Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Love Affair with TV Monitor Over Already

I didn’t think I would be disillusioned over hardware before the sore feet. Well, I was wrong. The whole reason I used the TV is I didn’t want to deal with moving the monitor and its sensitive cord and I was hoping to transition to watching things on the computer more. I thought all the kinks were ironed out.

This morning was a whole new kink. The margins of the desktop moved off screen on all sides. I spent an hour tweaking everything and researching what could cause this. When I finally stopped to get dressed, I had managed to get the taskbar back (except for the Start Button) and the highest screen resolution, which is too high for the recommended setting.

So tonight’s project will be shifting the monitor and seeing how to kink the cord so it won’t put the images on the monitor in the green spectrum. It’s like viewing everything with Emerald City sunglasses when that happens.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

I Haz Standing Desk!



It's nothing pretty, but it's a functional experiment. My uncle found out you don't clean that type of screen with Windex the hard way and gave the TV to me because I don't have a thinner TV yet. So I figured using it as a monitor was less hassle than trying to set it up in the living room and deal with my old TV. The milk crate and shelf brings the keyboard to the exact height it should be for me, but without being permanent. If the experiment works, I'll look into creating a permanent standing desk.

So far all I accomplished Sunday was making my feet sore. but the only sitting I did was thirty minutes story writing, putting the can crusher together, eating, and the thirty minutes soak I had in the tub to stop the feet from hurting. Adds up to roughly two hours, maybe?

Can Crusher: It's a cheap one Harbor Freight offers that is prone to breaking, but it works with gravity (crushed can falls into the container below it). I haven't killed it yet or tore it off the porch post--which seems what will happen first since mounting it was less than perfect. Anyways, I'm all about consolidating the storage of the cans since I sell them quarterly during the year.

Stellar Gift of Death: Saturday was a planned day off, but Sunday I got distracted by everything else that needed doing. I never got a chance to type anything and really test out the standing desk setup. So the plan shifted to finishing Chapter 7's edit. I got thirty minutes done on that. In theory, concentrating on the revision part on the weekends is not a bad plan, provided I don't have a gazillion chores to yet at my monkey brain and distract me.

Captain America: Finances improved enough to free up the tickets. Oh how awesome it is. It's on my to buy it list.

Dum Dum Dugan: I didn't know you spoke German." Gabe Jones: "Two semesters at Howards before I switched to French because the girls were cuter."
I'd be thrilled with a sequel on just the Howling Commandos, but Marvel thinks there's more money with Iron Man and friends.

Rich's Newest Project: The guy who brought us the Ten Doctors, Forever Janette, Stalker of Norfolk, Outrage of the Zygons, and Seeds of Destruction (Written by Landry Walker) has started a new story.



Have you got the theme music handy?

Why so silent? I haven't posted here since July 21st and August is almost over. What have I been doing? A lot of writing if you look at DUF, and other stuff that I can pinpoint since I'd write out a blog post but never type and post it. Which is a variation of "trying not to think about it." (Hatter in Alice). So don't be surprised if some out of date posts pop up filling in that missing time. I thought about adding it all to this one, but it's long enough already.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Monday, August 15, 2011

Finally Got to Test Out the Brilliant Idea

It’s probably late in the game on a technology scale and it’s late to my game since I meant to experiment all last week with it but failed due to oversleeping. The copier at the paying job can scan papers as a PDF file and email it. I have a box full plus a shelf-full of binders of class notes I cannot just throw away. I also have a scanner but it doesn’t have a paper feeder, so making PDF files at home is such a chore, I haven’t finished the project in years.

Brought a binder to work and was done in ten minutes—including two paper jams, me not sorting out the two-sided from the 1-sided pages so I had multiple files, and me having to scan one set over again because I got my work email addy wrong. Ten minutes.

TEN MINUTES

I’m a little boggled right now, thanks for asking. This project just went from I’ll-never-finish-it to could-be-done-by-the-end-of-the-month before I finished breakfast.

So now that’s my plan: bring two binders to work, scan, and save the PDF files, and put the papers in the recycle bin. When I’m through with the binders, I’ll figure out a way to transport the box full of papers in smaller chunks.

Read Free!
The BookWorm