Thursday 4 November 2004

Pic of the day: The new headset. It gnawed a little on the ears at first.

Mike broke

I hope this is not indicative of the quality of Plantronics headsets, but the microphone in mine was suddenly dead when I tried to dictate this morning. It was less than two months old. I think I may have the original receipt somewhere, but luckily I did not need it. I took the headset to the shop where I bought it, and waited for nearly an hour to be sure I got to talk with the guy I bought it from. (And he had only one previous customer too... a middle-aged couple, even more middle-aged than I. The woman's mobile phone had been stolen, as is often the case, and she needed a new one that was as least as good. This is the second time this autumn that I have to wait while such a transaction is processed to talk to this man. It took a lot of time the last time too. It was a woman the last time too, and she was even alone.) The waiting paid off, though, as he called the supplier right away and then gave me a new headset of the exact same type.

Not that typing by hand would be such a bad idea today. I have indeed done so for most of the day. Because tomorrow is my appointment with the doctor, and it would be just too bad to show up without pain in my shoulder and wrist! Of course, I have other things to complain about too, but normally my hand does hurt. Then again, normally I go to work. These last two weeks I haven't done that. Well, not quite two weeks, but close. I don't exactly miss it, but I suppose they would miss me if I stayed away long enough. Worse, they would stop missing me if I stayed away even longer...

I have not made much progress on my novel these last two days, after the US election. It is hard to be in the mood to write a happy romance story when your online friends are grieving over the loss of their country. Most of my writing has been of a political nature. The irony is that by default I tend to side with the Republican Party, as I support the idea that people who make an effort should be rewarded. I also tend to think that such things as marriage are good ideas, just not for me. And I definitely think that government ought to play a lesser role in our life than it does today. (Then again, even the Democratic Party would not support such a level of intrusive government as most European nations have.) None of this, however, changes the fact that George W. Bush is incompetent and after four years as President still comes across as mildly retarded. The economy is a disaster, the war is a disaster, the nation is deeply divided and human rights are being broken as a matter of policy. The main problem with George W. Bush is that he is unable to learn from his mistakes, because he is unable to admit that he ever makes a mistake. Mistakes, it seems, is a thing of his past, before his conversion to Christianity. This is a dangerous attitude, which now turns out to be shared by most American voters.

Not going to write more, as it is NaNoWriMo and I am already writing a novel.