If I can locate the appropriate repair parts I suppose I can replace the upper lamp and get a couple more years out of the thing. That'd be nice, since it doesn't appear that a new monitor is going to be in the cards for me any time soon.
The AOC turns out to be some 80 pixels smaller in width and 150 pixels smaller in height; since both monitors run at native resolution that explains the difference in diagonal size.
It just seems tiny.
Another idea involved moving the blab slab from the spare bedroom and mounting it to the wall in here, but that'd be officially FAR TOO BIG and I'd have to rearrange the room to make it usable. A 47" monitor at arm's length is too much.
Well, it could be worse, you know. At least we have this one to spare. I'm not having to do blog posts from El-Hazard on the 'slab in the family room.
* * *
Fred talks about the decline and fall of the American educational system.
Fred laments the fact that our socialized educational system turns out kids who are functional illiterates, but he is making a common mistake. He thinks that our educational system is there to teach children facts, figures, equations, and language, when nothing could be further from the truth.
The primary aim of our socialized educational system is to indoctrinate.
Anyone who escapes from the public school system able to think for himself is a failure of the system. The system is successful when it manages to emit someone who never, never, ever questions the validity of leftist political theory, whatever else happens to him. Whether he goes on to the Ivy League or to prison, the system is satisfied when he properly parrots the party line.
Even if he can't spell it.
* * *
Well, it's 50° outside today, and it might hit the sixties later this week. The forecast included snow, but now does not, and I hope that means this will be the first week of the year without any snow in it. It may rain, but you don't have to shovel rain.
The existing snow continues to melt away. I can now see the bottom of the bottom fence rail. More of the ground is reappearing. Whee!
I figure we've got one or two more cold snaps with snow left this winter, but I think we're through the worst of it.
* * *
The rewrite project is perhaps a whole page into the flashback sequence, and already it's prompting some things I need to add to the rest of the story. Little things, things that will connect everything together. Foreshadowing--or whatever you call it when you're linking present-day to something that happened 10,000 years ago but are talking about later in your recounting of the tale.
It's thought-provoking, too, because it makes me wonder if this stuff was in there all along, and I'm just noticing it now? Or am I taking a robust framework, a good setting, and adding things as I explore it? Regardless, I have to believe that if it's fun for the writer, it's fun for the reader--and I'm looking forward to getting this tale written down. It's just going to take time and effort, and before I can write anything serious I really need to figure out what I will write. That's a process that goes on in the background, though, and I can safely let it do that while I go on with daily life. It has my attention; once I know what's going on I'll sequester myself at the computer and bang it out. No problem.
The hard part was getting a start, and I got that part.
Ultimately the story will stand or fall on its merits. It's "talky", but it's not a polemic--politics are virtually absent from the story--and the talking I do is either about the science of archaeology (which is central to the story) or else it's about the things happening in the story. I happen to think it's an interesting read, but of course I wrote the thing. I got an outside opinion which led me to believe it's worth pursuing.
So I'll pursue it.
Meanwhile I still have to finish the summary of #RELEASE_CANDIDATE_ONE and add a page of stuff about me, so I can submit it for consideration. Summarizing is hard; I want to summarize properly but I also want to make it intriguing and not give away the whole hen house. Knowing that I only have a page is confining, so I have to be judicious about what details I explain and what details I skimp on. I'm not used to working like that. It's also in the queue, though, and I'll get after it one of these days.
...probably when it's 75° outside and I could be doing anything else. *sigh*