Well, I already know how to write. That is, I can make marks on paper that resemble handwriting. I can even read them most of the time. But the most common response I get when somebody else sees my handwriting is, “You can read that?”

It never really bothered me because as far as I was concerned my handwriting was for me. I learned to type when I was 18 years old, and I haven’t had to present my handwriting to the outside world since then. Why do I care if anybody else can read it?

Yeah, my handwriting is an embarrassment. And that’s just the printing. For all intents and purposes, I flat cannot do cursive. Beyond signing my name, which is really just a big ‘J’ followed by a scrawl, I haven’t written anything in cursive for perhaps 40 years. The last time I tried, I couldn’t remember how to make some of the letters.

A while back I got the urge (who knows where these urges come from?) to improve my handwriting. I don’t recall now what led me to this particular book, but I ordered it. And then it sat on a shelf for a couple of years because … I don’t know why. I got lazy? Didn’t want to take the time? Whatever the case, I ignored it. A couple of weeks ago I was looking for something on the shelf and I came across it. So I went to Wal-Mart, bought a spiral notebook and some pens, and decided I’d try my “one hour per day” bit on improving my handwriting.

And because I knew that just improving my handwriting wasn’t going to be sufficient motivation, I set myself the goal to also learn to write left-handed. That is a challenge!

The book I’m working from is WRITE NOW™: the Getty-Dubay® Program for Handwriting Success™.

Again, I don’t recall why I selected this particular book. I’m quite happy with it so far. The selected script is italic, somewhat similar to Fairbank italic. The primary benefit of it, as far as I’m concerned, is that the cursive letters are almost identical to the basic (i.e. “printed”) letters. And the cursive doesn’t include those crazy loops that are the hallmark of the Palmer method cursive most of us learned and loathe.

The book is separated into three sections: basic italic, cursive italic, and edged-pen italic. It’s self-paced, starting with introduction of the lower-case letter forms, then capitals, numbers, and symbols. Then it covers cursive and edged-pen cursive. The focus of the book is on improving your handwriting. It assumes that you’ve learned some form of handwriting before.

The company does sell a complete writing course. I’ve not evaluated it. Truth to be told, I’m probably not qualified to evaluate it. The only person I’ve ever taught to write is me, and nobody who’s seen my handwriting would consider me an authority. See the web site for information.

I started on September 21, spending a few minutes each day doing a lesson in the workbook (tracing letters and then writing them on my own) and then writing a short paragraph in my spiral notebook. Both right-handed and left-handed. Understand, I’ve never trained my left hand to write. Other than a few short sentences scrawled on a lark, I haven’t ever tried.

Above is my right-handed printing. The top of the page is how I was writing before I started doing the exercises in the book. That was me trying (not real hard) to be legible. Believe me when I say that my “just for me” handwriting is a lot worse. The bottom part, September 22, shows my writing after going through a lesson or two and taking my time to get the letter forms correct. You can see that I’m struggling to break bad habits, and concentrating on forming the letters caused me to misspell “write” because I lost track of the larger goal.

But the improvement after one day, is pretty astonishing. That’s the product of reviewing the letter forms, tracing and practicing them in the workbook, and then trying very hard to duplicate those shapes on paper. That short paragraph probably took me three or four minutes to write. That’s okay. I’ll learn how to do it the right way, then I’ll work on improving my speed.

And there’s my left-handed printing. It’s curious that the “before” writing is neater than the “before” with the right hand. I attribute that to having to think about how to form each letter. Again, the difference of a single day’s practice, considerably less than one hour, is all that separates the two samples.

And, yes, I really did fall asleep while I was writing that last paragraph. I’d been up very late preparing a presentation the night before, and I’d spent most of the day working on it, too. I probably shouldn’t have been practicing my writing, the shape I was in. You can see some of the bad habits from my old right-handed handwriting creeping in.

From September 21 through September 29, I’ve logged five sessions of writing practice, each one less than an hour. That’s total time spent doing the workbook exercises and writing a small paragraph in my spiral book. Total time I’ve spent, both hands combined, is something less than four hours. I’m still very slow and have a lot of improvement to make before I’ll consider my handwriting “good,” but the progress I’ve made so far is encouraging.

And, yes, as soon as I’m pleased with the handwriting I create using the gel pen I’ll invest in a good edged pen and learn to use that.

If you want to improve your handwriting, all you have to do is practice. Get a book or find a Web site that has some practice exercises. I’d suggest something other than the loopy Palmer method cursive you probably learned in school. There are plenty of attractive scripts that you’ll find much easier and faster to write. You don’t even have to practice a lot. My goal is to do a lesson in the workbook every other day, perhaps 30 minutes. And to write a small paragraph in my spiral notebook at least that often, if not every day. I know I’m not going to improve my handwriting overnight. It doesn’t matter how long it takes until I’m “good” at it, as long as I see steady improvement.

The US efforts to curb illegal immigration have been stupidly focused. Don’t get me wrong, I believe we should have strong borders and enforcement to prevent people coming in illegally. I applaud realistic efforts to strengthen border protections. We shouldn’t let “just anybody” come into the country without at least having some assurance that their intentions are in line with ours.

I find it ridiculous, though, that it’s easier for somebody to come across the border illegally and live on the fringes of society than it is for somebody to come to the country legally. And then those who are here legally are subject to the short-sighted whims of political parties. During the first Trump administration our team of eight people at Amazon lost two employees for more than six months because immigration laws changed and they were suddenly no longer authorized to work. They were able to stay in the country, but because of some particular rule change or Congress’s lack of action on something, their authorization to work expired and there was no way to renew it.

Millions of people who had jumped through all of the immigration hoops, had obeyed all the regulations, filled out all the forms, owned houses, had kids, contributed to the economy and paid taxes were treated as outsiders, at best, if not suspected criminals. Some were found to have inadvertently missed a filing date and were summarily exported. 10 years or more in the country as model guests and then Boom! Kicked out. Not only did the companies who sponsored their visas lose valuable employees, the nation turned millions of friends into enemies. The economic losses pale in comparison to the loss of trust and goodwill.

Stupid.

The ongoing debate about the “Dreamers,” children of parents who came to the country illegally decades ago, is even dumber. These children, now adults, have known no other home but the United States. They have families themselves, steady jobs, own homes and businesses, pay taxes, and extoll the virtues of living in the United States. But because their parents brought them here illegally decades ago they are under constant threat of having their lives destroyed by political whim.

Forget the moral arguments, whether it’s “right” that they should be allowed to stay or whether it’s “right” that we should destroy somebody’s life because their parents didn’t do the right thing. Think instead of the economic cost and the loss of goodwill. Nothing good comes from forcing these Americans, which they are in all but name, to leave the country and start a new life somewhere that they’ve never been. Well, nothing good except for some politician to placate his over-zealous supporters by showing that he’s “tough on immigration” and “doing something about the problem” by turning productive, tax-paying friends into implacable enemies.

“Stupid” doesn’t even begin to describe it.

People are forever waxing nostalgic over the “old days” of music. Through some twisted reasoning they long for the days of records, tapes, and CDs, complaining that today they have to pay a monthly subscription just to listen to music. Perhaps they don’t remember things the same way I do.

I bought a high-end stereo system in 1985. At the time, a record album cost about $6.00. For what is the equivalent of about $15.00 today, I got maybe 40 minutes of music. If I had a turntable and stereo. And I had to get up and flip the record after 20 minutes. Cassettes and CDs were available, too, and cost about the same. The CDs’ primary advantage was that I didn’t have to get up and flip the record (or tape).

Today, I pay $15.00 per month to Spotify, and Debra and I have access to a huge selection of music, podcasts, audio books, and who knows what all else. I can play whatever I want whenever I want. I turn it on and it plays. Continuously. Until I tell it to stop.

Let that sink in a little bit. For the monthly price of what I would have paid for one album, I have an essentially unlimited music library. And I’m not talking obscure stuff, but the latest music in any genre and pretty much everything of note that has been released since the dawn of recorded music. Sure, there are some things not available for various reasons, but Spotify and similar services do in a very real sense give you everything. For the price of one record album per month.

Not only that, but I don’t have to store the music collection, take special care of it, or replace a cassette tape because the temperamental player decided to have a snack. Warped records are a thing of the past.

To play those records or whatever back in 1985 required some special-purpose equipment. Very bulky, heavy, and expensive equipment. My high-end stereo system in 1985 cost what today would be about $12,000. And all it could do was play music: AM/FM stereo, vinyl records, cassette tapes, and CDs. The equipment weighed a couple hundred pounds and sucked power like nobody’s business. Sure, it was a really nice stereo, but even a low-end stereo back then would run you a few hundred dollars: what today would be $1,000 or more.

And if you bought one new record album every month then in 10 years you’d own maybe 120 hours of music. But if you then discovered Pink Floyd and wanted to collect all of their albums, it’d cost you $75.00 (equivalent to $180 today). Remember Apple Music and $1 per song?

Streaming, too, requires some equipment. You need a phone and an internet connection. Oh, wait, you already have those! All you need, if you want to save your ears, is a better speaker than what the phone includes. A pretty decent speaker for small spaces will run you maybe $30. Some quite usable wireless earbuds will be less than $100. You can spend a whole lot more if you want to, but a “listenable” speaker is not at all expensive. By contrast, even a set of low-end stereo speakers in 1985 cost hundreds of dollars: the equivalent of a thousand or more today.

So, let me see: a hugely expensive, non-portable stereo system combined with a laughably small music collection, or a $15.00 monthly subscription to a service that gives me immediate access to pretty much anything I’d ever want to listen to whenever I want it, wherever I am.

Tough choice. Let me think . . .

Who am I kidding? If you’re nostalgic for the bad old days of owning media, knock yourselves out. I’ve got some records, CDs, and cassettes (no 8-tracks left, sorry) I’ll make you a heck of a deal on. Me, I’ll sit back and groove to some tunes and laugh while watching you fiddle with your records or whatever.

A friend on Facebook asked how to make a wobbly ceiling fan not wobbly. That’s one of those questions that starts with, “The best temporary solution is . . .” My response was more an explanation of why there is no permanent solution.

What the uneducated call “balancing the ceiling fan” is really just an amateur attempt at counteracting Fae magic. The one about putting small bits of coin on the blades to “counteract the wobble” can work temporarily, depending on the amount of iron in the coins. But it only dampens the magic for a while–until the Fae notice what you’ve done, and change the magic frequency. Then you have to do the “balancing” exercise again.

Various other solutions are proposed, but none of them have proved effective over the long term. And what do you expect? The ceiling fan is the perfect toy for the Fae to torment us with. It’s something that humans think they like because they think they need, but they secretly detest because of the lurking danger of things getting caught, inadvertently losing a digit or a limb due to an ill-timed gesture, etc. It’s like a spinning guillotine just over people’s heads. The Fae love this kind of thing! They’ll give it a little wobble–just enough so that you barely notice it–and they’ll delight in the annoyance it gives you. Then they’ll increase it steadily until you go through that silly “balancing” trick. And every time you “balance” it, the wobble goes away for a while until the Fae decide to torment you some more. Then it comes back, slightly worse than it was before. The Fae find this whole thing incredibly amusing, watching you get more and more irritated over time and all the while wondering at the incredible stupidity of humans who can’t figure out that their problems would be *over* if they’d just get rid of the silly ceiling fan!

Yeah, ceiling fans. Playthings of the Fae. NOT recommended.

I mentioned a while back, as part of resurrecting this blog, the possibility of moving old blog entries (from October 2000 until March 2007) to WordPress. Having re-entered the old posts from 2007 on, I figured I might as well have the old posts here, as well. I’ll probably keep the old diary format on the site, but it’s nice to have all my blog writings in a single place.

Don’t get me wrong, I like WordPress. A lot. But it has some annoying quirks. One of which has to do with the UI for assigning categories and tags to posts. In the WordPress user interface, the controls for adding categories and tags are shown on the “Post” tab when editing a post. They’re supposed to be shown below where one adds the author, date, and a few other post-related items. Unfortunately, they’re not always shown.

Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, they’re shown when I select “Add New Post” from the list of blog posts. They’re also shown sometimes, very rarely, if I select “Add New Post” from the post-publishing page. In the cases when they’re not shown, sometimes (again, very rarely), doing a hard refresh (Ctrl+F5) of the page will cause them to be shown. Sometimes I get the Tags, but not the Categories. Oddly, I can’t recall seeing the Categories controls without the Tags controls.

The problem, of course, is “sometimes.” The only reliable way I know of to show the Categories and Tags controls is to do the following:

1. Create a new post.
2. Add the post title.
3. Save the post as a draft.
4. Go back to the list of posts.
5. Click to edit the post that you just created.
6. The Categories and Tags controls are now displayed in the “Post” tab.

I suspect the problem is that an AJAX request is timing out somewhere, although I can’t explain why it never seems to time out when I’m editing a previously-saved post.

WordPress gives the author a second chance to add tags and categories. When I click on the Publish button, it does some pre-publish checks and gives the opportunity to change some things. Or, if configured, to remind about Categories and Tags. At least that’s what it’s supposed to do. And it does. Rarely.

It’s way too much trouble. At some point I got tired of having to make that round trip. I don’t know if it’s WordPress or my hosting provider that’s the problem. At this point I don’t really care. I just won’t tag my blog entries at this time. Which is okay. It turns out that coming up with a good set of categories is difficult. And without careful thought, all a tag cloud does is obscure things. Surprise: taxonomy is hard. I’ll get all the blog entries converted to WordPress and then I’ll worry about taxonomy.