Haven’t We Covered This a Billion Times?

January 14, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

In what ways do you communicate online?

First, let’s get practical. I got used to everything being delivered during the pandemic, and I liked it because it was the same price as taking Uber to the store. So, pretty much all my groceries come from Uber Eats because they’ll go to several grocery stores and 7-Eleven in my neighborhood. They don’t charge an arm and a leg, particularly if you have an Uber membership (which I do- I take it too much for it not to pay off handsomely. I think I saved $900 in fees last year.).

I have only had one bad driver in the history of my taking Uber, and it wasn’t that bad. It just made me uncomfortable. It was an African man looking for a traditional wife and I made the mistake of being polite to him….. so it was a never-ending barrage of “what’s your phone number?” And, of course, that he could be better to me than anyone else. I highly doubt that since he was from Uganda and I think he would not approve of the people who are better for me, for the most part. I also have no intention of becoming a “traditional wife,” because in my friends’ lives, that means “what I say goes and I could give fuck all what you think.” I would not last long in a relationship like that, and neither should anyone else…… but we all do it a little bit. Charm goes a long way in “new relationship energy,” and those rose-colored glasses blind us to what is truly there.

Oh, wait. I have one more story about an Uber driver, but it wasn’t sexual harassment. I gave the first dude zero stars and had a promise this guy wouldn’t pick me up again, because I definitely didn’t want a conversation in which he said, “you gave me a fake number.”

With the second guy, I left my phone in the back of his car. I have reminders for all that now, but it didn’t help me because he’d already driven away. Uber and I both tried to contact him for over a week, and he didn’t answer their messages, either. Then, he had the audacity to tell me that I could call him. On what phone, jackass? So, we resorted to e-mail and he offered to drop it off at my house because he lived in my neighborhood.

So, he drives up and tells me that I need to give him $20 in cash before he’ll give me my phone back. I knew it was a shakedown because Uber officially charges you $20 on your account if you forget your phone (or other items) to ensure the drivers get paid for their time. I was so angry I literally told him to fuck off and he told me I was getting too excited about this. I could see he was about to drive off, so I grabbed my phone out of his hand faster than I’ve ever reached for anything in my life.

I have a thing about my phone.

So, anyway, I reported this guy to Uber after not having paid him and Uber wiped the floor with him. I’m not sure that he’s still employed, but I do know that Uber credited me $40 in Uber cash, refunding their fee, plus the $20 the guy tried to fleece.

I feel that Skyrim gave me some power in this situation. 😉 Sometimes, shouting is your only option, and I didn’t feel like my normal self because my phone was in danger. I have gone to hell and back with that thing because once I left my phone in the bathroom at DCA. They got it back to me, but they mailed it to my dad. I wiped it and got a smaller phone that would fit in my pocket and stay on my person, rather than in my bag.

It’s handy because I can connect to the Internet on the train using my phone as a hotspot for my tablet. If my watch could handle being a hotspot without losing battery, my phone would be redundant.

That’s because I use my Apple Watch to pay for everything in person, which is still connected to the Internet whether by phone, wi-fi, or both. Not only does it hold my debit card, it also holds my Metro card, so all I have to do is hold my watch up to the turnstile and I go through immediately. Plus, now all the buses have the same system. It’s also cool that if you’re on the go and realize you need more Metro dollars, you can add it right from your watch.

My Apple Watch is the handiest thing I never knew I needed.

I didn’t get it for the technology, it was a Christmas present a couple years running. That’s because I had the first iteration that was only a Bluetooth connection to your phone. You could use it to control your media and such, but it wasn’t very powerful on its own.

Now, my watch has a cell connection and I know these smart watches coming in Android as well- I’m not trying to sell you an Apple Watch, just highlight how advanced smart watches have become. Both Android and iOS have different and cool features, but the basics are the same.

Here’s what I use the most:

I’ve never had a watch with a Bluetooth card on it before, so I’ve never been able to connect my headphones directly and make calls. Carrying BT headphones is a must because the speaker phone is not very good; it’s just handy in a pinch.
Location–based reminders, where your calendar integrates into your tasks lists and GPS.. For instance, if I have Zac’s address saved in my phone (and I do), I could already say “make an appointment with Zac,” but what has been relatively recent is being able to say, “when I get to Zac’s, remind me to do THIS.”
I tend to use Amazon Music over Apple, because for some strange reason Amazon has the ability to run completely off your watch and Apple Music still depends on your phone. Although you can set albums to download to your watch, I feel like it’s easier just to stream them, and right now, Amazon is doing it better.
Reminders….. like if I get into an Uber and my iPad is still upstairs, it will flash on my watch that “Leslie’s iPad has been left behind.” The only thing that tripped me up was that I got that message when it was in my backpack. With me. In the car. But by and large it’s a help- so much that I’m thinking of getting Bluetooth tags for things like my umbrella. Maybe I should just have the nurses put my name on it………… inside joke, talk to your parents.
Fall detection is the reason I got a second Apple Watch for Christmas, because the newer models will keep track of if you fall and how long you stay down. It will alert the authorities and if your phone is with you, start taking pictures immediately. I fell in my room once when I’d just gotten out of the shower, and I have never been so glad my phone was pointing at the ceiling.
Carrot Weather is the only app I’ve ever paid for in the Apple Watch App Store, and it is the best fucking $5 I’ve ever spent. You can adjust her personality from nice to homicidal, and it is so damn funny. I’ve gotten things akin to “tonight is clear. Can you say the same thing about your conscience?” “Joe Biden did this.” Today, since it’s 35F outside, it says, “I’m recommending you travel with a tauntaun sleeping bag in case you get stuck outside.” I also love that it roasts both political parties because they both deserve it…… but one of them is funny to laugh at, and one of them is straight up terrifying. Carrot recognizes the difference, trust me. Her takedowns of Trump were fucking epic, I just don’t think I have screenshots. Oh, and in the app on your phone, you can ask for the weather in world cities, too. I always like to know the temperature in Beirut (if this doesn’t make sense to you, the family I live with is Lebanese and now Beirut is on my bucket list because we have pictures of it all over our house).
Recording my walks is also very nice because I don’t have to remember to do it. I’ll just be walking along and it will say “you seem to be having an outdoor walk. Would you like to record it?” Yes. Yes, I would. I don’t keep track of my health stats except occasionally. I just want to know how I’m doing overall, I don’t want to obsess over it. Before I went to Zac’s I made it a point to walk about three miles, because I really do love the cold weather when I’m moving enough to create body heat for my many layers to entrap. But because the weather has been generally crappy, I haven’t been walking as much as I normally do. It was the first time I’d walked long enough for it to remind me in, well, too long. That needs to change. I’m too mentally ill not to give myself some much-needed endorphins.
CityMapper is an app that’s available in lots of cities, and I’m lucky it’s also here. It picks up from your GPS where you are, and gives you the most direct route by train and bus to get where you’re going. The fact that I can do all that FROM MY WATCH is just incredible.
Uber gets an honorable mention, but they would have gotten first prize if they hadn’t reworked the app so you couldn’t use your Apple Watch independently. I cannot go anywhere without my phone in a literal, survivalist sense when I need an Uber because I can order it from my iPad and it will keep track of everything, but what you cannot do is order another one. This did not used to be the case, and I’m still bitter about it….. a little.
Facebook Messenger saved my ass on several occasions when I’ve been without my phone, but they announced they were discontinuing that feature and I felt like I lost a relative.

The only reason I’m a little bit bitter about apps not being able to run independently on my watch is that I have found my phone is redundant. I feel that it would be much easier for me to just control my watch from my iPad and skip the middle man, but iOS for iPad doesn’t do that. You must have a phone. So, I have everything I need in a phone right on my wrist, and a tablet that doesn’t make my eyes bleed because there’s so much more desktop real estate………. and, credit where credit is due, the fonts are better. It’s an Apple product. What do you expect?

In fact, I was just talking about Apple fonts with my new friend Eric- I met him at the beer tasting. I don’t remember how we got on the subject of “Helvetica,” but I’m a font nerd so the conversation’s always going to lead there, anyway……… I was telling him that it was professionally designed (you really need to see the documentary to see just how much it words our world), and very, very expensive.

Apple bought the license for Helvetica when it first came out, so if you get a Mac, you get a copy of the professional, original font. I told him that I once bought an old Mac at a thrift store just for a real copy of that font. He said, “why?” I said, “copy of the entire Helvetica family is probably about $800-1,000. Crappy Mac at Goodwill…. $25.

Priceless.

You might not know the name “Helvetica” if you aren’t a Mac person, but don’t worry. Microsoft made a much uglier version called “Arial.” It’s a knockoff and I know the ascenders and descenders so well that I was quizzed online and got a perfect score.

It’s why I’m so grateful that the fonts on the Apple Watch are clear. You don’t have to have the latest and greatest model of it (or GalaxyWear and Samsung) to really enjoy its functionality.

The best thing is that it goes online. So, you have a device on your wrist that’s not as obvious as a phone and an App Store that will absolutely sell you a Facebook feed crawler. I know what you do on company time.

One of the most touching compliments I’ve ever gotten was a woman who told me I made her cry on the toilet.

It is then that I knew I was invincible……………………. in the ways I communicate online.

Helvetica Brought to You By Genetics

October 6, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

It doesn’t take much in life to make me happy.

I have always been a font nerd. Just incredibly so. It started with newspapers, and not even with reading them myself. When I was a teenager, one of my dad’s contributions to our church was to make a big sign for it. Not like cardboard… like a huge logo built onto the side of a stone wall, or something like that. I don’t remember exactly what it was made of, but I do remember the conversation before it was constructed.

He said that if we were going to advertise the church, the font didn’t need to be readable when you were standing in front of the church. It needed to be visible when you were driving down the road at 35 mile an hour.

And it’s not just one thing, but it is another story about my family. I have no proof of this, but my feeling about it is that my love of fonts started with my grandfather, Mayo.

Both of my grandfathers worked at Lone Star Steel for their entire careers. My mother’s father was a computer geek (this has no bearing on my current situation). I also think I may have inherited his autism, but I am not basing that on a diagnosis and it may be complete bullshit. I just observed him for years.

He, like me, ate about five things. (I’m a pro cook, but I don’t do it for myself. As a writer, I like consistency as not to interrupt my flow.)

He, like me, was the first in the family to adopt computers as a career…. except he was more high-level than I was. Not only did he do projects for NASA at Lone Star Steel, he would have been (I think, not 100% certain) the modern day equivalent of a systems administrator. The things that I recall that happened to my mother, aunts, and uncles back me up on this, because in retrospect it really seems like he was a neurodivergent struggling in a neurotypical world (which also has no bearing on my current situation, clearly). Not only did we have the connection of me being his first grandchild out of many, he could see me. For instance, literally no one around me knew how to tutor me in Algebra except him.

My father’s father was the public relations man for the whole company. He wrote like a journalist, he took pictures like a journalist. Probably neurodivergent and struggling as well, because genetics and past history in terms of observation.

I started with a tangent on my maternal grandfather before getting to the story because I am an interesting mix of both of them. I have my father’s father’s widow’s peak and my mother’s father’s nose. My dad attested to this in the video the other day…. “she’s got my face.” I assume he got it from somewhere. I don’t know whether me being genderqueer makes me notice it more, or whether it’s objectively true, but I find myself in them more than any other family member. Put together, I look an amazing amount like my dad’s littlest sister….. but inside, I’m both of them down to their careers. Not only do I use linux, I’ve got the skills of a PR man to make documentation and linux evangelism come alive on the page. It’s such a drag to read boring documentation and comments in the code, and every one of us knows it. So far, the best comment I’ve gotten when I’ve installed a package is “not guaranteed not to kill puppies and steal your women.” It was bleeding edge, and the reason it’s funny is that linux isn’t corporate and doesn’t have to conform to Microsoft bullshit. I would have a lot more fun working with developers on Launchpad than I would ever get out of Seattle……. because I could say things like “if you install this on a live server first, God have mercy on your soul.”

Where fonts come in is that coders are persnickety about the fonts used in the code editor (ironically enough, I prefer Microsoft Visual Studio Code because it’s every bit as good as Notepad++ and will run natively. Most coders use some version of the same font. It will look llike Verdana with a few notable exceptions. The first thing is that monospace type means exactly what it says. Every letter takes up the same amount of room. This is important when looking at coding because it’s so much easier on your eyes. In the newspaper business, they don’t do that because they’re not looking at the same thing. They don’t have to read the code between the content.

In an office suite and with coding, for me it’s Droid for everything- sans, serif, and mono. Not only do I just like them, it looks better for documents to always use a complete family of fonts rather than picking them out piecemeal. You can, it’s just easier on the eyes because then the spaces between the fonts look the same…… except for Droid Sans Mono. We have covered this.

If you’re an Android user, you’re used to the Droid font family because it’s the same one used on your phone. It makes it easier on your eyes due to looking at it all day.

Editor’s Note: “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Your Face” from “My Fair Lady” is playing in my head right now as the designation below font familiy is font face.

The only thing that ever wins over Droid Sans is Helvetica…. that’s because it’s hard to find if you’re not an Apple user, because Apple actuallly bought it for distribution and Windows didn’t. They made up their own knockoff called “Arial,” and if they’d followed Steve’s advice to focus on design, they would have bought it, too, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. In case you didn’t think Helvetica is worth serious money, there’s a whole ass documentary by the same name. Helvetica is everywhere you look. Everywhere. I once bought a copy of Helvetica at Goodwill and a whole ass Mac came with it. Buying a Mac at Goodwill was on purpose. The first is that it would be old as shit. More like a glorified typewriter. The second is that it didn’t even have a wireless card in it, so I wouldn’t be tempted at Starbucks.

When I go to Starbucks, I’m there to play for keeps. I am going to get something out of this writing session if it’s the last thing I do. “Getting something out of a writing session” is relative. Sometimes it’s that I can judge whether my writing is better or worse. Sometimes I realize that even if it’s six pages of bullshit and four wide margins, I still worked out. Writing is a muscle, and you’re strengthening your core.

I am just saying both my grandfathers have taught me a lot about what it takes to be a computer geek and a writer who focuses on art. A lot about what it takes to be neurodivergent in a neurotypical world…. particularly with my father’s father, I feel like a resurrection now that he’s dead. I am certain my father would say that, too, because he’s observed us together his whole life. I, just like him, have leapt in my bedroom to escape all the peopling. Everyone else just worked around us. Now that I’m older and I’m looking at his life in retrospect, the things that seemed weird about him when I was a kid are the exact same things that are making me weird now.

I am dying laughing thinking about how tears will roll down his face at that line. How tears would have rolled down my mother’s, aunts,and uncles’ face as well because I have just revealed the fact that I have both their dad’s numbers because I are them.

“All lesbians have this straight guy side to them…….” -me

Through my father’s father, I know that I have found both of my beloveds in this life, and they are to me. Invaluable and precious just like my grandmother was.

So, when I think about my personality, I am my dad on the inside and my mom on the outside in my behavior and actions. I think like a man, I look like a woman. This isn’t problematic to me because I’ve solved the mystery because now I have a word like nonbinary, where that disconnect doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. I named it and claimed it, sister.

Although I know my first and ony thought at the first sign of breast cancer means rip them both off immediately, because what I saw when I saw Tig Notaro is that it didn’t make her look any less feminine than she did before and my shirts would hang right.

I say this not to say that I’d have top surgery on purpose because I feel I was born in the wrong body. I just know I won’t struggle with body issues afterwards because you cannot even guess how little it would bother me to look male to some people. My mind is big enough to accept that I contain multitudes and no answer is easy…. why most people think I’m the most intense personality they’ve ever met because when they tell me they have a problem, I say, “do you want some advice, or did you just want to vent?” If they say that they’d like advice, I will go Griffin from MiBIII on their asses. I can “if, then” my way through an emotional situation like a doctor, and I do that because of my dad. He left the ministry to pursue a career in medicine and my stepmother is a rheumatologist. They got married and we lived together when I was young enough to pick up their patois quickly and easily. I get lost in a psychological H&P.

So, to get back to what I was saying about fonts, I know what to use and when because I have all the use case scenarios where you have to make readability a priority, and that comes from my dad, too. He preached about it. He said, “when Kennedy was assasinated, it said, ‘Kennedy Shot!’ in about 80pt font. When Jessica (llittlle girl that got trapped in a well) got rescued, the newspaper said, ‘Jessica Safe!’ in about 80pt font.” I don’t remember the sermon verbatim, but it centered on the ways in which bad and good news is delivered. Perhaps it was that you can only control what you broadcast, not what you take in.

When broadcasting your good news, it helps to make readability a priority.