pyat

<sub>I'm ready to ride the bus to another bus!


Let's have a pow-wow about the Honeywell contract!</sub>

Well, sort of.

You know... if I was 35 in 1965, I'd probably be dead right now. Especially since I'd probably have been smoking a pipe.

If alive, I'd have clear memories of WWII, though I'd have been too young to serve. I might have served in Korea, as that war started shortly after my 20th birthday. I'd have been married in 1955. Elizabeth would have been born in 1959, and Claire in 1962. I'd probably be working for a daily newspaper, or as a copywriter for a company in Hamilton.

I'd probably have been the sort of man who futzed with tape recorders and home movie cameras. I'd have a darkroom in the basement, and a subscription to a couple of science-fiction magazines.

Five words, from melstra:

Typewriters
I’ve long had an appreciation and interest in mechanical typewriters. My first “real” full-time job upon leaving university was working as a Media Liaison for a Youth Services Canada make-work project, with the local police department. I was assigned an electric typewriter and a desk.


_{1920 Fontana Baby}

The typewriter was broken, but across the street from our office was a typewriter repair store run by an angry/interesting old Russian man. He repaired my typewriter at a reduced price in exchange for an ad in our newsletter. His shop was full of wonderful old mechanical typewriters.


_{1902 Blickensdorfer Electric, which required a key to start.}

A few years later, after my stint as a magazine writer and newspaper reporter, I was hired on a product researcher at the Canadian Office Product Association. As part of this job I researched and wrote about the history of office products. I can tell you a great deal about the secret histories of pencils and rubber stamps. I know things about paperclips that would make thy knotted and combined locks to part and each particular hair to stand on end, like quills upon the fretful porpentine. I also wrote a lot about historical typewriters


_{1870s Hansen Writing Ball.}

Some were works of art, others were curious dead-ends.


Also, there is a hidden world of typewriter-related pornography, dating back to the 1870s. No, seriously.

Snow


As a Canadian, I encounter snow several times a year. Usually, in the winter. I like snow, or at the least the comfortable contrast between a snow-filled landscape and the warm cozy glow of a house in winter. I like looking out a perfectly untouched field of snow. I like snowstorms that pile snow in fantastic shapes around my house. I dislike shoveling snow, but I have discovered in the past few years that regular workouts on a weight machine have made snow-shoveling much less of the wheezing, red-faced, overheated ordeal that it once was.

Technical Writing
I started my professional life as a reporter, first at a business magazine, and then at a newspaper. I enjoyed the newspaper a lot more, mainly because it was a rural paper. I don’t think I’ve have liked urban journalism as much. I loved traveling down side roads and listening to people tell me their stories. I liked how wonderfully strange things just seemed to always happen at the right time. I liked rumbling along in my Cutlass Calais, chasing a plume of smoke on the horizon, or slithering along icy dirt roads. There were definitely things I did not like. I was alternately too soft-hearted and too cynical for the job, all at once. I also learned, time and time again, that extensive research and legwork and sources can still lead you to a false conclusion.


_{My office at COPA. A luminous place of wonders!}

Oh. Tech writing, right. I got into tech writing through a curious backdoor of corporate writing. I found it much less stressful than reporting, and definitely more lucrative, though rarely as much fun. My professional anecdotes have become less interesting, but I also receive fewer death threats. And I found that I like codifying and classifying things. I like discovering how things work, and describing a process. I intensely dislike sales and marketing speak, which causes me problems at times.

Unitarianism

_{Channing Memorial, which I visited in Newport in 2007}

velvetpage and I started going to a Unitarian church last year. I like the people there, and I like the atmosphere of interrogative spirituality. Of course, given the entirely open nature of belief at the church, it also means you run into people you disagree with strongly, and have less in the way of common ground upon which you may debate. Quoting a few apt Bible verses does not cut much ice hereabouts. And, there’s also a good deal of Liberal Fundamentalism amongst the congregants. For example, this past week’s sermon was by a woman who took it as read that we all regarded technological development as foolish hubris and a path to destruction.

Glasses

_{The rimless glasses I wore before my current pair of specs.}

I’ve worn glasses since 8th grade. I went through much of highschool while wearing glasses that had been Scotch-taped or soldered together, because I was very hard on them. I’d gnaw the arms, scratch the lenses, actually pop out the lenses (deliberately) and make jury-rig repairs. I once lost a pair in Lake Ontario. I’ve owned eight pairs of glasses since 1987.

My current glasses are my favorite thus far, with a very distinctive sort of 1950s style to them. They’re very durable, and have endured countless knocks and twists and bends and being sat on. Alas, they’re starting to look a little battered, and I’m pretty sure I need bifocals. I fear I won’t be able to find replacements anywhere near as cool.