What It Is (posts below left; rate sheet, client list, other stuff below right)

My name is Bob Land. I am a full-time freelance editor and proofreader, and occasional indexer. This blog is my website.

You'll find my rate sheet and client list here, as well as musings on the life of a freelancer; editing, proofreading, and indexing concerns and issues; my ongoing battles with books and production; and the occasional personal revelation.

Feel free to contact me directly with additional questions: landondemand@gmail.com.

Thanks for visiting. Leave me a comment. Come back often.

Sunday, May 1, 2016

Technology Update


Flip phone? Check.

Word 2003? Check.

Adobe Acrobat 9.0. Check. Maybe it's 7.0. I don't know. It works, and I have the disc if it doesn't.

Unable to intuitively or at a glance operate the televisions in my house? Check. The last time I voluntarily turned on the TV was to watch the Masters a few years ago to help me get to sleep. (I actually have enjoyed watching golf on TV. No stress. Nothing bad happens, except some gazillionaire only makes $60,000 this week for finishing 35th.)

iAnything? Nope. I used to have one of those tiny iPods years ago. I put about a dozen albums on it and lost all interest.

I seem to catch the blame for this, but the -- uh, sh!t, what's the opposite of receptive? (see, you few blog readers; it all comes together) -- end of a plug-in music-type device snapped off in the receptive part of my dashboard while someone related to me by marriage was plugging it in and I was supposedly making a sharp turn. Ehh . . .

Anyway, this little nub is as deep in there as you can get (not far), and according to the geniuses here in the home of the World's Fastest Half-Mile, you'd have to take the whole dashboard out to fetch the thing. About $400 of labor for something that they'll actually fix in about two seconds. I never listened to music much anyway in recent decades. I've been driving around in silence for years, even before that -- and that's Bristol silence in the car, baby, not Brooklyn silence. I think I turned off the radio when Sean Hannity went to New York from Atlanta. I might not be making that up.

[Speaking of which, turns out that Bernie Sanders's boyhood home was about a tenth of a mile from my last known NYC address. Right down the street, make a little turn, two houses down. Have I already mentioned this?]

The problem is that I think my younger son will be taking this v-hikl to Colorado with him. The man needs some music. As did I at that age. But I've always got AM radio, where few people dare to tread.

But the car. It seems to me that if I parked on a steep enough hill and got a little vacuum action going on . . . or a magnet. . . .

Technology.

So yeah: AM radio.

What prompted this post is that Tere bought a shredder a year or two ago and had it up where she does some work, but she never uses it. I have all kinds of uses for it. I moved it down to the LoD headquarters a week or two ago. Used it yesterday. What fun.

Shredder. Check.

It's May 1, 2016, and I'm happy to have a shredder at hand. This century is just passing me by. I'm not really complaining.

Facebook. Assumed name. Five friends. Wife, two sons, one future daughter-in-law, one ex-girlfriend. I've received two friend requests from people who know me, who know the name from Tere's posts. One I friended for about a week and told him, Look, you know I love you, but I can't do this. He understood perfectly. The other friend request is just sitting there. Completely wonderful guys. Love 'em. Facebook is a rats' nest, or can be.

Younger son doesn't post at all. I think his last activity was changing his relationship status four months ago. I enjoy seeing my older son's posts, as it's mostly Chicago antics with a very nice group of people around various arts scenes.

But if Facebook were to go away tomorrow, I'd know less about what's going on with my son (well, and his ex), and that's about it. We can always talk on the phone, which he's happy to do. Which is a hell of a lot more than my parents got from me at age 26. I'd talk to my mother once a week and my father every few months. Not like they were after me, either. Well, actually they were hearing more from me at age 26 because I was fixin' to get married. . . .

Geez . . .

Maybe I'll do a post about my bar mitzvah.



That's not me, but it might as well be, except I of course had the Coke-bottle glasses. And the rabbi was a lot younger, and my great-grandfather (who I think appeared in the picture) was a lot older. And shorter. Grampa Isaac was a little guy. About 4-10. Always told me to move my legs so that he didn't have to step over me. If anyone stepped over me, I wouldn't grow. That's the kind of advice you take seriously from a 90-year-old guy who is 4-10.

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