Musings
Dreary Winter
Now in the midst of dreary winter, while the hills wear their white mantles, I sense a withering of will, and a drying up of muscle. When buds burst into leaves, I also break out in motion, powering against the rusted pedals, to rush down that path of leaves; rustling. .
Wintry winds tear at my coat, seek to reach my guarded soul, And follow me into my bungalow to snuff out my little flame. When Summer, oh summer, comes, I shall ride the streets of sun, catch the warm rays upon my back, spreading a glow through my winter shrunken frame.
-Ezra Hilyer
Read MoreOde To The Composition Book
The lowly school composition book, the simple tool that has been used by so many.
A few days ago I picked up a $1 marbled composition book to record the progress of a current project, and upon picking it up, I was flooded with memories, it brought me back to my school days.
That black and white marbled cover and familiar size, the single signature of pages, and the cheap, but sturdy construction is unchanged in the 15 years since I last held one.
I have been into the whole ‘Moleskine thing’ for about 7 or 8 years now, and have looked down on the cheaper notebooks as inferior, but perhaps that is just pride, after all it is what is inside that counts.
I chose this one specifically because it was cheap, I wanted to use it to record notes on a messy experiment, and knew it would get wet, and smudged, so I didn’t want to put one of my precious Moles through that, but I wonder if that desire to keep my notes clear and clean and precise is a downfall?
When I first started to use the Moleskines, I only had one size: the pocket size, and I carried it with me everywhere. I put it in my back pocket, and sat on it, I had it with me every day I was working in dirty wet conditions, and the edges would get wet, and the ink would run. Just about the time I filled one up, it would start to come apart. Those first 3 or 4 Moleskines are ragged and torn, the covers are stuck on with gorilla tape, and the markers are frayed.
Now I have a bit more sedate life, and more of a clean work environment, I also don’t carry my moles in my pocket, but rather in my bag (which is always with me) and so they are in much better shape when I am done with them.
Conversely, I don’t use them as much; having them closer to my hand makes me more likely to use them in the few moments I have standing in line, than if I have to unzip my bag, and then open my pen case. Now I tend to use my notebooks for longer stretches, but the tendency to just fill them with instant inspiration is gone.
Now when I am waiting in line, I reach for my iPhone instead.
These lowly composition books are really jewels in a way that Moleskines can never be. Because they are cheap and readily available, the bar is set low, and there is no hesitation to use them.
I won’t stop using my Moleskines, as they are a wonderful tool that I have grown quote attached to, but I intend to get a few more of these ordinary cheap little books, and I intend to use them.
-Ezra Hilyer
Read MoreIdiots Working For Best-Buy & Other Pet Peeves.
So I go out to look at the new iPad 2 at ‘Best Buy’, just to see if I like the white better than the black. (Turns out I do, and plan to get the white instead of the black this time around)
In any case, I get there, and start looking, not more than a few moments go by before two separate people come up to see if I need ‘help’. Now under normal circumstances, if I am looking for some help there is never anyone remotely near, but sure enough now they are all around.
I am grateful, but “No I don’t need any help, thank you ever so much.”
One of these sales-guys then starts to talk to another guy who is looking at a 15″ MBP, and is asking questions.
Customer: How much memory does this have?
Employee: 500 Gigs.
Now, I am not about to butt in, and tell this guy that in-fact it doesn’t have 500 gigs of ‘Memory’, but that it has 500 GB of hard disk storage…NOOOOO, I keep my mouth shut.
Customer: How durable is it?
Employee: Oh you can’t hurt it, its solid state.
if I had been drinking something; I would have spit it across the room, that model wasn’t standard with a SSD, it had a normal drive, no solid state here!
Customer: “Can I use any program with this computer?”
Employee: “Yep its fast enough for just about anything”
Now in one sense that is true, that Macbook probably can handle just about anything you throw at it, but this customer was clearly not from the ‘Mac world’ and so might have been asking if it would run his copy of word from his old XP box. No word of clarification from the ‘Best Buy guy’, just a blanket: ”Yep”
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This is why I don’t spend much time in that store, and rarely buy anything there, its that pimpled kid that thinks that he knows it all just because he can replace a power supply. I can only grit my teeth and shake my head.
-Ezra Hilyer
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