Friday 5 for November 24: Thanks a LOT

Five weekly questions from Scrivener's Friday 5.

1. What would you sarcastically like to thank your local government for?

Thanks for the rail development and all the cost and increased taxes that I will have to pay for the rest of my life. Now it is not only the general excise tax, because thanks to stupid, socialist government policy that think rail is a solution to our transportation problems, you are all sentencing us to increased costs as both property owners and renters who live close to the rail line and all the gigantic expensive development that is springing up because of TOD (Transient Oriented Development)... As a property owner I HATE seeing my property taxes increased because of the new developments that will spring up in my area. And Scrivener you are not off the hook, because property taxes and the ugly rail development will impact your neighborhoods in Kalihi that will drive more people out and increase the gigantic homeless problem we already have. So we have the stupid GET surcharge tax and the increased rates for property tax. The rail keeps on costing more money and the stupid city wants to build more in the future to get to the University of Hawaii, yet one of the rail corridors in my area is already blocked because of TOD yet to occur near the convention center.

Fuck You City & County of Honolulu. Rail is the biggest mistake ever of the 21st century unleashed upon all of the taxpayers and tourists in Hawaii. (Currently costing at least $10 billion for 20 shitty miles)

"They paved paradise and are erecting an expensive, giant, ugly fixed rail train".

Ugh!

2. What would you sarcastically like to thank your body for?

For getting emotionally bent out of shape and having high anxiety every time I think or write about the friggin' rail. (See above). Thanks a lot Honolulu.

3. What would you sarcastically like to thank your neighbors for?

I would like to thank that one lady who lives in our building with her stupid pooch who seems to have an exemption from our "NO PETS" policy. Ugh!!!!!

4. What would you sarcastically like to thank the internet for?

Spam. Pop Up Ads. Auto Playing Video Ads that steal your cell phone bandwidth. Crap.

5. What would you sarcastically like to thank November for?

I'd like  to thank this week's Friday 5 topic for helping put me in such a negative mood. Move on to December and November be totally fucking gone. I did not have Thanksgiving at home on the Big Island because, what the fuck... both my parents are dead and gone now and there is no reason other than to see my sister, to ever go back there for something that used to be celebrated but ain't no more.

Luckily Lisa and I had a nice simple turkey sandwich the day before even though Foodland screwed me and gave me a roast beef sandwich with a turkey sandwich label on it. Be Gone November, Be Gone!!!

Friday 5 for November 17: Makin’ It

From Scrivener's weekly Friday 5 blog comes these questions:

1. What skill seems like it would be really fun to learn?

Learning how to play the piano or guitar may be fun. I can read music on the treble clef side after I learned how to play the trumpet in high school. I'd probably have trouble figuring out the bass clef side. I'm also not very good a finger picking on a ukulele, so doing that on guitar may be difficult.

Other than that, perhaps learning how to fly an airplane may be fun, but could be very expensive.

2. Which of the winter Olympic sports would you love to compete in?

I really suck at all sports to a point that for most of my life I just avoided any kind of partipation in sports except for photographing some sporting events or watching a few on TV or in person.

That said I don't have any interest in winter sports and have never watched the winter Olympics on TV. We have no snow in 95% of the places here in Hawaii, which means there is no cultural connection that I know of to any winter sports.

However after going through a list of sports played in the Winter Olympics, the only one that I would be even remotely interested in is Curling. Why? Because I first saw it when I was a kid on The Beatles 1965 movie “Help!”

I thought that was one of the goofiest things I saw grown ups play…. sweeping some big kettle like stone on the ice from one place to another. Of course the scene in that Beatles movie was meant to be funny I think, hence my thought of the sport being one step up from silly.

And this is an Olympic sport? Who'd have known!

3. What fun craft did you make when you were a kid, in school or at camp or somewhere else?

In middle school I took a semester of woodworking class. This was way back in around 1971. I created a dog figurine door stop and a double horse napkin holder (see photo above).

4. If everyone in the world is the best in the world at some very specific thing, what are you most likely the best at?

I was very good at setting type copy on the Itek Quadritek 1200 to 2400 series of phototypesetting machines. It was a computerized system that the operator had to use codes to set all kinds of parameters to get copy out. I was very good in creating forms on this expensive device without having the benefit of having a WYSIWYG graphical user interface. It was all green screen text with codes to set attributes to each action of copy or graphics that the end user wanted to create. Granted for its time this system was complicated to use if you dived into the deep end. The tagging system was a precursor to mark-up languages we have today, such as HTML.

After personal computers became popular, namely the Macintosh platform, publishers and everyone else including myself moved on to these which were far superior in their capabilities and whole lot cheaper than the old stuff from the 1970s and early 1980s.

5. What’s something you own that was handmade by someone you know?

I have a handful of examples of crochet pieces that my grandmother, Mary Pawela Ah Ching created when she was alive. (1901 - 1987)

Friday 5 for November 10: Space

From Scrivener's Weekly Friday 5...

1. Of all the spaces in your residence, which is most powerfully your space?

All of it. I own and live in my small studio apartment which is essentially just one room combined with all the amenities except the bathroom and closet which are separate. That said, the living area is the most immediate of the “powerful”.

2. What’s the most spacious space in your everyday life? 

The great, urban outdoors and once in a blue moon the outdoors in the countryside or on another island if I choose to travel.

3. What’s a good song about space?

There’s plenty and here are my top 10:

1. Space Oddity - David Bowie - one of the most iconic “space” songs out there.
2. Main Theme From ‘Star Wars’ - John Williams / London Symphony Orchestra
3. Rocket Man - Elton John
4. Major Tom - Shiny Toy Guns - One of the few remakes I like better than the original.
5. Theme From ‘Babylon 5’ (Season 5) - Christopher Franke
6. Across the Universe - The Beatles
7. Space Cowboy - Steve Miller Band
8. Theme From ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ - Alexander Courage / Jerry Goldsmith
9. Man on the Moon - R.E.M.
10. Blue Danube Waltz - Strauss / MGM Orchestra from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’.

If you haven’t heard the above songs before, just search YouTube. There are videos and audios of every one of these. I would link them to this post, but unfortunately my main internet is down and I am posting this using my cell phone data stream.

4. What’s under your bed?

I have 2 flat storage bins containing various computer cables with add on accessories, and another with my old iBook G3 laptop and a small PC Notebook. Both have issues, both may be fixable. There is another small container with audio cables.

5. What are your thoughts on typing one space or two spaces after sentences.

When I first learned how to type on manual typewriters it was two spaces at the end of a sentence before the start of a new sentence. This works today only if you are using a TYPEWRITER with monospaced fonts. Other than that, NO NO NO!

In 1977 at my college’s publications department I was taught that on our then new, state of the art Itek Quadritek 1200 photo typesetting computer, that it was only a single space at the end of the sentence because of the use of proportional fonts even in those very early days of computerized typesetting. From that point on, I ingrained that mantra to all electronic, computerized keyboards I have used throughout my life. SINGLE SPACE AT THE END OF A SENTENCE BEFORE THE START OF THE NEXT.... works all the time with Macs, PCs, Chromebooks, smartphones, tablets and anything else that uses proportional fonts (which is just about everything). It is the mantra! Get with the program you double space Luddites!

And while I’m at it, do not underline text. That is what italics are for.