November 2007

How to boil water

Well, it finally happened.

I became so mundanely satisfied in my inherent ability to time the cooking of rice correctly...I turned on the stove, put the rice and water in the pot, and left it alone.

Fast forward one hour later...

::BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE::

My ears perk up.

Hark, what is that sound? Ah, probably some student burning something, like in the days of college. Silly students.

Wait.

I don't live in a dormitory.

I live in an apartment.

That is my smoke detector.

AHHHHHHHH!!!!

I jump out of the room, one of my slippers flying off and hitting my roomate's door as I run towards the stove. I quickly shut off the stove, grab the pot and stick it under cold water, as I grab today's daily advertisement (thank goodness I didn't just toss it out as usual) and run back to my room to fan at the smoke detector.

::BEEEEEEEeeeeeep::

I pace back to the stove, and then commence dumping out the rice, scrubbing the black bits, and muttering angry curse words at the fact that I have destroyed my favorite pot.

::BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE::

SHUT UP GAH

After fanning, I call my mother after scrubbing for about 5 minutes for help. Ah, all is not lost. To remove the black bits, apparently the advice is to boil the pot with water in it, and then use chopsticks to loosen up those carbon pieces.

Good to know.

Dag nabbit.

a brief window into my life as of ... today

although this is only my first real blog entry, I have two or three entries that I started but did not finish. Why, may you, my probably one or zero readers, have interest in my mundane everyday complications? perhaps I shall grab an entry from a few weeks ago, and proceed with that outline.

1. Give tutorial on how to properly install Dragon NaturallySpeaking preferred on Windows Vista
   
2. Address important computer health safety habits
   
3. List what I have been doing for the last month and a half.
   

all of my blog entries are written -- well not really written I guess -- by dictation into voice recognition software. It is a method that helps conserve my hands' energy for doing work such as code, and at the same time allows me tothink out loud (which is an added benefit). The problem, as you will probably see, is that often I will have grammatical mistakes. I apologize for these, I try to catch them as I go along.

1. For the last year and a half, I have been using voice recognition software. For the last two months, however, I have not used it as often because I decided to get a computer that did not have it installed. the first time I tried to install it got fed up after a while, because it kept on telling me was incompatible with vista.

   here it is, step-by-step in case anyone happens to Google my blog (yeah right)
   

   
   
   1. download NaturallySpeaking Preferred 9.5. it is a little more than 1 GB in size, so you need a fast Internet connection. I burned my copy to DVD, so I could install a copy on my new computer.
      
   2. Run the file. Here is where I ran into a problem. What it might pop up with, is the problem that your computer is not compatible with the newest version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Specifically, that your processor speed is too slow. What happens is that Dragon NaturallySpeaking thinks that your processors to slow because it checks for your idling processor speed. One way to remedy this, is to set your power options to be "always on". This means your hard disks never shut off, your computer never goes into standby, or hibernates. this should be an option for this in the list of possible power options. If not, you can just mess with one of the setting options, like I did.
      
   3. hopefully, the software will install. I was super excited to find out that this works, after many many tries of trying to figure out how to get this to actually succeed. I even ran a bunch of programs at the same time as the installation for good measure, even though that's usually a bad idea.
      
   
   
2. Computer health safety
   I started going back to physical therapy. I used to go at home, and then at Duke. it is really interesting here, because my problem seemed to be much more common than anywhere else I have seen. Subsequently, they know what to do with me here. what I find it interesting, is that since I have been trying to do proper ergonomics over the last three or four years, I always end up creating problems that change over time, depending on what ergonomic factor I am leaving out, and have yet to discover.
   

computer setup.
• make sure your keyboard is at a comfortable level such that the angle of your elbow approximately 90°. All too often I see someone sitting at a desk with her hands arched way over the top of the desk their wrists bent crookedly over the keyboard.
• your wrists should not be turned in a weird position. This is why like my curved keyboard, because my wrist can stay relatively straight. the drawback is that sometimes the keyboard is a little bit too high.
• Don't flick your wrists many times when you are using or moving the mouse. Whenever you are not typing or using the mouse, bring your hands back to your lap. NEVER type while resting your wrists on the table. This adds a lot of pressure to the area that is most sensitive to carpal tunnel syndrome.
• your monitor should be relatively high, such that you do not have to bend your head down to look at the screen. It should be a good angle directly across from your head.

  habits
  

• Take frequent breaks. This does not mean checking news online, or checking e-mail, or looking at a web comic. this means get up. Go to the bathroom,walk around a little, or just end up and stretch a bit. There are these great PowerPoint slides that you can find online, and then set your computer to play it at every certain interval or time of the day. I have two ergonomic stretches that I set to go off at 5 p.m. each day on my old computer. I still have to copy and use that on my new one. In order to do that on a PC, you can just create a new schedule task to run the PowerPoint.
  
• arch your back and sit up straight. this has apparently become my problem. I need to sit up straight to help fix myself. If you wan to sit up straight with less effort, try to lean forward, and then sit down by placing the back of your butt at the very back of the chair. When you straighten yourself back up you'll notice that you are sitting taller than you would normally (taught to me by PT here). Sitting straight has always been one of my problems, and I am sure it is a problem for anyone who uses the computer extensively. Often, you just want to sit back, lean back in your chair and kind of slouch for a bit. I suggest integrating slouching into your walk around time, if you must. You can go curl up on the couch for a minute, when you come back to your chair, you want to be sitting up straight when you are using computer.
  

since tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and since my family is here, I suppose I should go to bed for now and write more about my actual life tomorrow. Tomorrow is Turkey Day. For anyone interested, feel free to Google this term:
bustergophechiduckneaealcockidgeoverwingailusharkolanbler

Happy Thanksgiving!