Now the roads get dangerous and expensive
Jan. 31st, 2007 08:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsI 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-31 07:10 pm (UTC)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.