Bad design: iMac ports

In a way it’s too easy to pick on Apple. The company has been around for 40 years and in that time it helped usher in the personal computer, redefined what a PC could be with the Macintosh in 1984 and then went on a long trek into the wilderness, almost going bankrupt before getting a lift up from Microsoft, of all companies. And then Steve Jobs came back and in the next 14 years he served as CEO Apple went from nearly folding up to a company that was generating tens of billions of dollars in revenue. All of these products were created with Jobs back at the helm: iPod, iTunes, iMac, iPhone, and iPad.

They really liked the lowercase “i.”

During this time in particular, Apple’s reputation became cemented as a company that makes premium products and the term “Apple tax” got bandied about. You paid more for an Apple device, but you got something high quality in return.

Well, mostly.

The other thing Apple gained a reputation for–and why it is really such a juicy target for bad design–are the examples of form over function. I highlighted one already with the weirdly round original iMac mouse.

Next up is another aspect of the iMac, but one that concerns the current design, namely the arrangement of the ports.

Observe below the ports available on the 27 inch iMac:

iMac 27 inch ports

They are neatly arranged. This is good.

They are all on the back of the computer. This is bad.

The front of the iMac is very clean. The display is flush with the unibody aluminum design, with a small Apple logo being the only embellishment.

When you look at the front of a typical PC case you’ll notice a couple of things. The first is that it is usually not as sexy or clean as an iMac, though some can look pretty nice. The other thing you will notice is the front of the case (sometimes the side) will usually include line in/line out jacks and a couple of USB ports. This makes it easy to plug or unplug a headset (something you may not want to always have connected to the computer) and more importantly, it gives easy access to USB ports. While some USB devices are unlikely to get unplugged often or at all (USB mice and keyboards, for example), others will rarely remain plugged in, like a USB flash drive. Insert flash drive, copy/save the data needed, remove the flash drive.

On most PCs this is easy. On the iMac it is always a nuisance because a) the USB ports are out of sight on the back and b) the iMac only pivots up and down on its hinge, not side to side, which would at least make it easier to turn to access the ports on the back.

This is bad design and worse, it’s bad design deliberately chosen to keep the front of the iMac clean-looking, the very definition of form over function.

I actually think Apple may revisit this decision but probably not before a complete redesign of the iMac happens and that doesn’t seem likely to happen soon.

(iMac owners can help alleviate the issue by using USB hubs that sit garishly out front.)

Run 433: And six weeks later we have running

Run 433
Average pace: 5:51/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Distance: 5.26 km
Time: 30:50
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 21-26ºC
Wind: light
BPM: 169
Stride: n/a
Weight: 161.1 pounds
Total distance to date: 3477
Device used: Apple Watch and iPhone 6

I held off running for longer than planned due to a combination of weather (resuming runs in the rain makes for fine alliteration but it’s hard to motivate yourself to begin again while getting soaked) and general trepidation (mainly the fear of resuming too soon and risking aggravation of injury).

But today I finally committed to myself to head out on a basic 5K for the first time in six weeks.

I started by sleeping in. Whoops.

I eventually headed out around noon and started the run clockwise at Burnaby Lake around 12:30. Today also happened to be the day the summer switch got flipped back to ON and it was 21ºC when I started and rose to 26º by the end. It felt quite warm and I was thirsty and sluggish and the idea of aggravating injuries seemed the stuff of fantasy because I felt like I was barely moving.

My pace turned out to be 5:51/km, ten seconds slower than my last run but in line with what I’d expect after the month and a half of inactivity. My heart rate was up significantly, from 160 bpm on the previous run to 169 bpm today, but that can be attributed to the heat and greater overall strain in running.

On the plus side the only negative effect was my left foot feeling a little sore but not enough to slow me down or really make a difference. It was more like an annoying bug you can’t swat away. That analogy sucks but mainly it wasn’t an issue. I did not feel any other pain or soreness during or after the run, so that was encouraging.

The current plan is to resume a regular set of 5K runs and see how they go and eventually move back to 10K. I’ll try another 5K on Tuesday and see if it goes well. If so then yay. If not, then boo. It’s pretty simple.

The trail was in good condition overall, most of the puddles having dried up after recent rains–except for one giant puddle that was hidden around the corner, at the end of the path that leads out to the athletic fields. This puddle was big enough to be unavoidable and had the curious effect of leaving my feet utterly soaked even as I felt as parched as a nomad wandering the desert without a handy bottle of Gatorade.

Overall I am pleased that I got through and got through without any pain. We will see what Tuesday brings.

Some of the most embarrassing music videos ever (from the 1980s)

These are personal picks and they coincidentally are all from the 1980s because the 80s were both chockablock full of terrible music videos and it also happened to be the decade when I was old enough to really got into music. You can find more “official” choices out there like WatchMojo’s Top 10 Good Songs with Bad Music Videos (you’ll see some duplication on my list). My one criteria in the following selections is this: Do I cringe while watching? If the answer is yes, the video is a winner (at being cringe-inducing).

Here they are in no particular order:

Journey, “Separate Ways”

In some ways it’s hard to describe what makes something very 80s but you know it when you see it. Here, it might be the woman’s puffed hair and overly made-up face. Or maybe it’s Steve Perry’s everything. The air instruments alone guarantees this video’s spot but really, the whole thing is difficult to watch. You feel bad for these guys. Then you remember how much money they had.

Enjoy!

Starship, “We Built This City”

Sometimes cited as the worst song of the 80s, the video is a fine companion to it. Never mind that a song extolling the virtues of rock and roll is a top-heavy mess of synthesizers, the lead singer can’t dance and several times he literally stands facing the camera with his mouth hanging open, waiting to sing the next part of the song. The rest is a hodgepodge of extras and stylized scenes of Las Vegas because when I think of rock and roll, I think of Vegas.

Man, even the still you get before playing the video is cringe-worthy.

Wham!, “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”

I’ll confess, I pretty much hated this song. It was catchy but insipid. The video takes these qualities and turns them up to a million. The fashion transcends being 80s to looking like the random results of piecing together whatever was found after a rainbow exploded in a clothing factory. I mean, look at this still image I grabbed:

Colorful Wham!

Also, George Michael’s teeth are supernaturally white. It’s kind of creepy.

Styx, “Mr. Roboto”

This is a good example of a perfect marriage, with both song and video being equally silly and cringe-inducing. Part of the concept album Kilroy Was Here, this song features lead singer Dennis DeYoung disguising himself as a robot to help secretly undermine the authoritarian regime that has made music illegal or something. But if he’s in disguise, why do the lyrics include lines like, “my brain is IBM”? DeYoung over-emotes throughout and early in the video he spontaneously switches from being disguised as a robot to mincing around in a purple jumpsuit. He later inexplicably grabs a robot and starts singing loudly at it, possibly to torture it. And us.

Queen, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”

I quite liked this song when it was released as a single way back in 1980. It’s a breezy little Elvis-style ditty. The video features the band as the least-convincing group of greasers ever. Freddie Mercury struts around, jackets mysteriously appearing and disappearing on him and toward the end of the video someone apparently handed him a microphone because he’s suddenly got one in his hand. One of the dancers tears Mercury’s shirt open. It magically repairs itself later. The dancers look like they got lost on their way to a Broadway production of Cats or maybe Starlight Express. Brian May grimaces throughout.

And a bonus from 1975:

Neil Sedaka, “Bad Blood”

Neil Sedaka’s brown jacket and yellow shirt represent stylish 1970s fashion in the same way the shark from Jaws represents safe ocean swimming. The song is about a woman who done the protagonist wrong, with the chorus charmingly including the lyrics, “The bitch is in her smile.” Sedaka nonetheless mugs and grins throughout the song as if it’s some Barry Manilow show tune. There’s an odd bit halfway through where he suddenly stands up from the piano and starts clapping and singing to the same person off-camera that he’s been over-emoting to throughout the video.

Elton John, who embraced 70s fashion as the tasteless spectacle it was, shares vocals but, perhaps suspecting something was up, does not appear in the video.

Book review: The Chronoliths

The ChronolithsThe Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Minor spoilers below.

The Chronoliths takes the same broad theme of Wilson’s later novel Spin (mysterious giant objects appear around the globe) and uses it to frame a bleak look at a near-future where environmental and economic collapse have left the world vulnerable to military conquest on a level not seen since World War II. The twist is that the conquest is set to happen twenty years in the future and is foretold by the arrival of chronoliths, giant towers of indestructible stone and ice that commemorate the victories of someone or something only identified as Kuin.

With chronoliths spreading from Asia to South America and beyond, and pro and anti-Kuin forces forming, the story follows software developer Scott Warden as he witnesses the arrival of the first chronolith in Thailand and then becomes entangled in what Warden’s former teacher and scientist Sue Chopra calls “tau turbulence” in the quest to stop both the chronoliths and Kuin.

Written in 2001 and predating the 9/11 attacks, The Chronoliths is informed by a present that didn’t anticipate the arrival of the smartphone (it predates the launch of the iPhone by six years) and as such, even though it depicts a mid-21st century where video phones and terminals are commonplace, it feels ever-so-slightly out of date. This is not a real criticism, just a reflection on the likelihood of science fiction that chronicles near-future events not quite hitting the mark. Predicting the future is tricky business, which is ironically (and as Chopra would point out, not coincidentally) what the story is about. Reading the novel when it was published in 2001, these incongruities are non-existent. In 2016 you just have to keep the story in context of when it was written.

That said, the story moves along briskly and Wilson quickly ensnares Morgan, his friends and family into the future of the chronoliths, making Morgan’s actions and decisions both momentous and personal. He may not necessarily want to save the world, taking a rather jaundiced view of it, but he does want to save the people he loves. As more chronoliths appear and Kuin’s victory seems more and more inevitable, the tone becomes increasingly one of despair and hopelessness. Told from the first person perspective, the character of Scott Morgan deliberately feeds into this, framing the tale as one in which many terrible things happen. And they do!

I won’t spoil the ending but Wilson does kind of pull a rabbit out of a hat and it works. As with most stories that have a time travel element it’s best if you don’t try to pull the logic apart. In the case of The Chronoliths, Wilson makes that easy with a style that effortlessly moves the plot along.

Recommended.

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First day of summer 2016: meh

Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year and the first day of summer.

I rate it 7/10.

Good:

  • pleasantly warm
  • mainly sunny for most of the day
  • no hurricanes

Less good:

  • cloudy by late afternoon
  • forecast for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th days of summer: overcast, overcast, rain, chance of rain
  • rain puddles all over the place make it feel un-summerish

P.S. I promise to swear off weather-related posts for at least a week. That’s seven days.

Unless we have a hurricane.

Should we talk about the weather?

It’s hard to believe that June 5 was only two weeks ago. Back then it was Africa hot, the kind of hot where the air itself feels warm, like you could cut into it with a knife.

I say it’s hard to believe not because the time has flown by, but because so many of the days since then have seen lower-than-normal temperatures, along with enough showers to make the current water rationing seem a bit silly. It’s as if the nice weather was all just a convincing hoax. Perhaps it will be bone dry for the next two months and I’ll come to regret my complaints about more or less typical June weather. Perhaps we will look back and reflect bitterly on what we will come to know as The Great Dustbowl of 2016.

I suspect not.

Evidence that summer is coming, if only according to the calendar, was seen today as I traipsed through Hume Park during a respite from the rain, as the swimming pool has been outfitted with slides and filled with water. It would have looked inviting had the temperature been about ten degrees higher. Maybe next week. Actually, according to the forecast, the highest it will get in the next ten days is 26ºC and that’s next Sunday (and entire week from now), meaning it could conceivably be snowing by then, given rapidly changing weather conditions (you think I jest and yet Grouse Mountain got snow recently, something that sits awkwardly next to their summer promotional advertising). The next five days appear to be a dreary mix of cloud and rain. I suppose it could be worse. I could still be operating the concession at Locarno Beach and openly weeping over the loss of revenue. By the way, do people still go to the beach to tan anymore or do people slather themselves with super-strength sunblock and just go through the motions?)

P.S. I promise the next post will not be about the weather. PROMISE.

Book review: The World Beyond Your Head

The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of DistractionThe World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction by Matthew B. Crawford
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Crawford draws on theories and ideas from Kant to Freud to Nietzsche and more, both favorably and negatively, as he makes his case for how we in the western world are suffering from distractions both insidious and incidental, all of which collectively diminish what we can achieve by working to make us conform, to comply, to passively listen and not question. Crawford isn’t talking about the people walking down the sidewalk with their eyes glued to their smartphones–though he touches on such digital distractions–but rather bigger and more encompassing things that work to grab our attention, usually because some corporate or other vested interest has deemed our eyeballs and ears too valuable to leave alone. We are fed muzak in public spaces with no option to turn it off. A children’s TV show (Mickey Mouse Clubhouse) presents life as a no-risk endeavor where every potential hazard can be overcome with miraculous devices and conflict is smoothed over quickly, if it ever happens (he contrasts this with the earliest episodes of Sesame Street where characters regularly fight and yell at each other). Slot machines (machine gambling) are carefully engineered with newer technology to maximize their addictive quality, at the expense of those that fall victim to the addiction. We are pushed to know a little of everything and away from specialization.

He laments that classrooms are largely comprised of students sitting at desks passively listening to a teacher presenting information that may or may not be relevant to them, and counters with examples of people engaged in occupations that make use of skills that are learned from other craftspeople/masters as well as drawn from the lessons of those who came before them in the same field, putting together a picture of how we can become more individualistic not by rebelling or isolating ourselves from others, but instead acknowledging and working with the people around us and our society.

He turns to examples ranging from efficiently multi-tasking short order cooks and, in greater detail, an organ shop that restores and builds church organs, to illustrate how focused craft and skills can produce more productive and engaged citizens, while criticizing the trend toward general, non-specific (shallow) knowledge. The loving detail to these examples and his own affection for building and working with tools is alluring. You may not want to assemble a motorcycle or build a church organ when you’re done reading, but you’ll probably want to make something with your hands.

The writing itself may be challenging for some, falling (sometimes awkwardly) between casual and academic. The footnotes alone are more than 40 pages. This is not a self-help book or one with quick fixes or bullet point lists of easy solutions. Instead it is a meditative exercise on where we can (or should) go as a society and the dangers of continuing along our present course. There is a lot to chew on here and I suspect I will return to this book from time to time to re-read key passages, while carrying the central message that the individual, crafting and building, is a wonderful thing.

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Writing exercise: Before the boom

Writing exercise: It's five minutes before a massive meteor is set to directly impact the Earth. There are plenty of theories on what will happen, but they all share one grim thing in common: the near-certainty that humanity will be extinguished.

Write from the perspective of someone waiting during those final five minutes.

Writing exercise writer's note: I left this for a few months, having struggled to come up with a better ending than just stopping abruptly. I also wanted to make it better fit the parameters of the exercise (spoiler: the exercise goes on after the meteor hits). Instead, I've decided to post it as is because the pursuit of perfection is noble but also dumb when I could be pursuing another imperfect writing project.

I reserve the right to come back to this some day.

Enjoy!

I’m looking at the battery indicator on my MacBook. It estimates I have just over four hours of juice left. That should be enough. More than enough, really.

I’m sitting on a large, weather-smoothed boulder, legs dangling off the edge, the MacBook precariously balanced on my lap. One wrong shift and off it goes, bouncing down a rocky hill to its inevitable destruction. It would cost a thousand bucks to replace but I’m not concerned. Laptops are about to become a relic of the past.

Three days ago an amateur astronomer in Hawaii spotted an asteroid ten kilometers wide.

The boulder I’m sitting on is in a park on the coast, near Vancouver. I look out at English Bay, the water is sparkling and calm, and then look up, trying to imagine the asteroid against the soft blue of the mid-summer sky. I can’t. I can’t wrap my head around a chunk of rock ten kilometers wide, not one hanging up there impossibly in the sky.

Big asteroids blasting the Earth are pretty rare. The last one this size came down 66 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs.

This one was sneaky—if you can imagine a ten kilometer rock being sneaky—in that it came toward us from the sun. It wasn’t until its trajectory curved out and beyond the blinding light of our solar furnace that anyone knew it existed.

I saw the amateur astronomer in Hawaii interviewed twice. The first was on discovery day. He was gleeful, practically bouncing off the walls, unable to contain his excitement. Amateurs don’t make a lot of these discoveries. The second interview was this morning. He was ashen and never looked directly at his interviewer or the camera. He appeared to have lost weight, though I wasn’t sure how he could lose enough for it to be noticeable in just three days.

A sneaky asteroid—that is, one arriving largely unseen because the sun has obscured its path—is not necessarily a bad thing. But in this case it is. Its path is predicted to intersect with our mostly lovely planet with a 99% degree of certainty.

In about five minutes, if estimates are right.

There are ideas on how to deal with these kinds of celestial threats, but that’s all they are–ideas, theories on paper. We have nothing prepared.

The first day was one of confusion, but a growing sense of panic was palpable by nightfall. The second day was confirmation of the worst from many sources. Political leaders made awkward speeches calling for calm, offering reassurances that were naked lies. Then they disappeared. The end of Day Two spun off into bedlam.

People didn’t exactly riot here, but there was a lot of looting. Police initially attempted to keep order but quickly retreated. Then everyone retreated. The city streets filled up as people attempted to get out. The few remaining looters were swept away by crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Violence was inevitable. I managed to pick my way through back yards and alleys to escape unscathed. I came here, to this park, for the end. And for the view.

Fires dot the skyline. When I turn my head to the east I count nine columns of smoke over the downtown core. There are more beyond that. I appreciate the irony that the destruction began before a single speck of meteor dust entered the atmosphere.

The likely point of impact—also with that reassuring 99% degree of certainty—is the Pacific Ocean, which I am looking at. A breeze is picking up, but it’s just a breeze, gentle and refreshing, carrying the cool tang of sea air. While exact angle and speed of impact are yet to be determined—or maybe I missed the report amid the chaos—it’s reckoned that Ol’ Snuffy (my name) is going to leave a dent in the planet roughly 200 kilometers from where I’m sitting. It’s not Ground Zero but it’s close, relatively speaking. I looked up the effects on the internet—also about to become a relic of the past—not because I’m ghoulish but because I like going into situations with my eyes open. You know—give it to me straight, doc, how bad is it?

The good news is I won’t be vaporized.

That’s actually not good news because vaporization would be swift and painless.

I can see it in the sky now. Even this far away, there are streaks descending. They said it would break apart and once again those brainy scientists were right. I suddenly gasp and realize I’ve been holding my breath. My brain is trying to process a lot of things right now. If those internet sites are right, I could be dead and gone in fifteen minutes. Or I might survive. If I do I will find myself living in a world transformed into an unrecognizable hellish landscape. That could be interesting.

I count the streaks. There are eight that I can see, slowly fanning apart from each other. One of these glows bright, too bright to look at directly, almost a mini-sun, the core of Ol’ Snuffy making a beeline.

I look at the clock on my laptop. 3:21 p.m. A sequence of descending numbers, like a countdown.

My first kiss. Should I be thinking of that? It’s one of those first meaningful moments, so I suppose it should come to me swiftly and with fond remembrance. But I’m not sure who it was. Suzanne? Peggy? Jennifer? I don’t want to claim I was some kind of scoundrel, but I had a definite “kiss all the girls” phase and it rolled straight into kissing for real, advancing beyond kissing and running away before finding out what happened next.

3:23 p.m. now. The streaks have vanished over the horizon. I hold my breath again.

It was Peggy. I’m sure of it. I had a mad crush on her. Red hair, freckles. She liked to arm wrestle and she could beat me since I had scrawny scarecrow arms. I have no idea where she is now.

Nowhere safe, though. The scientists told us no such place existed.

I experience it first as a vibration that comes up through the boulder, tickling my bottom. The horizon suddenly changes, the fuzzy white sky is suddenly cast in bright colors—orange, red, mixed with muddy browns and blacks. Ejecta. The fact that I can see this from two hundred kilometers away is impressive. I could be terrified but am fascinated instead. How many people will ever see something like this?

The shockwave hits next. I don’t know how long it takes to reach me. It feels like minutes but is probably seconds. I am swept off the boulder. The MacBook blows away as if made of paper. I tumble onto the ground but am fortunate that recent rains have left it soft, almost spongy. I roll up against a cedar and remain there, unable to move for a time. I hear a loud crack, then many loud cracks, like a series of explosions.

For a moment it gets very hot. I wonder if I will be boiled in my own skin.

The shockwave passes.

I slump away from the cedar and realize it is no longer standing. Most of the trees have been snapped and lay flat. I wonder how none came down on me. The boulder has shifted to the left and looks a little wobbly. It must weigh a couple of tons.

My hair is a mess.

I stand up and see blood on my hands. Rivulets of blood run down both arms. My legs threaten to buckle but I manage to stay upright, for the moment, at least.

Apparently it is more than my hair that is a mess.

The ejecta is spreading out now, an ever-expanding mushroom cloud of debris. Acid rain will start falling soon. I’ll need to find some place to hide…for the next six months to a year.

I laugh. I didn’t expect to survive. This kind of sucks.

The rain shouldn’t be a problem if those internet sites were right, though. Something else will come first. I cup a hand to my left ear and listen. The sound is muffled, like it’s caught in a bottle. Did the shockwave shatter my eardrums? I don’t think so because I definitely hear something.

A distant roar. Is it real? I think it is.

The mega-tsunamis promise to be as tall as skyscrapers. They will be impressive sights.

I don’t swim very well.

I stagger over to the boulder—my right leg hurts like hell, there’s probably a broken bone or two shifting around inside—and set a hand against it to steady myself. That’s enough to start the boulder rolling. It lumbers down the hill, picking up speed before plunging over the edge and landing in the water with a satisfying dunk.

I fall over, too weak to stand unaided, and curl up, leaving the right leg extended. I am facing away from the water.

I want to see.

With pain bursting like bombs in my right leg, I shift until I am propped up on my elbows, looking across the bay. I can’t hold the position, though, and collapse onto my back. The sky above is still hazy blue, as if nothing has happened. As if this is all a dream.

My dreams never have this kind of continuity, though. The roaring is louder, much louder. I loll my head to the left. There is a cedar stump still stuck halfway in the ground. I could prop myself up against it. But even though it is nearly close enough to touch if I stretch out a hand, it looks very far away. I don’t think I can do it.

Instead I lay back again, pushing my head against the soft, spongy ground. I close my eyes.

The roar grows until it hurts my ears. I make feeble motions to cover them but give up. I wait for the tsunami to claim me.

It is geography—the earth itself—that saves me. Vancouver Island absorbs most of the energy of the tsunamis, and the waves that make it through the strait are big but not deadly. I feel water come up around me, nearly buoying me, then I settle back onto the ground as it flows by and eventually retreats. There will probably be other waves but my swimming skills aren’t going to be tested.

The sky’s transformation is hastening, though. The threat of a burning rain draws near.

Naughty with keyboards

Tonight, just because I could, I plugged a Mac keyboard into my PC. But wait, I didn’t just plug it into any USB port, I plugged it into one of the USB ports of my current PC keyboard.

Yes, I plugged a keyboard into a keyboard. It’s wrong and yet it works.

I kind of like the quiet of the Mac keyboard after the sturm und drang of my blue switch (extra clacky) mechanical keyboard. Still, this is silly so I’ll switch back after this post.

And a picture for posterity:

Dueling keyboards
Top: Das USB mechanical keyboard. Bottom: Apple USB keyboard. Not seen: Me being silly doing this.

Writing prompt: Ten questionable opening sentences

You may never want to open a story with one of these sentences.

  1. It was a dark and stormy kite.
  2. Brent Entwhistle knew he would get in trouble one day for peeling the banana from the wrong end and now that day had come.
  3. “It’s the new watusi!” Cyril bleated.
  4. John “Hawk” Dirk examined the bomb with great care, noting the timer only had forty seven days left on it.
  5. She whipped her luxurious golden hair around, like a yellow bed sheet flapping in the wind.
  6. “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog,” Byron said to the boy as he rode past on his bike, suddenly realizing that that curse of speaking only in Elvis song lyrics had come true.
  7. Abraham Lincoln swiveled around and pointed a Howitzer at Booth, thus beginning the craziest version of history yet.
  8. The family reunion would be awkward this year, Jane knew, but all she could do was hope the others would forget about her out of control bionic peg leg and move on.
  9. The killdozer thundered relentlessly toward the tranquil town of Sleepyville, but it would meet its match with the murderhoe that lumbered to meet it.
  10. “I’m only one man,” Ben said to the desperate crowd assembled before him, “but if you clone me I could be a hundred men!”

My word factory continues to appear abandoned

The first and only rule of writing is to write (so I say).

Today the weather changed from weirdly hot to slightly cooler than normal, clouds gathered up in the sky (their favorite gathering place) and presented the threat of showers (it sprinkled a little). I opted to skip my lunch walk because I don’t like walks in the rain or on the beach or around candlelit dinners or mostly because I was paranoid the sprinkle would become a downpour and I’d return to work sopping wet. I also wanted a day off from the walks to show my right leg how beneficent and kind I am, to encourage it to heal and be wonderful and normal once more.

My usual plan when I skip the lunch walk is to curl up (well, not actually curl up, that would be uncomfortable) with my Surface Pro 3 in the staff lounge and do some writing. How much writing did I do at lunch today?

None.

But I surfed the internet. Oh yes, I learned about new gadgets, read opinions on various things and caught up on the news. But writing? Not a word.

I felt bad and proceeded to have an afternoon filled with cascading or at least remarkably coincidental failures. Karma? Perhaps.

Next lunch break I’m writing.