Now the roads get dangerous and expensive

[elfs]

I received three nasty surprises yesterday. The first came in the form of black ice all across the freeway. I took it slow, but a pickup in front of me did not and started fishtailing as it got onto the on-ramp to state road 509, and that on-ramp seems to regularly eat cars and drivers that don't anticipate it's tight curve. That driver got control back, but a half-mile up we came across a patrol car helping an SUV that had obviously failed to keep control. The roads were very slippery up until the SR518 intersection, at which point enough warm cars and tires had passed over the road to melt the most dangerous stuff.

The second nasty surprise came when I reached the office. The City of Seattle has been moving from per-spot parking meters to computerized, one-per-street meters. The automated kiosks, despite requiring rolls of receipt-printing paper, apparently take much less maintenance, can take credit cards, and are much easier to clear of cash-- which means that the city is now putting them everywhere. Including all over lower Queen Anne. No more free parking near the office. Dammit. The best lot near the office is $6/day. I do want to meet the guy I've parked next to twice this week: his bumper sticker reads Got Yaoi?.

The third nasty surprise came when I got home. "You have been randomly selected to server as a Juror. By order of the court, you are summoned to appear on Feb 21st, 2007 at 8:00am." Gotta quash that one real fast. This is the third time in the past ten years. This is what I get for being a good citizen and voting reliably. Bleah.

My wrists and hands have really been bugging me this week, but I've been wearing my wrist brace and concentrating on my posture, and the tendinitis seems to be under control this day. I have to remember not to hammer at the keys, though. That's a really bad habit that asserts itself when I'm not paying attention. I tried, I really did, to use one of those super-ergo Kinesis keyboards, but I have too many Emacs-based keystroke habits (some extended to the window manager and other apps, like Firefox and Thunderbird) that require a strong familiarity with the position of the ALT and CTRL keys, so I couldn't use it without a ton of reorientation. I use IBM "Think" brand keyboards both at my workstation and on my laptop, so the layouts are more or less the same there.

Comments

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

The Kinesis keyboards are programmable--Spouse reprograms his slightly, just enough to confuse me. I was using one here at work, but I had to stop because although the initial tendonitis was improving, the keyboard was stressing different parts of my hand and causing problems there. I think it's because too much is on the thumbs. I use a M$ Un-natural keyboard and it seems to be ok.

[solarbird]

I found quite by accident that carrying around anything with TROTSKY on it in big letters and with a picture - I was reading The Revolution Betrayed, his denounciation of Stalin - pretty much gets you instapunted from any jury pool. And then you can go!

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Wearing a button that reads "I Support FIJA (http://www.fija.org/)" works very nicely, too. I got booted from a jury for a civil case once on the grounds that I was too well-educated and politically aware to be impartial.

Irony overload!

[norincraft.livejournal.com]

That amazes me. You would think that would the exact type of juror they would be looking for. I think we should dust off the idea of a professional jury.

[ibsulon.livejournal.com]

Doesn't Stallman have a typist to help him now that his own wrists are so bad?

I'm sorry, but Emacs is truly a wrist killer, and I'm so glad that I was never sucked into the cult. :) I admit, it's powerful, but my wrists thank me for it.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Keyboarding has never been the issue. Mousing is the real threat to my wrists. Especially game mousing. All those twitch and shooters I've played over my life are catching up with me. I might have to make the same decision a friend of mine did: do I want to play video games now, or would I like to be able to wank ten years from now? (She chose the latter.)

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

Black ice is no fun at all. Luckily it was in an almost empty car park, and I was going slow, so I didn't lose control of the car.

But then I had to walk.

And those SUVs don't get any advantage from 4wd. It's the engine torque curve and the low-range gears which make the difference.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

The entrance to the car park has quite the slope. My FWD hatchback had no trouble getting up there. Walking down the slope to put money in the meter, however, was frighteningly slippery and I damn near fell and broke my arse. I wonder that the wheels didn't slip.

[norikos-author.livejournal.com]

I have no personal objection to serving on a jury; the one time I was called, however, I would have said whatever was needed to get out of serving (talking about jury nullification loudly was on my list).

I was working contract, and losing the money for even a couple of days would have destroyed us financially at the time, as we were recovering from three months of me _not_ working after my previous contract had run out. We had, quite literally, _no_ cushion whatsoever.

I personally think that if a state is not going to allow financial hardship as a reason to be excused (and Texas explicitly _prohibits_ a judge from considering it), they should require all employers to pay their employees for days spent at jury duty, including contract companies. The money I got paid by the state quite literally didn't cover my gas costs.