Chapter 17 - Whoa! Del trips the life support apparatuses for the wrong reasons. Not near death, but certain life!

THE STORY OF DEL - Delete

This is when life support apparatuses should ALSO be clamoring, thought Del. Not only when he was about to die, but also when he was about to live!

La Vita è Bella!

"How did you get in?"

"After we met, you never let me out, remember? So, I'm not here," she said indicating the whole ICU, "I'm here." She touched the side of her head.

"That's terrible. One wrong impulse and I could turn you into a carrot juicer!"

"I know, but you won't, because I have a job for you. And it's right up your alley, and since you like me so much, I'm going to be your muse. And you and I are gonna be too busy having fun!"

"Whoa!"

And just as Del had ruminated, all the warning bells went off and it was a concert of ringing, singing, wailing and bling-blinging. And one of the apparatuses - Infusion Pump N° 17 regulating Medication Line N° 23 - even started playing the bagpipes. To hell with 'Near Death Experiences,' this was all about Certain Life.

Except it wasn't. Real World Electrons were circulating between email clients, in which the need for Del's mercy killing - to free up medical resources - was being bandied about.

Indeed, all the 'medical professionals' had agreed that he was doomed. His organs were damaged beyond repair. His poor liver only needed a bay leaf, a sprinkle of kosher salt and a glass of Sauterne to be classified a Pâté de Foie.

And in the cafeteria, after their collective examination of Del, the team of orthopedists had joked about how this was one of those rare times when tattoos would've helped to properly align the body pieces. But luckily for Del, whereas time in the conscious world went 'tick-tock' and was equated with money, in his dream dimension, one second could be a whole Belle Époque or Industrial Revolution. His only worry was that some stupid whim of his would transform Juula into a bag of donuts or a Ferris Wheel.

But she had spoken about a job 'right up his alley' - a clever move, because Del was a workaholic!

Comments

Chapter 1 - From Keyboard Reject to Action Hero

THE STORY OF DEL - Delete Once upon a half-life ago, there was a guy called Del. That was his nickname, short for Delete. And he was a reliable, hard-working key on most of the world's computers. A straight-forward and regular sort of guy, he was never more prominent than any of the letters he had been charged to kill, no fatter than an 'i', no skinnier than a capital 'W' - unlike Backspace who was super-sized and flaunted a Nike-style arrow pointing hard-left ←. Some hardware companies, like Lord Macintosh, had refused Del right from the get-go, preferring to farm out his tasks to a combination of other workers like 'Function-Delete,' with 'Delete' on Sir Mac actually being Backspace ←. But then one day, for Del - the original Del - things took a bad turn, real bad! And it happened at the speed of a toilet flush vortex! Millions upon BILLIONS of small handheld flatscreen devices suddenly began to spill from the heavens - the 'STPs' - smartph...

Chapter 26 - For scribes and writers, the biggest design fail came from the best designer of all time!

THE STORY OF DEL - Delete "Hi Del, how are you feeling today?" "Still kicking, Juula." "Where were we?" "You were talking about the 4 main reasons for bothering to select text, which on handhelds, is mostly done by dragging mini-handles - a real bummer." "Right. For writers and scribes, it represents the biggest design fail of all times. Sadly foisted on humanity by the greatest design genius of all times." Minihandles! - Yecch! "All right, let's focus on deletion. Remember this?" Merry splinter Kleenex guardrail whippersnapper tear Boeing shoebox Christmas "Yes." In the preparatory "selection" phase, before effectuating the obvious deletion, it becomes this:" Merry splinter Kleenex guardrail whippersnapper tear Boeing shoebox →Christmas "What do you notice?! "For deletion, the only text I'm interested in is the one just beyond the end of the selected words!...

Chapter 27 - If it takes you more than one touch to cancel to the end of a sentence, you're working too hard.

THE STORY OF DEL - Delete " Buongiorno Del! Come va ?" " Bene bellezza, mia . What do you have for me today?" "We're gonna reason a few things through regarding text editing on handhelds." "For instance? "Well, when discussing anything, it's always a good idea to provide some givens. For example:" 1) Compared to the ease of selection on regular computers, with their big physical keyboards, mice, shift-arrows and function keys, highlighting text on the flat screens (phones, tablets and phablets) is torture. "Definitely! But the problem is the handhelds are basically content-retrieval systems." "Maybe they are now, but they don't have to be. No, it's entirely a matter of poor design. Excuse the vulgarity, but piss-poor design!" "I have good reason to believe you, mi amor!" "The second given:" 2) When editing, the writing part can happen at the variable speeds of ins...

AN EDITING REVOLUTION FOR PHONES & TABLETS

Search This Blog