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 |   Tales from real life |
| Well, if they're not true, they oughta be! |
| To celebrate April Fools, here's a story about the best prank I ever pulled at work. In 1988, we got desktop computers for each engineer in the Facilities department. These were 'advanced' IBM AT models with the 80286 processor, a 1.2 MB floppy disc drive, and a 20 MB hard drive. One of the features of their PC-DOS 3.0 operating system was the ability to modify the command line prompt. When I came across this option, I amused myself for a few minutes by changing my prompt from the boring default of: C:\> to: Hi Terry! Then I had a wonderful, awful idea. There were four desks in each bay of our systems furniture, and it took only five seconds to type the command that changed my cube mate's prompt to: sys error 10 please reboot When Matt instinctively pressed the Enter key, the 'sys error 10' message just kept repeating (as the prompt). But when he rebooted, the operating system reverted to the normal command line. Problem solved! It took a couple of minutes for his computer to boot up, and Matt was soon frustrated by having to wait for a reboot every other time he returned from the restroom. I made sure to keep the problem somewhat random. The IT guy was even more frustrated because there was no such thing as 'sys error 10' in the manuals. The IBM service people were no help either. They hinted that we might be crazy. The IT guy gave up and told Mike to just live with it. The 'sys error 10' message was a topic of conversation, speculation, and profane rants for several weeks. Every self-styled computer expert had an opinion, but no one came up with a solution. I just shrugged and held my tongue. The error message became more sporadic as time passed, but it never went away completely. So, whenever our bull sessions turned to crazy computer problems, Matt would tell the tale of the mysterious 'sys error 10'. The longer it went on, the more I enjoyed an inside joke that only I understood. The end finally came when I moved on to another position. I don't think Matt ever made the connection, and as far as I know, he's still telling the story. My little gift to him! |
Way back in the 1960's, we would occasionally hear the sonic boom of fighter jets as they trained over the sparsely occupied state of Montana. They operated from Malmstrom AFB, near Great Falls. It took them only a few minutes to scramble and rattle our windows even though their base was more than 100 miles away. Sometimes they came over at low altitude and scared the crap out of cows and cowboys alike. Sometimes, I could actually feel the sonic boom vibrating my internal organs. The skies got quieter when the FAA banned sonic booms in 1973. That pretty much killed the Concorde SST, the world's only supersonic commercial jet aircraft. Some said it was a political decision to aid the US aviation industry, but the Air Force was sitting on thousands of noise complaints and damage claims. Today, sonic booms are limited to over-ocean flights, emergency scrambles, and a couple of designated USAF training areas. In 1980, I visited the H. W. Ward company, near Birmingham, England to provide technical assistance with a new CNC lathe that they were developing. They built the iron bits, and my company provided the controller. As we left for lunch one day, a Harrier jet came screaming overhead at what seemed like tree-top altitude and reminded me of the fighter planes that had frightened me as a child. "What the hell are they doing?" I asked the engineer who'd been assigned as my 'minder'. "It's just a training exercise," Geoff said. "Happens all the time." "Directly over the city? Seems dangerous, why are they allowed to do that?" Geoff gave me an odd look and said, "Where else are they going to go?" At that moment, the light bulb came on. I suddenly realized that the Harrier jet would leave British airspace in about twenty minutes no matter what direction it went. All of Britain is barely large enough to do a reasonable practice run. I looked it up later and found that the entire island (80,823 sq mi) could be fitted inside the rectangular borders of Montana (147,040 sq mi). No folding necessary, and there'd still be a lot of empty space around the edges. I also realized that even though those Harrier flights were subsonic, they annoyed more than sixty times as many people! |
As we enter the new year, many resolutions will pass through people's minds. Some will be mentioned aloud, a few will be written down, and one or two might even be accomplished. With that cheerful prospect in mind, here are some thoughts on portfolio organization: Free Account: Folders aren't available to free accounts since they're allowed only 10 items. And they aren't allowed to create books, so that point is moot. There's little to be done in the way of organizing, but you can create separate items for poetry, short stories, non-fiction, horror, romance, etc. More than one piece can be saved in an item, but the size limit for each is 50 Kb. That's about 25 pages of text, so you can't really write a novel. Still, a collection of two dozen poems or a few short stories could be presented in a single item. Basic Account: A basic membership allows a portfolio of 50 items, and each can be up to 100 Kb in size (about 50 pages of text). A list that long is probably too much for our modern-day attention span. It may be better to use folders to direct the reader. Some authors name their folders for the year the items were written. This is easy, but most readers don't care, they're looking for something more specific. Love poems, for example, or horror stories. I'd suggest that an author start by collecting their items into folders of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, recipes, lyrics, etc., and then further organizing them by genre. Then the reader can find all the mushy stuff by clicking once on 'Poetry' and then again on 'Love Poems'. And they won't have to scroll past horror stories that could spoil the mood. Upgraded Account: An upgraded membership allows 250 items and each can be up to 250 Kb in size (about 125 pages). At this level, it becomes imperative to organize one's portfolio. Using folders is a good start, and 250 items may seem like a lot, but it's easier than you might think for an author to bump up against the limit. It took me less than three years to get there. One obvious option is to simply delete the lesser works, but vanity precludes that. A better solution is to learn how to use books. An upgraded membership allows the author to create up to 10 books of up to 5Mb each (about 2500 pages). That is truly a lot of pages! So, if you're short on portfolio space, then I recommend putting similar items into a book. This seems especially obvious for poetry collections, where individual entries tend to be short. Another good use for a book is to hold items that are in-work. Have you ever felt frustrated by all the 'save and view' clicking just to try out different formatting? A book entry has a 'preview' feature that allows you to quickly see how the finished item will look without leaving the edit pane. Once the story or poem looks 'right' you can copy and paste it into an individual item and make it public. A book is also useful for storing ideas. You can easily jot a few notes into a book entry, set it to private and save it for later. And, of course, a blog (what you're reading now) is just a special book format that's automagically linked to the blog tab of your portfolio. Oh, I almost forgot, you could even use a book to write the Great American Novel with each entry being a separate chapter. I haven't been ambitious enough to try that yet. A drawback of using a book is that you can't attach a cover image to individual entries. I feel that an appropriate image can be a big help in setting the mood for a piece. I'd like to be able to add a cover image to my book entries, but that's not an option. Another drawback is that awardicons can't be attached to individual entries within a book. An awardicon is attached to the book rather than the entry within the book. They can, however, be referenced within the entry itself. My method is to create a drop note and show the awardicon there. The ML code shown below will create the drop note shown further below. {dropnote:"Author's note:"} 20 lines of free verse Second place in the September 2022 round of {i}Second Time Around{/i} contest Prompt: Help celebrate WDC's 22nd birthday. Just for this month, all entries must be previously written pieces that did not win a contest, and that have a birthday or a party theme. {award:155262} {b-item:2164876} {/dropnote} Author's note: ▼ Premium Accounts: I haven't tried these levels, but they allow even more individual items and even more books. I won't give any further advice except to say that portfolio organization only grows more important as the number of items increase. |
| For your consideration . . . Hiding in Plain Sight by Cam E. Leon The Western Quest by Louis N. Clarke Making the Grade by Kenney Hackett Surface Shine by Dustin D. House Tap, Tap, Tap by Peg Legget A Frond Indeed by Fern N. Bracken A DIY Fox Collar by Rufus Mayne Meat, Cheese, Bun by Patti Melton See also: "Here I Go Again"  See also: "Below the Bottom Shelf" |
My commercial aviation career took a zig in 1995, when I transferred from facilities factory support to customer support as a maintenance manual author. As a Facilities Engineer, I prepared purchase specifications and wrote project status reports. I'd become comfortable with Word for Windows and I loved its WYSIWYG display (what you see is what you get). Seeing different fonts on the screen was a novel experience for someone who'd cut their word processing teeth on the original Wordstar program for CP/M. The proprietary publishing system used for the maintenance manuals seemed like a giant step backward. The minicomputer that held the actual data was accessed through green-screen terminals that were hopelessly outdated compared to a desktop computer running Windows 95. And the maintenance manual author didn't even use that ancient terminal technology. Data entry personnel did the actual typing, while I reverted all the way back to colored pencils. As an author, I analyzed engineering drawings, wiring diagrams, and vendor documentation (all paper) and turned them into step-by-step procedures for the airline mechanic. My original hand-written text was entered into the publishing system by a data entry clerk and then printed on fanfold paper, double spaced, for my approval. Editing was done with red pencil for deletions, blue pencil for additions, and green pencil for editorial comments. You might wonder why we used a proprietary minicomputer, and why the text was formatted as a database rather than a document. The answer is configuration control. Creating an aircraft maintenance manual is a complex process. Each model has its own base manual that fills an entire bookcase. Each airline has its own customized set of manuals, and the current configuration of each airplane in the entire worldwide fleet must be tracked per FAA regulations. Microsoft Word wasn't (still isn't) anywhere close to being able to handle the database-like requirements of tracking airplane configurations. Thankfully, things changed quickly in those early years of computing technology. By 1997, we all had desktop PCs with terminal emulation programs. We could enter our own data and display the simulated manual pages on-screen instead of wasting reams of paper. The downside was the wear and tear of spending hours hammering away at the keyboard. Ergonomics was just a funny sounding word in those days. Few of us really believed in carpal tunnel syndrome, it was something that shirkers used as an excuse to get out of work. No one understood the effects of an awkwardly laid out workstation. I had a keyboard and a state of the art 19" CRT on my desk. No keyboard tray, no ergonomic chair, just an upward reach to a mouse that kept my wrist bent at a near 90-degree angle. It took several years, but eventually I developed enough pain in my wrist that work became almost intolerable. Even then, I never saw a doctor. That would've been a show of weakness. Instead, I learned to mouse left-handed. That allowed me to solve the problem on my own. It worked out better than might be expected. I quickly gained left hand dexterity and mousing felt normal again in a couple of weeks. The pain in my right wrist subsided and I finally submitted to an ergonomic evaluation of my workstation. A better layout helped preserve my left wrist, and it remains pain-free. The damage to my right wrist, however, is permanent. I can mouse equally well with either hand, but the pain returns in a few days if I use my right hand. So, I know what I'm going to do with the time I have left. |
| I think most writers feel that getting published is the ultimate validation of their work. It makes that subtle difference between saying 'I write' and 'I'm a writer'. I was thrilled when my first submission was accepted by an online science fiction magazine. The money was minimal, but actually seeing my name in print would be priceless. Unfortunately, my story was scheduled for issue #5 and the magazine folded after issue #4. I'm still unpublished, but I'll always have this: Terrence, Hello, my name is Kip Shelton, Editor-in-Chief here at Synthetic Reality Magazine. We really enjoyed your story and wanted to include it in issue #5 coming out on March 26th. As a new magazine unfortunately, we can only pay .01 per word and in contributor's copies, which we send 3 to the writers. I realize that this is not much, but as we progress and grow, we will offer better. If this is acceptable to you, please let me know and I will make the Social Media announcements and have our graphics team add your name to the cover. After we receive your approval, we will be sending you a contract for the release of Song of the Vamp. Once again, thank you for submitting to Synthetic Reality Magazine and we hope to hear from you soon. Sincerely, Kip Shelton / Editor It occurred to me recently that getting a story accepted is only a part of the writing experience. So, to expand my stock of life experiences, I decided to submit some other pieces. And I can now proudly display rejections from a couple of well-respected magazines. To: tgifisher Thank you very much for letting us see "The Veybach Machine." We appreciate your taking the time to send it in for our consideration. Although it does not suit the needs of the magazine at this time, we wish you luck with placing it elsewhere. Sincerely, Sheila Williams, Editor Pronouns: she, her Asimov's Science Fiction www.asimovs.com ------------ Dear Mr. Fisher, Thank you for sending me your poem. Thanks, too, for your kind comments about the Meter column. Although I enjoyed reading "Cosmic Counterpoints," I'm sorry to say I'm going to pass. Response to the Meter column has been so robust that I'm forced to say "no" far more often than I anticipated, or than I'd like. Again gratefully, and with regret, Dava Sobel. <dsobel@sciam.com> |
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