\t\t\t\t5:25 PM Thursday, September 08, 2011
\nI forget sometimes how exacting and time-consuming it can be to type a
\nsingle sentence. The busy work, the paperwork (I still call it paperwork
\neven with the absence of paper) seemingly never ends. I wrote and re-wrote
\na short piece for one of my web sites yesterday, then went back to add a
\nfew paragraphs, only to find that somehow the changes I thought I’d made
\nin yesterday’s last edits never made it in to the final version. How does
\nthis happen? Well, laziness and ineptitude happens. Unsaved files and
\nunintentional overwrites happen. It is just so annoying to read back
\nthrough a piece and find all the errors I know I fixed somehow magically
\nunfixed. Software is somehow to blame, I am certain of it, not that I
\nabsolve myself of any ineptitude.<\/p>\n
Another story, less substantive but long-planned, came along a little more
\nquickly, and was posted without incident… that is, until I go back and
\nread it tomorrow. I may find stupid spelling errors and discontinuances in
\nseemingly directionful sentences…<\/p>\n
I think that a lot of the typos grammar gaffes on the Intertubes could be
\nblamed on the abundance of editing interfaces people must switch among in
\na day. Maybe I write a few paragraphs in MS Word, but to post it to the
\nweb I probably have to copy and paste it into a content management system.
\nMore likely I will have to copy and paste it from Word and into a plain
\ntext editor before dumping it into the content managements system.
\nInevitably I find myself editing things in the content management system
\nwhile the “original” Word version becomes out of date.<\/p>\n
But that’s not the scenario I meant. What I meant was, in a regular day I
\nfind myself editing in Word, in PINE (which uses PICO) in Notepad, in
\nother text-only editors — and then, should I try to comment on a news
\nstory or in a message board I am probably going to confront an edit box
\nthat I’ve never seen before, replete with its unique idiosyncracies that
\ncan (and do) cause lengthy and meaningful postings to disappear. The only
\nway to salvage content like that, swallowed by software editors and
\nweb-based hiccups, is to have a keystroke logger, which is not on my list
\nof self-imposed surveillance techniques that I need in my life. and,
\ngetting back to my original point, the alien editing box that is distinct
\nvirtually every single news and comment board is a magnet for
\ndistraction-induced spelling errors and typos.<\/p>\n
\nSo much text matter simply disappears, unrecoverably. Like when a
\nbackground software process tries to force itself into the foreground,
\ndemanding your attention, but unable to do so because the software you are
\nfocused on is set to “Always on Top”. The focus goes to the invisible
\nbackground application anyway, and all the words you think you are typing
\ngo nowhere. Down the traphole of software maldesign.<\/p>\n
And that’s saying nothing about the continuous and seemingly unfixable
\ncomputer interface problem of dialog windows popping up unexpectedly and
\nthen instantly disappearing when the unexpecting computer user hits the
\nenter key or the “OK” button and the fleeting dialog box disappears, going
\noff to perform some unknown task. How many times have I asked “What did I
\njust do? To what software request did I just say ‘OK’?”<\/p>\n
…..<\/p>\n
I had a bad feeling about a pari of sunglasses I bought and paid for at
\nLenscrafters a few weeks ago. The sales process and everything around it
\nseemed somewhat chaotic, with lots of miscommunication among the sales
\nfolk and the optometrists. I have never had a bad experience with
\nLenscrafters but it is starting to look like this will be the first one.
\nNearly a month later I have not heard from them. The sunglasses appear not
\nto have been ordered or produced, and I am waiting for a call right now, a
\ncall that I fear will never come, from the Lenscrafters on 5th Avenue,
\njust to get some notion of what is going on here. They got my $500 so I
\nguess they’re in charge now.<\/p>\n
I really do need the damn sunglasses, too. Last week I felt like light
\nsabers were slashing at my cornea.<\/p>\n
…..<\/p>\n
If this is not the most boring pile of text matter I’ve ever assembled
\nthen I don’t know what is. I guess the creative energies go toward other
\nthings this day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
5:25 PM Thursday, September 08, 2011 I forget sometimes how exacting and time-consuming it can be to type a single sentence. The busy work, the paperwork (I still call it paperwork even with the absence of paper) seemingly never ends. I wrote and re-wrote a short piece for one of my web sites yesterday, then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-uo","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}