Category: Hiatus

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The Internet Is An Unreliable Friend

Friends,

I bought a Fisher Space Pen. Why did I do this? I’ve fallen into a fun journaling habit with Field Notes notebooks. What should I do? Are there solutions? Should I work on them now, or research them later?

This has been nice way for me to stay on track without using Apple’s Reminders app, which I think has a different purpose. I’m using Reminders for things that need to be really annoying. Things in the notebook require reflection and a little bit of time.

The bullet Space Pen is lovely. It’s a nice shape and you can carry it in your pocket all day, every day. The only problem is the insert. The writing experience is terrible. It’s dry, scratchy, and it’s loathe to give up its ink. I hate it, so I looked to the internet to find something better. Who’s refilling the iconic pen with something that works much better?

Redditors made a suggestion that seemed perfectly reasonable, so I found the recommended, rare as hens’ teeth, available only through weird circumstances refills. I’m familiar with the brand, so I did the work and received the refills.

They don’t fit. Not at all. Even with extensive modifications.

I don’t blame the pen nerds. I blame myself.

Right? Is that the right way to handle this?

Your pal,

– bob

REALLY LOVELY UPDATE: Not a day after I posted this, Fisher sent me an email asking me to review my purchase. While being very polite, I kinda let them have it. Here’s my two-star review:

“I don’t know what took me so long to finally buy a Bullet Space Pen. I guess I thought it was out of my financial reach, but this was remarkably affordable, considering the precision engineering that clearly goes in. That said, the writing experience is not great. In fact, despite the fact that I carry the Space Pen everywhere, I look for another pen first if I’m going to write anything of any length. The ink delivery is as reluctant as a self-conscious teenager at the junior high prom. The point is scratchy, and to get it to produce any sort of line, I have to use too much force on the paper, damaging the surface.
I’m trying new refills, but I gotta tell you, it’s been a disappointing introduction.”

The very next morning, Michelle from Consumer Service (their new name for customer service is growing on me) wrote sent this, asking for details:

“Thank you for contacting Fisher Space Pen!

I am sorry to hear you have experienced an issue with the refill I am happy to replace your refill for you…”

And a new pen is on its way. Absolutely top shelf interaction. No blaming, no intrusive questions, just an apology and an offer to make it right from a real person writing a real email. If you want to reinforce the strength of your brand, this is how you do it.

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The Conceit

Friends,

It’s been a while, but I’ve been busy.

However, I have a plan. Two weeks ago I visited my piney paradise (more on how much I miss the forest tomorrow) and stopped by the local thrift shop. While there, I was thrilled to discover a 1964 Olivetti Lettera 32 that I promptly picked up. This was in service to satisfy my newfound desire to own a nice typewriter (this is news. – ed I don’t know if you missed this, but I haven’t posted anything new in quite a while.)

a nice Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter

The new machine is going to replace the previous two typewriters I picked up solely because the typing effort on the other two is way too high—I really have to stab the keys on the Sears machine and the Smith Corona very hard to get anything on a page and that’s annoying.

two other typewriters for sale

So here’s the idea: I type out a post on paper, plop it into the scanner, then it shows up here. It seems fun to me. Gizmos, scripting, and old mechanical things. What could possibly go wrong?

– bob

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Hibernation Ended

Friends,

It’s been a little while since I last checked in, so consider this A STATUS UPDATE!

First, here’s the song you should be listening to while reading. You’re welcome.

Now! To the business at hand. I’m now two weeks out from the second Moderna jab and we’re getting out into the world again. I don’t really remember how to act around people, so I’m going with the default for all of the amazing delivery drivers who have sacrificed their safety to keep me isolated during the last year: slobbering gratitude. If my side effects from the second Moderna shot were only a fraction as bad as getting Covid-19, I would’ve been terrified to be out in the world. This pandemic is not a joke and I’m concerned that we’re not nearly prepared for the next one, or the one after that. As my late grandmother admonished, maybe we should just stay in bed and pull up the covers.

While it’s great advice, it doesn’t pay the bills.

I have a few live job opportunities in the pipeline at the moment. Of course I can’t tell you about them because I do not wish to invoke the jinx. What I can say is that there are a couple tech support gigs and a couple copywriting gigs. Each one has things to recommend it. Employee discounts, big pay, and neat perks. It’ll be fun to see which one makes an offer first.

My sweet wife has started to believe that my piney paradise is a nice place to spend time, so she has encouraged me to fix up the place a bit. I find it hard to disagree with this.

We went furniture shopping today to pick up a couple larger pieces that should add a more adult feel to the cabin. Bookshelves and end tables and even a dresser made the list. This, however, did not make the cut…

the shiniest bedroom set ever

Woof. The headboard lights up.

Your best pal,

– bob

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No Zero Days

Friends,

I joined the hundreds of thousands of people across the globe who essentially took 2020 off. Not from work, at least not on purpose, but from the creative pursuits that we used to enjoy before the darkest year in living memory. Now that that The Orange Menace has been stopped at a single disastrous term in the White House, it’s time to get back to it.

Was I actually waiting for an election? Not really, but it does seem like a good place to plant a marker for a new start. Besides, being sad, out of shape, angry, cooped up in the house, and jobless (Twice! For the same pandemic!) has to end sometime. Why not now?

That’s why I’m taking the opportunity and nudge from C. Spike Trotman of Iron Circus Comics on Twitter to do something creative every day. Writing is the thing I’m doing today. Yesterday it was reinventing my old vegetarian chili recipe to make it gluten-free after almost a decade hiatus. I made it every New Year’s Day for fifteen years or so based on Carrol Shelby’s Chili Mix but without the meat. Now it’s got a big helping of Impossible Burger browned and mixed in. Pretty good!

Tomorrow, I start working on a special project that I’ve been hoping get off the ground for years. This year is the year. It’ll be stupid. I hope you like it.

More later.

Your best pal,

– bob

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What Are You Doing? Worldwide Quarantine Edition

Friends,

Like everyone else on the planet, we’ve been holed up in the house for the last month (Could be a few weeks, or two months. Hard to tell.) and I find that the years spent sequestered in my Secret Alpine Laboratory served me well. What started out as temper tantrum to withdraw from big cities/life/commitment turned into a meditation. “What do you do when you’re by yourself for a couple years?” First, particularly when it’s snowing outside, you get depressed. “What happens when you’re alone and it’s snowing and you have no real income?” That’s much worse

What that means now, that it’s pretty important not to go out and mingle, but to have the benefit of a job that can easily be done remotely and the benefit of a sweet and loving partner, is that staying in is easy. The state’s Stay At Home order isn’t going to last long enough to forestall another huge wave of infection because politicians will cave to the loud minority agitating to get a haircut and line up at Golden Corral. That’s bad news for people like me who, by my latest count, are vulnerable times three. Too old, too asthmatic, and too diabetic.

Here’s the fun part: Will my employer be indemnified from providing unemployment insurance to people who are vulnerable to infection who demur from a return to work order? What choice will that leave me, a person terrified of being broke and sequestered once again?

I’d just begun a program of going out and mingling now that I’ve identified some folks at work who I’d like to mingle with. I’m certainly not going out to mingle any time soon.

As I write this, more than 75,000 Americans have died from complications from a SARS-CoV-2 infection. Some people online have wondered why, as a country, we’re not mourning. Why no big obituary pages? Why no profiles on teevee with sad violins in the background? I think the answer is simple: The slow-motion tragedy isn’t over yet. The car is still crashing. The towers are taking months to collapse.

The Federal Government is doing not much at all to help. Political donors were made whole, but the response was late and not enough. Scientists who dare speak out are removed. Doctors who complain are dismissed. A vaccine is months away and I’m not going to play this game of Hot Lava Where Everything Is Lava Everywhere until there’s a safe vaccine that works, and I’m able to get one.

So, anyway, it’s been a while. How are you doing?

Your pal,

– bob

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Filling In The Blanks: Castle Edition

Friends,

When you say to your fiancé that you’re not so much interested in making the event into a spectacle as much as something grand, the obvious reaction is, “Yeah? Like what?” Better have something in your pocket ready to go.

“How about a big outdoor wedding? Something big, like a castle,” I think I said. Then it was time to find a castle.

Scotland? Ireland? A destination wedding was voted down. I tried to stick with something grand somewhere close, but local wineries and other venues in the Wedding Industrial Complex just weren’t doing it for me. Then I found this place—a real castle! Who knew?

The upside is that the company that manages the venue also provides catering and other services. The downside is that they’re very firm about who else can provide services on your wedding day. This meant that my dear friend and talented photographer had to jump through hoops. That meant no ponies, pets, or piglets. This also meant that we had to use the approved disc jockey. An affable fellow with an unfortunate middle-aged dude ponytail afforded us the opportunity to create our own playlists. We used a food-themed jazz playlist for dinner, then one filled with dance tunes for the reception.

We chose a cake and flowers and dresses and suits and colors and entrees and liquor and quotes and vows and got married on a beautiful spring day. How about that?

As the one year anniversary approaches, it’s hard to believe it didn’t happen last week.

A lot happened between then and now. It should keep us both busy for a while.

See you tomorrow.

Your pal,

– bob

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So, Where Was I?

Dear friends,

It’s been a little while since I added something to this mess. How long? To me, it seems like I last wrote a lifetime ago. You’ll have to bear with me here, since I haven’t written anything longer than a Twitter post or a cover letter for a resume for ages.

A resume, you ask? You sound surprised, but I’ll explain.

You may recall that I was working for McGraw-Hill answering phone calls from their salespeople to fix computer problems, reset a password, connect to the Internet, and hook up a printer. Sometimes this was a tough job when the caller was crying or when the systems causing the problems should have been out of my reach. Luckily, people don’t change their router passwords like they should, and sometimes they try to connect to hotel WiFi networks that are actually well documented. Given a bit of time, it’s easy to look stuff up and appear to be a genius. This wasn’t rocket surgery, as the kids say.

As jobs go, it wasn’t all that difficult. Sure, it meant not living full time in the mountains, mostly abandoning my piney paradise, but my colleagues were great and it represented a steady paycheck. It meant that I could finally dig out of the financial hole I’d wallowed in since leaving the Festival of Dirt<™> during my largely unsuccessful attempt to build a private computer repair practice. With the very notable exception of developing great friendships, starting an independent business in a small mountain resort town seems doomed to failure.

The downside of working for a book publisher in 2018 and an academic publisher in the age of Republican ascendancy, is that these fortunes are tenuous and education of the populace is not as cherished. That’s probably why they closed our office in California and off-shored our work to a third-world country right to work state that pays minimum wage for the same work—Ohio.

The upside of working in Northern San Diego County is moving in with my lovely sweetheart. We’ve been dating for over a decade and she’s been waiting and waiting and waiting for me to settle down and take a moment to think about what’s really important—sitting in a cold cabin, broke and sulking, or spending sunny days with a sweet girl. That’s when I called up the courage to propose marriage.

And that’s exactly what we did.

We got married at a real, bona fide castle and made up our minds to live happily ever after. Being as non-committal as ever, I made clear my intention to review this whole marriage thing on our 50th anniversary to see if things were working out as planned. This seems like a fair compromise and should serve to keep both of us on our very best behavior.

I subsequently got a new forever job working for a California state university. One of them. It’s up to you to guess which one.

There’s an awful lot of stuff in the middle of all of this that I’ll get to in a little while. What’s also coming is, essentially, me figuring out how to work a new camera. I hope it’ll be worth your time, but it’s pretty important to note that it may not be.

Let’s waste your precious time together, shall we?

Yes, lets.

Your pal,

– bob