fending off the sciatica fairy.

We’re coming up on the anniversary of last year’s Month From Hell, when I was immobilized with back pain and on industrial-strength painkillers for weeks.  To avoid a rerun of that experience, I’ve been experimenting with a few things to improve my back health and decrease the strain on my spine.

To that end, I rigged up this setup to try a standing desk for a few days:

It’s just a little table of just the right height placed on top of my regular desk.  I’ve read a few studies and articles that tout the benefits of standing vs. sitting, but it’s not an easy thing to retrain someone who has basically spent every workday in the last sixteen years or so mostly sitting at a desk.

Have any of you tried out a standing desk, or are you currently using one?  If you tried and abandoned it, why did you not stick with it?  If you still use it, how long did it take you to get used to it?

I worked in retail once, and being on my feet all day was a bit tiresome at the end of a long day.  Maybe I’ll augment this setup with a drafting-type stool for the occasional upright sitting.  But I’m willing to try just about anything to avoid another one of those sciatica bouts.  That was without exaggeration the most painful, least pleasant month of my life so far.  If this works out, and I notice a reduction in back pain, I’ll rig something a little more permanent on top of the old desk, or build a dedicated standing desk instead.

gaia’s dandruff, again. bitch needs some head & shoulders.

You know what Friday is?  That’s right: April 1st.

You know what they predicted for Friday?  That’s right: snow.  Half a foot or more.

Good thing I didn’t put the snowblower away yet.  The way things are going, I may have to buy a second, slightly smaller snowblower, just for the summer.

typewriter heaven, right down in boston.

The Lady of the Manor required some quiet time today for finishing the paperwork for the King’s Obulus (Ye Olde Tax Tyme), so the Lord and Jester-In-Residence packed up the kids and took the opportunity for a trip south to Cambridge Typewriter in Boston.

I took half a dozen machines down for trade to thin out the collection a bit, which had definitely reached “excessive accumulation” status.  In return, I brought back a lovely Olympia SF in robin egg blue, with Elite typeface.  (Pictures and typecast to follow.) I also remembered to bring my camera this time, so here are a few snapshots of the visit:

Some of the machines on the tables at Cambridge Typewriter.  The two on the left are identical to my two black Royals: a DeLuxe Portable (front) and a KHM (rear).

The shelves on the other side of the room, and the floor.  Place is all ate up with typewriters.

Tom Furrier, owner of Cambridge Typewriter and all-around nice guy, fielding questions from Quinn, a.k.a. Mister What’s-That-For?

Miss Lyra at work. (Random fact: the first time she ever labeled a computer keyboard verbally, she called it a “typewriter”.)

Future Typewriter Users of America.

A German-made Simplex from 1938.  (Trivia: the keys are the same size and shape as the ones on the German WWII “Enigma” machines.)

Another German typewriter of the 1940s–this one’s a Continental.  Looks like it came off the assembly line seven years ago, not seventy.

Olympia “Splendid 99″ compact travel typewriter, predecessor of the SF series. The cream-colored case and burgundy keys are a handsome color combination.

The Olivetti Lettera 32 of Cormac McCarthy fame.  These are the first L32s I actually got to lay hands on in real life.  The left one has Elite typeface, and the right one sports a script type that is simply lovely.  They’re great little typers, and I’ve been wanting one for ages…but after trying them right next to an Olympia SF, I think the boxy German is the superior machine, no matter how much those Lettera 32s fetch on the ‘Bay these days.  (Not that the Olivettis are bad, but the Olympia feels more like a workhorse.)  One of these days I’ll buy a Lettera 32 off Tom as well, however.  The design is just slick.

Thanks to Tom Furrier of Cambridge Typewriter for having us.  It’s an awesome shop for typewriter lovers, and Tom is a class act.  If you’re looking for a specific typewriter, he can probably hook you up (he ships nationwide), and if you need one fixed, chances are he can make it whole.  (No affiliation other than being a happy customer.)

geekxperiment.

With Robin upgrading to a 23″ widescreen LCD, we had a spare 19″ flat panel, and my Mac mini supports dual display modes.

<cue SFX: very low-watt light bulb barely working up the tiniest of glows>

Yesterday I picked up the necessary dongle to make use of the Mini DisplayPort on the Mac mini, and set up the second LCD to run in desk-spanning mode.  (The mini also does mirroring, but I don’t really see the point in it for a desktop.)

Here’s what it looks like:

It’s kind of neat to have one’s work on one screen, and a web browser or iTunes window on the other.  Last night, I even played World of Warcraft on the left screen while keeping Firefox open on the right one.  I could not write new material that way efficiently–not with another monitor to keep distractions on–but I use Scrivener mostly for transcribing longhand or typewritten stuff and then editing it, rather than writing straight into it.  And for non-fiction, it’s really handy to be able to cross-check stuff without alt-tabbing, or comparing two documents side by side.

I don’t know yet if I’ll keep the setup, but I like it so far.

shit! it’s will sasso in a tank!

(Alternate post title: “Rainbow Six: Chicken Commando“)

To protect us from the evil scourge of cockfighting, Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Steven Seagal staged a raid on a suspect…with dozens of SWAT ninjas in full kit, and an armored personnel carrier.

This is the kind of thing that makes law enforcement look like heavy-handed, jackbooted goonery.  No doubt they had camera crews with them, and that Sheriff Joe in fact decided to take all the sexy hardware along for the bust precisely because it’s photogenic.  But is this still “peace officer” work?

When you serve warrants and stage raids dressed and acting like you’re in urban combat in Fallujah, you look like an occupying army instead of community law enforcement officers, and then you can’t be surprised if people treat you like one.  Us vs. Them mindset, special rights and weapons for the King’s Men, overwhelming force by default in the name of “officer safety”, and the broadest leniency and benefit of the doubt when it comes to the use of force…I don’t see that kind of route to be a healthy one for public safety.

Is the job of the police officer a dangerous one? No doubt.  Are most police officers like Sheriff Joe and his tank-riding cockfight-busting ninjas?  Hell no.  But am I the only one who finds serving a cock-fighting warrant with a fucking tank and a platoon of SWAT just a tad excessive?  What kind of attitude does that kind of swagger generate toward the police?

Tens of thousands in taxpayer money spent on some flash bang theater. Thousands of dollars in property damage.  One unarmed suspect arrested. 115 chickens euthanized on the spot. Well done, Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.  Well done, indeed.

typecast #9.

(From The Last Night of the Earth, by Charles Bukowski.  Typed on an Olympia SM9 from 1964, with–I think– Congress Pica typeface.)

hippies: entirely useless, or cheap reactor shielding at least?

Our hippie friends across the river have a nuclear power plant in their state, Vermont Yankee.  It’s an older design, similar to the Japanese Fukushima I reactor.   Vermont Yankee generates 73% of the energy used in the state of Vermont.

Naturally, the hippies want it shut down, and the state senate has voted to not renew Vermont Yankee’s operating license past 2012.  Presumably, the magic unicorns roaming the Green Mountains will step up to the plate, touch their horns to the transformers, and feed five thousand gigawatt hours of magic energy into the grid annually to make up for Vermont Yankee’s capacity.  Or something.

Yes, Vermont Yankee is of the same design as the Fukushima I plant that had a radiation leak.  After a 9.0 quake nearby, and after being hammered by a tsunami and losing power for the cooling system as a result.  And that radiation leak has killed 0 (in words: zero) people due to radiation exposure so far.

Look, there is no technology that is absolutely 100% safe–but nuclear energy is the safest, cleanest, and most efficient form of energy generation we have yet invented.  There’s no such thing as a human birthright to be free from all conceivable dangers from cradle to grave.  To be human means to constantly juggle risks and benefits, because we have to constantly work for our survival on this little blue pebble.  Yes, a nuclear accident can cause thousands of deaths, but higher food and energy prices due to insufficient energy supply to keep billions of people warm and fed would kill many more than that. Nuclear energy is indispensable at this point…unless you want to see the Chinese and Indians build a few hundred coal plants in the next few decades, you don’t mind millions of brownish-hued people in Over Thereistan starving in the dark, you feel great about rolling blackouts and $500/month energy bills, and you like driving to work under a permanent dome of coal-burn haze.

Chernobyl resulted in fewer than a hundred deaths, and a few thousand people with radiation-related health problems, mostly from the area 20 miles around the plant.  That’s the worst nuclear accident in history, and that death toll is unacceptable, and proof that nukes aren’t safe, despite the fact that hundreds of reactors worldwide have been running for decades without any accidents. Automobile accidents kill 30,000 people in the U.S. every year…and that’s the price of freedom.  More miners die every year digging for the coal that runs coal-powered plants than people have died of nuclear accidents in the history of the technology.

Hippies: Sometimes, They Don’t Make Sense.  But then again, the nuclear debate has never really been about what’s safe for people.  It has also never been about what’s good for the planet–otherwise the anti-nuke crowd wouldn’t push to get rid of a technology whose only current viable large-scale alternative, coal power, requires the burning of 8,600 tons of CO2-generating coal per plant and day.

random items on a random monday.

• Thanks to everyone who put their hats into the ring for Robin’s graphics job.  She went through all the portfolios and picked someone for the job.  I’ll be sending out emails later today to all who replied.
• ‘”You pay $5.99 for a mocha, dude.  Why would you not pay it for a book?” The always eloquent Cat Valente weighs in on the $0.99 pricing model for ebooks, and I can’t say I disagree with her on any particular point.
• Not to be outdone, John Scalzi provides a handy Electronic Publishing Bingo Chart with all the arguments commonly found whenever there’s a debate on the subject.  Jump into a discussion thread on e-book self-publishing, and see how fast you can check off all the boxes.
• Lastly, Chuck Wendig gives you instructions for the Care and Feeding of Your Favorite Authors.
• I’ve been busy Doing Stuff this weekend.  We had friends over on Saturday afternoon, so we did some of that socializing stuff that seems to be all the rage these days, and it was fun indeed.  In addition, I also finished a chapter of the Urban Fantasy novel I now seem to be writing concurrently with That Damn MilSF Sequel, and wrote 2,200 words for a new SF short story yesterday.  All in all, the weekend was the perfect mix of recreation and productivity.  (I don’t really take days off from writing, although Saturdays tend to be my least productive days because of Dadcation and Saturday Night World of Warcraft Mit Der Hooch.)
• That short story I’m writing right now is called CAKE WHORES OF MARS.  The title was sort of an in-joke between Chuck Wendig and me, and I thought I’d see where I could go strictly from the title alone.  The evolution of that short story is a perfect example of the occasional pure awesomeness of the writing process—I started with the first line that came to mind when reading the title, and the whole story just gradually unfolded as I was typing the first paragraph.  By the time I was halfway down the first page, I knew where I was going with it, and how to get there.  I love it when stuff just comes together like that.
• The Mac mini is now a year old, which means that it’s out of Apple Care warranty…which also means that the chances for catastrophic failure increased by 2000%.  I do have a Time Machine backup hard drive, and I’ve never lost a machine to the point that I couldn’t just hook up its hard drive to a new computer and salvage all the data.  My Macs tend to have really long useful lives, however (there’s an eMac upstairs that will be eight years old this year, and I have a G3 iBook that’s closer to ten), and if those other machines are any indicators as to the projected service life of the mini, I’ll be using that one for a few more years.
• I got out my “spare” Olympia SM-9, the one I got in a garage sale, and cleaned it up.  It’s in as close to new condition as I’ve ever seen a used typewriter.  There’s not a thing wrong with it, and it looks like it rolled off the assembly line four weeks rather than four decades ago.  The typeface is that lovely, legible Congress in Pica.  I hammered out a bunch of pages on it this past weekend, and it’s as smooth and precise as a good Swiss watch.  The 1960s and 1970s Olympias will never win any prizes for looks—they’re not nearly as nice to look at as, say, a 1930s Royal or Smith-Corona with gloss paint and glass keytops—but they work like nothing else…and from the samples I’ve owned, they age really well.
• For those typewriter nuts out there who also own iPads, here’s a fun typewriter simulator that’s well worth the 99-cent price tag.
• Last typewriter-related item for today is Richard Polt’s page, specifically the typewriter font downloads.  (The essay collection of writers singing the praises of their manuals is great, too.  Hell, most everything on there is a fun read for a typewriter fan.)

Since I’m using this blog as a quasi-journal, let me mention Friday while I’m at it.

Robin got off work at noon, and we met up at the pediatrician’s office for Quinn’s 6-year checkup.  Then we all went out to lunch together.  The weather was perfect—fifty-odd degrees, cloudless skies, and a light warm breeze, no need for a jacket.  We went to Weathervane, which is sort of like a New England version of Denny’s with fried seafood and lobster.  We sat and talked, the kids enjoyed their lunch (and declared Weathervane their new Favorite Restaurant Ever), and I was struck by the fact that we just don’t do these kinds of things often enough.  Not the restaurant, I mean, but hanging out and doing things as a family—enjoying each others’ company without anyone having to do some other task at the same time.

And I thought to myself—this is a pretty good life.  I have a smart, funny and lovely wife and a great marriage.  We have two intelligent, healthy, adorable kids.  We have our own house in the green–a crooked house, sure, but ours.  We can fill the fridge and pay our bills reliably, and buy ourselves some nice things on occasion. I get to do what I’ve always wanted to do with my life, and I get to stay home with the kids and make sure they get a good start into their own lives.  Isn’t that just about as good as we could hope for things to be?

How often do we lose sight of how good we actually have it because we’re busy making things better for ourselves?  I don’t want to have no ambitions or be content with the status quo, mind you—but I have the sneaking suspicion that one day, I’ll be looking back on days like Friday, and think of them as The Good Days.  Almost everyone’s working toward That Day, that mythical point in our life where everything is going to be Just Right…and while we’re walking around with our minds weeks or months or years ahead of the present, we probably walk unthinkingly over a long string of those perfect days without realizing it.

Anyway, that’s enough Monday Morning Philosophizing for you.  There’s work to be done—a new week to seize by the throat and shake down for lunch money.

like electricity? hug a nuclear reactor today.

Japan’s recent troubles have given the opponents of nuclear energy some new ammunition.  Using the failure of a fission reactor after a 9.0 quake and subsequent 100-foot tidal wave as evidence that nuclear power plants are unsafe is just a bit silly, in my opinion.  But the thing that drives me batty about that argument is that it ignores the negative effect on the environment and the overall well-being of society if we do get rid of all the nuke plants:

You have to replace them with other sources of energy, all of which are much harder on ol’ Gaia than Andy the Atom.  Coal plants are really dirty, and coal is a finite resource.  Also, we’d need to build a bunch of new coal plants to make up the lost megawatts from the nuke plants, and with NIMBYs everywhere hitting the streets and writing their Senator Congressman angry letters every time someone wants to build a new anything energy-related nearby, that would be a tough feat to accomplish.

Green power is a non-starter when it comes to providing all the electricity we need.  Right now, it’s supplemental energy–just a little over 10% of our juice comes from solar, water, or wind power.  It’s also unpredictable, and we simply don’t have the ability to store the excess power for wide use.  And wind power is not only a very low-yield way to make kilowatts, but also saddled with almost the same NIMBY opposition as power plants.  A lot of the people who want renewable energy also don’t want a giant spinning rotor within sight of their property, because how ugly and ZOMG teh birds.

In the end, it’s simple math.  Our advanced technological society needs a steady and reliable supply of megawatts to function, and the only way to meet that need cleanly is with the help of nuclear fission plants.  Anyone who is in favor of shutting down all the reactors ASAP either can’t do math, or has a different sort of agenda–one that’s opposed to technology and industrialism.  Until we get atomic fusion licked, nuclear fission is the only game in town for energy that’s clean, infinitely renewable, not derived from fossil fuels, and suitable for our vast energy needs.

 

ebooks and pricing.

Here’s an interview with author Zoe Winters on ebook pricing.  She feels that the $0.99 ebook doesn’t make enough money for the author, and contributes to the “WalMartization” of literature.

The figures she quotes are interesting.  Amazon takes a huge cut of the book’s price at that price point–their royalties model encourages authors to price their books at the $2.99 threshold or above, beyond which the author gets 70%.  At $0.99, it’s just 30%.  If I were to put out, say, Terms of Enlistment as an ebook, I’d have a lot of incentive to price it at $2.99 a copy–even though I wouldn’t sell as many books, I’d probably earn more money than if I priced it at a buck a book.  My personal yardstick for “reasonable” is $2.99-$5.99 for a novel, and $0.99 for a novella or short story collection.  (That’s what I don’t mind paying, although I’ve purchased ebooks from proven and established authors at higher price points.)

What’s your opinion on ebook pricing?  What’s a price you don’t mind paying without thinking long and hard about it?