The Wrong Tool For The Job
This isn't either of the blogs I had planned for this week. I have a 90% written piece about why perfectly good computers aren't compatible with Windows 11. I also have about half of the background done on what I plan to be my first movie review here.
I can't promise I would have published either this week. No matter which party won the election, I was going to have things to do as it related to that. I might have had more energy if I hadn't been mourning the results. It would require a lot more than a time machine to find out what things might have been like for me this week with a different outcome.
This post is one I didn't plan. There's an oft-repeated phrase “the right tool for the job.” If you grew up speaking English, you've heard of it. Probably from a parent telling you to stop using a screwdriver as a hammer. It's not a bad phrase as is. It has uses but I come to you today to tell you sometimes you need the wrong tool.
A long time ago, I looked down at my grocery cart and realized that everything in it that wasn't food was something I was buying for a purpose other than its intended use. It's the kind of thing I didn't really think about before then. It's part of what I call “living a life without defaults.” I don't do it for some specific philosophical reason. It's a description of something I've observed about myself, not something I think you need to adopt. I do it because I don't know what the defaults are. Blame it on my autism. Even in an age with search engines providing access to much of humanity's knowledge, it's often hard to phase the question in a way that you can get a straight answer out of a search engine.
More fundamentally, there are tools I need that don't exist. That's literally why I code but I'm not an engineer. If a physical thing I need doesn't exist, I end up bodging my own thing together with the wrong tool.
The thing that reminded me of this is a Freewrite Alpha. It's a bit pricey but it's a distraction-free writing tool. That's becoming a bit of a theme for me. When you use it with the kickstand deployed, the rubber feet at the bottom aren't enough to keep it from shifting around a desk. That's very distracting which defeats the purpose.
Note: I'm not endorsing the Freewrite Alpha. I think for the money, almost anyone would be better served by buying a used laptop and installing Linux on it. It'll be cheaper and you can get a similar low-distraction environment by creating a local only account.
I have some silicone coasters and I set up three of them to solve the issue but I knew it wasn't quite what I needed. Almost surely there's someone who has something that's either purpose built to solve my problem or something pretty close to it. I could spend hours trying to find the exact right thing. Or I could buy some of that rubber jar lid grippers are made out of.
I'm not here to advertise for you the wonders of a particular retail chain. They're not paying me and they've betrayed the queer community two Prides running so fuck 'em. But they do have rolls of that stuff as shelf-liner at prices cheaper than any more purpose-built solution I was likely to find. You can probably find it locally at one of your home improvement retailers. Plus it makes my improvised desk look good.
I did have to cut it to size. I reached for my good scissors and realized “Maybe this is the time for the right tool.” I found my less expensive scissors and cut it to length.
When you have the right tool available, you should use it. Sometimes the right tool doesn't exist or isn't affordable or available. When that happens, embrace using the wrong tool. Take joy in it! When you do, you're participating in a tradition older than humanity.
