Zombie Thumb

Image from Pixabay

Turning the sign board at work the other day didn't go so well for me. A screw had fallen out of the frame and I wasn't being careful enough. Pinched my thumb in there but good. Going to loose the thumbnail. Hurt a great deal at the time and cost me a little bit of blood. Very minor but ugly injury.

In New Brunswick it is wise to always fill out an on the job accident report, because the government medical system won't pay for the costs if it goes bad and it wasn't reported properly. We taped it up, put a finger cot on it and went back to work. If I thought it was ugly when I did it, it looked a whole lot worse when Francine and I unwrapped it that evening to clean and redress it. The thumbnail and the surrounding skin turned several shades of purple. The rest of my protected thumb was sealed up in its own juices and the skin absorbed a lot of moisture. It looked very dead.

I of course showed it to my youngest son Wesley who doesn't have a sympathetic bone in his body for his old dad. I told him I had a zombie thumb and asked him if he thought it would heal or it would slowly take over my whole body turning me into a zombie. He just laughed and laughed.

I decided against posting a picture of it. I don't write horror.

Epic Water Shot

I was waiting for inspiration this morning and Jassi my co-worker gave it to me. I asked her what kind of sauce was in one of the squeeze bottles. She took it from my hand, accidentally gave it a squeeze and shot herself right in the face with a blob. I laughed so hard.

That reminds me of a few great moments like that on the job. My all time favourite has to the sprinkler system test accident. Co-worker Matt was my unfortunate victim.

As a lead hand working on the college landscaping department, one of my responsibilities was to make sure the automatic sprinkler systems were functioning correctly. I'd briefly turn on each system from the control box and checked them out.

This particular day my job was complicated by some recent construction work. They dug a hole next to the controller and accidentally cut all wires. They were nice and spliced them all back together – in a scrambled sort of way. It took us awhile to figure out which system was associated with which dial position. I turned on my test and walked over for a look and the system wasn't on. Then I had a horrible thought. Matt was cutting the front lawn at the time. I ran to have a look and sure enough I got him. Oddly though he was making effort to stay dry. I ran back the controller to shut the water off and then back to Matt to try and apologize without laughing too much.

Turns out the pop up sprinkler head came up right under the push mower Matt was operating. The mower sheared it off. When Matt pushed past the broken water line it squirted him right in the crotch. I could not have planned that. To hide the embarrassing wet spot he walked around until he was all wet, not just that spot on his pants.

Article Writing Success

First tablet article was a complete success. I'm very pleased with the  situation and myself. Figured out everything necessary to accomplish this with equipment that I have.

Challenge number one was to satisfy my cheapskate self. There is Microsoft Office is available on my tablet but it is only a ninety day trial. I use Open Office for free on my laptop. I did a search on Google for an android version of that software. It doesn't work perfectly but it gets the job done.

Figuring the basic features out was a bigger challenge. I wrote my first tablet blog post without knowing how to get it posted. Even with help from the younger generation transfering the text over to blogger was a puzzle. I stumbled on how to highlight the text and from there I was able to copy and paste it over. Along the way found out how to move the cursor around. Editing text has as a result become a great deal easier.

One thing I'd really like would be able to somehow use predictive text within this wordprocessing software. I will search online for that when it crosses my mind and I have Internet access.

Until I càn afford an external keyboard, I get practice writing with my thumbs. I've a shown significant improvement but I'm not very efficient. I am pleased though that writing with this is possible to the point of being practical.

I'm sure my learning how to take a selfie with this thing is a horrifying development for my readers in itself.

Writing Practice On the Road

Learning to make better use of the technology in my hands. Making an awful lot of mistakes along the way. Typing with my thumbs on a tablet is a new skill for me.

The objective is to be able to write articles and other things on here while travelling. A kind of mini writing office I could even use on a bicycle trip. It may take a few days for me produce something worth posting to one of my blogs.

One of my discoveries is that the bold/italic/underline part of this program doesn't work right. Better to just stay away from it for now. The only other issues I've had are my lack of skill. The space bar is really c!ose to the button to minimize the screen. I've already lost count on how many times I've made that mistake.

I started this in the crew room at work, accidentally erased my work once and now I'm in a waiting room giving Francine the silent writer treatment. I'll probably finish at work again.

The biggest question now is can I post this along with a selfie from work on the free wifi there. For my not so technically savvy self, that is the challenge.