C-c-c-cold

[rowyn]

I'm at lunch now, and just remembered: I can copy/paste on my phone! I could write a meaningless short entry about my day and paste it into LJ without fear that it will be devoured by a glitch! You may learn to rue the day.

My day so far has been cold. It started out chilly inside my house because I got up before the heater kicked on for the morning. Then moved to bitterly cold on the walk to work. My cloak + coat combination did its job while I was walking through the neighborhood, but along the highway the wind blew unabated. The outdoors temperature according to the bank thermometer was -9.

It is not that cold indoors, but it's not warm, either. The bank was built in the sixties and its exterior walls are all floor-to-ceiling single-pane glass windows. It's asthetically pleasing but not well-insulated. I have spent today wearing two sweaters over my turtleneck, my cloak in my lap over my blanket, and my giant scarf over my head and around my neck. And the space heater running.

And I'm still cold.

I normally eat lunch at my desk, but today I went into the conference room that gets direct sunlight, and sat by the window in full sun. For twenty minutes, I was warm. I even took the scarf off! (Not the sweaters, though. Let's not go crazy.)

Now I am back to shivering at my desk. The part I hate most about being cold is that my shoulders and neck ache from instinctively hunching in an effort to conserve warmth. Ugh.

Since it's the first day after I set them, I am being all serious about my goals. I did a little bit of thinking & world-building on the Eve & Fox romance novel concept. I am studiously entering what I eat as I eat it. The app I downloaded is nosy, and it picked out a target calorie count for me. I haven't exceeded it yet! Pretty sure I will after dinner, though. (I didn't ask your advice, app! I'm not supposed to start trying to lose weight until *next* month). And I am blogging more. Right now, for example. The only goal I am neglecting is "edit RA". Editing on my smartphone is not fun. I do so much writing on it that I may need to learn to if I want it to happen. 25 days left in January to figure that out, however.

Comments

[level-head.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a successful day so far, but for the temperature. There will be a little more of this, but it is expected to warm before the end of the week.

A pity that tablets are often not convenient to carry. I wonder if a separate keyboard for the smartphone would help? Most accept Bluetooth add-on keyboards readily.

Best wishes on all of your goals!

===|==============/ Level Head

[rowyn]

The keyboard isn't the issue, actually. The problem is that when I'm editing, I want to have multiple documents open at once so I can refer between them, and there's no functionality or screen space for that on the smartphone. Probably a tablet would still be iffy; neither is designed with multitasking in mind -- the best you get is quickly swapping between apps. I also want to be able to jump around from place to place in a big document quickly ("now that I've changed this character in scene 1, I want to change scenes 23, 52 and 125 to match") which is another thing the phone does badly.

Today is warmer than yesterday. Why, it's almost supposed to get to 30! I'd go for a jog except that I don't want to jog in snowboots. :D Thank you for the well-wishes, sir.

[level-head.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. I've got an iPad, but would not consider it for actual document editing. It's an information appliance, but certainly no replacement for a computer. It is valuable and useful, just as a refrigerator is in a kitchen, but does not perform every task any more than a refrigerator can cook your food.

I've gone the other direction; an inexpensive big-screen television (40-50" can often be had for less than $300) makes an excellent computer monitor, showing 1920x1280 very nicely indeed. Mine is 47".

There you have room for multiple documents open, each with style and doc view panes.

===|==============/ Level Head

[rowyn]

Where did you get you 47" monitor? When I was looking last year I had to settle for 27". All of the larger ones I'd seen had worse resolutions. :/

[level-head.livejournal.com]

This was at WalMart (and Costco was very competitive) — both stores had specials on. There was a 40" for $299 — I splurged and got the 47" for about $360. It's a Sony, with 1920x1080p resolution.

I see that they now are selling "Internet TV" units at much higher prices. This is just a TV. You have to tinker with the "style" settings, as the default causes the text to halo a bit. That took only a minute, a year ago.

I bought another for a worksite some distance away a few months later; similar size and price. That was a Sharp; other than not being able to adjust the sleep timer delay, it's fine.

===|==============/ Level Head

[level-head.livejournal.com]

Amazon currently has 42" (Vizio, LG) at that resolution for $350 or so.

===|==============/ Level Head

[level-head.livejournal.com]

As an aside, perhaps you are missing an opportunity. There's good money in studying the effectiveness of smartphone apps for health:

http://phys.org/wire-news/150470838/associate-chief-of-emergency-medicine-receives-22m-award-for-ast.html

I've written grants for PCORI; this is larger than usual for them, and I thought of you and the calorie tracker. It needs a study!

===|==============/ Level Head

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

It's not *that* cold here, but it's still cold. Brrr.