How To Make Keyboard Trays Into Shelves

Ergonomic experts love keyboard trays. The rest of the world is far more split; some folks like having the keyboard and mouse slide out from under their desks, while others just find it annoying to bump their knees into the trays.

In the office where I work, the latter sentiment has become dominant. I think the desks are a bit shorter than most, so the trays hang down even closer to the ground than usual.

Keyboard tray

It may look innocent, but it’s hell on the thighs.

Read more of this post

The War on Independence Day

Looking forward to the Fourth of July? Going to celebrate with cookouts and fireworks?

Oh, are you ever part of the problem.

You’d think, with all the ultra-nationalism surrounding Memorial Day and Veterans Day, that Independence Day would get the same respect. But we don’t even call it that most of the time. If a store saying “Season’s Greetings” or “Happy Holidays” is enough to constitute a War on Christmas, than surely this indicates a War on Independence Day:

There is no other holiday that we identify primarily by its date. There’s September 11, but that’s more because we never came up with an adequate name or description for the events of that day, and we can’t be as collectively traumatized by our own declaration of independence as we are by a terrorist attack, can we? When did this tendency to say “the Fourth of July” or “July Fourth” instead of “Independence Day” begin, and why?

Independence Day movie posters

If it was the movie on the left, why didn’t the movie on the right cancel it out?

There’s at least one company that remembers the reason for the season. They sent me an e-mail yesterday morning about their respectful celebration containing the following graphic:

Independence Day HP

Not a flag or revolutionary document in sight, but explosions and coupons because America.

Just to get the point across even more blunty I might start calling it To Hell With You, Britain, Though We’ll Still Watch Your Television and Listen To Your Music Day.

Charge iPad, Plan Party, and Other To-Do Items

The latest articles I’ve published this week around the wide, wide, world of web:

New Hippo Techie: Showing great resolution

Although billed by Apple, like everything else they do, as “revolutionary,” the concept behind Retina displays is pretty simple: pack more pixels into a smaller area so you get sharp, crisp images and text on your screen.

Read the full article at The Hippo.

Everyone’s a Winner!*

Participant RibbonA (very) short story of mine was recently selected to be part of a collection at the online Marco Polo Arts Mag. The collection is called 100X100 and features 100 stories, each exactly 100 words long. On the hopefully completely non-ordered list of finalists, mine was number 97. The actual winner, Vincent Fino’s “Mother’s Day Retreat,” is up now at the 100X100 page. I’ll let you know when my story goes live, but keep an eye on that page regardless. After all, any writing in the company of mine is sure to be amazing, right?

*Okay, it looks like more like one in five is a winner, since there were “close to five hundred international submissions.” Actually that’s not bad, huh?