It occurs to me that I haven’t posted anything this year, so why not start with commentary on my newest glowing rectangle?

Backstory: I switched from MacBooks to Chromebooks ages ago. I had come to despise the MacBook because it took forever to do anything– to update, to start up, to shut down. It was bad. It was “waiting for Tunnels of Doom to load via cartridge and audio cassette on a TI-99-4a in 1983” bad, but with bitter loathing instead of joyous anticipation.

So I tried out a Chromebook because it was advertised as cheap and fast, and it fit the bill, and I was an instant convert. They were cheap enough that I could replace them every couple years without breaking the bank. Then I decided to break the bank on a Pixelbook in 2018. It was the best computer I’ve ever had.

The Pixelbook worked like a charm for 6 years, which is unusual for any “smart” device these days, until I discovered that it is– was– susceptible to ketchup. Worse, the Mensa candidates who run Google decided they don’t want that much of my money, so they cancelled the Pixelbook line altogether.

I looked for alternatives. Didn’t feel like taking out a second mortgage to get a MacBook, the Windows laptops felt clunky, and the Chromebooks– though still cheap and fast– paled in comparison to the perfection of the Pixelbook. So I figured I’d try an altogether different form factor.

I am typing this on a detachable keyboard on a Samsung tablet. (For those of my generation and older, a “tablet” is like those touchscreen clipboards on Star Trek.) The tablet was cheapish and came with a magic pen. It may not actually be magic, but the device can convert my scribblings to digitized text, which is pretty darn impressive. Hold on a second…

I am writing this sentence using the magic pen.I just erased a mistake by scratching it out.. I just changed the numeral “1” at the beginning of this paragraph to the letter “I” by  simply writing over. it. I clearly haven’t fully mastered the pen, because I just spent five minutes trying to get this sentence right without inserting it into a previous sentence. impressive enough for now. The magic pen that is, not my proficiency with it.

That was an adventure. Back to the keyboard. Next I’ll have to write a post in digital manuscript and/or cursive.

What times we live in. Maybe the return to “stylus on surface” writing will get decent-lookin’ handwriting and signatures trending again. We’ll see.