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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
Some days, being “the computer guy” at the office isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
(I’m not sure what it’s cracked up to be, exactly. No one I know has ever cracked it up, to the best of my knowledge. So I don’t know what to compare it against, really,
But some days, it just isn’t.)
I had one of those days today, when one of the guys in our group came by my office, computer equipment in hand, and informed me: ‘I don’t like this keyboard. I want a different one.‘
Now, never mind that I in no way qualify as a keyboard expert. I tend to order the machines for the group, and replace the occasional cable or walk a CD-ROM over to a user, but hardware’s not my bag. Too much chance to cut myself or get scraped or to fry my delicate inner motherboard by licking the wrong wire or something. I’m happy to leave the heavy hardware lifting to the rocket scientists and bomb squads, the way nature intended.
Also, I don’t know the first damned thing about ergonomics. I could understand if he’d said the keyboard was broken — I’ve sacrificed my fair share of perfectly innocent input devices in a bout of impotent frustrated desk-pounding, too — but instead he said he just didn’t like it. As though it could somehow be optimized with carpal massagers or wrist flexor recombobulators or an arm rest sanctioned by a licensed chiropractor shaman.
“I’ve banged on more keyboards than an internet porn addict with no hands.”
These are not things I know about. You’re talking to a guy who slumps so far in his chair, I keep hitting the space bar with my chin when I chew gum. I have vertebrae so maladjusted that my ribs have gotten together and staged an intervention. And I peck away at computers all damned day and night — any computer, and on whatever equipment’s available. I’ve banged on more keyboards than an internet porn addict with no hands.
So this guy coming to me saying he doesn’t ‘like‘ his keyboard — I don’t know what the hell to do about it. I’m a programmer, Jim, not a doctor. Go steal somebody else’s, is what I wanted to tell him. Blast it with a blowtorch until it curves the way you want. Swap some keys around. Have a party, dance a jig, build a big August Dvorak effigy in the parking lot and scamper around it chanting, ‘Qwer-ty! Qwer-ty!‘ ,for all I care.
But no. I’m “the computer guy”. I’ve got to do better than that. If only for the sake of appearance.
So I asked him what was wrong with his keyboard. He said, “It’s these number keys over here. I don’t use the number pad, but I keep accidentally hitting them when I type.”
I suppose it’s plausible. I mean, I’ve used keyboards like the one in his hand and had no problem keeping my grubby little paws on the keys I targeted my grubby little paws to tap. The number pad is way over on the right, well away from the letters and common punctuation in the soft chewy center of the layout.
But who am I to say? Maybe the guy just has incredibly stubby little tuna-can fingers, and everything’s a challenge. Maybe he presses four elevator buttons at once, shakes hands like an octopus, and looks like he’s balancing a can of soup on his fist when he flips you the bird.
(Nah, he’d have flipped me the bird by now. The guy’s fingers must be normal. I’d have noticed.)
More likely, he just spilled water or soda or Pabst Blue Ribbon all over the keyboard, and now he’s trying to cover his goof. Or he’s an internet porn addict with no hands. Something to ruin an otherwise good keyboard, and then ditch it because he doesn’t ‘like’ it.
Still, the faster I swapped out his keyboard with out asking any uncomfortable questions or staring at his mutant stubby sucker hands, the sooner I could go back to whatever other pointless and demeaning thing I was doing before this ordeal started. So I walked the guy over to our ‘hardware stash’, and pulled out a replacement.
‘Here you go, bud. Barely used, and with no number keypad. Just plug it in, and you’ll be back on your way to–”
“Oh, no. I can’t use that one.”
“Why? What’s wrong with that one?”
“Well, the keys are too close together, for starters.”
I looked at him, nonplussed. I looked at the keyboard, whose keys were spaced… I don’t know, next to each other, like every other fricking keyboard I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. I looks at him again. I blinked. He didn’t go away. I blinked again. Still there. So I caved:
‘Okay… I guess. Well, let’s see if we have an extra lying around that you like.‘
The next ninety minutes were like a nightmare fairy tale from Charlie-locks and the Three Touch-Typers. This keyboard is “too thin”. That one is “too long”. “I don’t like the look of those F-keys” on that one. Now the words on the caps lock “are rubbed out and smudgy”.
One after another, the keyboards came and went. Too loud, too soft, too hot, too cold, not enough porridge crammed under the space bar — none of our extras were good enough for Sir Types-A-Lot and his precious princely fingers. Finally, he peered over my shoulder and said:
“Hey… that one looks pretty snazzy.”
“You mean the one connected to my computer?”
“Yeah — she’s real purty.”
“Okay, fine. Let’s trade keyboards, then.”
So we did. I unhooked my device, wrapped the cable around it — it was either that, or his neck — and handed it over. I don’t care much what sort of keyboard I use, so why not let the picky bastard have his toy? He grabbed it and toddled off back to his cubicle, strutting with his new prize like a magpie in a shiny foil hat.
I picked out the closest extra keyboard, plugged it in, and started tapping out an email. But something didn’t feel quite right. It was skinnier than my other keyboard, and sort of wobbly when I pressed down on the left-hand keys. I figured that would bug me after a while, so I ditched it and pulled another replacement off the pile.
Only this one had a sticky ‘D’ key. And I wind up using ‘d’ an awful lot in sentences. As in, “I’m the Doofus who gave away his keyboard to some whiny Douche just now.” Just for instance.
So I grabbed another. And another. And another. None of our spare keyboards worked quite the way I wanted — and some didn’t work at all. Without knowing it, I’d seemingly given up the last viable keyboard on our entire floor. In desperation, I reached for the keyboard the guy brought in; the one he didn’t ‘like’.
As I pulled it over, some gooey translucent liquid oozed out from under the space bar. It might have been hair gel. It may have been Elmer’s Glue. It could have been congealed lemonade, for all I know, but I didn’t care. I stopped touching the keyboard and went for a long, long, long lunch break. Right after sand-blasting my hands. And desk. And eyes.
When I came back, I picked a defective keyboard at random, plugged it in, wrote a note to the cleaning staff requesting the “super duper disinfectant treatment” on my desk, and took the rest of the day off. Assuming they hit it with the Comet and napalm overnight, I can sit there again in the morning. But I’ve got nothing good to type on.
Now I think the whole thing was a charade just to part me from my keyboard. Or to gross me the hell out. So, you know, missions accomplished, soldier!
And I know that if I ask for my keyboard back, PickyBoy won’t play ball. I’m sure my old keyboard types like a dream, clacks like a soothing slow cargo train, and caresses the fingertips with velvety-smooth sweet nothings. How do I know this? Because she used to be mine.
I’ve decided my only recourse is to steal my keyboard back. Tomorrow evening, after another day of suboptimal input device malaise, I’m going to sneak into his office and take back what’s rightfully mine.
And don’t ask what I’m going to leave dripping on his desk. Turnabout is a keystroke of genius, don’t you know.
Permalink | 1 CommentThe missus and I have lived with our dog for over a decade now. But only recently have I become aware of the notion of ‘dog astrology’ — the idea being that pups and mutts are influenced by the motions of the moon and stars and heavenly bodies to the same degree that humans are.
(Which is not at all, as far as I’m concerned. Not that it ever stopped me from trying to use creative zodiacry to my advantage, back in the day. If being an Aries might get me some action — sure, I’m an Aries. If it takes Mars in my seventh house to get to second base, then okay… whatever you just said, honey. Are we going to make out or stare at constellations all night?
Of course, I never knew enough about astrology for it to help me much. A woman once asked me if I was a Sagittarian. I said, ‘No, I eat meat — why do you ask?‘
I had to hightail it out of there before I wound up with one of her Capricorns shoved up my Pisces.)
Still, as a dog owner I was intrigued by this idea, so I did a little digging. And found as reputable an example of celestial canine prognostication as I could muster — a full page of dog horoscopes, from no less an authority than Discovery’s Animal Planet.
“Someday they’re going to find a family of morbidly obese little people hoarding junk in a haunted dirty crab boat and being mauled by chopper-riding tigers.”
(What do pets have to do with the other ninety-nine percent of Discovery’s current programming? How the hell should I know?
Someday they’re going to find a family of morbidly obese little people hoarding junk in a haunted dirty crab boat and being mauled by chopper-riding tigers. They’ll shoot twenty minutes of film, loop it twenty-four hours a day, and that’ll be that. Transformation to “circus sideshow peephole network” complete.
Anyway, Animal Planet. Work with me here.)
So the folks at AP have decided that the personality of a dog can be determined by the phase of the moon or the incline of the Big Dipper, or which way Aries’ spear is pointing.
(Or maybe that’s Aries Spears. I’m not so much on the details.)
At any rate, I’ve read the things. And they’re useless. If you gaze into Animal Planet’s crystal dog ball, you’ll see things like this:
‘Your Taurus teddy bear… is a good listener and will never let you down.‘
‘The Gemini pup… wants to be in the know and is eternally youthful.‘
‘Leo dogs live for the limelight and a 5-star lifestyle.‘
Oh, horse puckey. These sound more like come-ons from internet dating ads than anything approaching what your dog is like. We’re talking a bunch of over-furred drooling morons here, not an online Mr. Right.
(Who is actually also an over-furred drooling moron, most likely. But like the crafty AP copy writers, he doesn’t want you to know that.)
In an attempt to bring a smidgen of sanity to this idea of dog-strology, allow me to offer a somewhat more realistic outlook on your dog’s nature, based (very loosely) on the unrelated motions of dozens of independent stars and galaxies many trillions of miles apart that appear, to some observers, to suggest certain recognizable shapes if viewed from a vantage point in a tiny sliver of the known universe that happens to contain our planet.
In other words, the first six astrological signs of “The Poochoscope”:
Aries: The hothead coke fiend of the canine world, the Aries dog is always ready for a scrap, a tussle, or a manic gallop around the block. Most eager to show his love at three in the morning or during your naps, this lovable ball of spaz will be clamoring to fetch, play, go outside and sing a hearty howl-along with you at all hours of the day and night.
This is one pooch with no off switch. Really. We tried. Even the horse tranqs didn’t work. It’s quite possible the dog has been possessed by Satan. Good luck with that.
Taurus: Owning a Taurus dog is like having John Goodman stay at your place — for ten to fifteen years. You’ll have some laughs together — between the binging and the sleeping and the puking all over the rug — but mostly you’ll sit on your asses sucking down Cheetos and beef jerky treats, taking turns out-fatting each other.
Best of all, the Taurus dog is a faithful companion and fiercely loyal. To your couch. And your refrigerator. And your pizza delivery guy. Ooh, is that a regurgitated pepperoni slice on the carpet over there? Yummo, big fella.
Gemini: These are the debutantes and divas of the doggie world. Most Gemini pups weigh less than your average hamster turd, and come wrapped in several pounds of adorable clothing. If you see a dog dressed up in a cowboy suit or a mini-mink coat or pimped out like Lady Gaga’s Thai tranny cousin, you’re face-to-face with a Gemini starlet.
It’s easy to travel with a Gemini dog — simply stuff them in a pocket or tuck them into your sock, and you’re on the move. The subtle squirming and muffled impotent angry yapping will let you know that your passenger is ready to roll.
Cancer: Cancer dogs love to be with their owners. All the time. On the couch, in the bed, quite possibly while pooping — all. The. Time. And Cancers are a sensitive lot, so the smallest perceived slight or impatient heave out of the way could send them into a mopey funk.
Basically, it’s like supporting a needy, unemployed, over-affectionate emo boyfriend. The dog’s farts are worse because he only eats horsemeat, but he also won’t recite you depressing bits of poetry he wrote while spending the day in the tub listening to the Smiths. It’s a toss-up, really.
Leo: There’s nothing a Leo pooch likes more than being pampered. Happily, the definition of ‘pampered’ changes approximately every twelve seconds, so you’ll never be bored!
“The kibble I’ve been eating every day for six years? Eat it now? What are you, simple?” “Nope, don’t like those treats any more. Away!” “That toy? That toy sucks, is what that toy does.” “Who told you I like Snausages? Was it the cat? Of course it was. Idiot.”
Virgo: The key feature of Virgo dogs is how they appreciate routine and order. Creatures of habit and wholly fastidious, these pooches will eat at noon and six precisely, bed down at eight, go for walks at fifteen past every third hour, and see that every person, prop and piece of furniture is in its proper place at all times. So long as all is as expected with no surprises, the Virgo dog will be a model of serene companionship.
Of course, when life happens and you run out of food, sleep in or move the extra couch upstairs, the Virgo dog will careen into uncontrollable panic and chew roughly half the fur off its own ass. Seeing as how its world has been irrevocably shattered, it may also dig holes in the yard (or the shag carpet), wail like a soprano banshee being dipped in an ice bath, or soil every pee–reachable surface in the interior of your home. You might as well feed a pack of rabid gremlins after midnight.
(Stay tuned for the second half of the mighty Poochoscope coming soon. If your dog’s sign hasn’t come up yet… well, you can probably guess how it turns out. Your dog’s kind of an idiot. But a lovable idiot! And that’s plenty good enough.)
Permalink | No CommentsThere are plenty of reasons why a guy like me might miss his regular exercise.
There’s injury, of course. I turned forty a few months ago, and let’s face it — at my age, I could shatter a hip opening a jar of peanut butter. I’ve been fortunate in the last couple of years to not break, sprain, strain, rip, shred or separate anything significant. But the threat of being yanked asunder like some oversized flabby chicken wing is always present.
(If not quite as appetizing. Though I also go well with celery and blue cheese.)
Other times, exercise takes a back seat to a busy schedule. My work days are packed tight with all sorts of meetings and disciplinary hearings and sobbing quietly under my desk. Sometimes it bleeds over into the evenings or weekends, and I don’t get a chance to work up a good healthy sweat.
(‘Soaked in tears’ isn’t quite the same. Ideally, I’d feel the burn all over; not just in the tear duct area.)
Also, there’s the laziness. The cruel, debilitating, delicious, spectacular laziness. If I’m snuggled under the covers, I can’t very well be out running, now, can I? That’s just how it goes sometimes. I’ve made my bed. And I’m prepared to snore and twitch and drool in it — all day, if it comes to that.
But for the first time, I’m at risk of missing exercise for a completely different reason: physics. Here’s how it shakes out — or more accurately, how it doesn’t:
Last fall, my wife bought me a volleyball net. I play in an indoor league for most of the year, but during the three-and-a-half days that Boston experiences something resembling summer, my fellow players and I like to set up a net of our own out on the grass and go at it ‘freestyle’. I’d never had my own net, so I was always at the mercy of someone else bringing the required equipment.
(Because without a net, volleyball is just… I don’t know. Lawn bowling, maybe. Or aerial four-square. But not a proper sport, that’s for certain.)
So my sweetie rectified that problem for me. Or so I thought.
It was too late in the season last year to try it out, so I stashed the net in the trunk for the winter. Today being the first moderately temperate day of near-spring, I thought I might take it out and have a closer look. Familiarize myself with the parts, see if I need to buy anything, lose the instruction sheet — all the usual stuff.
There’s just one teensy little problem. I can’t get the damned thing out of the trunk.
Everything needed to set up the net is in this big long black bag — poles, net, spikes, everything. The poles can telescope once you take them out, but in the bag they’re squished in as short as they’ll go. Which is about three inches not-short-enough to clear the mouth of the trunk. That’s simple physics. And it’s holding the net hostage in my trunk. Physics is a damned terrorist.
“I lobbied for a semester devoted to Imperial tie fighters. The prof told me to get the Force out of his classroom.”
(I think I always knew that, really — that’s why I barely passed the class back in college. I wasn’t lazy or dumb or hung over for the morning lectures. No.
I just knew that if I got close enough to really examine physics — to, say, be able to identify it in a police lineup — it would put a sack over my head, toss me in a basement somewhere and tie me to a radiator. I’d probably be there right now, if I’d studied hard enough to do better than a C- in that class.
My parents said I didn’t apply myself. Now I see it was self-preservation. Way to go, college me.)
What I’m failing to understand here is how I got the bag into the trunk in the first place. Because it’s not coming out. I’ve tried every angle, every shimmy, every tug and bend and gyration, and that bag is stuck. Permanently. It’s not coming out of that hole.
But it went into the hole. And this isn’t a black hole we’re talking about — I can still see the bag in there. Time’s not slowing to a crawl in the vicinity of my back bumper, and random pedestrians aren’t being sucked through the license plate past the event horizon.
(Okay, so I learned a little physics in that class. But only the bits that I could use to win arguments about science fiction.
I lobbied for a semester devoted to Imperial tie fighters. The prof told me to get the Force out of his classroom. Smartass.)
My conclusion is that the laws of physics have somehow changed in the past six months or so. Back in the fall, the bag would go in. Now, it won’t come out. The bag’s the same bag, the trunk hasn’t shrunk, and nothing else has changed — so it has to be physics. Physics is trying to prevent me from playing volleyball this summer. What gives, physics? Yo, you used to be cool, man.
So now I’m weighing my options. I could take the car to my mechanic and have the trunkhole widened a few inches. Where ‘my mechanic’ is this guy I know with his own acetylene torch. But physics would probably get all huffy again, and change the laws of the universe to screw that up, too.
I could buy another net — but where the hell would I store it? Not in the trunk, that’s for sure. And I’m not convinced it would fit in the back seat. I’d have to prop it up on the front seat on the passenger side — and I can’t drive around town like that. It’d be bad enough getting pulled over for an illegal turn or speeding or double-parking at the ice cream parlor. But if the cop’s writing the ticket and sees something that looks like a body bag riding shotgun? I can’t imagine that would end well. And I’m allergic to being cuffed and tased repeatedly. Pass.
So I guess that’s it. When we’re planning an outing, people will ask if I own a net, and I’ll say, ‘Sure‘.
Can we use it? ‘Oh, no, sorry — it’s in my trunk.‘
But you’re driving there, right? ‘Yup.‘
So the net will be there? ‘Uh huh.‘
In the trunk? ‘You got it.‘
But we can’t use it? ‘Not without the jaws of life or a magic wand, nope.‘
And that’ll be that. At least until the physical universe re-melds itself into a configuration where the bag that’s too long to come out of the trunk slips briefly into another dimension or warps in some powerful local gravitational field, and works its way out of the trunk. Until then, my hands are tied.
By physics. I should have known that evil bastard would get me in the end.
Permalink | No Comments(Yesterday was a Bugs & Cranks day, so hop on over and read So, You Don’t Think They Can Dance? if you’re so inclined.
Or follow me on Twitter for up-to-the-millisecond notification of what’s going up where, and when. The why, you’ll have to figure out yourself. If you can.)
My wife and I have very similar views on many aspects of life. We’re both easygoing, flexible, low-maintenance sorts of people. We’re usually on the same page — or at least in the same chapter — and can come to some compromise on whatever issue might arise.
I’ve recently discovered, however, an are where we’re — literally — miles apart: gasoline. Specifically, when to replenish the gasoline in the fuel tank in the car.
The missus is a ‘quick filler’; when the needle slides near the quarter-tank mark, she starts scoping out the Chevrons. Heaven forbid the car should have less than a few gallons sloshing around in it, ever. An approach I could understand if we were were, say, riding a horse down the interstate. You don’t want your flesh-and-bone-and-swishy-tailed ride to tucker out, so I would totally support regular water breaks if we traveled by pony.
“What we lose in garage fees and parking tickets, we gain back in not having forty-eight pounds of poop a day to dispose of.”
But we drive a Maxima, not a Clydesdale. Each has their advantage. What we lose in garage fees and parking tickets, we gain back in not having forty-eight pounds of poop a day to dispose of. Also, the saddle sores tend to be less of a problem, given that we’re not mounting the car from above.
(Usually. There was the unfortunate incident when I tried to demonstrate a certain Whitesnake video to a friend who had never seen it. But that was just a one-time thing. And the dent’s never completely come out of the car hood.
Or my thighs. That stunt gave my legs dimples where no dimples have any right to be.)
My take on gas refills is the exact opposite. To me, filling up with a quarter-tank left is just ‘topping off’. Things don’t start to get interesting until the empty warning light comes on. And even that doesn’t send me careening into a service station. That’s just when the game begins.
See, I was once told — by a car salesman, so you know it’s true, right? — that when the warning light comes on in most cars, you have somewhere between twenty and maybe fifty miles left before you’re completely bone-dry and stranded and listening to ‘I told you so‘s.
I asked, ‘Is that true in this car — the one you’re selling me right now?‘
He said, ‘This one? This car’s good for a hundred miles with the warning light on. In fact, they don’t even call it a warning light. On this model, it’s a ‘tank half full’ light. No lie.‘
‘Of course‘, he followed, ‘we can only activate that feature if you sign in the next five minutes. So, you know — tick tock.‘
Clearly, I signed the papers. You don’t just fritter away a shot at an added bonus like that. And the guy didn’t even charge me extra for it — other than a one-time nominal feature activation fee, of course. Which I barely even had to take out a loan for. Sucker.
So my strategy is very different. I don’t even look at the gas gauge until the light comes on. And then I laugh heartily in its direction, and keep driving. Cosmo Kramer would be proud. I know I’ve got plenty of miles before the last gasp of gas will finally wisp out of the tank — so why rush to splash more in there? I want the gas left before a refill to be measured in teaspoons, not gallons. If I coast into the filling station on the last faint memories of gasoline fumes, then as far as I’m concerned, I’ve done my job.
This upsets my wife tremendously, She has visions of us stranded, cold and hungry, on the dark narrow shoulder of some remote backwoods road.
(Because apparently, getting low on gas encourages you to take deserted highways in the middle of the night for no good reason. And to throw your coats out the window, to fast, and to smash your cell phone and AAA card to pieces.
Probably, there’s also some sort of mating call to attract highwaymen that I should learn. I’ll ask about that next time it comes up.)
I have no such qualms. I prefer to gamble a little, to push my luck in the name of adventure. While my wife prefers to regale me with tales of the wild coyotes spotted around Boston, and how when — when! — we run out of gas, I’d better protect her from rabid scavenger beasties, or I’m totally walking home by myself. And that’s through angry moose and stampeding elephant territory, so I’d better just straighten up, mister, and find a damned gas station before that needle drops under the quarter-tank mark.
(She threatened once to withhold sex if I didn’t make a fill stop. I pointed out that as cold as she expects it to be, we’ll have to have sex just to stave off the frostbite. Also, the male musk glands exude a pheromone that’s a natural coyote repellent, so she’ll want to rub up against those as thoroughly and sexily as she can.
See? Two can play that little mind game. I catch on fast.)
But the fact remains — she doesn’t like my methods, and I don’t especially approve of hers. And the poor gas tank goes from feast to famine; either we fill it up every ten minutes, or wait until we can see our reflection in the bottom before refueling up. If the tank were our child, my wife would be the enabler — and I’d be the deadbeat dad who can’t remember what grade it’s in or who its friends are or whether or not its mine. Also, it would be four hundred pounds heavy from my wife’s constant feeding, and emotionally crippled from the whole ordeal.
(This is why we don’t have kids. When we’re seriously considering sending our gas tank to a therapist, bringing children into the equation is clearly out of the question.)
So we deal with our gap. When we’re driving alone, we’re free to exercise our best judgment — or lack thereof — as we see fit. When we’re together… well, it depends on who’s driving. If it’s her, we pull over for gas as soon as the dial flutters gently under a half tank. And if I’m driving…
Well, it takes maybe thirty seconds longer for her to notice, then she says something, and then we pull over for gas. Essentially the same thing, really.
But those thirty seconds of carefree, gas-pushing, fortune-tempting, dammit-a-man-has-to-live driving? Priceless.
So she’s winning now, mostly — but I do get my moments, however brief and fleeting they may be. She thinks she’ll break me some day, bring me around to her way of thinking. She imagines she’ll have me self-policing and scanning for pumps all on my own.
I’ve got a better idea. I’m saving up money, so I can buy her that horse. Then we’ll each have our own ride, and she can water hers to her heart’s content.
I just hope she knows where to stick the nozzle.
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