Breaks and Random Facts

Recently I've started getting some pretty severe pain in my lower right arm, a single tendon. I know because I can feel it. Almost no doubt from using my center mouse wheel too much. I use it navigating through records in MS Access, scrolling on webpages, etc.

So I did some research on computer ergonomics and found out that I am doing almost everything the wrong way. One of the best practices is to take 30 second "micro breaks" every ten minutes. There is no way I am ever going to hit every ten, but maybe I can do 20 or 30. So I go to take my first break, but start by navigating to http://time.gov because I know they have a clock with seconds there. And course, as I am "breaking" from typing everything I want to do is check out who is on IM, write blog posts, etc. Take me a far amount of discipline to sit in front of my computer doing nothing for 30 seconds.

While at time.gov I was reminded of an extremely random and amusing fact. Greenich/Zulu time is now called Coordinated Universal Time. Part of an international effort to get all the countries in the world (or all that have the capability) to be using the same time. The acronym for this is UTC, which obviously does not match Coordinatd Universal Time. Apparently this was a comprismise. The Powers That Be couldn't find an acronym that matched both French and English reprentations of their new name. So they went with one that didn't match anything.

Politics really can be funny.