Yesterday Kid 2 called me, visibly exhausted.
She is finishing up her second manuscript. We trunked the first one because while it was good, you can only debut once, and this new one is much more her. I’d sent her Maggie and she really loved the way it’s formatted.
In case you’re wondering, this is the Literata Book font, which is the default for Google Play books. Each chapter heading is preceded by an “insert break” to make sure that it starts on a new page. This way, no matter how much you edit the file, the beginning of a new chapter doesn’t slide around and you don’t end up with the chapter heading at the end of one page and the first paragraph at the beginning of another.
I like it because it looks like a printed book. Hehe. Heh. <–Geeky writer chuckles.
Kid 2 is also a fan of this formatting, and she decided to “make my manuscript pretty.” She promptly changed all the settings, but the manuscript didn’t look right.
While in high school, she ended up in the International Baccalaureate program, which required a massive amount of essay writing. They trained her to double-tap at the beginning of each new paragraph, so there is an extra blank line. I don’t know why this was done; nobody uses it anymore; but apparently back then it was a thing.
She’d double tapped the first couple of chapters, before organically switching to a single break for the paragraph.
At which point I said, “You know you can edit that automatically with Find and Replace and if you use ^p code?”
No, she didn’t know.
This is a lateral professional gap, to some extent. High schools and colleges rely a great deal on Google docs, while the publishing industry runs on Word. Word is the gold standard. I’m proficient with Word, but Google Docs always give me that 5 second pause while I try to orient myself.
I told Kid 2 how to fix the double breaks, and that got us started on weird things writers do to their formatting which make no sense.
Every profession has their strange quirks and rituals. Theater people wish each other break a leg before a performance. Wall Street traders tend to be superstitious and do things like avoid writing with red pens or not trading on the third Friday of the month.
When stuck, writers mess with their typography and work place. Here is a short list of silly stuff we try to get going again.
Maybe it will work in Arial – When writers are stuck, they sometimes change the font of their manuscript because it might magically fix things. I’ve done it, other people I know have done, and you know? Sometimes it works.
My butt is connected to my brain – When stuck, some people will switch from desktop to laptop and vice versa, or change which piece of furniture they use because sitting in a different spot might somehow be inspirational.
My talismans are mighty – When stuck, writers will clean their desks and rearrange the sacred objects on it.
Bargain with the devil you know – When stuck, writers will make little deals with themselves, like “I will not refill my tea cup until I have 200 words.” This can backfire in hilarious ways, because whatever we are feeling ends up in the manuscript. I once read a work in progress where the heroine had to pee for about 50 pages. There were multiple references to it. The writer was on a hellish deadline. For a couple of weeks, they locked themselves in their office every day, determined not to leave it until a certain amount of words happened and they were very fond of coffee.
A wise craftsman blames his tools – When all else fails, some people take the drastic step of changing their writing programs. Sometimes they will change OS. This is how I ended up with a MacBook for a couple of years. Full disclosure, I hate Mac OS with a passion of ten thousand suns. I love my iPhone, but for work I love my Windows. But I wanted to try Scrivener and at that point the Windows version of it was rudimentary. I wanted pretty backgrounds to my writing page because it would help. It did not help, but since we spent the money, I was then stuck with a MacBook until it died. Scrivener did not work for me. I tried. I know a lot of people love it, but I need Word’s spell check and structure.
And there you have it.
What weird quirks do you have in your professional life?
I’m retired; but I get along well with Word, so I got the Mac version of Office. The Excel also helps me with my budgeting, though I haven’t gotten silly with Powerpoint in a long time.
About halfway through my time at UCLA, many long years ago now, I had a computer that would occasionally give me fits. I discovered that if I yelled “Programmable toaster ovens! Do you hear me? Programmable toaster ovens!” at it, it would start working right again.
Yes, I’m a Bloom County fan, why do you ask?
Also retired. Word all the way. No strange old work habits, but when my first car acted up I threatened to trade it in for a broom.
Your comment reminded me when I was young. Back when I was in high school, whenever I misplaced a school book or something else I needed for some class I would walk around my room and say, “Math book, you have one purpose in life and that is to teach me Math. If I can’t find you after I search again, your existence will be meaningless.”
And I looked for whatever it was again and always found it 🙂
Have been telling people that Computers ARE ‘aware’ since sometime before 2007, and was Proven in a bank; a teller and her manager were having Issues with the terminal. They had called me up any way, and I told them that I could Threaten the monitor with my cane, and you can guess… the terminal Suddenly decided to Properly Function, within seconds. Amazing, yes? They looked at me with raised eyebrows & wider eyes, processed my transaction, with nary a problem, and I Left with a smirk. We don’t ‘need AI, it’s Been here for some time!
I have been threatening most of my friend’s laptops with the words ” My husband has working tech support for 30 years, always has a screwdriver and the contacts are cold” I have so far a 90% success rate over 25 laptops…
I used to have a tempremental laptop that I would threaten to throw out of the window fairly regularly, it usually would behave for a few days especially if I pointed out it was raining.
Are you enjoying having a prospective author in the family? Sharing all the tips and hints? Let us know when she’s ready to debut it because you know the BDH will be there!
Is that threat a reference to Oliver Windell Jones and his famous Banana Jr. PC? I am or was a BC fan and that’s all that comes to mind.
Yes.
Oh, Oliver Windell Jones. I loved that little dude.
And I’d call the Banana Jr. PC ‘infamous’, myself.
Some of us just have that talent. My coworkers have been known to threaten machines with me on days I am off.
Love, love, love, Bloom County. All hail Opus and Bill the Cat, Aack!
I used to have a t-shirt that said “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Bill and Opus”. I had a job at the time that let me wear picture Ts if I wanted, since I never dealt directly with patients. I wore that shirt a lot while Reagan was in the White House.
The Computer History Museum Blog had a great post on Bloom County – the title to search for is “The Banana Junior 6000: Computers and Comedy”.
In addition to 3 of the BC comics , there’s a YouTube link to a John Cleese ad for the Compaq portable.
https://computerhistory.org/blog/the-banana-junior-6000-computers-and-comedy/#:~:text=In%20late%201984%2C%20Breathed%20introduced,by%20young%20Oliver%20Wendell%20Jones.
I’m still old enough to be dealing with the “two spaces after a period” thing. Also, I can spell pretty much anything without thinking about it IF I am writing by hand (cursive or printing). Typing is not so automatic and I sometimes have to spell things out loud. I don’t bother to indent the first word of a paragraph anymore for any form of writing. The spouse has, for some reason even he doesn’t understand, given up on capitalizing things other than names or places.
No capitalisation is an Internet English thing 🙂.
words just flow better and look more streamlined without uppercase. and there are also other uses for capitals which denote tone in internet english, LIKE SCREAMING or WiThErInG SaRcAsM.
It’s a fascinating field of study, I got started years ago with Gretchen McCulloch book Because Internet: Understanding How Language Is Changing.
John McWhorter is a linguist (I think he is currently at Columbia University) who has several audio/video programs on where languages come from and how they evolve and how pronunciations shift over time. (Consonant sounds move from being pronounced at the back of the throat forward, so the hard glottal “guh” becomes “duh” and then “thuh” as it moves forward and other examples). I subscribe to the streaming channel Wondrium and all his stuff is up there
Wait! Wait! Writing in mixed caps and lower case indicates withering sarcasm? I have been talking about a sarcasm font for decades! (So I also want a yum emoji added to the reaction to a post options you know anything about that ?)
Sarcasm/mockery, yes 🙂 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternating_caps
Not sure I understand the second question, you want to add a yum emoji to a comment? 🤤?
While I find that really cool as a linguistic thing, the run on sentences & lack of capitalisation in real life is very frustrating! (I don’t find they flow better or look more streamlined but thats just me)
But also I think I approach capital letters like German, so sometimes I capitalise more nouns than is correct for English (Hiberno or British)!
I have the hardest time without capitalization and punctuation because instead of a streamlined flow, my brain snags and trips along offering grammatical corrections. 🤦♀️
My MIL texts with a double space after each sentence.
Someone else mentioned list making; that’s definitely the thing that frees up my mental space to focus on a task.
Retired now, but I started my working life as a copy typist – I still do the ‘two spaces after a period’, and I’m an ace speller (had to be, to correct appalling spelling we received in documents to transcribe)
I’m 39 and do 2 spaces after a sentence. It’s as it should be. 😉
I want one of those shirts that say “I’m silently correcting your grammar”. 😁
As I read my comment, it didn’t look like there were 2. I know it’s there. Webpage server, did you eat my space? 🤨
Web pages remove extra spaces by default. You can cheat it by holding the SHIFT key while you press the spacebar. That adds the HTML character reference for a blank space.
And apparently this blog software is aware of that cheat and removes it. Or SHIFT + spacebar doesn’t insert the correct type of character in this window. It works in normal web pages.
I’m old enough to have started with typewriters and I believe that is where the “two spaces after a period” came from, since typewriters were either elite (12 chars per inch) or pica (10 chars), and the letters were fixed-width. Word processors and proportional fonts replaced that logic because you are supposed to trust the software to figure out the spaces. It was a hard adjustment!
I also had two spaces behind a period, but my editor made sure I conquered that habit after editing my first manuscript.
“Trust the software.” Riiight. I am old enough to remember the dreaded Blue Screen of Doom. And I think my vocab is much larger than the average programmer, while my typing skills suck. You would not believe (OK, you probably would) some of the idiocy Automistake can come up with.
automistake. I am stealing that
One of my work colleagues gave me a mug that says this! I wanted to write on the other side “Want me to do it out loud? Just ask!”
😄
We have machines that measure “bubble point” of filter membranes..when it gives us trouble we have lab talismans that include rubber duckies and an elephant statue …
OMG! 🙂
🤣🤣🤣
❤️
How Pratchett of you
Quirks? Do I have any? I check email for new emails, check two or three specific websites to see if anything new has popped up that I need to know. Nothing work related. It is a ritual and procrastination before starting to actually “work”. I used to always check the weather first thing in the morning but I don’t commute as much anymore.
Oh boy do I know that feeling of disconnect between Word and Docs. For me it’s Word all the way people 😉
Trying to think about what would be weird and wonderful about my professional habits, but it’s like the fish being asked to describe water – I can’t see the weird because it’s my normal! I know my habit of talking to my computer (it’s listening! I know it is!) can be confusing to new colleagues, but they tend to quickly get used to it 😉 Oh, and continuing to touch type an email while answering a quick question from a colleague out loud can be weird to people too XD
Pretty common I guess but I need to have my workspace arranged just so before I start with the first patient at the beginning of my workday. Everything for drawing blood needs to be ready and filled up, printer started, picture of husband and kids arranged so that I see it but not my patients unless they are contortionists. I am a bit of (who am I kidding, a massive) a neat freak and I like my starting work ritual. Fortunately, I live and work in Germany. Although the problems in our health care system are mounting up as well, I’m sure there is still a lot of room to grow until we reach US-sized problems. The idea of discussing just one specific blood result in one setting made me laugh.
Have you tried LaTeX?
Ahhhhh! House Andrews do NOT try LaTeX!!! It will turn your writing project into a programming problem. A really bad programming problem.
I had to use LaTeX when I wrote my thesis and it. was. hell. I could never finish a coherent thought while writing in LaTeX. Every time I had to include the simplest formatting change or equation (disclosure, I do Math) I had to search for the proper syntax, \indent\font{14}\italics{}\ariel{Madness\\!} (I can’t quite recall the syntax but this is close), then compile to make sure I got it correct. Good luck proofing that!
The “development environment” was very rudimentary as well. I don’t think it has improved unless you take a predeveloped template and a 3rd party development platform – not free. Think programing, but all you have are the line by line commands. You can’t build a unit tested picture of your variables and functions. And all you can do is compile, hope for the best, and look at the results. It’s not a bit of wonder I’m fried at middle age…
LaTeX made for a chaotic and choppy writing experience and more than doubled my writing time. I will forever HATE that system.
Sorry, I had to rant. LaTeX still haunts me.
Ha, I’ve definitely switched fonts when stuck, including to Comic Sans because another writer swore it jarred your brain into a new mode. It didn’t work for me because it doesn’t support italics, and I love me some italics, but it was interesting.
Mostly I get up and do something boring, like dishes, to give me time to think. Doesn’t always work, but at least the house gets cleaner. 🙂
It took me a few times to read your comment because I was so excited to see The Jessie Mihalik commenting as if you’re a normal member of the BDH (which yes I know you are but still I love your books so much).
As a hybrid worker I oh so often get up to do chores when I’m WFH and stuck/unmotivated with similar mixed results.
I am a physician shift worker in a hospital. The “Q” word and the “B” word are banned. Quiet. Bored. If anyone ever says “It’s quiet” or “I am bored”, they get the death stare because that is bad juju and the next thing you know, we are running around like crazy trying to keep up on the new admissions, the procedures, and whatnot.
The Q word is especially banned during a full moon. For realz.
At the ENA conference in 2021, an ED doc from Wisconsin did a lecture on black clouds and the Q word. Apparently there was no correlation between the W word and an uptake in census, but there was correlation that black clouds exist (with some possible explanations, like people working the same shifts). As a trauma nurse, I thought it was most interesting that someone actually took the time to do a study on those two subjects. I’m not superstitious, so I definitely got yelled at for using the Q word a time or two.
I meant the Q word, not the W word 😂
Had an ER nurse that had a black cloud around her. Every time she came in to work we all knew that the carp would hit the fan. We really hated it when there was a full moon too. Talk about a double whammy!
I always wish my first responder and medical friends a “cheese pizza” shift. As in, “plain, no complications”. Because the “Q” word.
Also the S word (slow).
Working in the OR, I can 💯% back this up. Never. Ever. Use the Q word unless someone has peeved you off, your going off shift. But then, know that they will absolutely do it back to you.
The newest doc always ends up with the weirdest cases or the black cloud. Some hospitals OR charge nurses balance that out by putting the good luck nurse and surgical tech in that room.
Where I work now, when they take drill batteries out of their case we bang them together twice. It the total joint superstition.
When we are doing the surgical time out (making sure we have the right patient, right surgical procedure, correct side) I always say “game on” at its conclusion. If not, weird crap happens.
Retired OB here. On the (rare) occasions when the Labor Room census board was empty, it was. Not. To. Be. Mentioned. Alas, some damned newbie nurse—or worse, med student—always did…
I’ve tried the move to a different place. Also noise canceling earbuds with ambient noise (because real life sounds must be the problem!), and it nearly put me to sleep.
I’ve definitely done the “deal” thing, but mostly in trying to pull the chaos of my home together. I get through one stack of papers and I can take a 15 minute reading break (which always becomes a half hour).
Looking forward to all the new Andrews works! Exciting times. 🙂
The treasure trove of ambient sounds that is YouTube! I’ve tried everything, from the World of Warcraft Tavern music so it can feel like I’ve gone for quests, to the 10 hours of Brown Noise. It’s funny that whatever you seek for has already been thought of, no matter how random. Do you want the sound of falling asleep in a car backseat as a child with radio music on? Or a coffee shop that plays only 1940s music, layered with customers voices? Christmas music, but coming from the other room and it’s raining and you’re near a fireplace? Someone out there has you covered 😂
Did you, in my beloved’s case, on seeing the interior of your bowels say “that would make a good tunnel for a video game” . . . yes it’s out there! *tears*
I teach high school English. I have four or five different chairs around the room for sitting in while teaching, while lecturing, while sitting with kids, while reading…
I need places for my butt. I need lots of different places for my butt. I need them at different heights and different widths. I have a bouncy stool and rolly chairs and two tall stools and an extra cushy armchair where I do my grading.
Wherever I am, I need a comfortable nest in order to feel productive.
IBDP trained me too and then I went to Uni and they were like, this isn’t MLA/APA/Chicago, what’re you doing, get rid of it all 😭
Very very quiet music. My husband likes louder music. We can not work in the same office. And if we’re in the same house he wears headphones because you can’t hear my music 2 feet away and you can hear his next door.
also he talks to himself. well, I do too, but I change my tone when I’m talking to him… and he gets annoyed when I don’t realize he’s talking to me and not himself.
In Taiwan, there is a children’s snack called “Kuai Kuai”, which means “Well Behave” (to encourage kids to behave). On almost all computer or media equipment in a professional setting, you will see a bag of this snack placed on top of the equipment, and taking that snack off the equipment will get you chewed out because the snack is there to make sure the equipment will behave and not malfunction. There are different flavors for this snack, but the superstition is that only the most traditional coconut green (for “go”) bags work. You never see any other flavors or packaging used. The professional media people especially swear by this and feel cursed when the green bag of snacks goes missing or expires.
It’s gotten to a point where if you see this green bag of Kuai Kuai placed on top of an item, you know that someone is wishing another person would behave in a professional setting. I work in a university, and on one occasion, I saw the staff place a row of these green Kuai Kuai on top of the faculty mailbox. I thought it was a hilarious way for the staff to wish that the faculty would behave and stop making their life difficult.
Omg, that’s so adorable! Offering to the gods of Good Behaviour!
Yes! That’s exactly what it is!
There’s even an entire Wikipedia page on this: look at “Kuai Kuai culture” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuai_Kuai_culture) for some interesting info. I love the explanation for why only the original green flavor is used — because it mimics the green “everything is working” light on a piece of machinery!
Fascinating! thanks for that link, Molly!
100% my favorite so far 😂😂
I worked as a court reporter for 30 years, 20 of them in court. Part of that profession is preparing transcripts from the notes I took in court. I used several “bargains” with myself to get a transcript done. My favorite one was to give myself 15 or 30 minutes editing transcript. I’d set a timer and at the end I’d check to see how many pages I did. Then I’d try to beat the record. Always did that when proofreading which can be so boring or hair-raising depending on the type of case I’d reported.
As a massage therapist, was trained to start closest to the heart, but tend to either stroke down the back from the neck or rub in the hip joints, on the posterior side: doesn’t really qualify as The Heart, huh?
ooh very interesting. When I’m writing and hit a wall, I run laps. While I’m running I’ll end up thinking of what to write next and boom, problem solved. It doesn’t work 100% of the time, but its got a pretty good success rate!
I am a Word and Excel FAN. But all my students have chromebooks and thus google docs. grrr.
I have a habit of saying nice things and petting the printer/copier before I hit start. Because I don’t want it to think I’m taking it for granted. lol.
I had a principal who encouraged us to take classes on walks sometimes. “If their butts are numb their brains are numb- get the blood moving and you’ll get that 10 minutes back!”
I keep a rubber ducky in my office. If I’m running into a problem i walk the ducky through it step by step. sometimes helps me find the missing piece. 🐤 mostly just a method to run something by someone, without having an actual someone, but it’s fairly helpful
I’m such a list person. When I flounder, usually it’s because I have a 1000 things to do and I’m not sure where to start so I write everything down that I have to do. Then I find something in the list I can knock off – and if I don’t have anything that seems simple, I pick something I think I can break down then break it down further until there seems to be something I think I can manage.
The endorphins get flowing when I cross a couple of things off the list and it just keeps rolling from there.
I can so relate to this. List person too.
Not a writer, I was a database programmer. But when I needed to really focus Gregorian Chants were my go-to. You can’t sing along, you can’t tap your feet, but you still have nice music to block the ambient noise. And when a piece of code refuses to function properly the soothing background helped keep my threats to dismember my equipment to low growls, as opposed to writing threats in the comment fields of the code. Because bad things happen when you don’t find and remove the threats when it’s finally working and someone else finds them in the peer review.
It drives my husband crazy when I sing along to my Gregorian chant CDs. I may have no idea what I am saying, but I’ve listened enough times that I can sing along. Same thing with my favorite Klezmer.
I’m retired now, but before that I had to write a lot as a Business Systems Analyst. I found that when I was stuck on something while writing, what worked every time was relocating (to an empty office or conference room at work, or to another room or even a nearby library if working from home.)
I think the not-usual setting distracted my mind enough that I’d get out of my own way and the answer would always just appear.
And I too love Word, not so much Google docs.
I have a few different jobs but one of them is Theatrical Lighting Designer. I work mostly designing for dance. Usually when you get to the point in the production where you have to set the lighting cue, or looks, for each moment in the dance everyone is sitting at a tech table in the house (audience) and you turn on the various lights in the various colors at the various levels that you want them to create a “look” or cue. This takes hours of time and after a while your eyes can start to…well, just not work as well also my brain gets tired and it all starts to look the same to me. So I am well known for having an entire row that is My Row just behind the tech table where I pace like a caged animal while staring intently at the stage and then suddenly saying “OH…bring up and back light to 50%, take the mid side lights to 30% and turn off the f*cking front light because I HATE IT!” My Row must be kept clear because it’s dark in the house and I do not look anywhere but at the stage…if the row isn’t clear I will fall down and it will cause a delay in getting the lighting done and no one has time for that…LOL.
Spot Op for community theater. It is so cool to watch lighting designers work – it is serious magic. (My understanding of lighting theory begins and ends with “straw = warm and blue = cool”.)
When I was in college, I would realize that I was putting off a particular heinous writing project when I started cleaning my room. I would pop my head up like a Meer cat, ask myself what I was putting off, then sit down and work on it.
After college, I worked in an office in a small town where the highway merged with the street in front of our office for a mile before it branched off. A coworker had to use our ANCIENT document scanner before she could mail out important letters. This thing was horrible. Tower had not been replaced in over 5 years, the program was buggy, and it was possessed by office gremlins. I could tell when it acted up for her because she would threaten to throw in under the wheels of the next log truck that drove by. It usually started behaving itself then because she meant business lol
Forgot to mention: our family adopted rescue 1 year old twin (one boy, one girl) pure white kittens with blue eyes to start the new year. They provide lots and lots of distraction! 🥰💕💕
I think any writing I may do from now on will have to be done at the library!! 😂
I worked in a correctional setting for 30+ years. It still gives me the heebee jeebees to be in an office with staplers and scissors sitting on the desk. Heaven forbid my chair does not have an unobstructed access to an exit.
College math professor here:
No matter when you finished the material, try to never give a test the day you return from spring or fall break. It will be as if they never heard of any of this material before.
Buy your own chalk and hoard it because the school buys crappy chalk (an addendum here: most math teachers I know love their chalk board, we do not love the white board and we REALLY do not love the smart board).
The week after any break will be hell, so don’t plan to have a life that week.
The last two weeks of the semester will be more stressful than the previous 14 weeks, so just try to live through it.
Sounds like what I went through when I was a TA for my biostatistics department. Only the midterm and final were before breaks.
Retired law enforcement. When I was working tons of pre shift checks. Always check equipment and vehicle to ensure everything is in good working condition. To this day I still prefer to sit with my back to the wall when out in public places. I also scan my surroundings. 👀
I do that sort of thing, too. Not from ever having been in law enforcement – from 25 years of getting myself around Los Angeles on the bus.
I live in Portland, Oregon, now, and I still keep a set of ain’t-got-shit clothes for if I have to go to one of the rougher neighborhoods. They are not necessarily the ones people assume, either.
👍
The main quirk I have with writing is about editing. I can’t stop, because there’s always a way to improve what’s already written. So at some point I have to get up and get a cup of tea or coffee and a bite to eat and say it’s done now. Done. Now. Hit send or save or whatever needs to be done at that point to stop writing.
For everyday professional life, every water bucket and tub and trough has to be scrubbed and refilled to the brim in advance of a storm. This has saved a lot of trouble on enough occasions – actually once was enough, when the power outage lasted five days – that I’m really OCD about it. And that is why I’m still nursing a shin splint from Friday, because all of that had to be done Saturday morning, and I didn’t arrange for a substitute so I could rest it properly.
Hope you are back to being pain free jolly soon!
Thank you for the good wishes! Work was doable today after three days of resting it, so it should be back to normal soon.
I have a MacBook that I tolerate because it works with all my other Apple products. However, I’ve been using Windows and MS Office since 1994. I do not like Pages or Google docs. Luckily, my husband’s job made MS Office for MAC available to employees at no cost. I’m still using it years later. I will never abandon Word.
I too love my iPhone and hate Macs, preferring Word above all else. It’s what I learned way back when you had to manually enter all commands into the document. Mice were still small, paper eating rodents. It is a dichotomy that confuses my android adoring husband
I changed to Mac for my personal use in 2017 after having to use a Mac for work starting in 2013 and will not look back. This may sound like a small thing but I prefer Macs a lot especially when it comes to accents (my name has an accent). I went to a French-American school until 8th grade, writing my French language homework assignments on a Windows desktop/laptop in the early 2000s was hell. In college as a Spanish major, copying and pasting all the accents on my Windows laptop was also the worst (let’s not even get into my Spanish MA thesis lol). When I was introduced to Mac in 2013 finally at a new job, I was thrilled to learn how much easier the accent shortcuts were. It’s been 10 years since then and the accent shortcuts are still the worst on Windows. Maybe there were other systems or apps I could have used to help me with accents but… I’ll stick with Mac 🙂 Thank you for the unexpected walk down memory lane of my foreign language homework tech issues using the US QWERTY keyboard on Windows.
“I once read a work in progress where the heroine had to pee for about 50 pages.”
I actually love it when stuff like this happens in books. I like when the characters have to pp or realize their makeup is -messy mascara- day or when they’re so hungry and end up eating cereal because it’s faster.
Me too!
Or have their period! Or PMS. I’ve always wondered how Kate manages that, lol. Stabby PMS.
The point of the anecdote was that the heroine had to pee * a lot* 😅. Like “does she have cystitis?” levels way above normal, because it was happening in real life to the author who was holding it in until the word count was matched.
It wasn’t just normal bodily function but something that required edits 🙂.
I am a physician and have worked in hospitals and, more recently, in rural medicine. No matter where you work as s medical professional in Germany it is VERY frowned upon to say „well, aren‘t we lucky that this is a quiet night?“ When I was in my first year as a doctor and working nightshift in the ER I was dressed down by the nurse for saying it because now the rest of the night would be pure hellish stress. She was right. Next to a truckload of people with minor problems, it was like stroke, stroke, distressed person with suicidal thoughts, psychiatrist says they are fine, I don‘t think so, need to figure out an internal medicine problem so I can observe them overnight since the psych ward won‘t take them, heart attack, sepsis, brain bleed, who refused to be hospitalized(but thankfully came back later and was treated), very sick person in a lot of pain, nearly screaming with it, no clue what is wrong, had already gotten the equivalent dose of pain medication for a budweiser stallion by the ambulance personel. Everyone of my patients made it through the night and we could really help them, but whenever somebody utters those forbidden words in my presence while I am working I emediately knock on wood or my own head.
Oh and I talk to my computer and my printer, when they have done a good job working. And I encourage them sometimes: „I know it is monday afternoon and I know you hate those, but would you just print this one single perscription? Pretty please?“ It works, I swear!
In the 1990s, I worked a company that had an early-model server: a large blue box that took up a corner of the office. When it would glitch, the accounting manager would go over and rub the top of the box. We have no idea why, but it always started working after he rubbed the top!
I am a part-time musician. I have a necklace that I HAVE to wear to any gig (not rehearsal, just performance). It’s a Celtic figure that I got at a RenFest and the vendor said it means “melody.” I’ve worn it for over 20 years, since college. I forgot it one time last year and had a literal anxiety attack in the car when I realized it wasn’t on my neck, and was working out my timing to go home and put it on. I survived the gig without it but gave myself a headache in the process!
I was a performing musician back in the day, and for gigs I always had to have at least one braid somewhere in my hair. !?!
Once upon a time, I was trained as a software developer. When you have a high volume of data for a program to work through, you often batch process the data, all at once, over night. Even though I no longer program, if I get stuck on something, I tell my brain that it is time to batch process the problem. By the time I wake up the next day, I usually have the answer.
I also need to name physical objects that are important in my life and talk to them regularly. My car, electronics, house, plants. Not sure why, but that ensures they listen when needing to plead, beg, and/or threaten.
Totally off-topic–but you put your kitten on Tatiana’s desk in Emerald Blaze!
Hehehe, indeed, someone always recognizes it when the picture is shared 😀
Would it be possible to get explanations for the items as a discussion topic? I’d love to hear the stories behind them! Thanks! 🤗
Also the owl looks like the one thatAunt B crushed in Gunmetal Magic when Martine recorded her conversation with Aunt b and played it for Andrea.
When I was working on my Dissertation (in Math) I shared an office with 7 other grad students. Sometimes I would work at my desk for a while, and then realize the ideas were used up there. I would switch to someone else’s desk, until I got anxious there and moved again. I shifted from desk to desk all over the office, unable to sit still at one, while I worked.
My husband would write a big R (for ring) at the top of a blank page on a pad. He would stare at it and think for a while. Then, realizing that idea wouldn’t work, he would tear off that page & recycle it. He would write a big R at the top of the next page, and think about a different idea. The work was all in his head.
Early in my IT career I was a programmer for a couple of years. It was ages ago when you had to type in lines of code and then “compile” it which did basic syntax checks. I would never leave work until my code had no errors in the compile run. Then I would never start my logic checking until after a meal break. Many an afternoon turned into evening – and dinner into midnight meals because of that quirk 😀
I’m retired but still work a few hours a week. My first task when I open my internet browser is to look at the IA blog. Once that’s read and digested and snorted and laughed at, I can get on with my day.
I’m not sure when the switch from Word to Docs happened, but I prefer Word. At my new job, it’s all Docs…… 😬
Use vim 🙂
Still have a mug with vi commands printed on it. Fingers never had to leave the keyboard. Switching to a mouse for cut and paste was an adjustment.
Never say “quiet” or “slow” while on a shift. The chaos that inevitably ensues will definitely be your fault for the jinx. (ER doctor)
We have a (biology) lab shrine overseen by, in my lab, a pirate rubber duckie. When I was in grad school, my advisor moved to a different university, and the lab manager packed up the shrine that had blessed a shared molecular space and moved it with them. Everything stopped working in the shared lab, so I created a new shrine with the pirate duck. He accepts offerings of alcohol and chocolate. I left them when I moved to my post-doc because I wasn’t going to be doing lab work. But a new lab manager came in and didn’t understand the necessity of a shrine. She packed him away, but had to bring him back out when everyone complained that their experiments stopped working. While I was back for a visit, I retrieved him, and I got email asking if I had insight into where he had gone. Tl/dr, grant proposals, manuscript submissions, big experiments, tenure applications, experiments not going well, etc. are all best undertaken when an offering to the small gods of research.
I have been a librarian for 33 and worked in libraries for almost 40 years. Every work day is a day with these wonders of technology. Never ever threaten, pound on, or wish ill to a copier, copier/scanner/printer. No matter how it has done you wrong, it can and will get worse. They also have great memories and will spite you later if you have transgressed against it.
Years ago I shared an office with a male co worker. When his computer didn’t do what he wanted he would start cussing a blue streak at it, calling it all sorts of names. When mine wouldn’t cooperate, I’d say things like “oh come on, can’t you do this for me? Just this one little thing?” My office mate said “and that’s the difference between men and women, right there!”
I work in oil and gas, and our weird quirk is being cavalier to a point with our safety while also being hyper vigilant that mistakes that go catastrophic can literally kill towns. Example, a full face mask a respirator set up that kinda can’t get a perfect seal on my face, but I’m still going into the chlorine to fix the leak because I don’t want others hurt. Just smash the mask to make the seal and go as fast as possible to fix the issue. There’s other stuff but this is the most easily understandable example.
Homer the Bear, a gift from my oldest niece, must be in my office. He hides in plants, behind card holders and on top of filing cabinets.
I consult him if the accounts are not balancing correctly. His advice is always the same, “check your math”. He is usually right.
My retired life is very laid back. But each morning, I play the NYT Wordle, Spelling Bee, Connections and xword mini. It is in that order. I may than begin my day, which is presently wintertime, so staying in my pjs until 11ish. I never realized how much time I can waste. I love it #32yrsworking
Have you ever tried Contexto? It’s like Wordle, but instead of guessing letters, you guess the meaning closeness of words. I’m hooked but my friends think it’s weird 😀 https://contextowordle.co/
Oh I just tried this and got it in 14! is that good??
14 is great! I’ve gone up to 60 sometimes 😅.
I just tried it! I did horribly (guessed the word in 81 tries), but I enjoyed it. 🙂
Yay!! Kid #2 writing!! Very exciting!
📚📚📚
The BDH awaits further news!
Interesting as always. I’ll have to remember Literata book font, I like the automatic page break thing. Word for me, thanks. I began my working life with Word Perfect and you had to use it on your computer from disks every time you needed it. But the switch to Word a few years down the line was easy enough and I’m not happy with other software now.
Congrats to Kid 2 on being close to finished, we’re all pulling for her!
Professionally I do procedure authorizations for a huge hospital in my neck of the woods. I managed to develop weird sensory issues from being in front of a screen all day so switching to night/dark mode has helped in that area at least.
I used to write as a hobby and weirdly when I would get stuck I would change the page color in my word program. Don’t ask me why it helped. 😆
Makes total sense to me. It helped you see the words in a new light. I’m completely serious!
I’m an I.T. project manager and there is far more writing involved than most people realize. I have to draft business justification documents for the projects, project charters, business requirements, scope documents, status reports, endless emails, and more. What makes it even more fun is I have to translate back and forth between the non-technical business requestors and the extremely technical system engineers. They absolutely don’t speak the same language. I’m not sure where or why but I picked up the habit of saying out loud what I’m typing if I’m working on something very high profile or time sensitive. I not only say the words but spell out a lot of them and say all of the punctuation and formatting. For example at the end of a sentence I say period space space or the start of a paragraph I say indent capital… I often am drafting documents with an engineer on a Zoom call to make sure I’m correct on the technology. The crazy looks I get when I work with an engineer for the first time are hilarious. The engineers that have worked with me a lot often say the punctuation and formatting along with me. Only a very few have ever been annoyed by this habit. I’ve been doing this for close to 35 years.
Relatable 🙂
Firefighter here with nearly 30 years of experience, aching joints, tinnitus so bad I need to turn my car radio up way too loud to hear my post-shift ‘Down with the Sickness’ stress relief song on the ride home, and a sense of humor so dark it’s been compared to a black hole.
I have, over the years, developed a few quirks inherent to my profession.
1) If you think you need to use the bathroom, Use. It. Immediately. Failure to comply will mean you end up on a call that’ll last for hours with no bathroom in sight.
2) Don’t leave any food item at the station. No matter where you hide it or if you put your employee number on it, if the food item is in any way appealing some late night scavenger on another shift will find and consume it, then put the empty wrapper back.
3) Whatever problem happens around the station or with the fire apparatus, it’s B Shift’s fault.
4) At absolutely NO TIME is it appropriate to ever, EVER, say the ‘Q’ word on shift. Saying or even thinking the word ‘Quiet’ will result in Armageddon. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will openly giggle, mount up, then ride through your first due area raining havoc that will interrupt every attempted meal or bathroom break.
What is the thing about eating the food and leaving the wrapper? It is so annoying.
It’s just like people who use the work microwave to reheat spaghetti sauce and they don’t cover it with a paper towel or something and it splatters all over the inside of the microwave and they DON’T CLEANUP after themselves.
Word was (and still is) the end all and be all of writing software. I had to use it for all my undergraduate and graduate studies. For my dissertation Word was required.
When I’m working on validation reports I’ve done before to the point I have memorized the steps, I’ll listen to rock music. Keeps me from falling asleep in the middle of a calculation.
If it’s something I really need to concentrate on, no music and no noise. I might mutter to myself that whoever wrote what I need to concentrate on should write in plain English. 😝
“A wise craftsman blames his tools ” Ayuh. I once had a job that required a lot of forms to be filled out. By hand; it was decades back. And one time, after tossing another partly filled document because of a mistake, I quipped to a co-worker that I needed better pens; the ones I had kept writing the wrong things. And that was another mistake, because for years after he’d offer me one of his pens because his always worked correctly.
I have to thank you for making me laugh and laugh this afternoon. The 50 pages on peeing was just what I needed to feel some better.
You see, I’m miserable today (that’s my translation for high levels of anxiety). actually I’m double miserable. I don’t need to dump the initial reason, but the double comes because what happened is fixable and I have no reason to be anxious – but I am.
Thanks so much for helping me feel better
But that’s anxiety isn’t it? Not just a little concerned about something, but full all out catastrophizing (and yes that is a word!) :-/
The glass kitty with blue eyes and a swipe of glitter on its ears!! 🤩
When I used to type my papers for college and after I always did two spaces after the period. I cannot stop doing that. It is automatic now.
Me too! It’s so ingrained that I don’t think about it. I just do it.
I was taught to type that way in HS, and used it through college, but when I started writing professionally for a mag in the 90s, the editor trained me out of it.
My brother is a lawyer and he said they still use WordPerfect. How about that blast from the past? Remember the little card you placed around the function keys so you could remember what key combination would give you bold or italics?
Oh my gosh. It’s like me asking a very good friend of mine who works for the federal government “do you still use SUDAAN?” This is a very old statistical software.
I make lists. Lists of all the tasks I have to do. When I get stuck I start adding estimated times to do each task. If a task will take more than a day, I’ll break it down in to sub-sets of smaller tasks. If I’m still stuck, I look for the shortest or easiest task and do that. Repeat until I have a pile of things that are DONE.
If I’m still stuck, it is time to do the dishes, or weed the garden, or paint the laundry room …
I work in retail, and when the credit card machine acts up, I make high pitched, robotic beeping noises at it. It works about 9 times out of 10. Some of my customers must think I’m certifiable.
I have smacked the PoS when it refuses to take a tapped payment. Percussive maintenance works.
LMAO! I agree. I do that with the scanner.
I know PoS is point of sale. However, I’ve heard from people working in retail that it could also be piece of s**t when the terminal doesn’t work.
This makes me SO glad I’m retired (and I worked hard for it).
It takes me back to college classes for my AA degree, typing on an electric typewriter with erasable bond (anyone remember that?)
Then on to more college years and at last word processing (too many versions to remember) and finally struggling with APA format for BS and MS degrees. I used to have nightmares that the admissions office called to say they made a mistake and I have to take more classes for my degree.
I worked as an ICU nurse for almost 20 yrs and you bet, you do not jinx yourself about it being quiet, etc. And gird your loins when it’s a full moon, I kid you not.
I remember typing college papers “Columbus method” on a MANUAL typewriter with White-Out at my fingertips. Revisions or major mistakes were a b**ch, involving retyping an entire page from the beginning…
Yes, I am *that* old. (For those who have never heard the term, Columbus method typing is “find a key and
and land on it”. Also known as ” hunt, peck, goof, and cuss”.)
I began my career as a programmer on a mainframe dumb terminal that let me copy and place text wherever I wanted to place it. When we were switched to using PCs and word-processing apps, it was very frustrating. The apps could not seem to let us place copied text wherever we wanted it. I did not have time to create a “style”. I needed to use jargon that the apps never had in their spell-check or grammar-check lexicons; so I had to dumb down the apps each time we got a new update. I became resigned to having a working truce with the word processing apps. Whoever designed the styles that the apps used did not have the typing and office skills training that I got in the late 60s!
Oh, and using mixed case within words in communications is both masochistic and sadistic, IMHO.
I talk to my knitted work and dyed fibres quite a bit. Mostly about behaviour and how they should be acting. Maybe it helps me focus on my own goals, maybe the fibre kami are listening. Either way, it works.
If I have trouble with a project, I walk away and make a cup of tea. Usually the break works to rest my brain, or I open a book about a completely different (albeit related) topic. Often if I am having trouble seeing a problem I will take a photo of it, or look at it in a mirror.
Never thought about the mirror solution! Im def going to try that. Thank you😊
I am oooold school, and composed papers on typewriters because (1) if I had leftover time I lost the original train of thought and would have to redo it anyway (2) perfection procrastination. I did the original cut and past with my notes and typed the final papers from that. Got very creative with whiteout because I hated correction tape.
I fell in love with letterpress printing in college and using the em and en quads, with little shims everywhere to make the type (so many choices) do what I wanted. I had to fiddle with padding to get my linoleum block prints to be type-high for the press too.
I worked for an aviation company that had clients who were bitter enemies, like on a national level, so we had to make records notations in pencil on 3×5 file cards in code, I kid you not. This was the same job where I taught myself to use the computer to sort out and computerize the list for a warehouse full of aviation records that reused docket numbers every 5 years – because I refused to hand-type the 10-page document that had to be redone whenever dockets were filed. Their computer “expert” was largely absent, so the engineers started bringing their computer work to me to get done. When I got stuck, I bribed the IT guys with cookies to teach me more.
When computers came in I taught myself DOS and Word Perfect and Lotus 1-2-3 were king. Then came Microsoft, and those programs were what I learned best. I learned to HATE changes made to first columns in tables in DOS because it wrecked the formatting and I would have to recreate the entire table. You couldn’t see the table, oh no, you had to visualize it in your head or draw it out first. Then Windows OS happened and life changed for the better.
When multimedia happened and the WWW was imminent, I changed over to Mac and was confused AH with this new OS. There was a product called DeBaBelizer that was created just so-your files could transfer from one software to another. I began to prefer Mac OS because it was user friendly and could read documents created in MS (the opposite was not true at the time). Then I shifted over to desktop publishing and learned lots of tips and tricks for MS suite that stay with me to this day. All this came in handy when I shifted to web work and learned to code HTML and Javascript by hand. Oh, and working Tech Support.
Wow. That got very long. Off to read some more of the comments. Good luck with the MS, K2!
I only write in 11 point font, then edit and make it pretty in 12.
if it’s 12 when writing, it just looks big and cumbersome. Plus I really love the extra page counts when you go from 11 to 12 size font.
I’ve always had a difficult time meeting length requirements. So for my dissertation, I wrote as much as I could in a chapter single-spaced and then “select all” and set to double-space. And watched my length magically double!! (Yes, I realize it’s a bizarre mind game.) I also discovered the best serif font that increased the length without making it look like I was choosing an oversized font.
There’s also the magical cup accompanied by the correct tea or coffee. My Ripper Cushions mug should make me BRILLIANT.
There’s also the search for just the right pen. The one that will also MAKE ME BRILLIANT!! I was tempted to visit the Mont Blanc store at the DFW airport, but I realized even if they had the PEN OF BRILLIANCE, I wouldn’t be able to afford it.
I’m glad to have some other options. I need to work on my talismans. Obviously, this is where I’ve gone wrong. My Skipper (Penguins of Madgascar Skipper) funkopop probably needs company.
I used to fly a lot for work, and whenever I would, I wouldn’t curse or say anything about dropping something or something falling. Also wouldn’t watch anything violent during the flight. Kind of a “no bad ju-ju” superstition. When at the office, I wouldn’t leave until my desk was pristine and I had a list started for the next day.
Scarily enough, I use Windows on an Apple platform. And it’s always a double space after a period with indented paragraphs. I also despise writing a first draft of anything on computer. I’m an old-school paper and pen girl. Maybe just old girl??
Love you guys! My family of 3 (husband, 16-year-old and I) read together every night, and we have read all of the Innkeeper books. Hearing “ripper-cushions”, “don’t see me” and other beloved Innkeeper quotes in our home is a everyday occurence!
*whispers* Sorry everyone, but Word Star was The Best Ever.
Kid ” – you’ve got it, you really have.
never say the word quiet in the emergency department. you will immediately summon a chaos demon
Oh, gosh, golly, Gee! This really hits home. How to get past that moment of scary, white page and get a page with words on it. Let’s see…I sign up for six or seven classes on motivation, that I know I’m never going to finish. I try to learn Python (epic fail. I’m not a programmer), I test out new study or sprint timers…a different writing companion page just might do the job. I change music. No words. Must not have words, or I will type the words. I check my bank balances and do the budget. If all else fails, I wash dishes or mop the floor. Then, when the gritty grime of housework for too many pets gets to me, I remember that if I don’t meet that deadline, I’m not going to get paid. Oh…and I read Ilona Andrews blog posts, because they almost always make me smile, and that helps bunches.
Lawyer here. WordPerfect rules!!!!! Reveal Code is the Bestest!
Also, I am so old that I remember starting my work with “c:\dir” …
Me too to both of these! Recently ran across my copy of Word Perfect 6 I bought when I built a desktop computer 10 years ago and fantasized about installing it on one of my laptops…
But I work on Word these days because the accounting firms I contract with use Word and Google Docs. I draw the line at Google Docs though – I won’t go there.
Use a Mac now but still miss Reveal Codes. It is the Bestest!
Good fortune to Kid2👍
Gaming Blogger Here
When I get stuck, I switch from sitting to standing, redecorate one of my offices or just move rooms. I have three desks. One in my video/gaming studio, another by a big window in the former dinette, and lastly my gaming spot on the couch that, yes has a dedicated laptop with lapboard desk, side table with desk stuff and a pull out table top extender. It works for me. But most people just wouldn’t understand!
Spent 8 years in the Navy, and 2 spaces after a period and 4 spaces at the start of a paragraph were mandatory. I’ve been out 12 years now and I still do it.
When overwhelmed with my surroundings, I put my ear buds in and listen to whale songs. 🤷🏽♀️
I’ve work various kitchen cooking jobs over the years. My superstition is never to say things like “it’s going to be a super busy service tonight” or “it’s going to be an easy day today because all we have to prep is X” because in my experience, something always happens to derail these plans.
I am now very much a believer in “so far so good” and not taunting the kitchen gods.
Windows all the way. Just can’t get used to the Mac for work.
But I love my iPhone too.
I work in a bookstore and I will reorganize everything and sort things by type, language (we have a lot of languages) and maybe even change the whole layout when sales aren’t going. The funny part is that it actually works! I will suddenly have people walk or call in to purchase books every time!
This is going back to the late 90s. We had a GIS lab with 16 computers running windows 95 and ArcMap 3.2.
The standard operating procedure when something would crash:
1. Reopen the project
2. Restart ArcMap
3. Restart the computer
4. Switch computers
That resolved 80%+ of the issues even though the hardware, os and software were identical. Usually you could return to the original computer the next day and it would behave.
In my professionel life I work as an IT analyst for a bank. When I get stuck in something, i take out my sketchbook and doodle around until my brain can move again.
Doodling in a sketchbook also works wonders in corporate meetings, which are a special circle of Hell – when i started this practice I found i had much better concentration and patience with the overall stupidity and snail-like pace of meetings. Amazing how miniature landscapes and florals can help along a meeting about payment rails and clearing process.
When I paint in my free time and get stuck in a painting, i put it aside and go for either sketchbook or small discarded pieces of paper to make color swatches on – which turn out as tigers or florals or landscapes – if that doesn’t work, i rearrange my table and painting supplies – so about the same as your writer talismans, I think :).
I work at Microsoft, and we have to dogfood Office including Word. any time a new update is released, there is a whole lot of swearing and praying going on for the next few weeks/months. (Currently I can’t open my old email archives, and it’s pissing me off)
Do the programmers ever actually consult real secretaries when they make changes to Word? I’ve always believed not, but you might actually know.
So, I do rearrange things on my desk (whichever one I’m writing at–home office or work office).
But, there is some psychology behind switching devices and/or moving to different rooms (or switching between electronic and handwriting). It can trick the brain, and is something I often recommend to students for self-editing to trick the brain into thinking the document is something new.
I didn’t read every post but did read a bunch at the top. There were some interersting references to threatening machines and the anthropomorphization of said machines.
I’m coming up on 30 years of working in IT. I’ve seen a lot. Presently, one of my many and varied duties is to manage our data center where I work. I also run our shop. If a server breaks, I fix it and thus require a shop (I can, and have, fixed printers and PC’s and laptops too but that’s all been farmed out to big companies who shall remain nameless). On the door of my shop is a cartoon I cherish which still, after many years, puts a smile on my face. It’s a computer tech behind the counter with a PC on the counter talking to the customer. He says, “I found the problem ma’am and you were right, it just doesn’t like you!”
It’s real. I’ve seen it for myself.
I’m a college prof and demand students use Word for assignments. Each school I teach for gives students free access to MS Office 365 so it’s pretty easy. Students gravitate toward Google Docs, a product of public ed, as far as I can see. The problem is, GD doesn’t play nicely with the learning management systems (LMS) I use.
The school I teach for FT uses Canvas and it’s so-so with some glitches. One I teach PT for uses Blackboard and Bb hates Google Docs. My second PT institution uses Brightspace, and again, not very friendly. I’ll kick back assignments for either a redo, or GD allows you to save your document in .docx format, which works fine.
While I have no totems, relocation and musical selection seems to work for my fiction writing. Thanks for sharing a bit more of your process.
Since I’m a control freak, I still love WordPerfect as the best word processor there is. I do own MS Word, but once you actually master and experience WordPerfect there is no way to feel satisfied with the little control Word offers the author of a manuscript.
I loved WordPerfect when I was doing data entry. It was the program that allowed me to format the reports I had to do so other people could understand them.
👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍 x 1000
Ive been a Mac woman since the early 80s when got a Mac SE. Weighed a ton. Took it to New Zealand and it is still going! Various iMacs, powerbooks since.
Got talked into a brief flirtation with a PC. After had to reload windows twice in 4 months flogged it and bought an imac.
OS is fine, but Pages is awful, awful awful. Usually use libre office.
Work things. Hmm well until recently when I retired I was a Clinical pharmacist in a hospital. We are trained to be risk averse and you really need to have an OCD tendency so can be very focused esp on microdata and v orderly. So if someone interrupts your system for checking a prescription or drug chart you have to start again. I wrote on drug charts in purple pen though every other hospital in UK pharmacists use green. PURPLE👍👍👍. I liked certain reference books to take round the wards. and got snippy if they were my shelf in the right order.
I can feel the power of your totems from here. Your magic is strong.
I do part time childcare. Right now I take care of a spicy 2 1/2 year old girlie 20 hrs a week. I adore her but my work life is nothing but weird quirks. 😁🙄😂
Ooof. I got so frustrated at the planned obsolescence of laptops at one point (don’t tell me it’s coincidence that they fail 2 weeks out of warranty) that I switched to a MacBook (I had a dual-boot OS installed so I could boot into Windows or Mac version but the keyboard and commands, etc, were still weird). I’m an accountant and the programs just aren’t written/updated for Mac, so Windows is my default and what I use at work; I know all the shortcut keys, where to find all the hidden things and how to troubleshoot just about everything at a developer-level in Windows.
I hated the Mac OS with indescribable hatred, was constantly frustrated, and even in the Windows boot mode my peripherals never did work right. I was so happy when the cursed thing finally died and I could replace it with a Windows-based laptop – oh, what joy. (The d*mn thing lasted for-freaking-ever, to its credit, and I only finally got to junk it when I literally couldn’t update the OS for functionality anymore.)
The silver lining is I don’t get frustrated at my new laptop for ANYTHING because I remember how much worse it could be. HAHAHA.
At my hospital (well, pretty much all hospitals in my country), we believe if you wear red panties, you’re going to have a difficult shift with lots of patients.
I write fiction too (short stories), but sometimes I have to “trick” myself into starting a manuscript or I get too in my own head about it. So often I will start writing snippets and openings in my MacBook’s built-in Notes app, because then it’s just “trying stuff out” instead of “starting a new story.” I also use the web-based writing program called 4theWords.com, which gamifies writing and lets you battle monsters and advance a fantasy storyline while you write.
Both of those are great for motivation purposes, but terrible for formatting (no way to get either of those into Shunn Manuscript format)…so when I eventually get into the writing groove and need to port over to manuscript format in Word, if I’ve written too much of the story already in Notes and/or 4TW, it’s a pain in the ass to have to strip all the dumb formatting and fix it for the kind of manuscript format that magazines usually require.
But I haven’t found a less stupid way of getting around it. Or my own dumb head.
Professional quirks: Kindness, when a customer gets really bad? Kill them with Kindness and talk slowly in a nice tone. It usually works and once they calm down then I can (usually) fix their issue.
My quirk is that whenever my colleagues are having trouble with their computer, they call me and I stand behind them to see what they’re doing and suddenly everything starts working like it’s supposed to. I don’t do anything…
Quick question for the authors out there… I’m an avid listener, not a reader, any way we can start a petition to remove Jack and Simon as character names? So, you see, whenever Jack asks a question he becomes a male donkey. Whenever Simon says anything, I just have to do it. 😜
I cover my computers with toy spiders to catch the bugs.
Love my Mac, love my iPhone, love my iPad, loathe Pages, love Word. I still long for my IBM correcting selectric typewriter. I refuse to be superstitious as I walk around an open ladder, walk around a black cat, close my eyes when I have to hear something bad because all that behavior keeps the bad away. Shall I go on? I do appreciate hearing about others’ behaviors around this topic. Big smile of human similarity.
I also much prefer Word, but my work uses Google Suite. I write my reports in Word, then email them to my gmail so that I can open them in the Google Drive.
I indent paragraphs for personal correspondence, but double space for work. I ALWAYS use the Oxford comma 🙂
Also retired. My favorite feature of MS Word is Show/Hide. In my former role as technical editor for R&D engineers (who are pretty much hopeless with any word processor more complicated than a text editor), I ended up fixing their formatting tangles, which were sometimes epic. Show/Hide is my go-to tool. I even have Word show non-printing characters by template default. I know lots of people hate seeing spaces, tabs, paras, etc., but when you can’t figure out what’s going on with the formatting, it gets real obvious when you can see the culprit under the surface.
Yes! Yay for Show/Hide in Word! For me it’s a nice balance between the formatting opportunities of Word Perfect and speed of typing. I’m a PC person. The last time I tried to work on a Mac (I was a temp, which made this worse), I hit the wrong key and left the department without a computer network until IT could fix whatever I did. (Needless to say I wasn’t asked back.) Ever since then I’ve been a devoted user of PC and Android products.
Regarding a quirky way to deal with a brain that doesn’t want to move forward, I either lie down to process my way to a solution. If I’m making a quilled paper art piece on a deadline and I get stuck, I turn my work board around and work from another direction. Seems to jolt my brain into a fresh perspective.
I love reading the blogs and learning new things from the BDH! Thanks to Ilona, Gordon, and Mod R for everything you do!
I am a teen librarian and I like to write out my notes and to-do lists on colored post its or using colored pens. When my lists start to blur together and I feel like I’m not getting anything done, I’ll rewrite them in a new color and I feel like I’m accomplishing something. Sometimes it actually helps!
Könyvelő vagyok, és ha eltérés van a könyvekben és nem találom a hibát lefekszem aludni! Tízből tízszer megálmodom hol keressem!
I used to teach a Master class in Word for IT professionals that support law firms. Law firms are document centric. The class was a week long and the manual was several inches thick. I always carried that manual in a backpack when I traveled. I was afraid of losing it in my checked baggage. When printers switched to portional typefaces, I used the book The PC (or Mac) is Not a Typewriter. I never use two spaces after a period and always style my documents.
Thanks for sharing this! My creative pieces (little sculptured animals) are generally not on a deadline. But I often employ this technique for say, laundry. I don’t play WOW until I’ve done at least two loads. Well, maybe one… 🙂
Yes, the search & replace codes! They are actually the only reason I still own a copy of Word. I have even gone so far as to export from Google to Word, run search & replace cleanup macros, then import the clean document back into Google.
just enough of chapter 1 to hook me in. does the kid have a website?
The chapter shared is from House Andrews’ new project, Maggie, not Kid 2’s manuscript 🙂.
There is no website (yet) for her works.
Project manager here; If I can’t work through a problem or I need to dive deep into a competitive landscape analysis I’ll take my ear buds and go work from our cafeteria at a high top. I don’t know if it’s the new space or the increased chaos around me, but it makes my brain think in new ways. Coffee shops also work.
I’m a “recovering” programmer. I could wax poetic over whether emacs or vi is better, do you create an indent with tabs or spaces (and how many), do you have any empty lines, where is the line break for blocks of code – i.e. brackets\braces\block notation get their own line or not, etc. We all have our quirks – but for many in the space there’s a method to their madness.
I see patterns so whenever I was helping a co-worker debug code, I’d start by systematically formatting it (lots and lots of lazy devs out there that don’t follow ANY pattern) and while formatting found where they didn’t properly close\end a statement for instance. Rarely did I have to look further than just formatting code for actual code\logic mistakes although many times I’d find that as well simply because how they’d formatted it messed up their logic in wonderous ways…..
It’s taken me a LONG time to adjust to single carriage returns in Word for a new paragraph (because if I want an empty space when programming which doesn’t autoformat for me, I still have to do 2). Same for automatically double spacing after periods which is no longer a thing 🙂 Most word processors nowadays just remove them as you’re typing but it still bugs me sometimes…. <– elipses which all of us GenXers use and none of know why LOL
I did translatiions ( Finnish to English) and editing of English and I always did it from a printed copy and used editing marks. Not so good with computer editing.
Overleaf solved easy LaTeX problems for technical writing cause lots of smart people support it. Math is still a work in progress for all, not just tools. vim is baked into my fingers. I run macs and love them for easy support.
I was a typesetter for many years in another life. In the beginning I used computers that were specifically programmed for typesetting. I was sent to train on the computer, not only how to use it’s features but to learn typesetting in general. I loved the fact that I could program in just about anything as far as kerning, etc. The most challenging book I did was a compilation of titles from ancient books. It was several different languages with a slew of accent marks, some of which couldn’t be programed in and had to be done by hand with press on letters. Some foreign words I noticed were used frequently I programmed in. But the hardest part was where to break a foreign language word at the end of a sentence.
Okay everyone is commenting on operating systems and programs, I want more of Kid 2’s book. I’m assuming that’s what the page in this post is. Looks really good so gimme.
No, the page is from Maggie, the newest House Andrews project- it is shared to exemplify the formatting discussed.
We haven’t (yet) been privy to any snippet of Kid 2’s work 🙂
Woohoo Congratulations Kid 2!!! I hope when it is published; BDH will be told!!!
I make lists, mark them off when the task is done – that way at least I accomplished something. While doing those items my brain wanders then I usually come up with some sort of answer to something I was stuck on. lol
When I’m stuck, I don’t mess with my typography, but I do change all the character’s names. As if that has anything to do with why the plot won’t work…
I NEED pretty things to stare at when i think. blank walls are bad and make me feel bad. and my desk must not be too cluttered or my brain is cluttered. the struggle is real. and i definitely move around the house to think. I have a laptop-laptop table to enable me to work from any piece of furniture.
i am very far from writing as a profession, but i 100% believe the juju!
oh! and in word, my big tip that I live on is having the hidden formatting symbols on. I often have to write pieces of report in whatever format someone else is using, which means making it look like theirs. cntrl + * FTW. I love styles, but that relies on the owner of the doc setting them up right…
I will never say the “Q word”.Working in Healthcare IT, it’s a double whammy. You say it, and within seconds all the beds will be full, the ER overflowing, and it will be a full moon, as your queue fills with tickets because people will NOT understand that a device must be powered on to work, and every single server I am responsible for will take a dump. If someone says, “It’s sure q**** today,” they must be stopped before the phrase is complete.
“While in high school, she ended up in the International Baccalaureate program, which required a massive amount of essay writing. They trained her to double-tap at the beginning of each new paragraph, so there is an extra blank line. I don’t know why this was done; nobody uses it anymore; but apparently back then it was a thing.”
This is what is done in France, for example the French Baccalaureate written exam. You need two blank lines for each new section, to highlight how you divided your essay (usually introduction / 2 or 3 parts / conclusion). Essays are handwritten and can be as long as 8 pages, so it helps define the text.
Also, each new part should start with an indent.
These rules are strict and still applied today. Fun times!
When I was working as a features writer at a magazine, I once walked into an office where I was meeting someone for an interview and saw some of the wisest words I’d ever seen.
Written in billboard-sized writing on a huge central whiteboard it said, “NEVER let a piece of electronic equipment KNOW that you are in a hurry.”
It is advice I live by to this day. 🤣
I’m a marriage therapist, something we do not do is acknowledge or speak to clients while out in public. If they do then I’m more than happy to speak back. Keeping confidentiality goes beyond the office.
I do love Word but….
laurelhach:
using microsoft word
*moves an image a mm to the left*
all text and images shift. four new pages appear. paragraph breaks form a union. a swarm of commas buzzes at the window.
in the distance, sirens.
True story 🙂
So true.
My coworkers have realized if I am constantly walking back and forth between the shelves and the computer I am doing reorders. (I run the craft department of a local store). I may also be talking to myself.
I tell people to never throw out anything with my hand writing on it, unless it’s a note I’ve left them.
You absolutely can NOT say the word “quiet” or “slow” at my work place (about how work is going), because the minute you utter those blasphemous words, will start the countdown until it will become insane and everybody will regret their life choices. LOL. I’m not superstitious. But if you say those words about how how work is going when I’m there, you will DEFINITELY be responsible for any and all calamities that subsequently occur.
Now I just want to read the book where the heroine has to pee for 50 pages!
I went to university in the eighties… computers were glorified word processors and it was possible to lose all your work if you didn’t save every few minutes. We set up an alter to the computer gods in our entrance hallway with offerings.
Right there with you. I learned that the hard way. One hot day, I turned on a fan, which blew a fuse and the electricity went out. My boyfriend was lots of pages into a long report and lost all but a couple of pages because of that. That he was upset is an understatement.
I recognize that computers are sentient and they hate me!
I drink Pepsi instead of coffee except when the coworker I intensely dislike who is so abhorrent to any and all productivity my brain just assigns any shift with them as a ‘survive the s@$& show and go home- on those shifts I will only drink Dr. Pepper or room temp water. When I am home I will sit alone and drink cherry pepsi in my favorite glass with ice like it is a normal person’s wine or beer. Until I am home and have successfully survived and maintained professional decorum long enough to get home I will not have any pepsi. I don’t know when I started doing it or why it’s Dr. Pepper since I don’t generally drink Dr. Pepper except for those shifts but it’s now become enough of a thing my husband and my kid 1 know if I stock up on Dr. Pepper it’s gonna be a LOOONNGG week for mommy and thus there is always pepsi and copious amounts of my favorite treats magically ( not bought or shopped for by mommy) waiting in the house.
Wishing Kid2 all the best!
I am able to make really good notes of a meeting when manually writing in my notebook. Concise, to the point. Done on the fly directly.
When I had to move to making notes into Word to be able to share them and find things easier….
I have to write every word. Every single one. I am fast and can do it but in a big going on 6th year project it’s getting tiring.
But my notes are really good at finding what happened a year ago in design if needed. 🤷♀️
This is a day late; didn’t check the emails ’till this morning.
Anyway, my weird quirk, when I was painting professionally, was to set the timer for about 15 minutes before my husband would come home for lunch. When I was deeply immersed in creating art, I would loose all sense of time & the ability to speak. The telephone had an answering machine, which I would “tune out,” & even though I would turn on the radio for music when I started, that would fade away, too. The first time I lost the ability to speak really freaked me out. I felt like I had just sat down to work for about five minutes before Jim came home. It had been four hours. He kept talking to me, & at first all I could do was stare at him, mute, before the speech kicked in. After that, I picked out an alarm with an extremely loud, irritating buzzer & set it out of easy reach so I couldn’t just quickly grab it & turn it off.
I’m semi retired now, but one of my former jobs was as an internet tech. Our group was outspoken, cantankerous, and educated enough to argue grammar. We had frequent debates over the use of punctuation (okay, outright rows and toe to toe fights). We all had our little rituals to make our work flow, and we all talked to our computers. I miss those people-they were my tribe.
I have a terrible time focusing while sitting in “proper” position. When I was working in an office job, I had so much trouble until I started looking around for unused chairs. I lucked into finding an old swivel chair that I could sit cross-legged on — made such a difference!
I work at a library and we also try to avoid the Q word or the word slow especially if you’re working the check-in or check-out desks. It causes chaos, the line grows to 6 deep, and everyone wants curbside pickup, or help printing documents. Several patrons return 20 or more books.
I have also petted a cross-town bus and said, “Be a good bus. Don’t break down I need to get to work. ” The bus didn’t break down and I made it to work on time. Since I only worked part-time I didn’t ride the bus every day. The next time I got on the bus driver said, “You weren’t here to be nice to it and it broke down again.” I made sure to pat it and say nice things and off we went to work without mechanical issues. I also talk to my computer all the time.
LOL, that is awesome. I used to pat my pickup’s dashboard when pulling a trailer up long hills. That truck never once broke down on me. It did eventually break down on my daughter, but not for lack of affection on her part; it was very old by then, with over 250K miles. Also she was living nine hours away from us and did not have a reliable mechanic at the time. Ours would have checked the brake line when she had it in for service. She was able to get it safely off the road. RIP pickup.
Hate hate hate Google docs and all its formatting awfulness. Word is best and I still weep for my Outlook
when the monitor was a humongus thing on your desk and things were going wrong with my computer i would wap it upside the head and it would start working. i also used to thump on copiers and they would work. these new fangled monitors can’t hold up to abuse so i just shut down and restart these days.
So when do you think the BDH can read a teaser of her book?!?
I mean we wouldn’t be the BDH if we didn’t ask right? I’m pretty sure there was a mug or something with that on it at some point …
Pre-congrats on the new book in the family! Can’t wait (obviously 😊)
In my younger days, I worked on aircraft communications for the Air Force: radios, interphone boxes, etc. We had a guy in the shop with the magic touch. After spending two days troubling shooting and changing parts, and it STILL wasn’t operational, I’d finally go get ****. He’d walk over, stare at it, then flip the power switch on. The frigging thing worked like a champ. Never failed.
Sorry, forgot to add that when I have a scene that just won’t work, I lean back, stare at it and invoke his name. Sadly, it doesn’t always work.
I know this is a bit off topic, but I can’t really find anywhere else to ask. Did I miss something, or is Derek’s sojourn with Ice Fury a story yet to come? Please?
You haven’t missed ay story about Derek with Ice Fury 🙂 . There will be more of Derek in the sequel to Blood Heir, and maybe he’ll tell us more then!
Thank you so much. I really think his story NEEDS to be told, and I’m looking forward to hearing it.
I use Word for work and Google Docs for personal, and I have trouble with Docs sometimes. I’ve gotten better, but I know all of my needed tricks in Word, and I usually have to do a Google search for how to do the same thing in Docs.
I’m also old enough that learning the new rules of grammar, like the now 1 space after a period are hard. But I have a friend who works in communications and updates me on some of them.
Work-wise my main quirk is when I’m writing SQL queries I use notepad++ instead SQL server management server, mainly because I can customize background and key word colors. But also because I can zoom in easier and put code side by side for comparison.
I’m a humanities academic – lots of writing. When I hit a block, I’ll tinker with another part of the same project, or do some non-writing busywork around the office/house for 15-60 mins. In the vast majority of cases that works, but if it doesn’t, not much else will, so it’s parked to the following day.
I’m long time Word user and fan of finding/replacing special characters from my editing days, but our university’s latest update of 365 is driving me nuts. I need to do a bit of research to find a way to turn off the AI prediction for the rest of the word or phrase – it so distracting / disruptive. Being only able to work on one comment at a time (even offline) is more than doubling the time it takes to work on collaborative docs. At least I managed to turn the suggestions off for outlook emails …
I had to laugh when you included theatre people amongst the superstitious – because we are the worst of the worst! I always refer to “The Scottish Play”, throw salt over my left shoulder and NEVER walk under ladders. Primarily because some numbskull with drop a tool off the top of said ladder.
I’m with you on the MacBook. It’s like trying to use scissors with the wrong hand. Give me my PC with Excel and Word, and I can produce wonders. Give me a Mac, and I’m degraded to a world class curser. I wonder if your Mac’s demise was artificially hastened in any way.
Hard core Excel user, hate the Mac version passionately. Every shortcut is wrong.
Used to work in an architectural design office. We had an Epson plotter that was absolutely temperamental. It would start printing and then stop part way through. The main admin was this sweetheart just out of high school. One day we were printing a rush job for the senior partner for a VIP client who was waiting in a conference room. Of COURSE the printer stopped part way. So we called for Alexis who came running in. The senior partner standing there fuming said can you fix this? She said Yep! Then proceeded to start dancing and singing in front of the plotter: “oh Edmund, my Edmund (her name for the printer” with jazz hands and high kicks… and the printer started up again. The look on the senior partner’s face still makes me laugh.
True story.
Oh, for video of that!
Must. Have. Background. Noise. It can be a show I’ve watched a billion times (as I do day job). An audiobook (same). Or music. But if there’s not noise in the background somewhere, stuff doesn’t get done, be it day job work or writing. It’s like my brain is connected to my ears.
I format as I type, so I set up keyboard shortcuts (Alt+1 for Heading 1 etc). The latest version of Word has the headings set up to shrink and expand – very annoying! So I’ve had to set up my own headings as defaults in the Normal template. I hate having to use other people’s computers because I can’t use my keyboard shortcuts, and I cannot think if I can’t format as I go.
I’m with you on Word. Use it all the time. BTW – just love the owl
I work in a hospital. We are superstitious. We do not say the S word (slow) or the Q word (quiet,) because if you do the ER will inevitably explode.
If someone says it, we make them knock on wood. (real wood, not particle board)
Hello my favorite authors,
You asked: “What weird quirks do you have in your professional life?”
I am a Network Engineer so I tend to talk with the equipment. I talked to routers, switches and specially firewalls. And when things go wrong, I tend to laugh.
I had a manager that once said to a bunch of new hires for our team: “Everything is fine until Maxie starts laughing. If you hear her laugh, run for the hills because sh** is about to hit the fan.”
Back when I wanted to be a writer, you had to submit manuscripts in Courier font. I hate Courier. I’d write in whatever font I wanted, then change just before printing (yes, printing) to mail (yes, mail) for submission.
Still a Word user. Styles are your friend. Change a style, change the whole document in one swell foop.
I work in metrology and calibration, when a piece of electronic equipment isn’t working properly we’ve been know to try the old ‘technical tap’ as a last resort. Technical tap- a small medium forced tap with ones hand to the upper left or right of the unit under test. Occasionally it works🤷
In the Navy I once had a Voltmeter that only worked properly with a technical tap…. we actually wrote out instructions to use a technician tap before taking readings on the Special Calibration sticker 😂 Now, the Voltmeter was from the 70’s and never actually used by anyone but us for its yearly calibration, we still thought we were pretty hilarious.
I have a rake rattle and a Cush ball that I rattle or throw and catch and that gives the computer time to fix itself. I love my Mac couldn’t live without it.