Reluctance

This morning as I left for work I realized that, once again, I was running low on cigarettes.
There was no immediate need to buy more, but I thought about how I could spare myself the trouble of having to stop somewhere to get more on the way home by instead stopping to pick some up on the way in to work, as the disparity in traffic levels between the trip to and the trip from work is considerable, and stopping on the way home would, therefore, end up adding much more in the way of a delay.
Of course, given that virtually every aspect of Northern Virginia is built around a fanatical devotion to inconvenience, this would mean having to stop at the gas station that was the scene of last week's scanner failure drama, as there was nowhere else on my route that would be as easily accessible.
I was, understandably, reluctant.
Still, it seemed the least-worst option, and so I pulled into the parking lot, and was pleased to see that at least there were open parking spaces.
I was less pleased to see that the same guy from last week was working.
Walking up to the counter, I said, "Two packs of Marlboro lights."
He reached up to retrieve one pack, then said to me, "Two is seventy cents cheaper."
I said, "Yes, that would be why I asked for two."
He looked at me skeptically, reached up to grab another pack, and then I held my breath while I waited to see if the scanner worked.
It did, fortunately.

Even For Me

Even though I didn’t wake up any earlier than the usual ridiculously early time I wake up, my workout wasn’t any shorter than usual, and I wasn’t any quicker about showering and getting dressed than is typically the case, I ended up leaving the house about 15 minutes early yesterday morning.
As I was running low on cigarettes, and had some extra time, I stopped at a gas station to pick some up.
I pulled into the parking lot and was surprised – and annoyed – to see that there weren’t any parking spaces available.  I mean, it wasn’t even 5 AM…what the fuck?
I finally found a space and pulled into it.  While I was at it, I decided I’d grab an extra energy drink and protein bar.  Fortunately the “5 AM Rush” had cleared out by then, and I at least didn’t have to stand in line.
Before asking for the cigarettes, I waited for the guy to ring up the other items.  He tried scanning the energy drink.  Then he tried again.  And again.  And again.
He fiddled with the cord and tried again.
And again.
Without a word, he picked up a cell phone and stepped back from the counter and tried calling someone.
Receiving no answer, he came back to the counter, fiddled the cord again, tried to scan the energy drink, failed, tried scanning the protein bar, failed, put down the cell phone, then said, “Sorry, sir.  No.”
”What do you mean ‘no?’”
”It no work.”
”I can see that, but are you seriously trying to tell me that you’re completely incapable of selling me anything?”
He looked at me helplessly.
”That’s nonsense,” I said.  “Do you intend to spend the morning telling every customer that you can’t sell them things simply because the scanner doesn’t work?”
”It-“
”Yes, it doesn’t work.  I’ve been standing here the whole time watching it not work.  There is no reason that should mean you can’t actually sell things that customers want to buy.  You can’t manually enter a price into the register, or manually enter in the UPC?  You can’t move your drawer to the other register and see if that scanner works?  You have options; saying ‘no’ and shrugging your shoulders isn’t one of them.”
While he appeared unmoved by my argument, he attempted fiddling with the cord once again – this time I think he actually unplugged it and plugged it back in – and I noticed that the light on top of the scanner switched from blue to green, so this time the attempt to scan the items actually worked.
That experience, naturally, ate up all of the extra time I had somehow mysteriously gained.
As Scott put it, that all seemed excessive, even for me, in terms of the Universe just straight-up fucking with me.

The Legend Of Vikram And The Sudden Braking

Vikram Singh stifled a yawn as he drifted lazily along in his 2005 Honda Civic.

Sure, he was up and on the road at this ridiculous hour, well before the sun was even considering rising on this early summer day, so that he could avoid the worst of Rush Hour traffic and get to the Vienna Metro station at a time that would allow him to only be a few minutes late for work in DC, but he wasn’t in a hurry.

So he eased up on the gas as he approached the green light at Belmont, and decided to pump the brakes a few times, ultimately finding himself pleased – though he couldn’t say why, exactly – to see the light shift to yellow, and he knew that if he pumped the brake one or two more times, he was guaranteed to be stopped by the red light.

Two cars glided to a stop behind him – he had been sure, though, again, he wasn’t certain as to why – to stop nearly a car-length back from the line. A line of cars extending back nearly a quarter-mile came to a halt in the two lanes to his left.

He glanced in his mirror and was dimly aware of a car moving out of the center lane and into his own. The car – though he couldn’t see any details in the darkness, there was something familiar about it – approached at a rapid, but cautious speed, prepared to stop if any of the other cars in the center lane ahead of it suddenly decided to perform a similar maneuver.

As the car stopped, Vikram was aware of what he could only call a presence, and a voice that simply said, “You’re up.”

With those two words, he understood it all: the driver of that car was Jon.

This was it: Vikram’s turn to shine.

All the drivers in Northern Virginia awaited the call from the Universe, the one letting them know that they had been presented with the opportunity to set the tone for Jon’s day as he made his commute to work in these pre-dawn hours.

Vikram didn’t know anything about Jon, wouldn’t recognize him if he saw him, and didn’t even know his name, but he knew this much: fuck him.

Swallowing nervously, he looked around at his fellow drivers, and though he couldn’t see their faces, he knew that they were nodding towards him respectfully and encouragingly. They all knew their roles, just as Vikram knew his.

“My turn,” Vikram said, aloud. “My chance to shine.”

He suppressed his excitement. This wasn’t about him, and it was no occasion for excitement. This was a solemn duty, this was a higher power calling upon him to fuck with Jon, whoever Jon was, and for whatever reason.

As he considered the significance of what he had been called upon to do, his excitement gave way to anxiety. “What if I screw it up? What if, out of habit, I just floor it as soon as the light turns green?”

He shook his head. “I won’t. I won’t do that. And the others….let the cars behind me slow him down. I don’t have to…” his words trailed off.

No.

He was the chosen one. The Universe and his fellow commuters were counting on him.

His course was set. Every moment of his life had been leading inexorably to this one.

“How will I do it? Wait until the light is about to turn green, then suddenly decide to bend down and pick something up off the floor on the passenger side? Fiddle with my cell phone? Sent a text? Tweet about fucking over Jon?”

With a laugh, he said, “Maybe I’ll do it by spending my time here figuring out how I’m going to do it.”

He dismissed the idea, and settled on a sensible course: just taking his own sweet time to finally move his goddamn ass after the light turned green.

At the last second, just instants before the light changed, he was struck by a thought: Why not go for at least a little glory? After all, the Universe had to have chosen him for a reason.

He barely had time to finish the thought before the light changed, and the drivers in the other lanes – content in the knowledge that Jon wasn’t behind them – instantly took off at top speed, dozens of cars whizzing past before Vikram even considered taking his foot off the brake.

At least, that was how it was supposed to happen.

Instead, keenly aware of the disapproving eyes upon him, Vikram reacted with the same alacrity to the changing of the light and began to speed forward.

“Trust me, my friends,” he said to the disbelieving drivers all around him. “I know what I’m doing.”

Too stunned by his actions to think to respond any differently, the two cars behind him also surged forward with a sudden jerk.

Jon’s hopes, Vikram knew, were rising. He wasn’t going to be left waiting while all of the other cars on either side left him eating their dust.

As the hopes built up, Vikram could feel them washing over him, and, as he neared the center of the intersection, he grabbed hold of those hopes and threw them under the wheels of the cars in the other lanes by suddenly slamming on his brakes. The two cars, understanding what Vikram had done, did the same, leaving Jon with no choice but to slam on his own brakes and watch the line of cars, that had grown to extend over a half a mile, move steadily forward along Route 7 and leaving him behind.

The disapproval of the other drivers instantly turned to adulation.

The day was off to a shitty start for Jon, and Vikram knew that, if only in the collective unconscious of the drivers of Northern Virginia, songs would be sung about the magnificence of his glorious achievement.

With a smile, Vikram took his foot off the brake, punched the gas, and left Jon, shaken by the jolt of the sudden stop, shaking his head and swearing behind him.

The Only Excitement In My Bedroom

Scott came over for movie night last night, and, prior to his arrival – I had worked from home yesterday – I realized that to a normal person my house would probably seem a bit chilly, so I turned the heat up.  Way up.
By the time I went to bed and had turned the heat down, it was in the 80s upstairs.
When I woke up this morning I was immediately confronted by the unmistakable odor of stinkbugs.
I figured that there must have been some lying around dormant in the house before being roused by the previous evening’s unusual warmth.
As I went about my morning ritual, though, I noticed that the stink seemed to be following me, and at one point as I was scratching my nose I realized that the stink was on me.
Fortunately it was nothing that a little sweat couldn’t take care of, so, post-workout, and no longer stinking of stinkbug but stinking of Jon instead, I headed back upstairs to take a shower.
At some point while I was getting dressed I happened to glance in the direction of my bed, where I saw the crushed corpse of a stinkbug right where I had previously been sleeping.
So that explained that.
It figures; the first time in a very long time that I didn’t sleep alone and my bedtime companion turned out to be smelly and disgusting and wound up dead…

****

Universe:  Hey Jon, you look pretty beat.  Rough week?
Me:  Yeah.  I know I worked from home yesterday, but I’m still exhausted from Wednesday.  Only I could manage to go in to work late and still end up working a thirteen hour day.
Universe:  How did that happen?
Me:  Well, I had to do a 9 PM training session and I didn’t want to go in to work, come home, then drive back in again, so I went in late and just stayed there, but I also worked from home for a couple of hours before I went it.  Plus I did a bunch of work when I got home the night before.  So that was a fourteen hour day.
Universe:  Well, you should take a nap.
Me:  Ehh, maybe.  But there’s some stuff I wanted to get done, and there’s a bunch of recorded TV on the DVR.
Universe:  You’ve got plenty of time for that.  It’s a long weekend.
Me:  Yeah, I guess you’re right, I could – wait, what are you up to?
Universe:  Nothing!  I’m just concerned about your well-being.
Me:  Uh huh.
Universe:  Seriously, everything is off-kilter for you this week.  Your schedule was all messed up, you didn’t get to work out as much as you should have, you didn’t really eat well...you need some rest.
Me:  Hmph.  Don’t think that I agree with you just because you’re right.
Universe:  Noted.  Now climb on into bed.
Universe:  Jon?
Me:  What?
Universe:  Are you asleep yet?
Me:  Does it look like I’m asleep?
Universe:  Sorry, just checking.
Universe:  …
Universe:  How about now?
Me:  No.
Universe:  …
Universe:  Now?
Me:  Zzzzz
Universe:  Jon?
Me:  Zzzzz
Universe:  Are you dreaming?
Me:  *Mumble*
Universe:  Oh, seems like a nice dream.  That’s cool.
Universe:  …
Universe:  COBRAS!  There are cobras attacking your feet!  Your entire room is crawling with them!
Me:  EEEEYAAAAHHHHH!  COBRAS!  GEDDEMOFF!  GEDDEMOFF!  GEDEM – what the hell?
Universe:  Oh, you’re awake already?  That wasn’t much of a nap.
Me:  I hate you.

On The Nature Of Being Jon

Step 1. Notice massive chocolate stain on pant leg
Step 2. Break out the Tide To Go and apply to stain
Step 3. Discover that it's not a stain, but rather a piece of black thread
Step 4. Remove thread; swear under breath about massive wet spot on pant leg

Random Links And Observations

I went for a walk this afternoon, and here are some things I encountered:

A tall, gangly teenaged boy on the phone, arguing with his girlfriend:

"You said you'd be there! I didn't know you were going to fuckin' Pittsburgh!"

A little further along the way, there was a tiny, yippy little dog chained up in a yard that was yipping its yippy little head off at this older woman and large young man, who were just standing there staring at it. The yipping was so high-pitched and cartoonishly annoying as to sound like a parody of a yippy dog, or as if someone had forced it to breathe in some Helium.
The woman was saying, in a soothing tone, "Just calm down. It's okay."
Meanwhile I'm thinking, "Why are you trying to reason with the dog? Just keep moving," as it was clear that they, like me, were just passing by. "Why are you standing there antagonizing the thing? Are you retarded?"
It was at that point that I noticed that the woman was not talking to the dog, but to the guy, who, despite his size, was covering his ears like a child, and was letting out a similarly childlike groan.
Oh.
Whoops.
The guy then let out a howl and started to rush the dog, which backed away and increased its yipping to even more manic levels, which caused the guy to retreat, clutch more tightly at his ears, start crying, and wailing, "Nooo-oooooo! NOOOOOOOOO!"
So, yeah.

*****

As a reminder to those who knew about it, and to inform those who didn't, tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day.

*****

It was my friend Eric's birthday yesterday, and today, to celebrate, he and a bunch of his friends are hitting up a local strip club, which is having an amateur night, and he invited me along.
Unfortunately, that's "local" for him, which means it's in Delaware.
Still, I seriously considered going, since I haven't seen Eric in over seven years, and haven't been to a strip club in nearly eight.
I would actually like to go to a strip club, but I'd hate to go alone, and the circumstances of my life are such that I don't really have any friends that would or could go with me.
But ultimately I decided against it, as, under the best of circumstances, I hate driving anywhere that it takes more than an hour and a half to reach, and being in the thick of Northern Virginia/DC/Maryland traffic on a Friday afternoon is about as far from the best of circumstances as you can get.
If I'd had any sense, I would have taken today off and headed out that way during the non-peak hours.
But then, no one has ever accused me of having any sense.

*****

I have a doctor's appointment on Wednesday - I'm hoping I'll be put on different medication and be able to get off the insulin - which includes a complete physical. I figured that would take the better part of the morning, so I decided I might as well just take the day off.
When I was considering making the trek to Delaware, I decided that since I'd be losing the better part of my weekend I might as well take Monday and Tuesday off as well.
So now I don't have to be back to work until Thursday.
Too bad I don't have anything to do with that time off...
It turns out that I wouldn't have been able to take today off anyway, as I ended up having some meetings that I couldn't really afford to miss.

*****

My Boss: I'm planning for us to do an off-site team-building kind of thing pretty soon. Just a day to get out of the office and do something like go bowling, or play pool or something.
My Boss: Or we could just go someplace nice for lunch or something.
Me: Well, as far as the bowling or whatever...I pretty much suck at everything across the board, so I vote for lunch.
(We ended up, based on my suggestion, deciding to have lunch and then go to the Udvar-Hazy Center to see an IMAX movie.)

*****

I've started hitting stories from around 1981 in my Savage Sword of Conan reprints, and I'm finding that the nudity is starting to disappear, so it looks like my theory that The Universe got them to stop featuring nudity just as, in early puberty, I was on the cusp of becoming a regular reader was the correct explanation.

*****

I really wish this were real so that I could direct all of the people fruitlessly coming here in search of boob size-related knowledge to buy themselves a Droid:

It Tries To Warn You Itself With Its Terrible Taste*

While I’ve been a lot more conscious about what I eat, I’ve still been pretty lazy about actually preparing my own food. During the week I opt to bring in a breakfast of a low-carb protein shake, peanut-granola bar, and yogurt. Being too lazy to cook, I end up buying lunch, trying to go with something reasonably healthy, or at least low in carbs. Then when I get home – remember, I’m too lazy to cook – I usually have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (all-natural peanut butter, sugar free preserves), a bowl of high-fiber cereal, and maybe some yogurt or another peanut-granola bar.

Yesterday I decided to be slightly more ambitious, so for breakfast/lunch I made a dozen or so Fiber One pancakes, with the intent of having the leftover pancakes for breakfast throughout the week. In the evening I decided to actually cook something. I’ve been seeing a lot of references in places such as the healthy meals cookbook I got from my sister Kim for my birthday – by the way, thanks for the cookbook - to people making mashed cauliflower as a low-carb alternative to mashed potatoes, so I decided to make that along with some chicken breasts. I figured the leftovers would allow me to bring lunch at least a couple of times during the week.

It all turned out pretty well, but about an hour and a half after I ate, my stomach started churning, and for the next several hours there was a lot of bad stuff going on (and coming out of me). Upon reflection, I realized that, while it looked okay, I had no idea how long ago I’d bought the cauliflower in question. Given that I think I’d have been a lot sicker if it had been the chicken, I suspect that the cauliflower was the cause of my gastrointestinal distress.

Regardless, with the constant trips to the bathroom – and the fact that the sickness seemed to be wreaking havoc with my sugar – I didn’t get much sleep, and I woke up this morning feeling very tired and, well, drained. My stomach still felt pretty uneasy as well. I thought about calling in, but decided against it, though once I arrived at work I realized that I really should have just stayed home, so, after going to the one meeting I had for the day, I headed home around noon.

I managed to get a bit of sleep and started feeling better, and have managed to eat without having the food take the express train out of me.

Now I seem to be mostly back to normal. Of course, my plans for bringing in the leftover chicken and cauliflower – not knowing which is the culprit, I will be avoiding both – in for lunch have gone, er, down the drain.

All The Nudes That’s Fit To Print Department:

Years ago, when they held the licensing rights to the character, in addition to the regular color comics series Conan the Barbarian (monthly) and King Conan/Conan the King (bi-monthly), Marvel used to publish a black and white magazine called The Savage Sword of Conan the Barbarian, which I believe was on a quarterly schedule.

Not being a standard comic, Savage Sword was sold in a lot of places that didn’t normally carry comics, and, more significant to the point of this Department, did not fall under the guidelines of the Comics Code Authority.

I started picking up Savage Sword on a semi-regular basis sometime in the early 80s, shortly after the release of the movie, and I was sort of surprised at the somewhat more violent and risqué content compared to the regular comics. The differences weren’t extreme; there was a lot more blood, though being black and white it just looked like ink, the dialogue was just slightly more bawdy (I distinctly recall a scene in which two uncouth brigands are preparing to rape a woman they’ve found bathing in a stream and one of them says that they’re going to play a game called “Horsey in the Stable,” just before Conan swoops in and protects her virtue [which she later gives to him]), and there was usually a fair amount more exposed skin than was shown by even the most scantily-clad of the various wenches and maidens who appeared in the regular comics.

There was, however, very little in the way of full-on nudity. There’d be a fair amount of side-boob and the occasional bare bottom, but it was a rare thing indeed to see an actual depiction of a female nipple, and when that did happen, it was usually on one of the pin-up pages included in the book featuring action scenes depicted by various artists. At best, if a fully-exposed breast was shown, you got some semi-circles that indicated the outer edges of the areolas.

In recent years, Dark Horse Comics acquired the rights to Conan and in addition to publishing new books has been reprinting much of the old Marvel runs, including several volumes collecting Savage Sword.

I’ve picked up six of the Savage Sword reprints, and am currently making my way through Volume 6, which will bring me up to a point a couple of years before I started reading Savage Sword back in the day. In reading the reprints of these stories from the 70s, I’ve noticed something: naked breasts complete with nipples. Lots of them.

So this has led me to wonder something. Did Marvel editorial originally order an artistic cover-up of all the boobage when they were publishing Savage Sword, and now Dark Horse is simply reprinting the original, unedited art? Or did Savage Sword feature a lot of nudity up until the point at which I started reading it and then stop?

I suspect that it’s the former, and that Dark Horse is simply reprinting the art as it was originally submitted, but there’s another part of me that thinks that given how much The Universe likes to mess with me – and that it’s been doing so for my entire life – Savage Sword simply stopped featuring full-on nudity just as I started reading it.

If so, the joke’s on The Universe, because with the hormones raging through my system back then, even the almost-but-not-quite nudity that I found in Savage Sword every few months was more than enough for my purposes.

*The Simpsons reference in the title of the post is actually in reference to broccoli, not cauliflower, but it still works (even though I do actually like the taste of both).

*Sigh*

It was bound to happen.

Everyone and his brother bitched about all the problems with Windows Vista and how much it sucked and meanwhile I had very few issues with it, and actually kind of liked it.

On the other hand – with the usual dissenters – most people agree that Windows 7 is teh awesome and report very few problems with it, while I end up having all of the problems they apparently had with Vista.

Still, if I can get past the problems, there are a lot of things I like about Windows 7, though many of them are simple “gee-whiz, tha't’s kind of cool” things rather than major changes to performance and the interface or anything like that.

The Good:

The “Peek” function is cool.  If you have a bunch of windows open you can just hover over this button in the lower right-hand corner and all of the open windows turn transparent, allowing you to see the desktop. 

Thumbnail views of open windows when you hover over them on the taskbar are also cool, and it makes use of the “Peek” function:  if you hover over the thumbnail, all windows in front of it turn transparent.

I really like the idea of using Libraries to organize content in a disorganized fashion.

Grabbing a window and “shaking” it causes all other open windows to be minimized.  More fun than functional, I guess.

Jumplists, an evolution of “Recent Documents” is pretty sweet.  When a program is “pinned” to the Start Menu or taskbar, you can right-click on it and see a list of files recently opened by that application.

Native support for .iso burning is a long overdue new feature.  Right-click on the file, choose “Burn to Disc,” and you’re all set.

I like the new look of Media Center – and the rather ostentatious new start-up sound – and I’m hoping that more content will eventually be added to the Internet TV function.

The Indifferent:

Along with native burning support for .iso files, it would have been nice to have a built-in feature to mount them as drives.

I’m not seeing the supposed native support for .mov files.

The Bad:

Still no native Blu-ray support?  I don’t buy the “it would add $30 to the cost” argument.

The Downright Horrible:

When I got home on Friday I decided to try playing around with Windows 7 on Munin before installing it on Hugin.

However, the network status icon was showing me that my computer had “limited connectivity,” in that it was still connected to my network, but couldn’t access the Internet.

I tried the standard fix action:  a reboot.  This caused it to get as far as the “Shutting Down” down screen, but no further.  Eventually I had to kill the power.  Once it booted up, though, it was back on the Internet.  For a while.  I tried to adjust some of the network options for it, but the network options screen froze as soon as I tried to change anything.  So I went into Device Manager to try to uninstall the driver so that it would reinstall upon reboot.  Device Manager froze.  I rebooted.  Stuck and “Shutting Down.”

After the reboot, it was back to normal, so I took advantage of the brief window of opportunity to try to locate a new driver.  None available.  The loss of connectivity would happen at random times, and would always cause the failure to actually shut down and reboot, and even began interfering with transferring files to and from a USB drive.

I searched in vain – on the other computers – for an answer online.

Meanwhile I was dealing with some post-upgrade issues on Hugin, though those were less severe.  However, I do have on major problem:  Photoshop isn’t recognizing the pressure-sensitivity of my Cintiq.  This is a very big deal, as even the lightest press results in a thick, flat line.  Pressure-sensitivity is working in other applications – including other Adobe apps, like Illustrator – but not in Photoshop.  Not sure what to do about that one, since, as usual, the Internet is no help.

In any case, to resolve the wireless issue on Munin I decided to just disable the built-in adapter and use one of my old USB adapters.  I didn’t have a flash drive handy, so when I downloaded the drivers for the USB adapter on Hugin I saved them to my network drive, since even when Munin loses Internet access it remains connected to my network.  Of course, I had to try to get at Munin during the brief window in which I could go into Device Manager and disable the adapter without it freezing things up.

Naturally – and there’s no way you can convince me that this wasn’t the Universe just straight-up messing with me – the problem had gotten worse and the adapter would no longer connect to my network at all.  So I had to grab a flash drive, put the drivers on it – since I could no longer access the network drive from Munin – cut the power, boot into Safe Mode, disable the adapter, reboot, and then install the USB adapter, all of which took much longer than it should have.

As it stands now, I have the USB adapter in place and things appear to be working.  Still trying to figure out the Photoshop problem, though.

Anyway, if this post looks weird it’s because I’m trying the Windows Live Writer, which lets you write blog posts offline and then publish them directly rather than writing them in Word and pasting them into Blogger, or writing directly in Blogger, which has certain drawbacks.

The Universe Enjoying Its Saturday

Here we see the mangled remnants of the keyboard shelf from my computer desk:



Why is it mangled?
Because The Universe is a dick.
I sat down at the computer and slid the tray out to type in a URL, heard a popping sound, felt multiple pieces of something hitting my leg, and then the right side of the tray popped out from its guide rail, depositing my mouse and keyboard on the floor.
The multiple pieces of something were ball bearings that were part of the sliding mechanism in the rail. I gathered up as many of them as I could find, all the while getting hit in the head by the shelf, as it was still in its guide rail on the left side and was, as a result, flopping all over the place.
I found as many of the ball bearings as I could, then examined the mechanism to see if there was a way to put it back together. I thought I saw a way to do it, and began trying, in vain, to put the ball bearings back into place, dropping them multiple times.
(As a special bonus, the ball bearings were all sticky, as there was some viscous substance on them that was supposed to keep them in place. My hands are still sticky, as the stuff just won't wash off.)
Finally I gave up on trying to fix the broken part, having bent and broken it further in my attempts to repair it, and decided to see if I could get the tray to work without it, thinking maybe at worst the sliding action wouldn't be as smooth as it would be with the ball bearings.
Nope. Without that piece the tray would not stay in place.
...
Anyone who knows the Incredible Hulk in his comic book incarnation knows that "the madder Hulk gets, the stronger he gets."
As his rage sseemingly knows no bounds, the upper limits of his strength are, in theory, infinite.
For the past several years Marvel has been publishing various mini-series called "The End," focusing on potential futures that tell the "final" stories of some of their characters. One such mini-series focused on the Hulk.
In it, an ancient Bruce Banner is the only survivor of some cataclysm that destroyed humanity. He wanders alone through a barren hellscape looking for some way to end his life, but finding himself stymied at every turn by his green alter ego.
In addition to Banner, the world is inhabited by giant mutated insects, who, once a day, go out in search of food. The thing is, there isn't much left in the way of food other than Banner. So the insects descend on Banner, who, involuntarily in response to the threat, transforms into the Hulk and fights the insects off. However, there are just too many of them, and eventually the Hulk is overwhelmed. In addition to being largely invulnerable, the Hulk heals at a superhuman rate from any injury, so as the insects devour him, he regenerates continually, making him something of an all you can eat buffet, until, finally, the insects have their fill and go off on their way, leaving the carcass of the Hulk - picked clean like a post-Thanksgiving turkey - to grow the flesh back onto his bones and start the cycle over again.
It seems to me that, in that moment in which Hulk is completely overcome, he's probably so enraged that his strenth is approaching its maximum levels, yet for all that, there's nothing he can do.
That's sort of how I felt when dealing with the keyboard tray. I was so angry that I felt like I could split the world in two.
Of course, while I do share his penchant for rage, I differ from the Hulk in a significant way. Namely, the madder Jon gets, the clumsier he gets. While I've got the rage to split the world in two, I lack the strength, and even if I had the stregth I'd probably trip over my own feet while attempting to split the world in two, which, I suppose, is probably a good thing.
As I struggled to put things back together, and then struggled to simply take things apart just to get them out of the way, all I could do was shudder with impotent rage like the Hulk being devoured by insects.
Instead of splitting the world in two, I had to settle for bending some pieces of metal as I tore the left side of the drawer free from its guide rail.
I know that this isn't really a big dea; ultimately what I ended up doing was putting the mouse and keyboard on the desktop and raising my chair up so that my hands are at the correct level, and the only real inconvenience that stems from it is that I have to move the keyboard and mouse out of the way when I want to use the Cintiq.
But that's not really the point.
What is the point? How the hell should I know? I'm just the clumsy schmuck who encounters frustration - and stickiness - at virtually every turn.
In any case, I'm sure The Universe enjoyed the show, especially since it managed to get in its fun at my expense in a way that I could have never seen coming. Most of the time I can see what The Universe is up to - though in my case knowing is half of a losing battle - so I know that it likes it when it can hit me with something totally out of left field.