Sobriety test for New Year's Eve

Here's the deal.

No cheating. No practice runs. No going extremely slowly. Scroll down and as the phrase below comes into view, read it out loud, and AT NORMAL SPEAKING SPEED. Just say it as you read it.

If you can't say it, lay off the egg nog for a while, OK. ;-)

OK, ready?

































Irish Wristwatch

The Great Christmas Apple-Bacon Pie Caper

(click to enlarge)

Yes, that is a latticework of crispy bacon atop a homemade Granny Smith apple pie, in my kitchen.

It was an experiment.

As you may know (depending on which corners of the web you encounter) bacon has been a popular meme for the last year or so. I've exchanged many bacon-related posts and jokes with friends online.

And just to be clear, "bacon" isn't a code. It's not Kevin nor Sir Francis. Nor "bacon" as slang for something else. Nor as synecdoche or allegory or metaphor.

I mean bacon. Sizzling, smoky, curling, crackling, spitting, artery-clogging American bacon. Not that wimpy back bacon beloved by our noble Canadian neighbors to the north, but the cuts the British call with unappetizing accuracy: streaky bacon. (Of course, folks from the UK also eat "Toad in the Hole" for breakfast and "Spotted Dick" for dessert, so they have a history of bad food names.)

I almost never eat bacon anymore, but I love the taste. Bacon is the true breakfast of champions. Champions who die prematurely, perhaps, but with a smile on their greasy lips.

The bacon-meme is so pervasive that a slew of odd bacon-related and bacon flavored products have cropped up. Bacon breath mints. Bacon vodka. Bacon cologne. It goes on an on. The very zeitgeist is bacon-scented.

Odd recipes involving bacon also pop up, such as this one: Shelley's bacon-apple pie

Some friends invited me to Christmas dinner, and I offered to bring dessert. An evil plan was hatched. I would attempt an apple-bacon pie.

But first I must admit that as a chef, my imagination far exceeds my cooking skills. I am not a recreational cooker. As a single guy, the room with the refrig and stove is less a "kitchen" than a feeding station. I could furnish it from Cabela's; a hopper with a spreader disk on a timer to scatter kibble in my direction from time to time would be OK. Maybe a salt lick too.

But every once in a while, I enjoy trying something new.

Like Apple-Bacon Pie.

I got the supplies; enough for two complete pies. You see, in my state of primitive cookery, I knew that making pie would be anything but "easy as."

The first pie was for practice; a sacrifice to the gods of cholesterol.

The day before Christmas, I got everything ready for the trial run. Ironically, I hand-peeled and sliced fresh apples, used only a small amount of raw sugar, a pinch of honest to god sea salt, and other healthful and minimally processed ingredients along with the excessively processed, death-by-rasher, no-redeeming-virtue-other-than-its-taste bacon. It was like mixing Mother's Milk with plutonium.

I'm adventurous, but not suicidal, so I decided to change the recipe from the start: I'd precook the bacon. The recipe didn't call for *any* precooking, but I couldn't stand the thought of tons of bacon fat in the pie. By precooking, I could get out most of the fat before the bacon was baked with the pie. Right?

I'd seen a photo of bacon woven into a lattice before cooking, so I tried that. Ever to go camp and make potholders from yarn? Just like that, but slipperier and messier. It took a dozen slices (six in each direction) to make a lattice that would cover a standard 9" (23cm) pie.

I put the woven lattice on about half a dozen paper towels, and placed three layers of paper towels on top. I put the whole thing into the microwave. Hmmmm. A bit under a minute per slice is usually about right for this oven, but this bacon would be cooked twice, so I didn't want it fully cooked in the first step. I just wanted to liquefy and draw off some of the fat.

Eight minutes?

About 4 minutes later, my kitchen smelled glorious. I could see the paper towels doing their job, drawing the fat off the bacon. But the bacon was covered, so I couldn't visually check it.

I opened the oven at 6 minutes. The aroma was heady. It didn't just smell like bacon. IT SMELLED LIKE BACON!

The bacon was coming along at 6 minutes, and that was good, But how much more should I cook it?

I let it go the full 8 minutes, after which both my mouth and eyes were watering. Wow! HOLY SHIT, I MEAN BACON!

The meat lattice was still soft enough to need careful handling, but it was indeed partially cooked. I was optimistic.

I opened a door to air the house. I'm sure that for miles around, bears awoke from hibernation. A small cumulus of lard aerosol may have formed over my house.

I was ready for the moment: I'd already prepped the rest of the ingredients and so rapidly assembled everything, thinking that maybe this pie really would be as easy as.

OK, it wasn't.

An hour later, I saw I had precooked the bacon too long. The bacon survived the double-cooking --- what could hurt cooked bacon?--- but it had become uselessly crumbly, losing all structure. I'd turned the rashers into ghostly strips of loosely cohered bacon dust.

And the pie itself? Well, if I'd been aiming for a nice apple soup, it would have been perfect.

I mentally adjusted the recipe. I'd precook the bacon at lower temperatures and to a lesser degree of doneness, and start with thicker slices. I'd reduce the number of apples in the pie and increase the flour to change the liquid/solid ratio. And I'd cook the pie a bit longer to help take care of excess liquid.

But, a sign of my waning confidence after the first pie failure, I also went out on Christmas Eve and bought a standard, bacon-free, utterly plain Sarah Lee frozen apple pie to bring along as my emergency back-up dessert.

On Christmas day, the moment arrived and I repeated my pie-making steps with the adjustments. It all looked OK going into the main oven, and I let exothermy work its magic for a while.

The house once again infused with the unsubtle aroma of bacon. It didn't seem as strong as the previous day but I couldn't tell if it was actually less or I'd just become desensitized to it. After all, I'd cooked what is for me probably a year's worth of bacon in one glorious afternoon the day before.

But yesterday, the scent had been a deafening shout. Today, it was an insistent, pervasive whisper. Baaaaconnnn.

The pie came out and actually looked OK. I'd messed up the interface between the crust and the bacon lattice, but the lattice had retained its size and shape and bacony character.

Come on: get a better view. Click it:




I was encouraged, but uncertain enough that I also cooked the Sarah Lee pie, and brought them both, warm from the oven, to dinner.

My friends were taken aback by the pie. I waxed loquacious on the balance of sweet and salty flavors, the juxtaposition of softly cooked apples with crunchy firm bacon. I played up the natural and minimally-processed foods that made up the bulk of the pie.

We sliced it--- surprisingly, it sliced OK, although cutting crust and bacon together was a challenge. It wasn't soupy at all, and I could detect no excess bacon fat in or on the pie.

I tried a bite: I brought a fresh-baked, steaming forkful to my mouth, and opened wide.

Meh.

It was OK, but only that. Perhaps my expectations were too high. Perhaps I'd been overexposed to bacon in the last 2 days. But the pie just didn't have the zing I was hoping for.

It was good enough that the Sarah Lee pie went to another friend's party later that evening. But The Great Christmas Apple-Bacon Pie Caper was not what I'd call a resounding success.

All in all, this pie was all build-up with very little payoff.

Sort of like this post.

"The Googling:" a brief web movie

This is well done and quite funny. Multiple parts, too, if you like this first taste:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPgV6-gnQaE

Panoramio?

Somehow, I missed the rollout of this new Google service:

http://www.panoramio.com/

Those fond memories of childhood Christmases...

(Alternate title: "WTF?")

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!

May all your high-tech Holiday wishes come true!

Happy Holidays!

Speaking of China...

Doesn't this just warm your heart?




Wonder what he wants to be. If he grows up.

This morning, after the storm

No snowbanks Friday.

Today:



We lost power again last night, but it was wonderfully brief and not a major hassle.

(And yes, I look uncomfortable in the photo; the wind chill was running about -10F)

I think it's winter now.

I almost choked on my won ton

On the other hand, I have to agree with this:

After the ice storm...

... and then a small snowfall, and then yesterday's storm which dropped about 10" of snow, now:


A WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 5 AM EST MONDAY.

TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS WILL RANGE FROM 8 TO 20 INCHES. CONSIDERABLE BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW WITH NEAR BLIZZARD CONDITIONS CAN BE EXPECTED.

WINTER STORM WARNING FOR HEAVY SNOW MEANS SEVERE WINTER WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED. SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW ARE FORECAST THAT WILL MAKE TRAVEL DANGEROUS. ONLY TRAVEL IN AN EMERGENCY. IF YOU MUST TRAVEL...KEEP AN EXTRA FLASHLIGHT...FOOD... AND WATER IN YOUR VEHICLE IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY.

View across the field--- you saw a clear version of this a few days ago.


Somewhat deceptive; the deck is 4-5 inches below the indoor floor:




It's over knee-deep out there, with 12 hours of snowfall yet to go...

Another Magical Cruise Ship Moment

But this time, from inside:

Watch the plants in the midground. Things get really interesting from 1:30 to 2:00min, and positively amazing between 5:30 and 6 min.
http://tinyurl.com/6xrzgo

Going on a Cruise?

I'm not.

I bet these people wished they didn't either:

Check this out at about the 1 min mark, and again at 2:40:
http://tinyurl.com/34oo58

I'm not a car buff, but...

... this is awesome.

http://www.californiaclassix.com/archive/40_Barn-Dodge_c154.html

Free access to paid content

The folks at Windows Secrets, who publish a weekly computer column from me, have quite a deal going: Free access to their normally paid-subscription content.

It's simple, easy, and free:

To receive a free subscription to the paid version of the newsletter for a full three months (about a dozen issues!) just follow the instructions here: http://windowssecrets.com/holidaygift/ Signing up is spam-proof and only takes about 10 seconds. There is no cost or obligation and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Anyway, my new column this week covers:

"Slipstreaming" XP and Vista: Create a new custom setup CD that's fully pre-patched with current updates and Service Packs. This way, all reinstalls of your OS will be up to date from the moment they boot. (Yes, you can do it for Vista, too. But not the old way--- that won't work at all.)

Tracking computer use: Answering: "I would like to know how I can determine how much each computer is being used. Does Windows maintain a log of users who log on to the computer?" The answer is, "it can." Here's how.

.CSV files won't open in IE. Robert Harmon is stymied by an odd problem in Internet Explorer: The wrong viewer opens, even when the file associations are 100% correct.

Deleting "undeletable" Registry entries:Did you know you usually can delete "undeletable" Registry entries that defy normal methods? I describe 4 different approaches.

Remember, you can get access to this normally paid-for content FREE. Just visit http://windowssecrets.com/holidaygift/ and sign up instantly.

:-)

The Ice Storm (1)

Ed wrote: "Considering where you live and your recent weather I understand your interest in the [survival] book."

Funny you should mention that.

I lost power last Thursday night and got it back late Sunday. Temps went as low as 15F (-10C). It was a long, cold, dark weekend here. I'm on a private well system, so I lost water pressure too.

Yes, I have emergency supplies and wasn't in life-threatening danger, but it was an extremely uncomfortable few days. It went something like this: One minute you're relaxing on the sofa reading a book; the next you're thrust into an unannounced, unplanned winter camping trip of unknown duration. Surprise!

During that time, I was offline. (The blog here can auto-update with material I've banked in advance against just such exigencies.) But I took notes and storm photos, and you'll see some of those in the coming days. One thing about an ice storm: It's incredibly beautiful--- a crystalline, prismatic world.

OK, it's cold, too.

In all, it's New Hampshire's worst power outage ever. It's still going on: About 1/4 the State is still without power, and the outlying areas could take 2 more weeks to get reconnected. We had about an inch (25mm) of ice accumulate on everything.

The amount of tree damage is phenomenal. The first night of the storm, the forest was wracked with the almost continual sound of trees splitting with gunshot-loud cracks, followed by the whooshing fall and thud as ice-laden trees and limbs gave way.

Today, major numbered highways still have closures and danger areas where trees lean across the highway, supported only by inert power lines. Electrical and communications service trucks are out in convoys and packs.

Between last summer's tornado that chewed up 50 miles of forest and this ice storm, someone must have angered Woden or some other ancient tree gods. Payback's a dark, cold, shivery bitch, ain't it?

Here are a few photos; a taste:

The grass ended up looking like coral:



Everything was ghostly white:





The night after the storm, a full moon rose behind the icy trees. There were no external lights, so the sky was unusually dark, the only illumination coming from the moon and the stars (you can see a few stars in the upper left of the photo):



Today, I'm catching up on an overdue Windows Secrets column. More storm photos soon!


(PS: Kind of appropriate this is published on Wednesday, "Woden's Day" eh? It's the revenge of the Norse gods!)

Hands-On Survival

The book discussed yesterday "Deep Survival," got me thinking about the mental aspects that can separate survivors from victims. But the practical aspects are also interesting.

I'm checking these out for a possible adventure next summer:

http://www.primitiveskills.com/classes-workshops/wilderness-survival.html

http://www.hollowtop.com/Schools_North_America.htm

"Deep Survival"

I've been reading this book: http://www.deepsurvival.com/

It's interesting, and not at all what you might think. It's not about eating grubs to survive or how to build a radio from a coconut, or something.

It's about the psychology of survival, seeking to define what common trait there might be among people who tend to be survivors.

Example (true story--- the book is full of them): A plane went down in the jungles of South America. A group of 11 adults survived the crash in one location. A 19 year-old girl (wearing her confirmation dress and high heels) survived in a different location. The 11 adults all died before rescuers found them. The girl eventually walked out of the jungle on her own. What spark did she have that the adults didn't?

The author goes into the biology a bit, examining how various subsystems of our brains cooperate (or fail to cooperate) in crisis situations; and how and what our conscious minds might do about it. It's not Bear Grylls teaching you survival techniques, but more like a westernized, scientifically-based exploration of the Zen of survival.

I'm not quite finished with it yet. The author's ego gets in the way a bit, and his writing's a little uneven. But overall, it's very good and I expect my interest in the book to survive to the last page. ;-)

(BTW, I picked up a used hardbound copy off Amazon for $4.)

Why Quarterbacks Need Short Names

This can be interesting during peak times...

http://www.liveatc.net/

OO "Professional," free

You've probably heard of OpenOffice, but how about "OxygenOffice?"

Open Office is the free open-source office productivity suite, analogous to and largely compatible with Microsoft Office.

There used to be a "Premium" version with extra features that cost some money. I lost track of it, after a while.

I recently rediscovered it, now called Oxygen Office Professional. It's much more complete than the standard OO suite. OxygenOffice will even read and write the new xml-based file formats used by MS Office 2007: docx, pptx, etc.

Oxygen Office Professional
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=840436

Sometimes, I'm a brickhead.

But this is ridiculous.

http://www.langa.co.sz/

(No relation. Honest.)

4 new topics

It's Thursday, so there's a new "LangaList Plus" column posted at WindowsSecrets.Com. This week, it covers:

Controlling (and Killing!) Unneeded Processes: Too much software running in the background can really bog you down. There are good ways and bad ways of preventing needless processes from running. Here are the best ways I know.

Motherboard battery woes: A weak or dead system battery can cause all kinds of problems ranging from system clocks that can't keep time to PCs that "forget" what kind of hard drives and other hardware they have. But the fix is cheap and easy.

OK to delete old install files? An answer to this reader question: "I have a laptop running XP Home that's struggling for space on the C: drive. There are over 100 '$NtUninstallKB...' folders in \Windows that range in size from 2 to 8 MB ... it all adds up! I believe these are MS updates - but are they needed? Also, I have found there is a folder called Windows\Installer that has hundreds of files totaling around 3GB. What are these, are they really needed, and if not, what's the best way to kill them? "

More on Vista driver trouble A source of Vista-compatible drivers that I'd never heard of before!

Access to these items is almost free: You pay only whatever you think the content is worth (there's no set fee); your one-time payment gets you access for an entire year.

More info: https://windowssecrets.com/ Your support there helps me keep the lights lit here. :-)

"Private" Art

Interesting to see that some of you are also bridge admirers, especially about that folding/curling bridge I posted yesterday. My sister Susan wrote to me about it:

... it's mesmerizing: a mechanized ballet, or a cirque du soleil maneuver. Or maybe the world's slowest abdominal crunch. Dunno, but it's quite wonderful.

I agree.

I thought the music that played while the bridge operates was overdone, but it is interesting to see a purely mechanical event--- a routine bridge opening--- treated as a performance. Bridges really can be art.

And you know what I like best about the curling bridge? It's the image of the bridge rolling out in that slow dramatic unfolding with the music playing, even when no one's there. Truly ars artis gratia; art for art's sake.

There's something in the same vein near my house. It's nothing that elaborate, and it's not even a bridge.

It's a roughly sculptured stone standing in the forest along a foot trail, maybe a 20 minute walk from the nearest highway if you knew exactly where to go and walked there directly and speedily.

"Sculptured" is probably too fine a word to suggest the stone's appearance. "Hewn" might be better. Something more than merely "shaped," but not at all smoothed or "finished."

It looks like a monolith. It stands maybe 10 feet (3m) high, a gray granite slab whose base is buried in the earth. It has no sign, no signature, no explanation.

But it's clearly artificial; crafted and placed with great deliberation in that specific spot. It couldn't have been easy. The rock weighs tons, and required a large hole to be dug to erect it vertically. Plus, shaping/hewing/crafting a chunk of rock that large involved no small amount of work in itself.

I had passed the rock many times, registering it as a man-made artifact: A large, curious stone placed at what seems to be a more or less random spot deep in the local forest.

One day, I walked the woods in a different pattern and approached the rock from a different direction. From one specific distance, and from one and only one perspective (which is not along the axis of the trail) the rock changes and you see that it's actually roughly hewn in the shape of New Hampshire.

There's a wonderful Aha! moment when it clicks into perspective. From that moment, you can never see it as a monolith again: from any angle, you'll see it as a 3d physical representation of New Hampshire. Think about it some more, and you'll realize it's also a sculptural pun: the Granite State.

I have no clue who put it there, or why, or whose effort it represents.

It's not great art: Put that same monolith in a public park, and you wouldn't give it a second glance. Put it in a museum, and you might read the explanatory note on the wall to try to understand the significance of the piece, because in that setting, the innate significance would be lost.

What makes the rock special is that it's someone's private art: Art done for its own sake, and for no other reason. Few people will ever see the rock; fewer still will stumble across the one perspective that makes its real meaning evident; yet fewer still will grok the underlying pun.

How could the artist ever know who, if anyone, would understand or appreciate what he'd (or she'd) done? But s/he did it anyway. Art for art's sake.

Now close your eyes and picture in your mind's eye that bridge from yesterday's post, performing its balletic curling and uncurling with unnecessary grace even when no one's there to see. Art for art's sake.

And now, the bridge is dismantled and gone. Except it's in your memory now, and mine. It's no longer a thing, but the mere idea of a thing.

Let the bridge slowly roll and unroll in your mind. The bridge is gone, but the art is still there, alive in a way that steel and hydraulics never could be.

That's ars atis gratia.

You gotta love it.

amazing bridge

I've always enjoyed the architecture of bridges. Not so much the brute strength of pier-and-beam construction--- that's just a dead tree across a gully done with better materials.

But robust trusses, vast arches, gossamer suspensions, inventive curves and angles, unusual materials... bridges are often as strangely beautiful as they are functional.

Moving bridges--- draws, lifts, turntables--- are a special class. They're rarely delicate, but are often built with a precision that's amazing for structures so large and heavy; especially if you can watch the mating surfaces come together: Megatons of steel positioned with the gentleness of a nun putting down a teacup.

Then there's this small bridge. It's delicate, almost sculptural, and comes closer to moving like a living object than any other bridge I've seen:
http://www.odditycentral.com/videos/heatherwick-rolling-bridge.html

Wait a minute...

I recently saw a salary survey site that lets you enter two job titles to compare the average salaries.

For example, following some odd train of thought, I thought it might be interesting to compare a professional meteorologist to that of an on-air TV reporter:

http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=meteorologist&l1=&q2=tv+reporter&l2=

Interesting. Or so I thought.

But playing with the site made me soon realize that its data is, to but it politely, utter crap

http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=ninja&l1=&q2=pirate&l2=

http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=dictator&l1=&q2=monarch&l2=

http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=scum+of+the+earth&l1=&q2=salt+of+the+earth&l2=

http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=good&l1=&q2=evil&l2=

http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=satan&l1=&q2=god&l2=

Hoooookaaaaaay.

Unique view of Mt Rushmore

Speaking of cameras, I missed this shot from the other side of Mt Rushmore when I was there last year:

new camera, part 2

My previous camera, which I loved, took some serious abuse on my cross-country motorcycle trip last year: Hanging out in the breeze for 10,000 miles (16,000km), subject to dust, dirt, road grit, temperature extremes, etc., the camera certainly saw severe service.

I recently got an Olympus SP 570uz, which some online sites are offering at about half list price. (A small silver lining to the recession; electronics prices are in near free fall.)

Lots of nice features, but the one that most appealed to me was the enormous zoom capability, 26mm wide angle to 520mm telephoto. The first 20x is purely-optical zoom (no image degradation at all), plus another 5x digital zoom on top of that, for a total of 100x zoom. It's a freaking telescope!

The camera is about the size of a standard SLR, and is totally self-contained. This means I'll have a huge range of effective lens options without having to carry a bag full of heavy, expensive and delicate glass lenses with me.

I'm still learning what it can do. Although it has a point-and-shoot mode, it'd be silly to use the camera that way. So, I'm experimenting.

Here, I was playing with the zoom. I started out with a very wide-angle (100 degree wide) shot, centered on the top of the distant tree across the field:

(as always, click for larger views of the photos)

Start with the optical zoom, still focused on the very top of that tree:


Closer:


closer still:


And here, I'm approaching the end of the optical zoom:


I was holding the camera and bracing against a railing. The camera's image-stabilization system was no doubt working overtime to steady the shots at these magnifications. But there's still a little motion-blur evident, so I'll really need to use a tripod at high zooms like these.


Into the first increment of digital zoom. There's a little artefacting from the pixel enlargement and hand-held shakiness, but it's still OK:


Holy smokes, this is getting extreme. Even this half-assed first attempt at extreme zoom is picking out individual needles atop the tree:


And here we are at 100x zoom. Getting fuzzy, but you can still count the scales on the pine cones. (And remember, even in the larger Blogger format, this photo has been hugely reduced in resolution from the original.)


Wow.

Here's the original wide-angle shot with the 100x zoom inset, so you can see just how much magnification the camera can handle:


This camera's gonna be fun. ;-)

Pix from the NH Woods

Sorry for the break in posts--- life has a way of deciding ones plans for oneself, sometimes.

I was walking in the woods yesterday, enjoying a a cool late-Autumn afternoon and learning about a new camera I recently got. I thought you might enjoy seeing these photos.

The late-afternoon sunlight was slanting through the trees, dappling the forest floor and making some leaves turn a warm translucent brown. I tried to capture it.

The camera wanted me to use a flash, so I tried it, but the shot came out flat, overlit and not very good at all:

(click images for larger version)


The natural-lit shot was better overall, but too dark and without really getting the translucence I was hoping for:


Later, at home, I used imaging-editing software to play with the contrast. That helped open up the shadows and emphasize the light.


I then tweaked the red and yellow channels to bring out the warm browns my eyes originally saw. I tweaked the contrast again a bit, as well:


That (above) is probably as good as that shot was gonna get while leaving it as a photo. At a reasonable size, it looks pretty good with lots of detail.

But I wasn't after detail. I was after a subtler lighting effect. I wondered if doing a major manipulation of the photo might help achieve the effect I wanted. I tried an "oil painting" effect (really needs to be at larger size to see it well):



I liked it: the image was a play of lights and darks, without the distraction of lots of fine detail.

Next, I added a canvas effect, generated a fuzzy border, and then did a final brightening to compensate for the slight darkening the canvas effect caused. Click to see it larger:


You know, printed on high-quality glossy photo paper, that'd look halfway decent.

Anyway, it was fun to play with. I have a lot to learn about the new camera, but the potential sure is there, if I can live up to it!

If I got shipwrecked...

How bad is *your* typing?

I started on a manual typewriter, where stream-of-consciousness, fast-as-possible writing was positively aerobic. Ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, Ding!

Electrics were a revelation; so light a touch. Effortless!

Word processing was a dream. No more scissors and tape and paper scraps on the floor, but a *virtual* cut-and-paste. Amazing!

Now, I have become totally dependent on spellchecking and auto-correct.

When I'm typing fast, it's very ugly.

In an email, I tried to type "employment" and mistyped so many letters the spell-checker suggested "Uzbekistan."

I hang my head in shame; I have become a very lazy typist.

Or, as in the firstvdraft, a very l;azu typist./