Nothing is random: five items make a post
Mar. 31st, 2009 05:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceOne: while I continue to assert that I had a lovely time in Dublin, it must alas be admitted that the loveliness was constantly tempered by a penny-pinching meanness; it is no fun to congo on a budget. [That should perhaps officially be con-go, but I like the double entendre...] I was positively abstemious in m'drinking, and none the less I owe pints to half of Irish fandom, and a fair few of other nationalities. Next year...?
Two: which abstemiousness was necessarily carried over into the airport: with a couple of hours to kill, my natural tendency is to kill them in a bar. With the Laptop of Heavenly Perfection, all workingly and virtuous. So I counted my coins, having no euro-notes left at all, and asked rather plaintively if they took sterling. Certainly they did, they said, but they would have to give me change in euros. Which led to more counting of my English change, because otherwise it would be a twenty-quid note and I really didn't want to commit that much of my pelf to a foreign currency just as I was leaving foreign lands. Which led to an even more pathetically plaintive question, how much was half a pint of Guinness, in euros...? Which turned out to be ever so slightly less than I still had. Never before has half a pint been eked out so long, and so longingly...
Three: as well as leaving behind me this alas-deserved reputation for not buying my round, which I hate, I also worry that people will have tagged me as a man of neurotic gesturing. Which is kinda true anyway, because my hands do fly around helplessly as I talk, as I try to shape those things I can't describe; but this latest flare-up of my RSI-related neural damage has left me with severe pins and needles in my left hand and arm. Which is exacerbated by certain positions, which include leaning forward with my elbows on the table, which is my natural posture on a panel. So all these audiences will have seen me wringing my hands and rubbing constantly at my forearm, and written me down as a weirdo. Sigh.
Four: in pursuit of not having pins and needles, I am back seeing my physio on a weekly basis. Which is horridly expensive, and hence one reason for the severe con-budget; but, once I start to spend money, I do find it hard to stop. Especially on legitimate worky tech. Karen-the-physio had urged me to invest in a laptop stand and a separate keyboard and mouse for the LHP; in the interests of economy, I had dug out an old Dell keyboard which is actually extraordinarily light. I took that into town with me this morning, and after my session with Karen (ouchie!) I went down to the Lit & Phil. And built the tower of books that people recommended in lieu of an actual stand, and plugged in the keyboard, and gave this system a test-run on a rewrite of an old novella. And then, having found that it worked fine, I bought a whole set of new kit on my way home. I bought a new mouse, because trying to use the touchpad on the laptop when you're not using its keyboard and you've set it almost out of reach anyway is ... inefficient. And I bought a USB hub because the LHP only came with two ports and one of those has suddenly stopped accepting plugs (oh noes! the LHP is no longer P! and in this really annoying way: any USB plug will only go halfway into one of the sockets, for no observable reason whatsoever, grrr...!), so if I want to run keyboard and mouse and data key too... Yup. Hub. And I bought a new keyboard: which is actually both a little smaller and a little heavier than the Dell, thus running counter to the desirable in both instances, besides costing extra money - but the Dell one is noisy! It clacks! In the Silence Room! I was, um, horribly aware. And if I'd been anyone else in there I knew I'd be hating me with a passion. So, yup. New keyboard. It's still noisier than the LHP, but not appallingly so. I hope.
Five: bar the one I bought, all the USB hubs I looked at came with a power supply. What's that about? I thought half the point of USB devices was that they all drew their power from the computer. Is this a save-your-laptop-battery thing, such that running a keyboard and a mouse will be a significant drain on power? Will I not get nine hours' consecutive runtime any more...?
Two: which abstemiousness was necessarily carried over into the airport: with a couple of hours to kill, my natural tendency is to kill them in a bar. With the Laptop of Heavenly Perfection, all workingly and virtuous. So I counted my coins, having no euro-notes left at all, and asked rather plaintively if they took sterling. Certainly they did, they said, but they would have to give me change in euros. Which led to more counting of my English change, because otherwise it would be a twenty-quid note and I really didn't want to commit that much of my pelf to a foreign currency just as I was leaving foreign lands. Which led to an even more pathetically plaintive question, how much was half a pint of Guinness, in euros...? Which turned out to be ever so slightly less than I still had. Never before has half a pint been eked out so long, and so longingly...
Three: as well as leaving behind me this alas-deserved reputation for not buying my round, which I hate, I also worry that people will have tagged me as a man of neurotic gesturing. Which is kinda true anyway, because my hands do fly around helplessly as I talk, as I try to shape those things I can't describe; but this latest flare-up of my RSI-related neural damage has left me with severe pins and needles in my left hand and arm. Which is exacerbated by certain positions, which include leaning forward with my elbows on the table, which is my natural posture on a panel. So all these audiences will have seen me wringing my hands and rubbing constantly at my forearm, and written me down as a weirdo. Sigh.
Four: in pursuit of not having pins and needles, I am back seeing my physio on a weekly basis. Which is horridly expensive, and hence one reason for the severe con-budget; but, once I start to spend money, I do find it hard to stop. Especially on legitimate worky tech. Karen-the-physio had urged me to invest in a laptop stand and a separate keyboard and mouse for the LHP; in the interests of economy, I had dug out an old Dell keyboard which is actually extraordinarily light. I took that into town with me this morning, and after my session with Karen (ouchie!) I went down to the Lit & Phil. And built the tower of books that people recommended in lieu of an actual stand, and plugged in the keyboard, and gave this system a test-run on a rewrite of an old novella. And then, having found that it worked fine, I bought a whole set of new kit on my way home. I bought a new mouse, because trying to use the touchpad on the laptop when you're not using its keyboard and you've set it almost out of reach anyway is ... inefficient. And I bought a USB hub because the LHP only came with two ports and one of those has suddenly stopped accepting plugs (oh noes! the LHP is no longer P! and in this really annoying way: any USB plug will only go halfway into one of the sockets, for no observable reason whatsoever, grrr...!), so if I want to run keyboard and mouse and data key too... Yup. Hub. And I bought a new keyboard: which is actually both a little smaller and a little heavier than the Dell, thus running counter to the desirable in both instances, besides costing extra money - but the Dell one is noisy! It clacks! In the Silence Room! I was, um, horribly aware. And if I'd been anyone else in there I knew I'd be hating me with a passion. So, yup. New keyboard. It's still noisier than the LHP, but not appallingly so. I hope.
Five: bar the one I bought, all the USB hubs I looked at came with a power supply. What's that about? I thought half the point of USB devices was that they all drew their power from the computer. Is this a save-your-laptop-battery thing, such that running a keyboard and a mouse will be a significant drain on power? Will I not get nine hours' consecutive runtime any more...?
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Date: 2009-04-01 07:20 am (UTC)