First of all, a deadline. I already have one imposed, and it’s working out for me. Start the day, post, finish the day. Repeat. An editor, busily calling on the hypothetical telephone or worse, dropping by to check on progress would eat into my natural good humour. Spontaneity; out the window and the screen wouldn’t even slow things down.

Next up, correction of grammar and syntax. I know, writing can always be improved by rewriting, but there’s tomorrow (and another topic) for that diversion. I’ll depend on a lifetime of contact with practiced prose to guide me. And I did teach grade VIII language arts at one point. Boring, but it puts your punctuation radar into tune.

How about content? Now that’s a hard one. My content doesn’t come with scripted guidelines (and that leaves me content with my content). Place the emphasis where you will. Seriously, anyone looking for regular thought flow had best segue to another site. Around here, the topic for the day is usually chosen only minutes before the first sentence “hits the page”. Although, I do remember one morning where I planned the evening diatribe. But that was an exception.

I would enjoy the “give and take”, the jolly fisticuffs, the mad fits of passion an editor might provoke. Not enough to change things from the status quo, though.

Not to complain. I face the elements, day after day and rarely come up “at a loss for what to do next”. I mean, the bus still came, and I did dry out sometime during the morning hours in my cubicle. Nobody else noticed, which is a rare escape in the confined neighbourhood where I spend my days. My clothes aren’t likely to shrink, and within weeks it will be too cold for rain. Life goes on.

We had a departmental meeting scheduled, but when 33% of the staff were MIA, that got postponed. Which means that the time I spent clearing off our work table was pretty much a wasted effort. My own feeling is that meetings should be held elsewhere; leave the congested chaos of the setup table alone.

I’m contemplating the acquisition of a KVM. To keep you from racing to your favourite dictionary of acronyms, it refers to a small box that allows the cheap/space-deprived computer user to connect two systems to one keyboard, video display and mouse. Like everything else, there are different price points. I checked out the eBay possibilities (endless), and “made an offer” where one was solicited. The canny seller (who won’t get my money) countered with a price reduction of three cents.  .004% reduction. Feeling sorry I asked.

Green tea is probably very good for you. I can’t speak from experience; I’m a brown coffee man, myself. But if the local soft drink bottler tells you that the stuff in their containers is the “real thing”, be doubtful. In fact, the idea that a high fructose based soft drink can be made “healthier” by throwing some multivitamins into the tank just doesn’t cut it.

Over in Montreal, the citizens (or a subset thereof) have asked the city council to rethink the pricing of tap water. One of the larger soft drink bottlers pays $2 per 1000 litres of water taken from the city mains. It then wraps the water in a plastic bottle and profits, mightily. In defense of their business practice, the company isn’t doing anything wrong. Lacking in ethics, sure. Proving that consumers are silly bits, sure. Wrong, not according to Business 101 (offered at a campus near you).

In the real world, business (generically) would have a hard time rounding out the month, if there wasn’t a government spigot in the background. I’m not referring to bottled water, here. Today, the provincial government offered to pick up 40% of the tab for a new “multi-purpose arena”. That’s shorthand for a new house for a professional hockey team, that might be available for the occasional Metallica concert in the off season.

The first numbers being bandied around for the arena looked like 400 million, from here, which means that the provincial offer covers 180 of the shortfall. Tap the federal gang for another pocketful of change, and the investment by local business starts to sound like a a good business deal. For the taxpayer, twice or thrice tapped, not so much.

Check out some of the ads for paper towels. If the efficiency level was that high, there’d be no wet feet in Pakistan. First sign of the river getting enormous, you’d pull out the roll of whatever was on sale and slurp, problem solved.

Same thing for detergents. Grass stains? Pshaw. Chlorophyll is no match for industrial powder. Now, I know these ads are stretching things by a country mile; factories don’t have magic ingredients to get that kind of clean.

How about automobiles? Always clean, always ready to handle rally rides (and we don’t have roads of that complexity in my neighbourhood). Ever notice that the car radio only plays music that calms the savage mind? No shock talk while hawking the product.

It goes on and on. In fact, I can’t remember an ad that understated the case. For anything. It takes a challenged mind to always imagine things that can’t possibly happen.  Magazines (for those who still read) rarely try to dazzle. Flash (ads) don’t have big screen TV impact. Radio; goes without saying.

No doubt from my quarter (and no exaggeration); TV jumps the shark regularly, when it comes to annoying us. In a brave new world, we’ll miss those ads. Although, I’ll keep a certain soft spot in my heart for the dogs and cats of that imaginary universe. I love watching cats crash through solid walls.

It must be a little disheartening for the other teams in their league, what with not really being “in their league”. Today, the score was held to just over a forty point difference, but that might have been due to the decision to let the clock run down, rather than playing through. Now, I’m not forecasting a sweep of the trophies, but the term “dynasty” comes to mind.

The long weekend is officially a “stay at home” one. Probably safer that way, statistically. You know, avoiding the crazies that have to get their ya-ya’s out on the highway. I might get some trim laid in on the reno project that never ends, or I might not. Too early to call. My real hope is that I can involve some high quality child labour, in a training moment.

The city is still feeding on a “return of pro hockey” meal that got another course served up. Seems that the premier has asked the mayor to meet and discuss funding for a new arena. Sounds like a distractionary technique to me. After better than a week of hearings dealing with influence peddling, the provincial government has developed a dose of blushing disease. What better way to get the voters back on side, than to promise bread and circuses. Tax monies are so easy to spend on the banal.

Somewhere in the piles of stuff available at the local box store, there must be a guide to good posture. Otherwise, we’ve got lots of soft tissue injury that isn’t catching the attention of the medical world. Here’s the thing. Any time I “install” something around the house, I learn that it’s actually done while lying on the floor in pretzel form, while aiming a flashlight using available body parts.

No job takes five minutes. This afternoon, I replaced a baseboard heating unit. About as simple as it gets, electrically. You swap one cable and turn up the thermostat to test. Except for the deal that the cable is actually JUST the right length, so you have to undo the original part and reattach the new piece while in close contact with the floor. Dust bunny hunting zone.

How about changing out the light fixture while you’re in such a constructive mood. Here, hang this chandelier/huge fan, while standing on your tippy-toes. Extend your arm while supporting the weight of the world light fixture, and hold it just so, while you fasten things together with the other five fingers. Got the drill? No, no I didn’t mean a power tool used to perforate body parts!

And on we go. The aches and pains will follow on a later train. Seriously, as I get older, I understand the gleam in the eye of a neighbour when he hears about someone who does repairs. He no longer wants to spend Saturday tempting the gods. Life is too short.

When we first started experimenting with optical data, the disk seemed miraculous. I can remember my supervisor throwing them around the classroom; a proof of concept. Here we had portable data storage that would change our lives for the better. No more boxes of diskettes to install a program (while we waited for the inevitable failure to read on #37 out of 50). The data CD, with its aluminum substrate was invincible.

Not so much, now that we have DVD burners and cheap piles of media. If I can “burn” a disk and then read it again on another machine, I have to use handling methods more appropriate for corneal tissue. Forget stuffing the disk in a backpack pocket; the data will be beyond recall.

I suppose we can’t blame the “industry”. We wanted cheap, disposible media and they delivered on the demand. Look at how many other segments of the economy are following the model. Check out your new car. Don’t touch the bumper, or expect the fancy little wheel caps to remain. Not part of the deal.

Never open your iPod. Despite the kits that are available for the do-it-yourselfer, the resultant obligation to close up the shell using duct tape will not amaze your friends. Don’t wash that colourfast red t-shirt with anything else. As for the “best before” date on yogurt, consider it as one of life’s little mysteries.

My educator hat (the one that is too tight and tries to compress my brain) comes with a belief that the informed user is a better user. Maybe, in a more perfect universe, my future workload will diminish.

My technician hat (the funky one with an obscure logo) comes with the imperative: tell them nothing, because this is magic. I mean, they do tell me that I have the “magic touch”. Great for my ego.

The directive from “those above me” is to tell the user what I’m doing/going to do; the user is educated and intelligent and deserves to be “in the loop”.

Try finding the solution that fits the problem; my own twist on things. But some of the calls to assist aren’t easily pigeonholed. This morning, a user wanted to know why an attached file in email seemed to “place itself where’er it wants”. Now, that’s not technically what was happening, but when I tried to explain the mystery of why Outlook doesn’t have a default setting for RTF vs HTML vs plain text, I got “the look”.

It was made clear, without prevarication, that the user in the next cubicle didn’t have the same difficulty. I had to point out that there were many versions of software, and a mix of language kits involved. Didn’t matter; time was short and so were tempers. Note to others; never change a software version at the start of the school year, because there are other variables in play.

In fact, a whole web province exists wherein the curious can check out how the stupid half lives. Some fun things to check out if you need a quick giggle on a lazy afternoon. But what on earth was the CEO of a major computer/software/lifestyle firm thinking this afternoon, when he announced a whole line of “stuff to buy” via a webcast that could only be watched while using Apple hardware.

I have a visceral dislike for Quicktime, but I accept the compromise. Today, even with QT, the PC world was shuttled off the media bus and told to wait for another source.

In the business world, there’s hubris, and there’s insanity. The fact that I’m writing about an “epic fail” by Jobs and Company doesn’t mean he succeeded in getting my attention. I depend on seeing a product in the local shops (or on the local transit system) for that. No, I’m just curious why shareholders would praise any effort to stifle sales.

But on to other things. I’m home from “one of those days” at the office. Someone mentioned, as I passed by their cubicle, that there had been no new email in their folder since 2009. Not 20h 09 on the wall clock; the year. Against my better judgement, I sat down to see for myself. Effectively, email no longer “came in” to the Outlook client. Think of it as an acceptable compromise, when you check “Work Offline”.

I bought a reader this summer (a Kobo, for the curious minds, because I live in Canada and that’s what we can buy up here). I like it, but I haven’t been reading it; too busy deciding what to add to my personal library. Should I pad things out with titles I’ve already perused? Should I concentrate on new worlds (a logical plan)? Should I concentrate on the 100 classic titles that came bundled; the ones I might have read back in Grade IV, if we had moved earlier in the year?

Actually, I’m still trying to master the turn off vs sleep modes. Both leave the battery ready for a few hours on the charger, near as I can tell. And, no, I don’t wish that it would morph into an iPad. Thanks for wondering.

Outside, the heat wave continues. I walked back from the box stores earlier this evening,  with the vague idea that I could move quickly enough to generate a breeze. File that thought under “faint hope”. How about this one: if I walked every evening for a year, I’d lose enough weight to be able to redress my wet suit. Hold that thought; I may be getting heat stroke.

And in the news, we’re all on hurricane watch, just in case…