The Online Photographer

Open Mike: New Habits

Happy to report that my lifestyle changes are going swimmingly*. My problems are worse than some others have, and not as bad as some others deal with. But they're mine so they're all I can share.

I'm either supposed to do, or trying to do on my own, five things:

• Go back to my plant-food diet, and stop eating sugar;
• Wear compression socks;
• Lose weight;
• Resume using CPAP; and
• Exercise.

The Five Doctors (I seem to keep seeing different people) are more or less agreed that I was having heart problems caused by sleep apnea—my heartbeat had become uncoordinated and irregular and my heart wasn't pumping enough blood, so I wasn't getting enough oxygen. This was causing all sorts of symptoms. I've been back on the CPAP for 31 days and the difference is...astonishing. I've gone from extreme fatigue (four naps in one day being the signal that got me to the doctor) to no naps; from oxygen hunger and shortness of breath to breathing normally; from lethargy to energy; from badly fractured sleep (with an avalanche of nightmares) to almost normal sleep; from confusion to normal mental sharpness (such as it is, yuk-yuk).

I've been off sugar and back on my plant-food diet for a mere eight days, and have been working out for only six days, and I've already lost 9.3 lbs. (.66 stone). (I weigh myself first thing in the morning on an excellent scale.) Who knows if the weight loss is attributable to the return of normal heart function, or the diet and exercise, or the resumption of normal sleep, or all those things?

The exercise is interesting. I rather enjoy it. I just take my tablet and read, and that makes the time fly by. I use some combination of a total of five different cardio machines, alternating sitting with being on my feet. I get my heart rate to between 90 and 100 BPM and keep it there. It isn't hard. I'm going to add workouts with dumbbells sooner or later.

Books, books!
I'm really enjoying Bill Bryson's The Body: A Guide for Occupants. I love love love his guided tours of subjects far from my usual field of interest; I lapped up his lovely book on physics, A Short History of Nearly Everything. The Body is equally entertaining, and bits and pieces of fascinating information fly by. For instance, babies who grow up in houses with cats present almost never get asthma. (I'm on the chapter about the lungs now.) His vivid account of how long it took before we accepted that smoking was linked to lung cancer is very telling. There's certainly a parallel to the obesity epidemic: as Dr. John McDougall says, "People love to hear good news about their bad habits."  

Speaking of which, that's what I'm working on now, habits. I'll let you know how it goes. I'll report back in a month or two. I hope I can do this. (I initially mistyped "can't" for "can"...Freudian slip?)

And speaking of habits—to briefly get back on topic—I'm carrying the camera again. Too many pictures were going by in my daily life. From now on, where I go, the camera goes.

Mike

*Except that I'm having trouble with time management.

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Keith Mitchell: "I also enjoy Bryson's writing. Despite being a recently retired registered nurse, The Body left me with a sad sense of my lack of knowledge but simultaneously a sense that more work and research will still facilitate big improvements to our health.

"Glad to hear you are on the right side of your health concerns and hope that your new habits become embedded quickly."

Steven ralser: "If you want to read further about one of the reasons why it took so long to recognize the link between smoking (and second hand smoke)and lung cancer, read Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, by Naomi Oreskes [and Erik M. Conway —Ed.]. See also https://www.merchantsofdoubt.org."

JoeB: "Good to hear the phoenix is rising from the ashes. I have found going to the gym an excellent way to organize my day—I enjoy the routine. I also enjoy the results of my workout. The social aspects of seeing the same folks at the same time of day cannot be discounted. Diet cannot be ignored. What and how much is eaten make all the difference in our life. I should have turned green if the saying 'you are what you eat' is true!"

MikeR: "Yay for you! And aren't those sleep apnea nightmares horrifying?"

Mike replies: They certainly are. I didn't think I was going crazy, but I did think the cause was fundamentally psychological. I didn't realize it was a symptom of sleep apnea.

Free Money (OT)

This is a followup to the OT Ford Mach-E EV post, and I beg your pardon. I really shouldn't write about this this morning. But I can't help myself...I need to vent.

Here's the short version. As you've probably heard, the government, at both the State and Federal level, wants to sweeten the deal for people buying EVs. So they offer consumer incentives in the form of rebates and tax credits. (As of this year, the Federal tax credit can be applied to the price of an EV immediately at the point of sale, by the dealer, so it's easy now.) In my State the incentives max out at $7,500 Federal and $2,000 State. There are a few conditions, mainly to benefit American car companies and lessen our dependency on China.

So the government wants to give me $9,500 to help me buy a Ford EV. Nice of them, huh? And guess how much the Mach-E qualifies for?

...In most cases, $500. I didn't skip a zero there—five hundred dollars. The other nine grand? Ford doesn't mind if you and I miss out on that.

G O O D   L O R D. Talk about shooting themselves in the foot! Ford pours resources and engineering into building an all-new, from-the-ground-up EV, and then they don't even ensure that their customers can avail themselves of the free money the government is giving away. What?!? Really? That has got to be one of the most self-defeating business blunders ever. If you were designing a car from scratch, and the government had designed a program specifically to help you succeed, wouldn't it be "Job One" to absolutely ensure that your car qualifies for the monetary incentives your customers will be eligible for?

Of course, it's a little more complicated than that. The government did change the rules midstream in January '23—the Mach-E qualified for half the Federal incentive before that—and the lowest model configuration of the car does qualify for the whole two grand from the State. It's all the higher models that only qualify for $500. Furthermore, a used EV that costs less than $25k qualifies for $4,000 in Federal tax credits, regardless of where it was made and what kind of batteries it has. (But there are no State rebates for used EVs.) A few of the early cars have already dipped into that range, and more will follow as time passes. And, Ford was planning to build its own LFP battery plant in Michigan, which would have solved the problem—but apparently it has put those plans on the shelf because of short-term consumer hesitancy.

Ah, what a clusterf--k.

Anyway, in 2022, when the Mach-E qualified for half the Federal sweetener and was still newish, it outsold the gasoline Mustang—in fact, in April '22, Ford suspended orders, citing excessive demand. In 2023, U.S. sales (now with zero Federal rebate) only rose slightly, from roughly 39,000 to around 41,000. But how are you going to apportion the blame for that? Some of it has to be due to the denial of the subsidies. Why would you buy Car B if it meant leaving $9,500 on the table, vs. Car A which allows you to have that money? There was also a very costly recall of early cars that might have dampened Ford management's enthusiasm for the whole project. That's partly what you get for starting at the top end, rather than the low. Maybe Ford should have built a cheap EV at the same time. (Reminds me of Kyocera's star-crossed attempt to build a deluxe 6-MP Contax DSLR, the full-frame N Digital,  before the timing was right. It wasn't "the" camera that killed Contax—there were several factors—but it was the biggest.) Still, the Mach-E is currently either No. 3 or No. 4 on the list of the best-selling EVs. The first two places are held by Teslas, which qualify for all of the available government incentives.

No such thing as range anxiety
Meanwhile, two little morsels I stumbled across in my research (you know me—it's been all EVs all the time for the past several days). They give opposite perspectives on the the issue of range anxiety. The first from a guy who's making a road trip from L.A. to Phoenix and the second from a guy who charges a daily driver, a Tesla, at home.

1: A wonderful rant by Matt Farah of The Smoking Tire about "infrastructure anxiety." Start watching at about 12:00 and go to about 14:30. This is worth hearing. (Note that the sound is not properly sync'd.)

2: From a comment by a Tesla owner who goes by the name @MH-Tesla:

"Oh, and it's full every day I wake up, like having a gas pump at your home. So the one and only thing a gas car is superior at is long road trips.

"I thought the charging was going to be the thing I disliked the most. Turns out it's the best part of an electric car. Unless you do that road trip, you don't even think about range. It doesn't enter your thinking. You just use your car without a thought to 'do I have enough gas / range.' You always have enough every day so you quickly get used to not thinking about it. It's awesome."

"Like having a gas pump at home." We don't hear enough about that. In my area, you can get free electricity in the middle of the night if you are using it to charge an EV, and you can sign up to get all your electricity from local solar fields whether you have an EV or not.

Anyway, the Mach-E gets shunted to the long list of expensive cars I like but can't afford, and to say I am disappointed is an understatement. (I've really caught the jones for that car.) Well, those grapes were probably sour anyway. But supposedly the Chevy Bolt is being redesigned and re-engineered for a 2025 or 2026 return, and will reportedly be at the cheaper end of the price range for EVs. We'll have to wait and see if that will be true—and whether the GM managers have enough sense and direction to give their customers a crack at that free money.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Stephen S.: "I used to live in a condo near downtown Toronto, Canada, and they announced a plan for electric car charging in the underground parking: residents would have to pay up to $30,000 to get a charger at their parking spot, and the building could only support half of the parking spots having chargers, so everyone was encouraged to secure their spot for the future, or risk losing out forever. It sure made it look like the future was that EV ownership only for those who owned a house, and that half of the condo residents would have to give up driving entirely if internal-combustion vehicles were ever outlawed. This was not at all encouraging."

Tom Stermitz: "Yes, pay attention to the rebates, whether Federal, State, dealer or manufacturer. The Hyundai/Kia group doesn't qualify for the Federal rebate because the batteries are not U.S.-made, but the manufacturer matches the $7,500. Thanks to the supply-demand-inventory distortion of the moment, I got $17,500 off my Kia EV6.

"Secondly, pay attention to lease vs. purchase cost over the life of the deal. Leased EVs get the Federal rebate regardless of battery origin—assuming the dealer passes that on to you. This is such a good deal, that over half of the EVs sold right now are leased.

"Thirdly, pay attention to your local off-peak electric costs. My 7.5 cents means that I pay $2 per 100 miles. My electric bill went up $20/month, but my fuel cost went down $200/month.... I commute about 1,200–1,500 miles per month....

"Fourth, don't forget the little things like purchase sales tax, yearly registration and monthly insurance. These cars are tech-heavy, and a broken rear-view mirror or bumper probably includes broken cameras or sensors."

John Camp: "One of the odder and yet more intriguing speculations about why 'we're alone' in the Universe—that is, we've never found a sign of life outside the solar system—is that advanced civilizations hit a 'great filter' that destroys them, and maybe their worlds. That always seemed unlikely to me, as surely some advanced civilizations would avoid the filter. But perhaps there are several filters to avoid, and we're approaching one. One of the more ignored thoughts about global warming is that there is an enormous (truly enormous) store of methane in the northern tundra of Canada and Russia. When that begins to melt, the amount of warming gases entering the atmosphere will increase exponentially. We can probably handle 130 degrees in Scottsdale and Austin with air conditioning. Can we handle 200 degrees in Minneapolis?

"Also, to the people who argue that energy generation is energy generation, and that going to EV cars is simply moving pollution from one place to another...no it isn't. The difference is, power plants are single-point sources. There is available (if expensive) tech that will sequester CO2. But how do you do that from millions of tiny point-sources, like cars. And the answer is, you can't. If we really want to control CO2 emissions, we need EV cars and nuclear, wind and solar."

Mike replies: Wind is already 10% of utility-scale electricity generation in the U.S., and the total of renewable sources is 21%, which exceeds the percentage for nuclear (source). Worldwide, the situation is better, with more than a quarter of power generation being from renewables according to the United Nations (source). One nice thing about renewables is that you can scale those down to point-sources (as you call them)—I have a number of friends who run their homes on solar, and one who runs his house on solar and has enough power left over to fuel his Nissan Leaf.

Cars are also an excellent solution to the problem of how to store solar energy! Millions of little mobile batteries can do what large-scale storage ideas can't.

Open Mike: How to Say Kamala (OT)

It's COMMA-luh. Comma as in the punctuation mark. Luh, a schwa (the most common sound in English) with an L in front of it. (Link should open at the 28 second mark.)

Speaking of punctuation marks, here's something cool that I learned recently: two dots over a vowel in English are not an umlaut, but a diacritical mark indicating diæresis—that is, it indicates that the second of two vowels is pronounced separately rather than being "clubbed" (combined) with the vowel on one or the other side of it. (We do that a lot. English is hampered because we have up to 17 vowel sounds but we use the Roman alphabet, which has only five symbols for vowels.) So in "coöperate," for instance, the two dots indicate that the two Os are separated and the word has four syllables rather than three. Nifty. However, the mark is considered obsolescent, because too few people know it or what it does. The New Yorker is one of the only publications left that uses it. They apparently get complaints.

Here's another cool thing. You know the difference between to, too and two, of course, and there, they're and their. Those are homophones (pronounced the same way) but not homographs (written the same way). But did you know there are homographs in English that are not only not homophones, but are actually different words? Words like have, and that, and had, for instance, and a number of others. To clear up the mystery, it depends on whether they're spoken as the strong form or the weak form. The differences in meaning, the contribution of strong and weak forms to the rhythm of our language, and the difficulty non-native English speakers have learning it, are all explained in a video by the exemplary Dr. Geoff Lindsey. It's a delight to have it explained so clearly and thoroughly.

Finally, have you noticed that young people who like to tell us how to speak if we want to be considerate are sometimes the same people who think nothing of being persistently rude and inconsiderate to those who happen to have the name Karen? Just sayin'.

Have a nice Sunday!

Mike

P.S. I should add that when I know someone who prefers nontraditional pronouns and asks me to use them, I do. People should be called what they want to be called. That's been my position most of my life. I had to decide the issue for myself when I was young because I had two cousins who wanted to leave their childhood nicknames behind. Some family members resisted that, and I thought about it and decided that if they wanted to be called "Lou" and "Mary" instead of "Terry" and "Bunny," then I would do as they requested. Same with the more recent changes in gendered language.

The point is to be considerate to people.

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

William Lewis: "Re 'P.S. I should add that when I know someone who prefers nontraditional pronouns and asks me to use them, I do. People should be called what they want to be called.' Agree completely. In the military, I got used to saying 'sir' or 'ma'am' as appropriate to everyone in the context of my job as hotel clerk. I have a friend who is non-binary, who is biologically female and presents as such but uses male (he/him) pronouns and has chosen a preferred masculine name. I get double takes on a regular basis when I call him 'sir.'"

Arg: "Except, as a non-American, I don't think I will pronounce 'comma' the way you probably think I will. Your international English-speaking audience might, if I am guessing correctly how Americans pronounce 'comma,' be better served by the suggestion CUMMA-luh. Hmm!"

Nikhil Ramkarran: "A substantial part of our population (Guyana’s) originate out of the Indian subcontinent, me included. We have tons of Kamalas. I have several aunty Kamalas (aunties Kamala?). No one I know has ever pronounced it this way, though it is undoubtedly the 'correct' way. People here laugh at the American emphasis (or usage for that matter) of the second 'a.' We say 'Kamla.' In fact, the second 'a' in the name has started falling out of fashion as younger people without knowledge of the 'proper' spelling began using the phonetic spelling when naming their children. Just an irrelevant aside."

Timothy Auger: "The correct spelling of the name of the car manufacturer Citroën is a good example of a diæresis. The French say Sit-ro-en, whereas we lazily say Sit-ron."

Open Mike: The Walk-Jog (OT)

Just a modest suggestion for people around my age.

When I was 58 I had a bit of a life experience—I reconnected with a woman I had carried a torch for when we were young. She'd been divorced, and we resumed our friendship, which quickly blossomed into a relationship. She was a runner (ran a marathon or two, even). I had a sudden interest in being healthy and trim, so I tried to take up running again.

I had been a runner of sorts when I was young. Mainly, I was fast when I was a kid—I won the blue ribbon at summer camp when I was seven, and was always the fastest kid in my class in grade school, so I thought of myself as a runner. I ran more or less daily, six months out of each year, until I was in my mid twenties.

When I tried to get back into exercise at 58, I first tried "spinning" on stationary bikes, which was all the rage ten years ago. But it turned out to be like dogs eating grass. I always wondered why my dogs ate grass, because it just made them throw up. So I went to Google, and learned that "dogs eat grass because it makes them throw up." Okay then. Solves that mystery. Spinning made my hips hurt, and I wondered why. Some quick Google-fu revealed that "middle-aged men sometimes have trouble taking up spinning because it makes their hips hurt." Well...okay. Check.

I won't go through all my experiments, but I had all sorts of problems with running, too. Here's the takeaway lesson, tl;dr version: it's better to exercise consistently and continuously throughout your lifetime. Taking several decades off throughout midlife not recommended.

Here's where I ended up after all my struggles: the walk-jog. My big problem ten years ago was that I kept injuring myself. So eventually I ended up walking two miles a day, interspersed with short blips of jogging—maybe a hundred or two hundred feet (30 to 60 meters) at a time. Walking is great, but a little jogging gets your heart rate up, and they think jarring your bones is good for keeping them strong. A little running is good for you even if you can't do a lot. Ten years ago I could easily jog for two miles, but after some number of weeks or months I'd break down (usually a knee). Sprinting for even short stretches, the same (usually a foot). The walk-jog I seemed to be able to do indefinitely. 

When I got my pacemaker in January of this year, I had to follow various rules during a "recovery period." Problem was, I used that as an excuse. The recovery period was only six weeks, but I continued to eat poorly and not exercise long after the recovery period had, um, ended. I didn't start my exercise program until my cardiologist gave me a meaningful stare and said, "you have no restrictions on your activities."

Anyway, I started trying to eat right again, and exercising, finally, last May sometime. I've also had persistent problems with getting into it too fast, because I get all enthusiastic at first, do too much, and then run out of steam. So I started very slowly this time—half a mile out and another back. It was tough at first, and I had to stop along the way to recover (I was pretty sick last year). Each day I walk just a little further. Just a few steps. When I turn around I pick some landmark a bit further on—a bush, a driveway, a telephone pole—and walk to that the next day. I'm up to about 1.7 miles every morning now, and I can walk briskly the whole way. Then last week I introduced the first jogging section—nothing much. 

I plan to work up to two miles in the morning, then start an additional walk in the evening.

I'm watching out for that defeatist mood that also comes over me—when exercising seems like too much of a PITA and a burden. Currently, my morning walk seems easy, and it's over quickly. But as soon as I catch myself dreading it, I plan to cut back on my distance significantly and start up the incremental increases again, slowly. That hasn't happened yet, but I'm ready for it. The point is to exercise every day, not to have to hit some arbitrary target.

I think real walking is better than a treadmill—does anyone know anything about that?—but I'm thinking of getting a treadmill for the Winter. I foresee it being easy to use the weather as an excuse. I belong to the health club in town, but using it has two downsides—I have to drive there, which takes up time, and I have to do all my walking at once. With a treadmill in the house I could walk for a while in the morning, again at midday, and then some more in the evening. Sounds convenient.

I think I'd like that.

Anyway, that's what has worked for me.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

ASW (partial comment): "Your suggestion of maintaining beneficial activities and habits over a long period is relevant for most aspects of life. Want to be a good typist? Keep typing. Want to be in shape? Move your body every day. Want to write a novel? Write a bit each day. The big failures of my life have all come because I kept putting off some small task until tomorrow. I would suggest that it's easier to exercise from home than from a location you have to travel to, whether that's walking out your front door or owning a treadmill or having a few free weights beside your desk. I'm a regular runner to the tune of 2,500–3,000 miles/year. While that might sound impressive, it all comes down to doing a bit each day, six days per week. The tip I give to anyone who wants to exercise, whether it's walking, running, doing pushups, or lifting weights, is to just get started. Walk or run (or lift weights or whatever) for five minutes and if you're not into it you can stop. The vast majority of the time you'll feel better than when you began and you'll keep going."

James Bullard: "Treadmills and other home exercise devices are boring. If you decide to go that route you need to also plan a distraction while you are treading, spinning, whatever. Set it up so you can listen to podcasts, watch videos, listen to music that engages you. Some people read. I can't do that. If you can, that is an option too, but however you manage to counteract the boredom, do it. Lack of activity never makes you feel better."

Why Do We Like the Sports We Like? (OT)

Comments are 100% posted and updated as of 3:31 Tuesday

I have a peculiar blind spot with regard to soccer, a.k.a. world football: I can't feel any suspense or excitement when I watch it. I can usually access those feelings a little even when watching some kind of sport that few people care about, such as, I don't know, luge, or curling. Obviously I know many people are passionate about world football. People regularly remind me that it's the most popular sport in the world. I have a friend from Maryland who's very into it, although he's terminally frustrated by his inability to keep up with things from the US without paying exorbitant fees for multiple video subscriptions. 

A reader sent me a clip of a sensational goal by the rising Spanish star Lamine Yamal, but—well, I felt no "sensation" watching it. Doesn't move me. A guy makes a kick in the direction of the goal and gets lucky, is what it looks like to me. Four inches further down and the goalie would have blocked it, one inch further to the left and it would have bounced off the upright. I can't believe that he has the athletic control to put it precisely where it went, so I don't see much in it. Even a baseball pitcher doesn't have that kind of pinpoint control—air works on the ball to disturb its flight. But the main thing is that I just can't feel the excitement or the suspense that so many people obviously feel. Weird.

Blind Spot
I've often wondered why I feel this way. It's been consistent over the years. Perhaps because I never played soccer, so I can't feel in my body what the basic mechanics of the sport feel like? Perhaps because I never watched it as a child and it was never the subject of discussion and admiration? Because I don't know the difficulty of what the good players are doing? Obviously the top players must be exceptional, because there have to be huge numbers of people striving to be good at it, and the teams in the top matches must be the crème de la crème. But I can't see it. I certainly don't know the subtlety or the strategy of the play. To me it just looks like they kick it randomly back and forth until my head falls off.

I don't get the game, is what I'm saying. I'm well aware that this is a blindness of mine, so you don't need to point that out. I know I'm just not seeing it. It's my own deficiency. But why am I blind?

I do try to remember this when I write about my own favorite sports on TOP. I know intellectually that many people feel about my favorite sports the way I feel about soccer. (Cuesports especially? I used to think everybody liked pool.) It helps me stay away from those topics and not subject you to them too often. 

One of those things
Why was I drawn to pool as a kid before we even had a table, when there's no tradition of pool in my family or, indeed, in the social class I was born into? Why have I been so fascinated by it for so long? I suppose I can lay my interest in track and field and tennis at the feet of narcissism, because I participated in those sports as a kid. Without ever studying American football, I can tell you with surprising accuracy what's going on because I've watched so much of it. I remember my father watching football on the weekends, and he almost never watched TV. I only played football in seventh and eighth grade, although we played touch football endlessly on summer afternoons in the yard. I remember being hit in the head by the football one night because we had stayed out trying to keep the game going for so long that it got pitch dark. I have a pretty early childhood memory—I was eight or ten—of driving past Lambeau Field coming back from a family vacation. We were listening to the game on the radio, and, as Bart Starr connected with Paul Hornung for a touchdown, we could hear the roar of the distant crowd through the rolled-down windows of the car. Made the hair on your neck stand up. I've had a fraught relationship with American football over the years, but it's easy to see why I'm drawn to it: it's the sport of the culture I'm in.

Maybe that's all it is with soccer: I didn't grow up with it. But my friend from Maryland didn't grow up with it either, and he can tell you anything you want to know about the Premier League like he had grown up eating fish and chips in pubs. Or maybe I decided at some point that I don't have room for it: I put it in the category of "not-mine" early on and have never seen fit to modify that? I don't know. If I did that, I didn't do it consciously. I know some of our readers have decided they don't like sports in general, so they have expanded their "willful blind spot" to cover all sports. And they seem proud of that somehow. That must have been a conscious decision.

Assuming you actually have at least one or two sports you genuinely love (that is, you're not one of those proud-hater-of-all-sports guys), do you also have some that leave you so completely cold that you can't feel even a twinge of suspense or excitement when you watch them? What grabs you? And what doesn't? And, any idea why?

I guess for me it's just one of those things.

Mike
(Thanks to Sietse Wolters)

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Tom Burke: "Anyone can play it. You don’t need any equipment, just something you can kick. A couple of pullovers can stand in for goal posts; indeed, you can play it in the street (or you could, in the 1950s and early 1960s) with just a single goal. It doesn’t require any special physical form. Being tall can help, but so can being small; Diego Maradonna was 5'5", Cristiano Ronaldo is 6'2". I think it’s the imperfections that make it so attractive. Most of the time, most of the moves don’t come off; players spend almost all of the game not touching the ball, and when they do get it, most of the time they mess it up. But sometimes, just sometimes, something glorious happens. And everybody in the crowd, or watching on TV, thinks 'I could do that!'—because it looks so simple. But of course it isn’t. Any professional footballer is a marvelous athlete; they’re all outrageously gifted with natural skill, and they’ve spent years developing their athleticism and skill; and still they get it wrong most of the time. It’s a very human experience."

Chris Bertram: "Don't get the indifference to what you call 'soccer,' but then I'm a long-time Liverpool fan. Spectacular goals: sure there's an element of luck, but there's also excitement in a forward beating three defenders to take a shot in the first place, a brilliant save or interception, a pinpoint pass, or a wonderfully rehearsed set-piece. Cricket can get me involved occasionally. The sports that leave me really cold are American football and (the remarkably similar) rugby league where dull repetition seems the order of the day."

KeithB: "In one of those 'connections' things, Walt Disney enjoyed playing polo, but his financial backers, fearing he would be injured, made him stop. So he switched to trains as a hobby. He created a ride-on railroad in his backyard and built a lot of the rolling stock himself. He also had plans for an amusement park percolating. He originally thought about a small-scale operation adjacent to the studios (where the freeway is now). Because of his hobby, he decided he wanted a full-scale railroad in the new park, which increased the size of the thing dramatically to several hundred acres. They found a good spot in an orange grove in Anaheim next to the Santa Ana Freeway which was under construction. And the rest is Disneyland."

darlene (partial comment): "I think guys look fantastic in baseball uniforms—those form-fitting pants really show off their legs, and the caps make their faces look even more handsome. It adds some eye candy to my love of watching professional baseball players, besides the strategy of the game itself. But football? It’s more like a fashion disaster meets medieval armor. And don’t even get me started on the game itself—it’s like watching a bunch of armored trucks crash into each other with occasional breaks for a tea party. Baseball? Pure joy. Football? A confusing chaos of padded mayhem. And no, I’m not apologizing for enjoying watching baseball players the same way guys enjoy women in swimsuits."

[Ed. note: For the full text of partial comments, please see the full Comments Section by clicking the link at the bottom of this post or by clicking on the post title and scrolling down.]

Dave Burns: "Of course, there's a famous Simpsons clip for your point. The full clip and the outtake from that that's more to your point. I'll assume you're the American announcer.  :-)  "

robert e: "I watch soccer only occasionally, but it strikes me as a massive performance of suspense and catharsis, and closer to the brink of chaos than most other sports, but for the thinnest yet resilient membrane of consensus and respect. Soccer and rugby thus seem the most primal of team sports to me, but I can only care about a particular soccer game if I have some vested interest going in, like rooting for a national team.

"I enjoy watching sports that are unfamiliar to me. I enjoyed part of a cricket match on TV last night (a very rare thing on US television). It's a sport I'm barely familiar with and whose rules still mystify me (though I do seem to pick up the gist more quickly every time I watch). The match (test? over?) took place in a field in the middle of Texas, USA, but the players and spectators seemed to predominantly hail from South Asia, i.e., Pakistan, New Zealand and places in between.

"My favorite thing about the Olympics is the opportunity to watch sports I rarely get to see in the US, contested by the world's elite practitioners—most all of them people I've never heard of.

"On the other hand, I can't get enough of tennis—a game I've played and loved since I was a child. For one thing, the scoring system—there are no 'dead' or meaningless points, so if the contestants are close enough in level, there are no 'dead' or meaningless moments in a tennis match, no matter what the score is. And it's beautiful—chess with athleticism and physics—what's not to like? Lots of variety and nuance, as well, though it probably takes familiarity to appreciate that in any sport.

"I played a lot of baseball, too, as a kid, but I have a more fraught relationship with that sport and have rarely watched it since the long strike of '94–95.

"I played playground basketball too, and followed the Knicks in the '60s and '70s, but didn't pay much attention as an adult until Michael Jordan's third or fourth season with the Bulls, and then I followed them religiously until he retired (both times). After that I gradually lost interest. I didn't pay any attention to women's basketball until Caitlin Clark's record-busting last year in college and first year in the pros, and discovered that WNBA games are more fun to watch than NBA games.

"In conclusion? There's probably a different reason for why I like or dislike any given sport at any given time."

Curt Gerston: "I can’t resist commenting on that shot from Lamine Yamal (not to try to change your mind, which I respect, but since you brought it up): I was watching that game (high stakes tournament soccer is my favorite), and I literally yelled as I jumped from my seat. You’re sort of right that he was a little lucky it went in at that exact spot, but also a player has to have tremendous skill to get clear of the defense, remain balanced, kick it at speed with the right pace and spin to even give it a chance to hit that location. Yes, most shots will hit the post or be saved by the keeper, so you have to try with all the skill you have and when that little bit of luck helps out, oh the joy! It’s hard to score in soccer.

"The other thing to enjoy about Yamal’s shot is that in that moment, his life changed. We witnessed something historic. Not every goal will do that of course, but every once in a while in this (and every sport) a moment comes and changes the course of a career, a team, or in this case, a country. They’ll be talking about that goal in Spain forever. That’s why we watch sports, for that magical moment, and to recognize it when it comes."

psu: "I never quite figured out how to watch soccer until I ended up spending around eight weeks at home after some wrist surgery during the 2022 World Cup which then led right into the Premiere League season. I think one reason Americans have trouble with soccer is that most of our interaction with it is via the international game (World Cup, Olympics, etc) which is very different than the 'club' leagues. I found Premiere League games to be much more active and aggressive, and the league itself to be full of NFL level between-game drama. With this involuntary deep immersion, I kind of figured out the how the rhythm of the game works, even if it still seems like they never score.

"Also the very best thing is the fact that the games play in the morning and early afternoon and never last more than two hours. But, it's still true that the game is more about the flow back and forth, and mostly failing to score even when you have good chances to. So if that drives you crazy there is nothing that will help."

Dog Bites (OT)

In case you think you might want to live in a rural paradise like the gorgeous Finger Lakes, you might want to think again.

My dog Butters got bitten by another doggie last Thursday. He got a rather nasty deep gash on his foreleg.

I called our vet. What, in the summer? It's the busy season. No dice; no openings. Sorry.

The next day I called several other vets. One said they could start the weeks-long procedure to accept us as a client, but the first visit couldn't be for "acute care."

So yesterday morning I called our existing vet again and wheedled and whined and complained and cajoled. It wasn't strategic; I was upset and frustrated.

They called back at 9:20 or so. I could bring him in at 11:00.

It's a 20-minute drive. We arrived at five minutes to 11:00. They gave us a pager, and we wandered about the parking lot and grounds...for an hour. Pager goes off at five minutes to noon, and we transitioned to a waiting room. 

Where we waited for another 25 minutes. What, were they punishing me?! The thought crossed my mind. Do you ever have to wait so long that you have to make  a decision about how long you will wait? I was getting to that point.

Vet came in. Not a problem: the wound will heal, the treatment is simple. The vet spent two minutes and 40 seconds with us and off he goes. (I was timing everything on purpose because I was curious.)

At checkout, I had to wait for the file, and for the medications to "come down." That usually happens right away, but, of course, not this time. The minutes started piling up again.

Protest bark
Mind you, this is not just me griping for my own sake. Butters doesn't do well at the vet. In fact, he does worse at the vet than anywhere else. He gets all ramped up, anxious, upset, fractious, barking. Can't calm down. When I try to calm him and hush him he has a wild look in his eye and fights me when I try to control his head and his attention. Halfway through the wait for the checkout, there are dogs every which way and he's getting harder to control, harder to calm down. I decided to move him outside to the car. It was safe: his leash was tethered and all the windows and the sunroof were open, and it wasn't too hot, and there was a breeze. He gets anxious when I leave him, though—it's a shame, but he's not a car dog—so he starts into what I call the "protest bark," which is an endless series of short, sharp staccato barks, as if he's saying "No! No! No! No! No!" Lots of anxiety coming through in that bark. To me, at least, because I know him.

From inside, I can hear this continuing out in the parking lot. I waited another ten minutes, getting more and more stressed out, then made a decision. I left. Took him home, where he immediately calmed down and went to sleep. Wish I could do that!

So that's another 40 minute round trip. After I returned, the bill and the medicines are ready. I can use my own antimicrobial spray, so all we have to pay for is the visit and the antibiotics.

Total time invested: 14 minutes on the phone (I didn't count the time I spent calling other vets), 80 minutes driving, 110 minutes waiting: 204 minutes total—three hours and 24 minutes—for 160 seconds with the vet. The total bill wasn't so bad—$102, $70 for the visit and the rest for medications. But still, $70 for the visit works out to about 44¢ per second, or $1,575.00/hr. Seems a bit much when you put it that way.

I wouldn't mind, but for the hassle and the delay. And the uncertainty. Especially the uncertainty. Rural life can sometimes feel like living in a secret little pocket of third-world country in the midst of a first-world one. It wasn't easy getting that appointment. It really wasn't a sure thing that I could get him seen at all. There's a certain amount of stress built into that. And the visit didn't happen until the fifth day after the incident, which stressed me out in the meantime. Then, the extended wait hanging around the practice was unnecessarily hard on the dog.

So that was my day.

How was yours?

Let it go
Part of the reason I left is that I had worked myself into a bad mood. Resentful and troubled. I confess I did wonder if it's even ethical to own a pet where I live, where it's so difficult to get adequate veterinary care. If you live in a populated area where you have a choice of grocery stores and there are actually a few restaurants you want to eat at, where you can find tradesmen when you need them and keep a lawn care service or household help for some reasonable length of time, where the car dealer isn't an hour and fifteen minutes away, where you can count on medical care for yourself and veterinary care for your pet without spending significant lengths of time in doubt—well, maybe just do what a lot of people do in my area, and rent a lake cottage in a rural area for a week or two. Enjoy the country life for some limited reasonable interlude, then go back home.

By the time I got back to the vet's to pay the bill and pick up the meds, though, I had already forgiven. My bad mood was gone. There were good things about the experience. I got to have a nice long conversation in the parking lot with a woman who was also waiting, who had a very elegant-looking four-month-old dog with an unusual personality. We talked animals for twenty minutes. I got to see another killdeer, who had laid her eggs in the gravel at the corner of the parking lot. It was much more fun to observe her now that I know how they act and why. I allowed her to lead me away from her eggs because I understood that's what she wants. The weather was beautiful. I passed a couple of deer in a field who posed for a picture (although all I had with me was the phone, boo-hoo). And Butters' leg isn't a bad wound; it wasn't infected; the vet did get to us in the end; and it's something that will heal—the prognosis is good. There's a lot to be thankful for in all that.

So it's all okay. Just the challenges in the course of a day. You can't concentrate on the bad parts; gotta look on the bright side, and let the other things go.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Tom Duffy: "Sorry to hear about your stressful day. Animal care has been hard hit, much like getting in to see a primary care physician if you don't have one. There were a significant number of retirements during COVID affecting both animal and human healthcare. At the same time, record numbers of people were getting pets for the first time while we all isolated at home. The cost of vet care has increased significantly leading to animal shelters being overwhelmed in many areas of the country as people give up their first pets post-pandemic. Owning a pet should be a lifelong commitment; many people weren't prepared for that.

"In terms of your cost-per-minute analysis, maybe it will make you feel better if you consider that you're really paying for a vet's expertise and experience. You no longer have to worry about Butter's being OK."

Joseph Kashi: "The New York Times had this coincidentally-timely article today about what's driving the change in vet charges. When the excellent local vet clinic that we used for two decades was bought out by VCA upon the owner's retirement, service seemed to degenerate and waiting times for appointments lengthened. Some months later, I happened to mention this to the retired owner, who told me that the supply of licensed vets is not keeping up with demand, causing a national strain upon the delivery of vet services. In our case, we were lucky because our fairly rural Alaska area had another, locally owned clinic that's excellent and already had us on their books as existing clients, so our change-over was easy. I've heard other pet owners, though, tell me of recent problems similar to yours, even for emergencies."

John Nollendorfs: "I think small animal vets have gotten totally greedy. Took our two cats in for their rabbies shots and checkup. 'How about we give them distemper shot too?' Oh, and how about flea and tick control? For the dog too? Bottom line, we were $860 poorer after spending only an hour for our appointment."

IanS: "In the UK, vet bills have rocketed the last few years, so much that an anti-competitive investigation is being launched. It's not helped that so many people got a dog in lockdown, and, after Brexit, so many European vets decided not to carry on working in the UK. Perfect storm!"

William Glokas: "How about seeing a doctor here on Cape Cod? They are all booked and you have to go to Urgent Care for treatment. A friend was having breathing issues and when he went to Urgent Care he was having a heart attack! They called an ambulance and sent him to Cape Cod Hospital."

Dan Khong: "The struggles and pressures in life strengthen one's resolve and personality and point us to the good parts that we often take for granted. If not for the vet visit, you would not have made a new lady friend and enjoyed some pretty deer. I am glad you saw the silver lining at the edge of the dark cloud."

Geoff Wittig: "I'd cut your vet a little more slack. As a rural family doctor I take care of several of the local veterinarians. They're delightful people. It's a hard life; they take night calls just like I do. They have the same challenges with anxious, frightened patients in pain. And their patients probably bite more often than mine do. In a farming area they're not just seeing cats and Labradors; they're also seeing Holsteins and hogs, tending to the herds of local dairy farms and such. Especially in the summer their workload can be overwhelming, and every animal has to be seen right away, today. There just aren't enough hours in the day.

"I certainly appreciate how stressful and aggravating it is to be subjected to a long wait for care with an agitated dog. Or child, or elderly parent. But trust me, the people on the other side of the counter are stressed too. Every time we squeeze in another patient, it means we get further behind and all subsequent appointments run even later. And those folks are even angrier. No good deed goes unpunished."

Kye Wood: "Cesar Millan, How to Raise the Perfect Dog. It will transform Butters. And your relationship with him. If you apply it. I have a free-range choccie lab who does whatever she wants but is still able to go out on full voice control. It's never too late to stop them being fearful, which they get from their owners' anxiety. It's a crappily written book. But the information and technical explanations are worth the effort."

Apologies (Blog Notes)

I got behind on comments again, and I apologize. I think I might have actually lost a reader over it; he thought I had censored him. No, just not persisting as I should. I'm sorry.

Time is speeding up, though. I couldn't believe it when I had to return the Leica D-Lux 7 two days ago. That week zoomed by so quickly I had to wonder if I hadn't spent part of it in suspended animation. I'll have some thoughts about the D-Lux 7 as soon as they percolate properly.

Anyway the Featured Comments have been added for the last three posts and all comments received up till noon today, Thursday, June 13th (what? The 13th already?!) have been published.

One-handed compliment
This next is very off topic, and it's esoteric in the extreme if you don't play tennis, but I was struck by it. A few months ago, Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece fell to No. 11 in the world men's tennis rankings, and it marked the very first time since ATP rankings began in 1973 that there isn't a single player in the Top Ten on the men's side who plays the backhand one-handed.

The single-handed backhand was de rigueur for most of the sport's history, although there were a few two-handers here and there and from time to time. That started to change in a bigger way in the 1970s, when Chrissie Evert among the women and Jimmy Connors and Björn Borg (listen to how his name is actually pronounced) among the men used two-handed backhands. Despite the success of all three, it was still considered nonstandard back then, as well as a little odd and maybe even a little suspicious. Pete Sampras, as a 14-year-old around 1985, changed his backhand from two-handed to one-handed because he believed it would give him a better chance to reach the pinnacle of the sport. Today, you'd think an ambitious junior might be more likely to do the opposite.

(By the way, I have a 29-year-old friend—and he's a sports fan—who had never heard of Björn Borg.)

Dorothea Lambert Chambers (née Douglass) making a backhand, sometime before 1910

Ajla Tomljanovic hitting a two-handed backhand against Carla Suarez Navarro at the U.S. Open in August, 2014. Photo by Steven Pisano of Brooklyn, New York.

One-handed backhands are beautiful shots. When well done, they win the beauty contest. If Roger Federer didn't have the best one-handed backhand in all of tennis history, he might as well have. The two-hander just isn't as elegant. Kai Nishikori and Novak Djokovic have admirable two-handed backhands. Among retired players, Marat Safin and David Nalbandian were standouts. You might not exactly call them beautiful strokes, though. Saying a two-handed backhand is beautiful is like talking about the handsomest frog.

All England Club
The Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, Wimbledon, London, will start on July 1. 'Twill be well worth watching. The game is at a very high level these days. I love watching both Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, the two best players in the world at the moment among the men. Sinner just achieved World No. 1 for the first time. As Andy Roddick put it about being No. 1, "if the Universe held a tennis tournament, Earth would send you." Rafa Nadal, the great clay-court champion now in the twilight of his career, will skip Wimbledon (played on grass) so he can keep practicing on clay for the Olympics in Paris later this Summer. It could be his swan song.

A great summer so far, and there's more to come.

Mike

P.S. I very much appreciated Lothar Adler's comment on the "Old Boat" post. I might need to do some soul-searching over that one.

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Open Mike: The Great White Whale

It just occurred to me, amusingly, that my "white whale" is...Moby-Dick. I've been trying to read Moby-Dick for most of my life, or at least I've been holding the idea in my mind that I will one day read it. And yet I never seem to be able to get through it. I own at least four editions of it. And have set out on that voyage at least that many times.

White whale, n.:

"An objective that is relentlessly or obsessively pursued but difficult to achieve" (Oxford Languages).

"A goal that you are determined to achieve, or something that you are determined to get, especially if this is very difficult" (Cambridge Dictionary).

"Something you obsess over to the point that it nearly or completely destroys you. An obsession that becomes your ultimate goal in life; one that your life now completely encircles and defines you" (Urban Dictionary).

"The potentially mythical object of an endless, life-long quest" (English Language Learners).

"The White Whale in Moby-Dick is possibly one of the greatest symbols in literature. When we talk about a character being used as a symbol, we mean that the character, in addition to performing a role within the plot, also represents an abstract idea or concept" (Study.com).

As a reader of non-fiction mostly, every year I try to read one great classic novel, for...balance, I guess. Trying to decide on this year's book. But this year I think one of my decisions should be to not read Moby-Dick, and indeed to never read Moby-Dick! I'm never going to read it anyway, so why continue to carry around the notion that I will? Out, damned spot.

Sometimes it's better to give up your dreams, am I right? I mean, Captain Ahab would have been better off if he had simply decided to give up on ever finding the great white whale. He could have spent the remainder of his days sitting by the fire in a little cottage in a quaint New England seaside town, with his bad leg comfortably resting on a stool, reading...a good book. Sometimes it's better to let things go.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

MARILYN NANCE: "In college, I read most of Moby-Dick in one long night only to find that the last 10 pages were missing from my used copy. Fortunately, I had been going to class and knew what happened. Try the audio book, Frank Muller is a wonderful reader (unfortunately passed)."

Geoff Wittig: "I also have too many editions of Moby-Dick. My favorite is a full-size facsimile of Andrew Hoyem's fabulous hand-printed Arion Press edition. The real thing recently sold at auction for $16,500 and it's widely regarded as the best fine printing done in America in the last 50 years. The Barry Moser engraved illustrations are fabulous. It's probably just me, but I find such a beautifully printed edition easier to get through, because I can enjoy the typopraphy and design in addition to the text itself. And, once you make your peace with Melville's period prose, he's a remarkably sly, droll writer. Bartleby the Scrivener is an astonishingly modern little gem of meta-fiction."

David Drake: "I was an English lit major in University and read Moby-Dick in an American Lit course. I very much enjoyed it, but I'm not sure I could get through it now. It's those exceptionally long sentences broken up with a crazy amount of commas. Our modern minds are used to sounds bites; we need to slow ourselves down to enter that 19th century mind-space. You get to the end of the sentence, and you've forgotten the beginning! It does give you a sense of the 19th century mind, as compared to the frantic pace of modern day. Now Ulysses by Joyce—there's one I didn't get through."

Dave Levingston: "I’m reading Ulysses. And by reading I mean it’s on my Kindle and every few months I read a couple pages. None of it makes any sense at all, so it really doesn’t matter. If you want something good to read in fiction there’s this guy named John Sandford whose books are so good I’ve read them all and wait impatiently for every new one he writes to be published. But maybe you shouldn’t take my recommendations. I loved Moby-Dick."

MikeR: "For me, it's The Federalist Papers. About 60 years, so far. I think the first two definitions appropriately describe my quest to convert an Epson printer from color to totally black-and-white, using carbon inks. I succeeded without having to use a harpoon, but that success was never assured."

Moose: "When I was 12–13, somewhere in there, I caught the mumps. Not a good plan, at that age: a.) Risk of sterility. Indications to date are that my middle-aged boys are my progeny. b.) PAINFUL! I killed time reading Moby-Dick. When the pain left, I left the book; don't expect to ever finish it. Coincidentally, I'm now on page 384 (of 857) of the recent novel Ahab's Wife."

Michel Hardy-Vallée: "It eluded me for a whale (ahem, I mean for a while...) until I bought the facsimile of the Arion edition by the UC Press. It's nothing about the size or complexity (I'm a card-carrying Joyce bro), but it's a question of maintaining attention. I can't commit to an ugly book. It's truly a masterpiece of typography and text-image integration. As a result, you feel like you're entering a well-ordered palace, and everything is in its place so that you can concentrate on the story. The design never competes with the text, and really enhances it."

Too Soon Alt, Too Late Schmardt (OT)

The title above was the apophthegm on a needlepoint panel on a wicker handbag I saw, from the sidewalk, in a shop window in Harbor Springs, Michigan, in the 1980s. I was young then, but now that I'm alt (the German word for "old"), I can testify.

Anyway, someone asked if I am going to be writing about audio and stereo in the future. Here's the lowdown: a couple of years ago I took a sort of mental survey of a lot of the stereo gear I bought over the years, and came (finally, at long long last) to a sensible conclusion: stop. Just stop. Never buy another piece of hi-fi gear ever again.

I love music, and I listen every day, or close enough, and it's true that I can put my finger on some standout values among all the audio gear I've spent money on over the years, and there have been a few items I've bought that I actually liked. But for the most part, audiophilia for me has been like opening a vein in my meager bank accounts and just letting it bleed and bleed. Mostly, it has served the overriding purpose of turning money into nothing (apologies to Dire Straits).

I'm quite happy with my current desktop speakers (I prefer to refer to them as "nearfield monitors"), which I got for free and had been listening to for a dozen years. That doesn't mean I didn't have to tie myself to the mast reading about the Tannoy Gold 7, but I didn't say my resolve was perfect.

I have a very bulldoggish tendency to stick with things that aren't working. I keep trying even when failure is tested and true. Persistence gets good press, but I suspect it's just as important to "cast a cold eye" and, when things are not working, move on. (Others may reach different conclusions, for themselves. To each their own fate.)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Michael: "In my 77 years, my grandmother was the only other person I have ever heard use the German phrase (auf Deutsch) that you chose to title this article. She and my grandfather were both of strong German heritage. Last name...Aufrecht. Both born in late 1800s in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, of German immigrants; moved to Chicago in the early 1900s, met, married, and the rest is family history. They definitely genetically contributed to what would become a scholastic major throughout my high school and college days. Ja, ich kann Deutsch sprechen und lesen. 'Wir werden zu fruh alt und zu spat klug.' I now use the phrase you used in the title, in English, in appropriate situations.  :-)  . Auf Wiedersehen, MK."

Editors Needed Everywhere (OT)

Ha! Just noticed a small but ludicrous mistake in yesterday's footnote:

*Although I have older friends here in rural Central New York who were born in the house they live in, and one, a guy of about 77,  whose parents were born in the house he lives in. Up here you hear stories like this.

See if you can detect the mistake. (Answer below.) I used to say "editors needed everywhere" a lot, and think it whenever I came across errors in the wild. If you edit in your daily life, mistakes present themselves all the time everywhere. (I'll make a mistake in this post, too, according to a corollary of the umbrella rule that states: every time you talk about grammar you will make a grammatical mistake.) Nowadays, I come across "howlers" (copyeditor talk for a glaring or eyerolling error) in videos, but it's no use to try to correct them because you won't be educating anyone. The scripts weren't even written by humans half the time. I believe I have an easier time than most spotting AI, because I'm very familiar with mistakes that are characteristics of humans, and often I'll come across an AI mistake that is not at all the kind of mistake that a human would make. By their mistakes ye shall know them.

Open Mike: Those Wonderful Sit-Stand Desks

One problem with standing desks. They break.

However, they are truly a luxury if, like me, you spend a lot of time at your desk. Half because of the intended purpose, which is to allow you to stand up and keep working and then, after a little while, sit down again; that's nice. The other half because you can make small changes to the height of your desk—to vary your arm position while typing, make it easier to get to things underneath the desk, make it easier to get in and out if you have a regular chair, or just to get the desk at the exact right height for you in the first place. They're very nice.

And the good news is, adjustable standing (AKA stand-up, AKA sit-stand) desks have gotten cheap.

Rock of Gibraltar
The first one I ever saw was at an office furniture store in Wisconsin. The top of the line SPFE sit-stand desk on display was a thing of beauty. It had a gorgeous thick real wood top and was as solid and steady as the rock of Gibraltar. It moved up and down smoothly and quietly with the touch of a button. Standing desks had never entered my consciousness before that. I wanted one immediately.

It also cost something like $2,100 in fifteen-years-ago money ($3,037 today). I mulled it over for months or maybe a year or two and eventually bought the "budget" model from the same manufacturer for around $1,100. It had lighter legs and a thinner (1-inch, 2.54 cm) laminate top (depth and width 31x65 inches, 79x165 cm). Still plenty nice enough.

Mine has had it rough. It survived incompetent installers who mucked everything up and departed with the new desk still inoperable (the store had to find the guy who knew what he was doing and send him along later); several bits and pieces coming loose over the years; and Lulu chewing up one of the connector plugs! The plug still worked post-mastication, which was a blessing. The desk also survived the 740 mile trip to New York in a jam-packed moving van driven by bandits. Not to mention ten years of service. Worth $110/yr.? I'd say yes.

But it finally broke. This morning the right side of the desk is eight inches higher than the left. It's not moving, but it's still making me a little seasick. Web search turns up several people with the same problem pleading for a source of parts. But the company that made it is long since out of business.

Cheaper by China
These days, though, standing desks are much less expensive. (The Chinese got to them.) I don't need a new top, but you can buy the leg sets alone for reasonable prices. I bought this heavy-duty leg set from Amazon for $346 with free shipping:

Capacity 275 lbs., the highest I could find. Made by a company called Mount-It! [sic], which sounds both very Chinese as well as a little dirty. That's actually on the expensive side; you can get leg sets for almost half that now—this is Amazon's "Overall Pick"—and whole desks like this one for $240.

I think my new leg set (arriving on Wednesday) is an outgoing model; the new top-of-the-line desks from Mount-It! have a load capacity of 220 lbs., which is, obviously, still reasonable unless you're overweight and plan to lie down on it. I'm not necessarily recommending any particular brand. It looks like some of the leg sets and desks that Amazon sells are generic, without even a brand name tacked on for show. And some of the brand names that do come up aren't exactly venerated well-known names. Topsky? Fezibo? Radlove? Sweetcrispy?!? However, you'll also notice that most of them also get high ratings from customer reviewers, so it looks like problems aren't...well, a problem.

My outgoing one just has two buttons, up and down. The new control modules have presets, exact height readouts in inches or centimeters, several presets, and time reminders—all of which would be useful, in my opinion.

Heirloom desktop
I'll tell you what I'd do if I were starting over, though. I'd get a stout leg set, then find a Mennonite or Amish cabinetmaker to make me a stunning real-wood desktop out of some sort of pretty wood. I fancy American black walnut, though you might have a different preference. As a bonus, that would let me specify the exact size I wanted. If you're an amateur woodworker, you could make one yourself.

Then, if the lifting mechanism ever broke again, I'd just get another leg set. And end up bequeathing my beautiful custom top to my son or grandson.

My desk might have broken, and I'm going to be listing to the side for the next couple of  days, but it's all good. I'm a big fan of standing desks all the same. They're well worth the trouble in my book.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Mike S: "I worked in a 911 center and we had dual-level powered sit-stand desks. The desk top was split into two parts. The rear section held the six monitors and the front section was for keyboards, pointing devices, coffee, oh so much coffee. Both levels could be raised in tandem, but the genius design allowed the monitor level to be lowered below the keyboard level. Alternating between standing and sitting is the best way to survive, but being able to also alternate between looking straight (or up) at monitors versus standing and looking at a downward angle is pure luxury during a 12-hour shift. Very high quality, used 24 hours a day, 356 days a year and probably cost as much as my non-existent Leica."

Steve L.: "Mine is from Standdesk. I bought it many years ago (like 10 maybe) after reading about the concept right here on your blog, I think. It's worked flawlessly, though for most of it's life I've used it mainly standing up. Now that I'm in my mid sixties I seem to be splitting my day more, half standing and half sitting. I just checked their website and they have a lifetime warranty, which might interest you if you ever need another one. Cheap, too. I paid way more when I got mine years ago."

Open Mike: I Go To Wander and Hope (OT)

When I was recovering from my heart procedure, which was supposed to take six weeks, I had to put my shirts and coats on backwards, because I wasn't allowed to raise my left arm during that time. I had not thought about how I put on a shirt or coat since I was, I don't know, five or six? When do kids learn to put on their coats? If I was five, that means John F. Kennedy was President the last time I consciously thought about how to don a coat. It wasn't a real problem, just an annoyance. But I had a ludicrous amount of trouble with it. I swear it took me the whole six weeks to re-learn how to do it. I didn't get the knack of doing the motion backwards till the last day. Honestly, it was that hard.

That's part of the reason I got all agitated when I learned my old keyboard had been discontinued. The replacement (which I called the No Natural because it had the same name minus the word "Natural") was different enough that I couldn't type on it at first. I was convinced it would take me forever to get used to it. Because, you know, the putting-on-the-coat thing, not to mention lots of other things like that.

But when I finally actually tried to learn the new one, I adapted to it in...about eight minutes. I exaggerate. But it's fine.

Do I still need to learn to touch-type? Not really. I took a typing test using the No Natural at Monkeytype, typing my old way with three fingers and one thumb, and within three tries my score was 50 WPM with 98% accuracy. Which (again) is fine.

So all this keyboard business was just me being Chicken Little. I was honestly panicked when I found out my keyboard had been discontinued. I mean, I had been been using it for 30 years (a new one every three or four years). Meanwhile, readers were all like, dude, just learn to type. As I was freaking the F out.

Lost souls
Speaking of odd nicknames for weird things, like No Natural, I went to Wal-Mart yesterday. I decided that store should be called "Wander and Hope," because that is what you have to do there. I get an attack of existential pessimism whenever I go into a Wander and Hope. It makes me question the culture of now, the meaning of life, and whether I belong on this planet. I never feel lonelier or more defeated. Manfully, however, I found three blue-vested employees in a little klatch talking with each other animatedly about their men, their kids, and their lives. I interrupted them and asked them for what I needed, and one of them turned away from the others and sucked it up and put on her concerned/motherly/helpful employee-face. She waved and pointed and said, "It's down there, way down there, just look for a section called 'More Meaningless Crap.' You'll see it. You'll find it. You'll be all right," and I repeated, "More Meaningless Crap?" to help me remember it, and she said 'More Meaningless Crap." Then she went back to her discussion with her friends. Within 40 steps I had forgotten what section she told me to look for (it wasn't actually the More Meaningless Crap section), but I was too far into it to go back and ask again. I thought perhaps I would find another employee in the interior of the store to ask, but encountering a Wander and Hope employee in the interior is as common as someone offering you a Prosciutto e Melone sample on a tray in the middle of the Australian outback. I had about a football field to walk. In my meandering I encountered several more old men wandering aimlessly, doddering into view for a little while and then disappearing. At any given time in any Wander and Hope there must be at least eight old men shuffling around lost, having forgotten or given up on their mission of finding whatever it was they came for. They wander around for part of the afternoon and then eventually manage to trickle out the front doors. They probably lose their cars in the parking lot, like I did, but here's a hint: if you just keep walking around purposefully out there like you know where you're going, nobody can tell you're lost. If you ask any of those old men later that evening what they did that day, they will look at you with a bewildered expression, which is not all that different from their usual expression, and say, "I went to Walmart."

I eventually found a round plastic can of wipes for car interiors, and I was pretty amazed that I found it. It occupied about 12 inches of linear shelf-frontage in a vast wall of other stuff, on an aisle adjacent to twelve other very similar aisles, and the employee had pointed to it from a football field away, and I found it anyway. I was a little proud of myself. Next, you wander until you detect daylight, and head toward that. Sometimes you merely sense it. Eventually you will get to a long stretch of cash registers, all of which say "CLOSED" except two, which both have long lines. At that point you are within an automated self-checkout payment of freedom, so keep going.

Ignore that orange warning light
My car came home yesterday, by the way. It was at the dealership because no one could figure out a persistent problem with the TPMS (tire pressure monitoring system).

This popped up about two years ago. At that time I took it to the Honda dealer in Canandaigua and asked if they could have a go at it, to save me the drive all the way to Rochester to the Acura dealer. (My car is an Acura, but Acura is a division of Honda, and my car is based on the Honda Civic.) I waited patiently, and presently the Service manager came out to talk to me. He kind of hemmed and hawed, saying that he didn't know if Acura used the same machine as his, and that Acura might have different codes than their machine used, and that I would probably be better off just taking it to Acura. I thanked him and left. In the interim I had several other places try to fix it, a couple of tire stores and a couple of independent mechanics. The light kept coming back on. It didn't really bother me much. It was merely an annoyance, no big deal. I learned to check the tires the old-fashioned way, and ignore the big orange warning panel that says "CHECK TPMS."

My car had to go to the Acura dealer for a different issue, so I asked them to take a look at the TPMS problem while they were at it. I, er, expressed my skepticism that it could be fixed. The Service manager said, "Oh, we'll fix it." When I picked the car up a week ago he told me the TPMS was fixed. I said, I dunno, that's been a pretty persistent issue. The light came back on before I even got home, same as usual.

But Acura is super-serious about standing behind their work. When I called and told them the light had come back on, that's when they sent a driver in a loaner car to pick up my car, so I wouldn't have to make the drive to Rochester again. They delivered an expensive, gleaming, brand new SUV, an RDX, for me to drive. They kept my car a whole week. No extra charge for any of this.

That's service.

Having not seen my own car for a week, it came to me in a flash of obviousness that it was dirty, hence the stop at the Wander and Hope. I had softened a good deal toward that Acura RDX that I ended up driving for one solid week. When they picked it up yesterday I still didn't know how to turn the radio on and off, but I had learned what a lot of the other features did and had started to relax into its weird mid-2020s vibe. I learned many things about it. If you can believe this, that damn car will drive itself on a more or less straight road, for miles, no hands on the wheel. It weaves gently from the fogline to the centerline and back again...until it reaches a curve, when it will go right across the centerline and into oncoming traffic. That seems a.) amazing, yet also b.) not a desirable functionality in any way, shape, form or fashion. We didn't hit anything.

So the reason they kept my car for so long was because the dealership was hosting a visiting Acura engineer for a day, for a completely separate matter, and they wanted him to take a look at my car while he was there. Well, guess what? The engineer discovered that the piece of testing equipment the dealership was using had gone bad.

He tested this hypothesis by driving my car to a nearby Honda dealership and getting them to fix the problem!

So everyone's happy. The Acura dealership discovered their equipment was faulty—they've ordered a new one, of whatever it is—the Acura engineer solved my issue, and my issue got solved, which is what I wanted.

I just think it's a little ironic, is all. If the first Honda dealer had just taken a shot at fixing the problem, it probably wouldn't have been a problem for the last two years. You know what they say: Oh well.

I can't complain. That's life. Life on life's terms.

This post typed the old-fashioned way

Meanwhile, I'm using the chip-away method on my dirty car. Whenever I have a big task to do, I tackle it by doing just a little at a time. To "detail" the interior of my beloved 2014 Acura ILX 2.4 with manual transmission (that's it in the top illustration, taken in the dark with the iPhone), I get a container of those car interior wipes, keep it in the car, and just clean a little bit every day. The inside of a door one day, the body sill the next; the center console the next day; the top of the dash the day after that; and so on. Before you know it the whole inside of my car will gleam like new. 

Now I'm off to chip away a little bit more on my taxes.

Happy Easter to those of you celebrating!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

David L.: "I work in a big box retail store. One of the most common searches is 'I’m looking for my wife/husband.'"

Steve Rosenblum: "As you know, Mike, here in Michigan we have these gigantic Meijer superstores (formerly called 'Meijer Thrifty Acres' before they decided to jettison the reference to their West Michigan Dutch Reformed roots). I believe they were pioneers of the 'superstore' concept because they had the combination grocery store/huge discount store thing going before I started college in 1970, long before Walmart and Target got on that bandwagon. I was amused by your post because even in my college days, long before I became an old man, I found myself in a kind of mild dissociative state after wandering around in there for quite a while trying to find the item I came there to buy without a helpful employee in sight. There didn't seem to be any logic to where things were located, or at least I was unable to perceive it. These days they are somewhat better organized; plus, many of the big box store apps will actually indicate on which section and shelf the item can be found."

Ken James: "Mike, that was the funniest thing I have read in like forever. It was made even more special for me because just on this past Thursday I went to Walmart for the first time ever! I was one of those old men shuffling about aimlessly in total amazement. I went there because they apparently carry a dog food I am feeding my rapidly declining old dog, and yep! I finally found the dog food department and, like you, after wandering that quarter-mile-long aisle for 10 minutes I spotted it on the vast wall in front of me on the very highest shelf, one case left occupying the same 12 inches of shelf space. The whole experience was truly surreal. I could also identify with wandering until I spotted daylight. What an experience. My wife had a similar experience with the tire pressure thing on her car too."

Speed: "Both Home Depot and Lowe's will tell your phone exactly where a product is if you tell them which of their stores you're standing in and exactly what product you are looking for. Their computer knows where their stuff is, why shouldn't you? Some Walmart stores do as well—maybe all but I've not yet shopped in all of their stores. And all three of the above will 'pick' all the products on your list, package them up, charge your credit card and have them waiting for you near the door. Target too."

Blue-Sky Tech (OT)

[UPDATE No. 2, AKA UPDATE to the UPDATE: This is so cool. I figured it out!!! I managed to open the Sweep in Vial, and I figured out how to program the "tapdance" mods. Too long and not interesting to give all the details, but I think I'm going to be able to figure out how to do 90% or even 95% of what I originally wanted to do. I've actually programmed alpha keys on the top layer to double as Control, Option, and Command. Plus I'm getting used to the little keeb after some practice. I'm as fired up now as I was depressed when I wrote the first update. This ain't over yet babies!

Onward.]

[UPDATE after I learned a little more about what I'm talking about: In my 12-step program we have a principle that states, "continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it." Well, I was wrong. The keyboard described below, which I bought because it was the cheapest 34-key keyboard I could find, arrived yesterday. To my dismay, it is not flashed with the firmware it has to have to use the software I need. It uses VIA, and I need Vial, which has the "Tapdance" feature that would allow me to assign different actions to the same key, such as the shift functionality I described in this post.

Another quote: you remember in Goodfellas when Henry Hill narrates in voiceover, "It was among the Italians. It was real greaseball sh*t." Well, these minimal keyboards are real hotshot sh*t. It is among the mavens and the keyboard fanatics. For instance, many of them require you to do your own programming and many of them sell out after limited runs. Mine was 3D printed and handmade to order. That is, the whole category is mostly a hobby among keyboard wizards, some of whom code or program for a living and who use various programming languages and are comfortable working directly in code. Whereas I couldn't even define any of those terms with a gun to my head. Michael W. Plant asked which Ferris Sweep I bought and where I got it, but I can't recommend the one I bought...unless you're competent to flash your own firmware (which, the Vail website tells me, casually but hilariously, I might have to code myself. Right, that's going to happen).

The only products in this category I would recommend are by ZSA. ZSA is the hotshot sh*t made ready for prime time. The ZSA Voyager is a fully developed consumer product. A Voyager was what I really wanted, but I was too miserly to spring for one. I bought the Sweep trying to get something "almost as good" but cheaper. ZSA's products are expensive, but part of what you buy is the programming software which is powerful and easy to use. It's called Oryx, and you can try it out online before buying. VIA and Vial are free and can be used online, but VIA is very simple and doesn't allow for a lot of the functionality Oryx does. It's mainly just for layout remapping. I knew that, as is the case whenever you try to cheap out, it was a calculated risk and that I might just be throwing money away. And, well, sure enough. It was a gamble.

Here are reviews of the ZSA Voyager by my two favorite online keyboard reviewers, Ben Vallack and Ben Frain.

I considered just deleting this post but there have already been lots of comments [Featured Comments have been added] and oh well, TOP is surely warts 'n' all. As John Hall commented, "Mike, you're nuts. But we love it." Fortunately, I am at the stage of learning Colemak in which I'm just typing lowercase nonsense words on keybr.com and Colemak Club. So I can use the Ferris Sweep I bought just for the alpha characters (remapped to Colemak, which is easy to do) to experiment with the 34-key form-factor. Thus it still works for demystification, to an extent. So not a total loss. 

I'll leave this up, but proceed here with caution.... 

By the way, this will be the last keyboard post until February 2025. I started this "voyage" in February '24, while I was recovering from my pacemaker procedure and couldn't play pool. I'll report back at the year mark. Till then!]

Open Mike: Do This With Your Hands (OT)

Question: Do you think it's weird that there's a whole category of keyboards marketed to gamers, as well as many aimed at software developers, coders, and other adepts and computer ninjas, but no category of keyboards marketed to writers? Serious question.

Sign o' the times, as Prince once sang.

I'm having a lot of anxiety about this keyboard situation. I've had a number of situations or experiences in my life when my settled habits and hard-won competencies got blown up for some reason, and I went off the rails and never got back on. The idea that I might never get comfortable typing again is probably irrational and untrue. But irrational fears make you fearful just like rational ones do.

Supine with a shotgun
Here's a brief rundown the main problems with typing posture on flat rectangular keyboards, of which the Apple Keyboard or any laptop keyboard are leading examples.

Starting position: stand or sit with your arms down and your elbows by your side. Raise your forearms till they're parallel with the floor and put your hands straight out, palms down.

Wrist extension: First, from that starting position, move your hands at the wrist till your fingers point upwards. Then flatten just your fingers. That's wrist extension. Wrist extension happens when your flat keyboard is above the level of where you're resting the heels of your hands. It also happens when you're angling your forearms up to reach your desktop. This is a perfectly comfortable movement for healthy hands, but if you work your fingers for hours, days, weeks, months, years, and decades with your wrists fixed in an extended position, it becomes a recipe for RSI. It's one reason why your hands are supposed to "float" above the keyboard, with the heels of your hands not touching the desk. Of course few people do that. What many keyboards do instead is to provide little fold-out legs on the underside of the keyboard in the back, to angle the keyboard the wrong way! Because it makes the face of the keyboard and the legends on the keys easier to see. 

Hand pronation: In starting position again, with your elbows by your sides and your forearm extended parallel to the floor again, rotate your thumbs upward until your palms are again flat, but facing the ceiling. That's called supination, related to supine, which means lying on your back. T.S. Eliot wrote, In "The Fire Sermon":

Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.

The poetic image is of a body lying on its back. Palms up, hand supination; palms down, hand pronation (relates the prone, the position of a soldier firing a rifle lying down; but not in the case of Edwin Throckmorton ("Ebby") Thatcher, who was so drunk when he was trying to shoot pigeons off the roof of his family's empty mansion that when he slipped on the thick wet grass and fell down, he found he could not get up again, so he commenced to firing shotgun blasts at the pigeons while lying supine on the grass. The neighbors called the police). Anyway. If you sit at a cleared table and place your elbows on the table and bring you hands together or nearly together on the table in front of you in the most natural and comfortable position, you'll find that your palms are not dead flat but angled upwards somewhat. When you have to keep them flat with your palms down, as you do when typing on a laptop keyboard, the ulnar bone and the radius bone of the forearm twist and pinch, and the problem is called pronation.

Ulnar angling: This is my term; typing folk rather lazily call it "ulnar deviation," which, strictly speaking, is a medical condition, a semi-permanent deformity caused, usually, by rheumatoid arthritis, not just a way of holding your hand or hands. (The more poetic description for the deformity is windblown hand.) From the starting position, still with your palms down and fingers straight, rotate your flat hands outward towards your pinkies until your fingers of each hand are pointing away from the other hand. Then bring them together in the middle. That angling of the wrist is what causes trouble. (If I had another person here a few photos could illustrate these positions in a jiffy, but the only other nearby being is Butters.)

Hunching: When you bring your wrists together in front of you, then look down, it tends to bring your shoulders forward and inward, curve your back forward, and crane your neck downwards. Sit in this posture persistently and it begins to transfer a significant amount of tension to your shoulders, back, and neck. Ever feel like you need a good shoulder and neck rub after you've been typing for a long time?

Fingertip impact: The last of the major RSI problems is fingertip impact. High-speed typists really pound away at the keyboard. Barbara Blackburn, born 1920, was listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the world's fastest typist, with an unofficial speed of 212 WPM on the Dvorak layout. (Keystroking records were removed from the Guinness Book from 1986 onwards.) Evidently it's not feasible to type with a light, delicate, diaphanous touch and still be a speed demon.

Solutions
And here are the ways "ergonomic" keyboards usually try to correct the above problems. The common way to ease ulnar angling is to split the keyboard, almost always along the T-G-B / Y-H-N line. This can either be done by placement on a single, fixed board, like the keyboard I've been using for 30 years, angling each bank of keys inward at the top and outward at the bottom. A custom becoming more common recently is to physically split the keyboard into two independent halves, making it possible to place and angle the keys in relation to your hands in whatever way feels most comfortable. Fascinatingly, I've noticed that some YouTubers, when trying split keyboards for the first time, will angle the halves the wrong way in order to reproduce the undesirable ulnar angling of their wrists that they've long been used to!

Wrist extension can be solved by devising a "wrist rest" for the heels of the hands to rest on that's level with the keys, or by manipulating the relationship of chair, desk, and keyboard until the fingers can rest on the keys with the hands in a relaxed position.

Pronation is solved either by moving the two halves of a physically split keyboard far apart, or by what's called tenting, which means propping up the halves with the inside edge higher than the outside edge, or some combination of these two things. Just keeping the keyboard in one piece prevents adequate tenting, and all the Microsoft-style "ergo" one-piece keyboards offer only a mild bump in the middle for a very low degree of tenting. 

A keyboard that is split, has integral wrist-rests, and is tented

Hunching is solved by moving the split halves of a keyboard back toward the body so that the shoulders open up and straighten, the spine can be held straight, and the arms can relax. It takes some getting used to, but it's extraordinary how comfortable it is.

As for fingertip impact, consider what TOP reader John Camp, AKA John Sandford, who has not one but many No. 1 New York Times bestsellers to his credit, said here the other day:

I estimate that I type roughly 400,000 words a year. But the thing is, I'm not trying to type 80 or 60 or 40 words per minute, or any other number, because I frequently pause to think, and reconfigure what I'm about to type, or to rework something I already typed, and I don't know how that would fit into an efficiency calculation. I think I'm efficient enough, and wouldn't get any better with any of the other keyboard styles, but what I really need is something that would keep my fingers and wrists from being damaged by the work.

Human beings love superlatives, and social media reveals a constant striving for extremes. Fastest biggest richest strongest best; idiotic GOAT arguments and "winners"and "losers" separated by hundredths of a second. But in writing (and perhaps even in typing in general) there's no real need to take things to extremes. Nothing much is wanted in most cases past the point of relaxed and accurate competency. Maybe this was not the case when a "draft" of a novel involved retyping the whole thing from start to finish; but now we make corrections, revisions, and emendations inline, thanks to the computer. And words look the same on the page regardless of whether you typed them quickly or slowly. The overall average speed of all typists is believed to be ~40 WPM. Many of the world's greatest authors wrote their works in longhand—some with a sharpened goose feather dipped in ink, and that can't be fast. And one can be a writer typing no faster than Archy the cockroach hopping around on the keys of Don Marquis' mechanical typewriter, the only kind they had in those days. That's probably why there are no keyboards made specifically for writers. (Although wouldn't it be a good marketing strategy?)

However, safety is something else. Apple could be leading the way here, but it chooses instead to contribute to the problem, leaving innovations in RSI prevention to small independent (and typically undercapitalized) companies like the pioneer Kinesis or the next-gen innovator ZSA. As many as 60% of people who type all day for their jobs will suffer RSI at some point in their lives (my right hand hurts right now). It is the number one cause of lost productivity in the white collar workplace, keeping workers out of commission for an average of 23 days per injury. Its more insidious forms, such as the dreaded carpal tunnel syndrome, are frustratingly persistent and slow to heal.

So while moderate typing speed is usually enough, it's still of crucial importance to "keep [your] fingers and wrists from being damaged by the work," in John's words. It's a field in which not much progress has yet been made.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Joshua Rothman: "As a writer myself, I know exactly what you mean. I use the Keychron Q11 split keyboard. I think it has brown switches. I'm nowhere near as far down the rabbit hole as you, but I did have my own little keyboard adventure, and since landing on the Q11 my wrist pain has gone away—even my tennis elbow seems better!"

ASW: "When I was a kid my mom put me in piano lessons. I remember that after 10–15 minutes of playing (very poorly) my wrists and forearms would start to hurt. The hand placement never felt natural to me. I've never had a similar issue with typing (on a basic desktop or laptop keyboard). I think that my perfectionism might play a role. I rarely type more than a few sentences at a time before pausing to reconsider, and usually change or even delete the majority of what I just typed. It makes for horribly inefficient writing progress, but gives me plenty of rest, and so far has prevented any RSI issues despite spending lots of time at the computer most days.

"As far as the key pounding goes, my wife's typing (even through walls and doors) sounds like a high-speed jackhammer in action. I'm a pretty light typer, again because I spend far more time pondering than typing."

Ken James: "Hi Mike, Have not typed you in a long time.

"How high is your desktop? Standard desk height? I over the years have made several desks. I make the top surface be 24 inches give a take a bit. My current desk is 25. In the past I used plywood for the whole thing but for this last one I bought legs on Etsy and put 2x12's on top. I did a bunch of stuff to the timber to make it pretty but you don't have to. This might well solve all or most of the wrist problems. Might. I also find a trackpad to be much better than a mouse. I designed home office systems for 12 years or so, so have thought about this a bit."

Mike replies: I have a sit-stand (adjustable height) desk that's 25" off the floor in its lowest position, and that is indeed what I use with the keyboard in the illustration above—I'm happy to have an expert encourage it! The adjustable height from a standing position is great for experimenting.

Two Interesting Keyboard Videos (OT)

No post today. (Well, except this one, and it doesn't count.) It's Super Bowl Sunday in the USA.

I am waist deep in keyboard shopping anyway. You think shopping for photo gear is hard? It's dead simple and straightforward compared to keyboard-land. Good Lard, as the Irish say. I think I have almost decided on the Kinesis Freestyle Pro, but not quite to the point of pulling that proverbial trigger.

I almost bought a Keychron Q10 or V10 Alice, because the layout is very close to my old Microsoft, but at the last second I realized I was only looking at it in two dimensions! The Microsoft has very slight tenting—only ~5°, but that little bit appears to be crucial. ("Tenting," as you might guess from the word, is raising the middle of the keyboard so your palms aren't flat, but angle a little bit towards vertical.) The Keychron is dead flat. Oops. Back to shopping.

Here are two of the most interesting videos I've found yet. The first one explains QWERTY and how it got that way:

The story of QWERTY is fascinating and a little horrifying! To think the whole world has been following that thoughtless plan for more than a century. I can't believe I've never heard of a Hill Climbing Algorithm before. Explains the U.S. Constitution, too!James's history of keyboards is a very satisfying.

Here's an interesting thing I learned in video about computer optimization of keys: you could make the QWERTY keyboard a whopping 13% more efficient just by exchanging the "J" and the "T." [UPDATE: actually he said J and E. —Ed.]

And the second one is brief tour of what are coming to be called "Next Gen keyboards":

If you haven't been keeping up, this one will seem futuristic. Change is certainly afoot.

That's enough of this. Something different mañana. Go Brock!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Bryan William Jones: "A good friend of mine just published Shift Happens, a two-volume love letter to the history of keyboards. Here's the book's site."

Mike replies: Completely sold out, which is perfect for that topic. Seems like most things in the keyboard world are sold out as a usual condition, only occasionally and intermittently becoming available again.

Grant: "Hey Mike Tohnsjon. You are righj. I Jyped jhis commenj jhirjeen percenj fasjer!"

Mike replies: Showing how ridiculously fastidious I am, I actually corrected your comment. You misspelled "jhirjeen" as "jirjeen."

John Camp: "I think the extra efficiency you'd get with the Dvorak keyboard or any of the others is mostly illusory, and would most apply to people who are typists—that is, professional typers of words. I estimate that I type roughly 400,000 words a year. But the thing is, I'm not trying to type 80 or 60 or 40 words per minute, or any other number, because I frequently pause to think, and reconfigure what I'm about to type, or to rework something I already typed, and I don't know how that would fit into an efficiency calculation. I think I'm efficient enough, and wouldn't get any better with any of the other keyboard styles, but what I really need is something that would keep my fingers and wrists from being damaged by the work. For example, if a Dvorak board made my typing 27% more efficient (a dubious claim; read the Wikipedia article,) that doesn't mean that if I type 1,000 words averaging 5.5 letters each, I'd have to type fewer letters. I still have to type 5,500 letters on either keyboard. That's why I mess around with different keyboards—not to reduce the amount of word done, but to reduce the repetitive stress, which some of these other styles might do. I hope."

Mike replies: Fascinating points, and apropos. The task of writing ≠ the task of typing. I note that Next Gen (layered, minimal key count, ortholinear, etc.) keyboards are mostly reviewed by coders (and a few gamers), who have very different needs than writers do. Coders' income, as I understand it, is directly tied to how fast they can type; also, they type all day long, and they seem to be mental ninjas on keyboards, such that they can readily learn alternative layouts (Colemak, Workman, Dvorak) and moveable keystrokes and on and on. I think if I switched to a keyboard on which seldom-used characters were relegated to an invisible (non-legended) function layer, the rest of my life wouldn't be long enough for me to get comfortable with it. A ninja I am not.

I wonder the same thing about the pacing of the work. I used to say that I sound very articulate when I write but that's because no one sees me staring at the ceiling for ten seconds trying to think of the right word. Or going over what I already wrote obsessively to polish every little phrase, hunting for those elusive little ambiguities that scurry around like mice. (A book which might interest you: William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity, a favorite of a mercurial English professor I had at Reed College.) I also remember something I read once, which is that H&P typing methods tend to be less susceptible to RSI than touch-typing. However, my brain is getting worse as I get older, and my coordination is suffering incrementally more as time goes by. I would say that what I'm looking for is the ability to type reliably and thoughtlessly. (At present it looks like it's going to be a long road.) Kye Wood put it best:

"THE UNINTENDED BENEFITS: Flow. Touch typing removes the process of conversion from thought—to characters on a page. You just think it—and it magically appears in front of you."

That's what I'd like.

As far as your goal of reducing repetitive stress, you might look into the Glove80, which is the current darling of the keyboard community and appears to be the Kinesis Advantage 2 that we both have, but done better. But personally I think the key for me, pardon the pun, will be a split keyboard that offers tenting. Moving the halves apart and angling them for optimum comfort, and then un-pronating the wrist at least a little, seems like it will do the trick for RSI. And it can be done without changing the standard layout or stagger. You do need to get your arms at the right angle, which might require adjusting chair or desk.

The keyboard I'm most interested in is the Dygma Raise. But unfortunately Dygma is currently in a nine-month desert in which they can't deliver product (the last-gen v. 1.2 is sold out and the v. 2 doesn't ship till October). Such an egregious business blunder doesn't portend well for the survival of the company in the long term, but the keyboard itself looks great. It's mostly a standard horizontally-staggered QWERTY with additional thumb keys added, built-in wrist rests that are cleanable and replaceable, and robust tenting (an add-on to the v. 1.2 and built in on the v. 2). It also has the other features I personally want for no good reason, like shine-through legends, hot-swappable switches, and PBT keycaps.

In the meantime I've ordered a Keychron Q11 (gets here tomorrow) and a set of the brand-new Gamakay Mercury switches (check out that bokeh! I helped create a monster). I'll experiment with that and see if I can figure out what a true split keyboard will do for me.

nivivar: "If you haven't purchased a keyboard yet, I highly recommend one of the Kinesis split keyboards. You can adjust the angles to your liking, making them as extreme or gentle as you would like. This would allow you to slowly adjust to using a split keyboard. There are the Freestyle2 for PC or Mac, Freestyle2 Pro, and Freestyle Edge RGB. I have the Edge RGB. I don't really use the RGB part or the customizable programming, but I do like to have a white backlight sometimes like a laptop keyboard. Lastly, you also get an option with the keyboards of selecting the key mechanisms, so if you like quieter keys or the clicky keys, you get to choose which."

Mike replies: The Edge RGB was a finalist for me, and I wonder if I might have made a mistake in not choosing it. Two turnoffs for me are that the switches are not swappable—I'm sensitive to noise and I'm usually listening to music as I work, so if I get stuck with noise I don't care for I need a way out—and I was turned off by the way Kinesis overcharges so blatantly for the tenting kits, which should really be included in the price. I mean, the Freestyle2 Pro already costs $169, and then they want an extra $53 for the few bits of plastic in the tenting kit. Feels...predatory.

As I say, though, these might not have been very good reasons for passing over the Edge RGB, which I probably would like.

Open Mike: My Dumb Young Self (OT)

I have a tiny little first-world problem, but one that I still have yet to solve. And one that I have to solve.

I had better solve it. I feel like a veteran photographer whose favorite material has just been discontinued. I could tell you stories about that. (I was going to, but this post got too long.)

Very brief background: I made the decision to hunt-and-peck on my then-brand-new typewriter, a gift from my grandmother, when I was 14. I remember it clearly. Bad decision. Very bad. I told myself back then that I was never going to need to know how to type. Nobody told me computers were a-comin'.

Apple Extended II keyboard, 1987–1994

When computers did arrive, I didn't think they had too much to do with me. But big honky mechanical keyboards like the IBM Model M seemed fine. They typed more or less like my father's IBM Selectric electric typewriter. Didn't confront me either way. Then I started using the Macintosh in 1984, the year it came out. It came with a keyboard, so, once more, I never thought about keyboards. Although I never even saw one that I'm aware of, Apple's last big mechanical keyboard, the Extended / Extended II, came out in 1987 and was discontinued in 1994. Was that about when the tiny, flat, "chiclet key" keyboards for the Macs, a smart and stylish design accessory as well as a petite but pestilent pox upon persons, began to show up? Whenever they arrived, I never got along with them even a little bit. Even my early Powerbook 190 (picture), one of my top-three all-time favorite Macs, had better keys. By the time chiclet keyboards proceeded upon their plaguey proliferation, I was already having problems with RSI (repetitive strain injury). They made it kick in even worse. My hands, wrists and arms seemed to always hurt somewhere. The more I typed the more it hurt.

I still have this taped to my monitor. Thirty years is not long
enough to ease my Windows vs. Mac confusions.

One of the first "ergonomic" keyboards, Microsoft's then-radical Natural Ergonomic keyboard, came out in 1994. Microsoft's very first keyboard. I got one; my hands felt better. It was made for PC's, and half the features didn't work on my Macs, but I got used to it. It eventually morphed into the physically identical Natural Ergonomic 4000, which I'll abbreviate NE4k. I've now been using them for 30 years.

Malicious obsolescence
I've gone through more than a dozen. Usually the first point of failure is that the legends wear off the keys, which is ridiculous—simply poor manufacturing, never corrected. They fail in a variety of different ways. Annoying little problems crop up; on my current one, the Shift key is slow to release, so capitalized words not infrequently look like THis. Eventually they get dirty; I even tried cleaning one in the dishwasher, following instructions I found online! It worked, but it was a project. It was easier to just buy a new one when the old one got grody, or lost its feel, or started sticking, or wore out.

When you use something every day for 30 years, you get used to it. I can now "hunt and peck" on a NE4k without much, well, hunting. (I do have to look down from time to time for specific keys, or to re-orient myself.) I basically type with three fingers, plus one thumb for the spacebar—sometimes a fourth and fifth finger for specific reaches—but I can do it while barely looking at the keyboard. Unfortunately, I can do that only on my keyboard. My exact keyboard, the NE4k. With other keyboards—even (perhaps especially) with those that look similar to the NE4k but are just that little skosh different—my effed-up muscle memory is just wrong enough that I can barely type at all.

Confession: Actually, if I'm honest, my typing is so idiosyncratic and wrong that I have good typing days and bad. This sounds absurd, but it's true—sometimes I make so many mistakes that I give up for the day. Other days my fingers fly. My typing speed goes from about 25 WPM + frustration on bad days to as high as 55–60 WPM on the best days. I don't know what makes the difference. Brain farts? The phase of the moon? Leprechauns in charge?

Here's the rub, alas: the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 went the way of all things in 2019. Discontinued. I wasn't aware, or I would have bought a dozen and salted them away*. I'm on my last one now, and the usual signs of decay and failure are starting to appear.

I have to do something about this. And the sooner I start the better, I'm guessing. Unless it's already too late for that.

You might think that the replacement for the NE4k would be the natural choice, but not so. The NE4k is far from well-built—a creaky plasticky slab—inexplicably with dog hairs under the keys!—but the confusingly named 2019 Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard (MEK), which Microsoft just handed off to a company called Incase to make and sell, is much worse. I have two. Cheap and flimsy. The NE4k itself was hardly known for having great feel, but the MEK doesn't rise to the NE4k's modest standard. Made to sell, not to use. Bleh, and yech. It's also not an exact duplicate of the NE4k, so it almost fits my muscle memory but not quite. I type on it like I've suffered a TBI, no offense. I dislike it.

Voyage to the unknown
When I first tried to deal with this problem a few years back, it seemed to me that the solution would be to learn something entirely new and completely different. My old habits are just going to frustrate me if I tried to duplicate the keyboard I'm used to, I figured. The NE4k is not coming back.

I feel like I'm a good candidate to learn touch typing at this point, although maybe this old dog can't learn new tricks. A few years ago I did some research and got a regular straight, flat mechanical tenkeyless keyboard, but within mere days it became clear that that's never going to work for me—my hands started hurting almost immediately. I then splurged on what seemed to be the most ergonomic of all ergonomic keyboards, the Kinesis Advantage 2. Since I intended to learn an all-new keyboard anyway, I also tried to learn the Dvorak layout and touch-typing all at the same time. Three radically new things all at once was probably, ah, overly ambitious (my most realistic friend, Ken Tanaka, probably could have predicted that!), but at the time I felt like I was mostly doing it as a mental exercise. I ended up getting up to 20 WPM with that setup. I worked on it every day for months. But only 15 to 30 minutes a day. Muscle memory never kicked in. Eventually I stopped tilting at that particular windmill.

Back to the drawing board, down to brass tacks
A few days ago I hauled the Kinesis Advantage 2 out of the closet again, wiped the dust off, switched the keyset back to a QWERTY layout from Dvorak, and started in again at keybr.com. Sigh.

(As an aside, here's a great explanation of why keybr. might be the best "learn how to type" site. As Popeye would say, faskinatin'.) 

I'm not sure the Advantage 2 is for me. I've used it a lot, and although it's easy on my hands, I can't seem to get the hang of it. So I've started poking about the wilds of the unknown 'Net for other alternatives. All I know is that I'm going to have to learn something new. And that I'd better get to it.

Keychron Alice V10, with a Keychron Pro K Blue switch

I don't think there's any answer to this problem other than to pick a keyboard, set goals, and get down to work.

Looking at the Keychron Alice right now. Looks nice. No idea if I'd like it better or worse. How would I know? I've been with one keyboard for three decades, and that's longer than all but 26.2% of marriages last.

This is just a very old bad decision circling back around to bite me. Ever made a casual decision you came to regret later? We all have, so no use complaining. I am just a bit peeved at 14-year-old me right now, though! Jeez, young Mike, just take a typing class** and do it right. Why did you always have to be different?!

Mike

*Actually I just discovered this morning that there are still a few available new on Amazon, but for $399. They used to be $59. I could buy one of those, I guess, but it would only delay the inevitable.

**Available for free at my high school just for signing up, and, as a bonus, full of girls. Dumb, Mike. I probably thought I'd be the most awkward and slowest typist in the class, and I didn't want to look bad in front of all those girls. That's important when you're 14.

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Open Mike: Surprising Facts (OT)

["Open Mike" is the often off-topic Editorial Page of TOP. It appears on Sundays, allegedly and theoretically.]

Photo by Douwe C. van der Zee

—>The first thing made by humans that was taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza was the spire of Lincoln Cathedral in Lincoln, England, completed in 1311. That meant that the Great Pyramid held the record as the tallest structure built by humans for some 3,800 years. Lincoln Cathedral held the title until 1548, when the spire collapsed and was not rebuilt.

—>Buzz Aldrin's mother's maiden name was Moon.

—>The Slovenian basketball player Luka Dončić, 24, who plays for the Dallas Mavericks and has been in the NBA for six years, currently holds the third-highest lifetime scoring average of all time in the NBA, 28.3 points per game (PPG). The only two players ahead of him are Wilt Chamberlain and Michael Jordan. In playoffs, Dončić has a career PPG of 32.5, second only to Michael Jordan. A week ago last Friday, he scored 73 points in a game, a tie for fourth-highest in League history. The two players who have scored more than 73 points in one game are Wilt Chamberlain, who did it twice, and Kobe Bryant.

—>Humans are the only animals that cry tears in response to emotions, and the only animals that have chins.

—>The worst business move in history might not have been such a bad move. You probably know that there was a third founder of Apple Computer, Ronald G. Wayne, who immediately sold his 10% interest in the company back to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak for $800. A year later he was paid an additional $1,500 to forfeit any future claims to the then newly-incorporated business. Today, his share would be worth approximately $95 billion. Wayne has stated on numerous occasions that he does not regret his decision. The reason is that he was intended to be the tiebreaker in disagreements between the two intense and headstrong Steves, the stress of which, he believes, would have made him "the richest man in the cemetery."

—>Human beings have been recognizably human for somewhere between 90,000 and 300,000 years, depending on how you look at it. Even if we survive as a species for that many more years, no human being will ever again experience the climate that existed in 1970.

—>Australia is wider than the moon.

—>The economy of the State of California is larger than that of all but four countries on Earth: China, Germany, Japan, and the United States itself (although India is close and the U.K. not too far behind India). Vermont's economy, the smallest in the U.S., is higher than that of 108 countries.

—>In 2018, there were more immigrants to the U.S. from both China and India than from Mexico. In addition, Mexico in recent years has seen an undetermined but large flow of former immigrants returning to Mexico. The same was true of Irish immigrants in the 1800s, many of whom eventually returned to Ireland.

—>The number of bacteria in our bodies outnumbers our human cells; we are about 56% bacteria. However, bacteria are very light, so we are still approximately 99.7% human by weight.

—>In photography's first seventy years or so, it was considered childish to smile while having one's picture taken, and adults said "prunes" before the picture was taken to remind them to remain appropriately serious*. Eastman Kodak eventually changed this with its ad campaigns by encouraging people to smile and say "cheese." Now, the custom among Americans of grinning all the time is considered an oddity by some Europeans.

Mike

*I've requested a copy of the scholarly paper that purports to document this, but haven't received it yet. If I am sent a copy I'll let you know.

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Open Mike: Championship Sunday (OT)

This time of this year marks ten years for me without a TV. It wasn't a momentous decision; I moved in 2014 and just never hooked up the TV in the new house. I got resentful of the fake culture of advertisements—the insincere bonhomie on the surface and the cutthroat competitive greed behind it. Marketing is mostly lying. I got tired of the lying. Plus, the older I get, the less interested I am in any of the things they're advertising.

Lamar Jackson, Baltimore Ravens quarterback, interacts with service members after practice at Ravens Training Camp Facility in Owings Mills, Md., July 30, 2018. More than 1,000 service members from throughout the National Capital Region filled the stands to watch as players and coaches ran a variety of drills and scrimmages. Photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Delano Scott.

However, sports is the thing I miss the most about TV, and today is the day I find it most difficult to not have a TV. It's not that I'm a huge American football fan, but, because of the game highlights and all the analysis and commentary available on YouTube, I've followed it pretty closely this year for the first time in many years. I would have loved to watch the Chiefs take on the Ravens in the early game today and (even more) see the Lions vs. the 49ers in the late game. Out of the four teams, I'm rooting for the Lions, but my money would be on the Ravens to beat the 49ers in the Super Bowl. They've been the two strongest teams all year. Lamar Jackson is the League's best quarterback. Which is saying something because it's a strong group.

Also, the Australian Open tennis final was sensational this year, with the 22-year-old Italian Jannik Sinner coming back from two sets down against the master tactician, 27-year-old Daniil Medvedev of Russia. It was Sinner's first major title and only the second time an Italian man has won a major tournament in the open era, the first being Adriano Panatta in the French Open way back in 1976. That would have had me jumping out of my seat.

I also like watching the baseball World Series, despite not being a big baseball fan either. I like basketball too, and follow it more than I follow the other major American team sport aside from football, but I've never been one to watch whole basketball games from start to finish. And I've never rooted for any particular team. I'm more interested in the culture of it, and in individual players and their accomplishments. Basketball is the most physical of the major sports and requires the most physical and mental genius. I find it fascinating how different great basketball players can be. It's almost bizarre that the best basketball player in the NBA right now is a phlegmatic Serbian white guy with an unfashionable haircut and no discernible muscle tone who can't jump over a dollar bill.

The sport I feel closest to is tennis, because I played it for many years when I was young. I should never have stopped: it's said to be the best exercise of all for seniors. The sport I love the most, however, is one that I've never played a single game of and have never once seen played in person: snooker. What a great game, beautifully designed, with distinct phases in each frame, and a multitude of different skills required. In that sport, Ronnie O'Sullivan just became the oldest as well as the youngest man ever to win the Masters, hoisting his eighth trophy, a record, just two weeks ago. It would take more than a whole post to recount his accomplishments and records. Snooker fans believe, quite sincerely, that O'Sullivan is more dominant, decorated, and flat-out brilliant than any active player in any other sport, worldwide.

One could at least make the case. But snooker is an oddly localized game; deeply entrenched in UK, it's played almost entirely in the UK and China, with a smattering of players hailing from India, Australia, and elsewhere. As far as the US is concerned, well, there's only one snooker table in the United States, and it's in storage. That's just a joke I heard once. But it's virtually unknown here. And so of course snooker is never on television here—yet another reason to not care that I don't have a TV.

Enjoy the football today, if you're a fan. Today I wish I lived at your house!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Dennis Mook: "When younger I used to love to play sports. When older, I transitioned to enjoy watching the competitions on television, that is until the commerical breaks became unbearable. There are so many advertisements today, sometimes 4-5 minutes in length, that it completely interrupts the rhythm of a game. That spoils it for me. I’ll just watch the highlights now. But I really miss the enjoyment of the continuity of the games."

Kenneth G Voigt: "I have Dish TV. I never watch anything live. Dish automatically records the programs I have selected (on a recurring basis) and I watch at my leisure. I NEVER WATCH A COMMERCIAL. I use 'Fast Forward' or the '30 sec jump' button to skip all commercials."

Keith Cartmell: "Each to their own. My opinion of sports on TV, especially football (not soccer) is that it is the modern manifestation of Roman policy, 'give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt.'"

Stephen Cowdery: "I've lost my interest in most sports as well, however I've become enamored of women's curling, maybe as close to ballet as any sport is."

Who Is That Masked Man?

Or more precisely, what should that masked man's mask be?

Following along from my final thought in the previous post, if I were going to write under a pseudonym, what do you think that pseudonym should be? You can make a joke if you want to ("Freye Degg"), but I'd be interested in serious suggestions too.

I had one picked out, but a search revealed that it was a name that had been used for the fictional lead character in what appeared to be a very low-budget, off-color movie comedy. Although it's possible it was a softcore porn film—I didn't look at the actual movie.

I had a pseudonym once. I wanted to write for Ed Buziak's Darkroom User magazine, which he heroically put together singlehandedly in an ancient stone cottage well past the end of the paved roads in rural Wales. His office was the kitchen pantry, no less. But that was when I was Editor of Photo Techniques in the USA. When I applied for permission from my boss, the publisher, he said he didn't mind me doing a little freelance on the side, but he wanted to avoid any possibility of controversy being associated with my day job, so he gave me his blessing only if I promised not to write under my own name. I chose a pseudonym that my father liked and sometimes talked about: L.T. Gray, which sounds like el Tigre in Spanish, which is what he called me when I was very little. Well, this provoked my father, who considered the pen name to be proprietary to himself, so he proceeded to write a series of letters to Ed's magazine that claimed to be from "the real L.T. Gray." Which is a strange little curlicue, if you think about it a minute.

My father was an amateur magazine writer at one point. He would query travel, food, and wine magazines, which were plentiful in the 1970s. Then, when he got a query approved, he would plan a trip to France to research and photograph the article. The only glitch was that he would spend $3,000 on the trip and then earn $850 for the article, or some such, but he enjoyed it and it provided a rationale for more trips. My father visited France 31 times in his life, and came very close to buying a restaurant there. I believe the shortest trip was a long weekend and the longest lasted two months. My first published picture appeared in one of those magazines when I was 16—in the lead position in the article!—but my father took the credit for it.

He never actually used the "L.T. Gray" name, although he often called himself "Monsieur Post" when traveling, because, he contended, the French cannot pronounce "Johnston." By the way, want a tip for getting rid of an accent? The problem is that people learn a new language without retraining the mouth and tongue positions they grew up using. As an example, "the" (pronounced thuh) is usually pronounced in English by sticking the tongue past the front teeth. That is a tongue position that's never done in French, so the French tend to say "zee" for "the," which is what results when you attempt to say "the" without sticking the tongue past the front teeth. The solution to an accent is to gradually retrain the mouth and tongue to use the positionings of the adopted language, and you do that by having a guide say phrases slowly and with a very exaggerated accent and then have the learner repeatedly do the same. Gradually the learner will begin to adopt the unfamiliar mouth and tongue positions of the new language and the accent will begin to lessen. I have a French friend who has been living here for many decades and still has such a strong accent that he is sometimes difficult to understand. I'm dying to try to work with him on his accent, just to see if this will work, but I haven't found the courage to ask.

(Here's a strange fact that I'm noticing but hopefully you're not: One of the symptoms of my months-long tachy-brady state is that I'm misspelling far more words as I type, and the incidence of typos has shot up. Interesting, isn't it? As Jon Peterson put it when I told him this, "the brain needs a freakishly large amount of oxygen to stay happy. A wee dip can manifest in funky ways—like misspellings and typos.")

I think I just digressed from a digression. But that's me. As the hero of my early youth said, I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Christer Almqvist: "I just realised, when reading your post, that my first English teacher used a very efficient method in her lessons in a small Swedish town in the 1950s. 'Each of you shall bring a small mirror tomorrow,' she said during one of the first lessons. 'We shall learn the 'TH-sound' and you need a mirror to see that your tongue is correctly placed for the proper pronunciation.' A good time was had by all students. And it worked."

John Camp: "I write under a pseudonym (John Sandford) and gave it some thought before I came up with it. (I needed a pseudonym because I was writing for two different publishers at the same time, two different thriller series, and nobody wanted to spend money advertising the other's author.) Anyway, my first impulse was John Barron, after my mother's maiden name, but there was already a thriller writer using that name. So, I went back a couple of generations, to my great-grandfather Henry Sandford. I also like that because he was a member of the Iron Brigade in the Civil War, and was one of the few survivors of the original enlistees. And I was a Civil War buff. I also wanted to keep my first name, so I would respond when people called me that, even if they knew me as John Sandford. In your case, you might consider calling yourself 'Mick,' a hypocorism of 'Michael.' As for last name, dig around among your ancestors and find one that you connect with. Even if it doesn't ring bells, it'll be yours."

Mike replies: Your comment about using the same first name reminds me of a story about Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, the eccentric mob boss of the '80s who pretended to be mentally ill as a way of evading conviction for his crimes. He had two separate families, but his wife and his mistress had the same first name so he could never make a mistake by referring to the wrong one.

Mike S.: "I once asked a French colleague with a very pronounced French accent to put on the most ridiculous over-the-top British accent he could manage. He was hesitant as he thought I might be offended, but he agreed in the end. Honestly, his accent disappeared and he sounded like a native. I could not convince him to continue with it; he thought he sounded absolutely ludicrous. Accents are weird."

Mike replies: I went to France a number of times when I was young (with my father and/or family), and I only ever encountered one Frenchman who had no accent at all, a hotel concierge in the Centre Val de Loire region. He turned out to be native-born and had never lived anywhere else, but he sounded for all the world like he was British. I couldn't detect the slightest trace of a French accent.

I'm pretty sure I could never do the same thing in French, even if I knew how to speak French! But recently I spent some time on Duolingo, and it was interesting trying to mimic the sounds of French words by ear. I realized that the "tyrant" for me is the way the words are spelled...what the letters "say" in effect. I give too much primacy to English-language pronunciations of letters and combinations of letters. For example, if you were to pronounce "quinoa" as "KWIN-oh-uh" rather than mimic the sound "keen-wah." Or say "LAY-sess-ter" rather than "lester" for Leicester. When I stated to get the hang of ignoring the spelling and simply mimicking the sounds I was hearing, my pronunciation improved. (Hard to say really, though, as I'm just sitting there alone.)

A Monomaniacal Madman (OT)

I guess people want me to write about this story: "He spent his life building a $1 million stereo. The real cost was unfathomable," by Geoff Edgers, in The Washington Post. A lot of people have sent me the link. [UPDATE: Craig tells us that non-subscribers can read the article here. Craig also notes that "the better term for Mr. Fritz's condition, rather than 'monomaniacal,' would be 'stereomaniacal.' Any true audiophile would surely agree."]

I had already read it, having found it, ironically, while I was unsubscribing to the WaPo. I just don't read it enough. (I'm very unhappy with the state of access to information on the Web, by the way. Although that's another story. We—and by "we" I mean Western humanity—need a new, rethought model for how that should work, I'll say that. It's becoming a Tower of Babel.)

The story struck me as disturbing, and a little horrifying. I'm not qualified to diagnose what kind of madman Ken Fritz was, but it seems like a mere psychological determination would be too rationalist/materialist, too modern—he seems like something out of a Gothic horror novel from Victorian times, or perhaps even a type to stand with the classic protagonists of ancient Greek tragedies. (The giant stereo could have served up the Chorus.) The only word I can come up with is monomaniacal. Which doesn't seem to do Mr. Fritz justice. He put me in mind of a poor soul I saw on the A&E show Hoarders once who couldn't get rid of old objects because they reminded her of her children, when her hoarding of old objects was what was causing her estrangement from...her children. Hmm.

On the other hand, I might point out that you don't have to be obsessed with building the perfect stereo to treat your sons like shi*t. Lots of people do that who are perfectly happy with desktop speakers or listening to music on airpods. We all waste time; a lot of us have weird hobbies. I recall meeting two young men in an electronics store once who had each spent most of their lives mastering various video games and every possible thing appertaining thereunto. All they were qualified to do for a living was...sell video games. It was all they knew! When I worked at Model Railroader, I remember reading about a guy who spent his whole life making an extremely elaborate (and famous) model railroad layout which then had to be dismantled at his death—it couldn't be moved, and no one had the money, the patience, or the will to maintain it anyway. I don't actually see what's uniquely odd about wasting your time and money on a crazy handmade stereo. Is it really any better or worse than fielding a polo team or collecting old cars or climbing all the tallest mountains in the world, or any other expensive, shading-into-neurotic pastime?

Still, there's no denying that audiophilia and obsessive-compulsive disorder go together like cheese and crackers. I was involved in it only for a short time, but it was long enough to acquaint myself with a variety of crackpots, obsessives, and eccentrics. And they were on both sides of the spectrum, too—the people who insisted on strange, quasi-magical tweaks on the one hand, and the folks who insisted that all amplifiers had to sound the same and that lamp cord was just as good as speaker wire on the other. To me, the anti-magical stance was just as unscientific and irrational as the people who "heard the difference" between a Home Depot electrical outlet and one made for hospitals.

The haunted darkroom
Something similar, but at a much lower level, happened at the darkroom magazine. I accepted and published an article by a guy who had just finished building "the perfect darkroom," everything beautifully designed, researched, engineered, and hand-crafted. It was magnificent, although, having spent years toiling in darkrooms, it also struck me as too nice to be practical. Years later, I remembered the guy's name and called him to find out the fate of the glorious darkroom. He said that after finishing it, he almost never worked in it, and subsequently it was dismantled and put in storage at the time of a house move and he had never set it up again. He came to realize, belatedly, that it was the planning and building of it that had been the hobby for him, not what he could do with it once it was done. I had run into that phenomenon before.

When I read the article about the million-dollar stereo system I couldn't see the subject as sympathetic. I thought it shone a flashlight on a dark, ugly pathology. I can't see much beautiful or desirable in such a quest. Quest...hey, maybe that's the best analogy! The Man of La Mancha—Don Quixote. (Have you ever read it? I had to admit I gave up. I'm like that guy in that Onion video who reviewed only the first third of all the great classic novels.)

All I can say is, don't spend your life tilting at windmills. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

But boy, did that article ever creep me out.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Severian: "I share Mike's reaction—this is ultimately a very sad story that is quite familiar. Brings to mind a certain captain and a whale. Lots of crew (family) are destroyed in the hunt and the whale outlives the captain. Sorry if I spoiled that book for any readers! Obsession about anything brings to mind the classic line from pharmacology: The dose makes the poison. It is so easy for intense hyper focus and true craftsmanship to slide into what I would define as mental illness. It is a caution to all of us 'of a certain age.' Our days will be up sooner than we care to face and we should take heed against investing too much (time, money, pride) in what will often be scrapped not too long after our funerals."

Peter Wright: "Fascinating article! Ancient wisdom in all religions has it that we shall have 'no god but god,' or words to that effect. Ken Fritz worshiped his stereo and paid a price, but many people fall into the same trap in different guises."

G Dan Mitchell: "I read your blog but rarely post comments. But I have a professional background in music and an aspect of audio. (I had a college faculty position teaching what we used to call 'electronic music.') One thing that almost no one notes about the super audiophile types is that they are predominantly not connected to the actual world of music, despite focusing obsessively on the purported 'perfect' modes of reproducing music. The complement to that observation is that the inverse is usually the case, too. I know a lot of musicians—people who make their livings by making music—and I cannot think of one who fits the audiophile profile. Whatever this audiophile thing is (and I have some ideas about that), it is only tangentially related to music itself."

Mike replies: You might not post comments much any more, but I note that you've been commenting since 2010, which is pretty impressive. Thanks for reading, and for the comments you do make.

Gary Merken: "Spending decades and a truckload (or two) of money on building the 'perfect' stereo system is one thing. Nothing intrinsically wrong with that. The horror, as you describe the story, comes from pressing his children into service pouring concrete and building walls, yet never (it seemed from the article) paying any time or attention to what interested them, what drove their passions. Hence at the end of his life, when he was too sick to even lift a record onto the enormous 'Frankentable,' one of his sons would not return his calls, the other didn't come around much, and only one of his children had much to do with him. To me, that was the saddest part."

All I Can Say Is... (OT)

"Oh, to be back in Wisconsin tonight!!"

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Jack Mac: "Mike, I need another ring."

Mike replies: Are you still on the Board of the Packers? By the way, to put this post back on topic, gigantic prints of many of Jack's Packers photographs have been displayed in the beautiful Atrium at Lambeau Field. So if you've been to a Packers home game over the years, there's a chance you've seen some of Jack's work there.