If Only It Were This Easy To Take Things Off My "Todo" List
Seems I'm inspired to load up my "todo" list today, which has now swelled to more than 40 items. I'm trying to bring the same enthusiasm to crossing stuff off that went into putting it on there in the first place . . . but my dance card is also filling up fast, with an out of town birthday party and a new Harry Potter movie to get to.
Soundtrack from My Morning Walk
It was more than cool this morning ("a tittle bit nipply", you could say), but after the first few minutes of walking it felt just fine. In a sharp departure from the last several days, most of the songs that came up today actually had a good walking tempo.
Title Artist Time Come On Over Shania Twain 2:54 Oddly zydeco instrumentation for the country crossover queen Lakini's Juice Live 4:49 Twentieth Century Fox .38 Special 4:15 Totally unrelated to the Doors tune of the same name Hard Workin' Man Brooks & Dunn 2:58 Fallen Angel Poison 3:55 Changes Tesla 5:02 Starts off sounding slow . . . but surprise, it's a full on 80s power ballad! 2JN R.E.M. 3:27 A weirdly compelling instrumental with toms tuned so low you'd swear it was tympani. Who's Crying Now Journey 5:02
Nerd Skills Update
Today I made it official, changing my Windows setup at work to use the Dvorak layout as the default keyboard configuration when I boot up. That means that every program that accepts keyboard input will now expect me to use a pattern of keys that does not match the little key caps on my physical keyboard without me having to jump through hoops every time I open a new program. (Well, okay, it's just a hot-key combination, but it was starting to get on my nerves.)
I don't type as fast with this layout yet, but learning the new was starting to mess up using the old, particularly for common letters like "e" and "t".
Typing speed (Dvorak layout): 198 cpm (2.7% error rate)
I've also started getting hardcore with GMail keyboard shortcuts, which lets me process my inbox without reaching for the mouse. I don't really have a way to measure progress on this one, but it's definitely starting to feel more natural.
Five Bizarre Elements in the Dreams I Had Last Night
- Once I determined that my entire skin had become detached from my musculo-skeletal structure, I was able (with some help from my best belovéd) to stretch my hands back into the gloves of skin that dangled from them without much difficulty, and with no real sense of panic.
- Although I was separated from both the bear and the wolves by chain-link fencing, I knew that I would have to choose to face one or the other in order to escape my own cage.
- When I tried to use the cool photo printing station at Kinko's, there were something like a dozen different memory cards that people before me had forgotten to take with them when they finished cluttering up the machine. (Apparently this was a pretty typical days' haul for the employees, who kept them for their own personal needs.)
- I seemed to be the only one aware that I had triggered the collapse of the stadium's superstruc
- The fact that my dreams occurred in decreasing order of strangeness was an over-arching theme of the dream series, which I was aware of even as I was having the dreams.
Quote of the Day
Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative. -- Kurt Vonnegut