Wednesday would have been a normal day, and for the most part it was, until I noticed my chest getting more and more uncomfortable through the day. Well, to the doctor I went, and after some stuff was ruled out, it turns out I have both costochondritis and an ulcer. Now, I’ve had inflamed cartilage in my chest before, and normally it’s very easy to control with Advil or Aleve, and time.
I have had a lot of comments from my friends that they would read Rabbit Rue if they could buy a paperback. Well, now they can!
I read a lot about this stuff online and eventually settled on Createspace for two simple reasons: it was both embarrassingly easy, and free. I finally approved the proof they sent me, and though it’ll take a while to show up on Amazon’s main site, they kindly provide Rabbit Rue and other books a free eStore.
I’ve lived in a few rough areas. But oddly enough, I’ve only been threatened once or twice while wandering around the neighborhood.
Summer in Tacoma is a wild experience. Everyone who’s never lived there claims it rains every day, and that we never see the sky, but they couldn’t be more wrong. Really, I’ve never experienced a more temperate and enjoyable climate since, and it’s easy to wish for the broken clouds and crisp breeze off the Puget Sound now that I’m sequestered here in the harsh extremes of Illinois.
My apparently undiagnosed masochism has inspired me to switch keyboard layouts. Aiming for pure obscurity, I’ve been typing using Colemak for the past several months. It’s no Dvorak in the popularity arena, having only an estimated userbase of 3000 as of January 2009. According to a computer aided layout optimizer, it’s also more efficient than the venerable Dvorak, ranking highly across all alternatives. Note that all statistics for Qwerty are hideous by comparison.
Now… I don’t normally do this, but while wasting time on Fark, I ran across this comment by a user, who himself copied it from an anonymous posting on the notorious 4Chan. While it glosses over many aspects of our government and how it affects our lives, it presents a good snapshot of just how ignorant people are to reality, and how willing they are to push any agenda that matches their own personal biases.
