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Locked on 12/01/2006 12:59:54 PM PST by Sidebar Moderator, reason:
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Posted on 09/07/2006 10:11:42 PM PDT by HairOfTheDog
New verse:
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Upon the hearth the fire is red, |
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Still round the corner there may wait |
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Home is behind, the world ahead, |
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Jeepers! I'm glad your Mom is OK!
I-81 is awful; many of the truckers during the day are just lousy! I don't mind driving it at night, when most of the truckers have stopped for the night.
Yay!
Yeah, I hear you on the writing a story you love for NaNo. I almost wish I hadn't. The story I did has some good plot bits but the writing and such is awful and it has more holes than swiss cheese.
And it's painful to work through hoooooorrible prose when you want a story to be a thing of beauty and all that. ;-) I wanted to figure it out, not just keep writing without knowing what I was doing.
But all's well that ends well. I suppose.
Hope y'all have fun in the snow!
Wonder where its been. It has a plate on the back from a shop in Zurich, and the extra characters (usually there are a few besides numbers and punctuation) are umlaut letters and such. Also has the z and y reversed - German keyboard layout. And it's obviously been very well-used. Paint all worn off the corners and plenty of scratches. Probably has had some interesting adventures.
Found a new ribbon for four bucks, cleaned out the gunk around the typebars so they aren't sticking anymore, and I'm in business.
Yes, I'm crazy, and I don't expect anyone to understand. ;-) But I think I'm in love with the thing.
Guess I should grab dinner, now that I've spent the whole evening playing...
Oh, and here it is in all of its hideous, worn, baby poop yellow glory:
Far out. :-)
I think that's actually pretty cool. I'm a closet luddite too. Having grown up in accounting during the days of pencils, five-column paper and green eye-shades, I've never been convinced that computers and software ended up doing us any real favors. But don't tell anybody I work for. :-)
[sigh]
There's a SOX thread I'm trying to avoid for the moment. I've written a reply or two that I've already had to just abandon because I devolved into usage of something less than the Queen's english.
Maybe I'll try again tomorrow.
[sip]
Dammit. :-)
It's fascinating to me that that piece of technology which is, at a guess, forty years old or thereabouts...still does *exactly* what it was meant to do. That in spite of the fact that it's probably been twenty years since anyone used it much. Just needed a little elbow grease.
Whereas...this computer will be on a dustheap in probably less than ten years.
We live in a high-speed disposable world, and though I love the Internet and all...well, I like having a few old things from a slower time. ;-) Hence my fountain pens, and now this old beater of a typewriter.
So...SOX wars, huh? I'll have to go spy...
SirKit's Mom had a old Royal electric typewriter, and we had a devil of a time finding a new ribbon for it! When we did find someone who sold them, we bought several for her. She didn't like the newer, IBM Selectric that she used where she worked, so the Royal was just right for her.
Congrats on the NaNo completion, all of you!
That looks like a 1950s-vintage portable. Positively jet-age styling. Also, that was a very popular color for Volkswagens.
Yeah, I think the older electrics that take kind of unique ribbons can be tricky to find replacement ribbons for. Luckily it's still really easy to find ribbons for old manuals that use standard spools. There are even a few companies still *making* typewriters that take 'em, believe it or not. Guess it's because there are still places where electricity isn't readily available.
I've heard you can also reink the ribbons pretty easily with something like stamp pad ink. Too messy an undertaking for me, but I guess it's good to know.
From what I can tell, you're right - which puts my 40 year old estimate at about ten years short. ;-) Well, almost.
The guy who was selling it said "circa 1974". and I knew that was wrong - the pictures I found of the version of this model from the 70s were much boxier and the "Olympia" name was in a square font instead of that script look.
Found the serial number and looked it up, and it appears it was made in 1958 - one of the first years they even made this model. Kewl. Considering the condition it's in, it doesn't make it valuable - especially in this country, where I'm guessing the German keyboard layout counts against it (probably why I was the only bidder!) - but it's neat just the same!
Looking it over, there was a little sticker under the ribbon cover that had some initials and a November '74 date, which must be what he'd used to guesstimate. I'm guessing it's a maintenance marker. It would have already been 16 then!
That's quite something. Amazing what you can find on Ebay.
Glad to hear your mother is okay, being shaken up is entirely understandable.
Got about 6-8 inches here, drifted quite a bit higher, Gypsygirl is unamused by the snowfall. Snowplows been by road looking good though snow/ice packed. Very dry snow. N side of metro got bumpkis, S side got up to 10 or inches. Hoping for less than a two hour commute home tonight.
To those who finished: congratulations on reaching 50,000! It's an honor to know you!
To those who did not finish, including myself: we are not limited to a single National Novel Writing Month! Any month, or combination of months, weeks, or days, works, too!
To all who participated, or thought of participating: Mark your calendars! Meet your characters! Stabilize your plots! We meet here next November, pens and notepads and typewriters and handhelds at the ready!
Remember, December 1st is not too early to start planning next year's NaNo!
Thanks.
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