Thoughts Wandering

It is a quiet night. There is no conversation. Just an occasional turning of a page, just thuck thunk of a typewriter. Just a single typewriter punctuating the silence. My brain is interrupting the silence with the thoughts providing what passes for an interruption of “hey, did you know?” We had a couple days of people bringing up ideas and ruminations. But those days are gone as the Petersons have boarded a train for points east, not quite two-thirds of the way across the continent. Google seems optimistic, claiming the trip to ST Paul, MN is a 26-hour drive. No stopping? A single driver? It seems they are figuring 67 miles per hour average. At least that is what my math says. Drive time with no stops. Well, I guess that is what they can do. I will need to remember this when I check Google and plan my driving to Billings for the family reunion this summer.

My brain is interrupting what I had been saying, or typing and carried these words through 4 pair or three paragraphs there. First drafts allow that kind of thing to occur.

It is the one thing I have to do every day, 4 One Typed Page. That is what Kent said. You will note that he does appear here every day. My everyday things to do not include One Type Page writing, It does include meditation and studying of foreign languages. Mostly Spanish and Esperanto. My meditation started in September 9016 and has mostly continued since then, so that is, what? five and a half years? Something like that. According to Duolingo, I started there in December 2013, so nine and a half years there. I know there was some interruptions there. So yeah. So what?

I believe I will give this some thought.

~~ MichaelRpdx :: ih3k :: 2022-04-09

Meandering through Portland

Of course, we had to go. To The Type Space and Ace Typewriter. How could we not? Leave the wives at home and go out to the typewriter stores. It was a manly thing to do.

We both went with a vow. A vow to keep each of us from buying a typewriter. One was a boss, A Boss? A 192x something priced less than he expected. That was Kent’s thing to buy if he was building a collection for a museum. An Underwood for me, at Ace. An Underwood like my Mom had when she had a typewriter and used it for resumes and term papers and trying to forget what it was like in the Army.

As we arrived home, me carrying a well it looked like a typewriter, but it was a case for a Hermes which I lack for one of mine. It is not good to be missing a case for a Hermes. Matt, bless his soul, had a plastic one.

It does not go with a Hermes 3000 but maybe, just maybe it would fit. “Here, take it. Just bring it back when you are in the area next.” “You realize that could be in 2025?” Yeah, that would be fine. Matt is a great guy to deal with. It fits in a wobbly way. Front to back it can be made to fit which it does, kinda sorta. Side to side it is loose. Do I want it? Would you want it? It certainly beats nothing at all. And who knows when or how I will find a lid to a 1968 Hermes 3000.

Kent did not know where we were going. Either time. The Type Space is, really, a walk from my home. About a mile and a quarter or so with minimal hills. Less than half an hour for normal people. We were lucky and found a parking spot close by the place. Spent some time and then left. Yes, he did want to go to the other place. Kent did not say “you betcha”, so he is not fully a Wisconsinite yet. Wisconsinite, at least not yet. Ace is not a walking distance from home, unless you have a lot of time on your hands or are training for a Camino, a Camino de Santiago walk that is usually 12 to 20 kilometers a day. Neither of us are training for that. So driving it was done in good conscious. (sp) Ace Typewriter is in Saint John’s area of Portland, up by where the Willamette and Columbia rivers join up. On the way there Kent got some blather about Portland.

Having resisted the temptations of the Boss (?) and the Underwood and meandered back home to find out that 28 Tigers was indeed open, starting at 4:00 we returned home to fresh reheated mac and cheese. It is a good day.

-—- MichaelRpdx :: ih3k :: 2022-04-08

TK Thoughts

Dueling Typewriters / kinda storta. We are typing there Typing here, in Portland, Oregon. Across the table. That is what we are up to. Got a TK or three or more, or so I hope.

What? You may be asking. What is going on here? We are doing typing duels, like Piano Duels. Two of us typing across from each other. Typing at a dining table. No desks, no working places, it is the dining table, where we So recently had dinner ( Typing to have ideas and get Mac and Cheese) And here we are. getting them written down before they are forgotten. Forgotten again.

The last time I appeared here I was confessing about my lust, my glut of books, so many of and they stack up and wait forlorn for me. the kind I get and I have them ready to read, and they wait to pick them up and read them.

So there I was and here I am and I have a pile of TK ideas. Have you ever tried to research TKs? I found it to be incredibly hard. There was not too much, well two items, but not too much on what TK means. (It is a proofing thing where you write TK for To Come for an idea you have or a page reference, or a thing to write about right now, anything that you do not have time for and it will come. TK because the letters because they do not appear close to each other, so you can search for TK and find them and nothing else. See The Magic of TK, from Steven Pressfield a part of his Writing Wednesdays series, that should be enough to find)

So I have a lot of TK things, things to write/type about the big difference being that today I am actually typing one or more of items. By the way, the other duelist is Kent Peterson who is visiting for a couple of days. Yep, 1t took some gentle “You can type something” (not a Quote, but it sounded good, so I typed it.)

Remember the first of the month?, as In April Fool’s day? I was going to appear here and talk, write about being there all the time for awhile. You know where that Idea went. There was a Slap, which I thought deserved no attention. I have said enough on that matter. Do you, might you have an idea for getting out and exercising? I need encouragement on that matter, I need to get out more. Only I prefer to read and write and not get out and exercise.

Boy I hope you could decipher the typing here. I am pretty sure it is not close to being spelled or typed or anything else (as in a train of thought) Kent had finished typing his file so this has become a solo typewriter sound.

More thoughts tomorrow.

— MichaelRpdx :: ih3k :: 2022-04-07

(lots of spelling cleaned up here)

A Pile of Not To Be Read

OK, I must admit, I have a problem. All of the books and one missing, On Writing, Stephen King, were found within an arm’s reach of my seating area. All of them ready to be picked up to be read. Which I have done, more or less, recently. You see, I must admit, I must admit to my problem. I am a glutton.

You know gluttony from people with eating or gathering up money. It does not matter how much you have, you want more. And so I do. I want more to read. I do not do the skimming and calling that reading. I pick up one and read each chapter, sometimes a few times, to make sure I get it.

But like the gluttony of, for food, I do not finish them. If the book does not satisfy me I will toss it aside. That is about to happen to The Drawing of The Three, which is surprising given how I was sucked into On Writing there was a lot of difference between the two books, but one of them just did not do it for me. In contrast, Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants which is a library book, and (I hope, for Christmas, if not I will buy a copy, hint hint) It is really fascinating.

In my defense, I do not buy all those books. I go to the library, and the Multnomah County Library is famed for being a great one. Well, I expect everyone likes their library a lot and think it is one of the best.

I have some books to read. More later.

MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2021-12-13

 

Routines

Get up. And return to a returning routine. Morning Pages. Again. These are part of my routine since April 2015. Not all the time. Not in September of 2028. Not in November 2021. For the most part, I have kept up that routine for seven years. Unlike drinking coffee, which I have kept up since 1973, or was it 1972? When I took it black, no sugar. No, I did not like it that way when I started. But I knew that I would come to like it that way and I would be able to enjoy it even when there was no sugar available. Like waking up early in the morning, with the sun in summer and in the dark of winter. I do not know when that started. I was up for the TV Stations coming on in the morning. 6:00? That was the way of TVs in our early days.

Now I get up. And the day is mine to determine. This is the way retirement works. You get to make your own routines. If you have yet to retire, if you have not retired, that is my advice for you. Figure out what you are going to do. Sitting around and watching TV is a terrible way to spend your time.

One of my personal issues is being interested in too many things. But I “get into” something and I go all in and learn as much as I can about it. I am good at that, researching something. And then I do whatever it is for a few years. Then another thing catches my attention and I am off onto that. I learn a lot about whatever it is.

You realize, I hope, that I am talking to myself here. As I figure out the things that I will continue to do for as long as I am alive.

I think, I Think, I am figuring it out now. We will find out.

MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2021-12-10

Dusty Things To Keep

Ron A wrote about his wife and her time Going through her mother’s things. And bringing home more and more things to be gone through later. Your house and garage are filling up.

You still have room for more. That sounds good to me. My wife spent a solid nine months of life and 18 months of calendar time going through her folks house. Our upstairs, our garage, a large portion of the basement are all filled. My wife is going through it all now. It will happen, your wife will go through everything she is bringing home now. She will go through it when she is ready. My only advice to you is: find a secure storage unit and get that for her. It is the shits when someone breaks into it and steals your stuff.

All of, as near as I can tell, all of my One Typed Page items, the one I have typed, as online. I get my daily-ish page up there before you see them. As soon as I finish finish typing them, I photograph them and email in here and copy to myself. Then an OCR program turns the paper into something ready for spell checking and putting online. Why do that?

“Got me” was my first answer to myself. I like having a corrected version available and it is searching, Searchable too. I use Word Press like Daniel does. And gee, with almost 250 posts I am sure I have over 50,000 words there. Another book?Yeah, right. Another book about “I have nothing to say…” At least when someone goes through my things (years from now, I have dodged death three times so far, another six to go) they can just delete the stuff.

Do you remember what you were thinking at 5:00 last night? Those thoughts are just so slippery. It takes no time at all for them to be gone. What is the use of thoughts?

Yeah, I am starting to drift along here. More later.

MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2021-12-07

Random Thoughts

Wandering around, trying to think of what, something to type. It might, just might, to sit down and put your fingers on the typewriter. Then anything that comes to mind can be typed. Right now. It is not like I am in Belize. That was the destination of friends who posted (on Instagram) one of two passports and two beers. They were on their way at that time. Now we have a pair of feet and a pool. What would I do with a pool anyway? It is way too cold here where cold is in the Os. Random thoughts

It is an upgrade, no no, Is it an upgrade when you switch from some 70s typewriter made of plastic to a 50s era Royal? To go from one with tab stops to one without because you do not need them? What is “upgrade” in the typewriter world?

I had forgotten how easy it was to “upgrade” some software. Where “some” is something made by people who care about a product for something besides money. Wikimedia Foundation being the source of my happiness. They need to upgrade because of the software has to keep ahead of the foul guys. But jeez, the upgrading was so simple, I had forgotten what it was like. They did not request any money, again. Here is the course for the software. Have at it.

I gave them money anyway. Do not ask, well they do actually via Wikipedia, one in a while. There. And if you do not give to them there, well that is OK. You can still use Wikipedia. Which I do a lot. Was it Pliny the Younger or Pliny the Elder I wanted to refer to? They had articles on both. It was the younger I was after. (Yes, I spelled it as Pliney, not correctly as Pliny.)

A bit of time away from the typewriter and I have lost my thought stream. Off the train of thought goes without me.

I will catch another one tomorrow. Until then, enjoy.

MichaelRpdx :: rkmm 2021-12-04

Roman Life

“It is not that we have a short time to live,
but that we waste a lot of it.”
— Seneca

Over 2,000 years and it is still true. We do not seem to be getting better at things, things where we need to learn them for ourselves.

How do you get a seat at the coliseum? 50,000 people could watch a gladiator game or whatever they put on yet there were 1,000,000 people in the city. They had to do something. And this is something where the emperor paid for it all. How did they bring order to it so people could get in?

They had tickets. Wood, clay, but here is the magic part – to my mind your ticket was marked with a gate number, a row, and a seat. That is just like what is used for modern tickets. These Romans sure had a lot of things figured out.

If only we could figure out a way to transmit how they, or at least some of them, knew how to not waste time.

I am certainly among the group of people who waste time. Lots of it. All I seem to have learned is to not complain about life being too short.

Though that could be because I have escaped death at least three times, so far. So I have gifts in abundance of life.

Now if I would just quit wasting it.

Came oh so close to not doing a typed page today. So very close. But I woke up with an idea and I started in on it and, aside from going to the dentist and coming home with a numb mouth, it seems like I have it complete. Too bad it has no worth to anyone except me and a couple of friends who I told about it.

Maybe I should just roast more coffee. We enjoy that.

MichaelRpdx :: rkmm 2021-12-03

Made The Distance

He wrote, he actually typed this in for public consumption? “I swear, this is my very *last* commentary on copyrights, licensing, etc.” Those are brave words on a subject where not everyone has commented on the matter(s) yet. Hold those thoughts, I have something else to talk about first.

61,728 words are my absolute, final count of words for (oh gawd here I go again) NaN oWriMo or NaNoWriMo editing of my First First Draft “novel”. And change the word editing in that prior sentence to typing or blurting or fill in the bland blank substitute you have for it. In any case, I have completed my first draft of what I am referring to as First First Draft which no matter what I wrote there will not, in the large part show up in a novel. But it is DONE.

So about copyrights, licensing or the whatnot. First, my disclaimers. I have many works under a license here.

As an example: https://saunter.us/my_typed_page OR https://www.michaelrpdx.com/mwiki/index.php My tangling with this issue goes back to 1994. I thought a lot about licensing a lot. It was the kind of thing you thought about when you were a nerd that hung around with nerds and we would argue about these, and many other, issues.

Mine are licensing under the CC-BY-SA-.0 which to save you looking it up is Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International What a mouthful. And after years of thinking on this matter and joining through the different licenses, I have come to the conclusion: it does not matter. If you have a lot of money burning holes in your garments then fine, get it licensing get a bunch of people to monitor the everywhere to find violations, and then send out search and desist letters the spend the money to put the fires out. And while you are at it, pat yourself on the back for keeping people employed.

Otherwise, a nice stern letter will do you as much good. Do not expect a post from me tomorrow, After a month of typing way too much on a first draft novel, and it was a first for me, I will take the day of writing off.

MichaelRpdx :: rkmm 2021-11-30

Saying What

When Kent sat down to write about Writing Naked* the words which came out of his fingers were not what he had sat down to type. He did get around to the original thread and he typed enough to go to a second page. I was hoping for that, to have words flow from my fingers until I got to the end of a page, I was hoping for that to occur on this page. Nope.

It is not happened (change is to has OR happened to happening whichever working words fit here for your taste there) yet.

I do that once and a while here. I go to type a word and it is the wrong word so I pause consider my choices and change what I was saying. Change what I was going to type | to a new sentence so 1) I do not need to erase what I wrote, or 2) it is kinda fun. Think up a new whole sentence based on a typo that is not a typo in the new sentence. Sometimes I get around to whatever it was I had in mind. Sometimes I get to take off in a new direction. Yes, a whole new direction due to a mistyped word.

In times like this one where it is difficult to come up with a coherent train of typing, it is difficult to keep the train going down the tracks of thought. Very hard today. Onward.

Mush huskies, mush! For it is getting warm and we need to get to Dawson. Get to Dawson before there is no ice to travel on. Mush huskies, mush!

I would say that to myself once in a while. Even if I had never been to Alaska or driven (what is the word for that?) a team of sled dogs. Never have I done those things or talked with someone who had done either. Well, OK I have talked with people from Alaska. But never about the task of going anywhere there.

But I would say that to myself. I do not know why I had. I do not know where the words came from. But there they were, there they are.

MichaelRpdx :: rkmm        2021-11-29
60,547

 

* He actually wrote about Write Naked by Peter Gould.
My bad.