...And a Reprieve

After I figured out that my Amazon links were messed up, and knowing the scope of the problem was pretty wide, I sent off an email to the Tech Editor, asking if he'd help me fix the links, figuring that four hands would get the links repaired in half the time. I was wrong.

With his mighty wizardry and knowledge of how computer shit works, he did some kind of magic "find and replace" with the Press guts, and then sent me a reply email the following morning that said that all 800-and-some links were fixed.

I cannot convey what a sense of relief I felt, except that I was so energized by the prospect of not developing terminal eyestrain that I spent the afternoon writing. Thank you, Tech Editor Josh. You made my week.

On a side note, Josh did not tell me how he fixed it. He never tells me how he fixes things in the Press guts. Maybe it's a power trip -- or maybe he just knows that I don't know what I'm doing really, and that in my hands a little bit of knowledge could be a very dangerous thing. If I were him, I wouldn't want someone to risk messing up 13 years of website either.

Re-Capturing A Glow

Having the old laptop come back to life on my desk made me think of the files that were on it. I had a look around them, and with a stomach-clenching start, realized that my six novels were NOT there. The next four were, in various states of unedited/unfinished-ness, but I have them backed up on the work laptop and a thumb drive already. With horror I went to the desktop machine, that perverse Windows 7 HP lemon ... oh, no, that's where the completed novels were? What had I been thinking?

When I transferred those files from my first (and now dead and gone to recycle bin) laptop, I hadn't known that the desktop was a lemon, that's what I had been thinking. Well, what the hell, I thought, I could work with those files on the Big Screen -- maybe that would help me catch typos!

I knew that Character Assassin needed "justified" print (CA was actually my first novel in print) so I thought I'd just do that and see if I still remembered how ...

And thus began the next few hours of sweat and twitchiness: the Word program I had installed on the desktop would not allow me to use "Thai Distributed Justify," which had worked so nicely with the other books. Again and again I typed those three words into Word's "Help" program, Google Search, back to Word, calling up Dreamer and seeing "Thai Distributed Justify" in its formatting, unable to find it for CA ... OMG, don't tell me that Windows 7 won't work with my old 2002 Word program!

I turned off the Big Screen and turned on my Windows Vista laptop. Yes, you can access Thai Distributed there. I turned Vista off and turned on Windows 7 laptop. Sweating bullets of relief, I found Thai Distributed there, too. Why the hell wasn't it on Big Screen -- all my machines had the same Word 2002 disk uploaded -- and what the hell might have happened to my files while they were being mauled by Lemon Big Screen?

There were two thumb drives in the desk drawer, and neither one of them had my novels on them.  With a steadily droning "Eeeeeeeeee" of horror running through my head, I carefully loaded the novels from Big Screen onto the thumb drive with palsied hands, checking each one to make sure that Page One and The End were on each. Lamaze breathing exercises and glugged ice water helped me keep from falling into a panic attack.

Did you know that it's okay to mention "Stress Sweat" nowadays? Yes, it is, I heard it on a television commercial just the other night. The ad noted that "Stress Sweat" is really smelly, different than "Exercise Sweat" -- duh! After I made sure that every sentence of my novels had successfully loaded onto Windows 7 Laptop, I re-formatted Out With the Trash to Thai Distributed justification. It looks sharp.

And then I took a shower because I stunk.

But you know what? Making sure that my novel files had lifeboats gave me some time to spend with them, and I liked what I saw. I think I'm ready now to start working with them again, and get Out With the Trash into circulation.

Fan that little spark, and make Sand a writer again, not simply an editor.

Bernie tells me that my laptop's days are numbered.

I don't want to believe that, because I've really liked this machine, and the keyboard feels so very familiar, and it has all my favorite programs on it to my satisfaction. However, it has begun running with a hot spot in the upper left corner, the power cord connection is wobbly, the DVD reader doesn't read any more, and there is the new problem with the screen going dead for no particular reason.

"It's not that old!" I sputtered at my husband, who then pointed out that this machine gets powered up in the morning even before I totter from bed to bathroom, and though I let it rest periodically during the day, it's also only turned off in the late evening when I've decided I can't keep my eyes open any longer. Is it possible that I've used my machine up?

We started with a noisy e-Machine, on which I wrote my first emails and my first novel; then I had my sweet little Micron that Tedi and JT sent me so that I could have my very own computer. After that came the first laptop, and then a desktop that could handle all the graphics I was doing in Photoshop; and then this laptop, and the absolute lemon desktop that can barely count its own toes and which I despise so much it will probably never work correctly.

So many ghosts of computers past, and present, and what will fill the future? I looked at laptops in Best Buy today, and hated every single one of them.

Nevertheless, I am reluctant to entrust any more writing to this laptop ...

Achoo, Said the Computer

There's a lot of pollen in the air, in spite of the blessed rain we've received this week. My neighbor's filthy, multiply-diseased ornamental pear (fireblight and mistletoe) reached its smelly (as in rotten meat smell) pinnacle of blossom just as the rains came in. God alone should be praised for that mercy.

Against my better judgment, I finally uploaded "updates" to my computers. The result? Can it be Better Performance? Can it be Greater Security? Oh noes, it turns out that now my laptop turns into a cyber-graveyard at random intervals, freezing up and shutting down non-normally.

We've tried "restoring" to a pre-updates day, but the problem persists. How I wish that I could reach the fool that wrote the program that has virtually destroyed my laptop. I'd probably go to jail, so perhaps it's a wish better not granted. This is not something I need, because I have no income, but I can't see any way around taking this laptop in to a shop and hoping they can fix the poor bugger.

Maybe it will work again after the heavy pollen season is over. That's just as possible as me suddenly finding the $$ in our checking account for a new laptop. At least I was able to save my documents -- all my novels -- to a thumb drive.

Damn Microsoft to CyberHell.

Nine Ladies Dancing

More or less. The bee doesn't count, she's working, not dancing.

The ninth day of Christmas was okay, after the Piker Press was up and I was able to stop swearing at my laptop and its penchant for wacking out on me when I'm trying to edit articles.

It starts like this: Grumpy because I've left working on the Press until Monday morning (when I've vowed every Monday afternoon for years that I'm going to get everything ready to roll the Thursday prior to Monday's publishing), I immediately tackle the "difficult" articles first -- the ones that need close attention and editing. An article that has misspellings and punctuation gaffes can take an hour to edit and format, depending on how rough a draft I've been handed, and how many interruptions in the process.

Every link has to be checked, every book that's reviewed has to be available on Amazon (since those links are our only income, piss poor though it is). Every Peek of the Week has to be mined from galleries, examined closely to make sure there is no blur, and on Monday mornings I can barely remember how to button my shirt correctly let alone who all has given me permission to look through their galleries for potential photos.

Halfway through the process, I'm already stiff and itchy, and then the laptop mousepad gets over-sensitive and buggers up lines I've typed. I should know better, yes, it's true. The only thing to do is get up, walk away, and go watch the birds for a while, drink a glass of ice water, run a load of laundry. The madder I get, the more mistakes slow me up. Bleah.

But once the Press was done, the ninth day was fine. Laundry was a-cookin' in the machines, there were plenty of leftovers for lunch; I took a walk around the block, read an uplifting article about liturgical norms, tackled three small sewing projects, and with Bernie's help, sanded off the old finish on the paper towel holder from the kitchen.

I got to thinking about a picture of 'nine ladies dancing' -- and thought of photos of cherry blossoms. So beautiful, and on a day that dawned with thick gray Tule fog, cold and damp, I found myself longing for Spring already.

As I looked through the photos, I spotted something I had missed last Spring: a bug staggering through the photo shoot.

Merry Christmas Season, Bug! You're a star!

Painting

No, this isn't the painting, those are leaves. I like those leaves. I like them a lot better than I like the painting!

I've been away from painting for so long that most of my oil paints are dried up. I also noted today that many of my brushes look like they are victims of mange.

And the reasons there is not a picture of the painting here are twofold: One, I don't feel like walking to the other end of the house to get the camera and cables, and Two, I don't feel like making all that effort for something that looks like shit.

No, I'm not being modest. The leaves really are easier on the eyes.

Nevertheless, I had the urge to dig out my oils yesterday, pulling the box of paints out from under the work table, squeezing each tube to see if there was any chance of getting any paint out of it, and opening my jars of medium and thinner to see if the jars would still actually open. "I'll find a simple picture in a magazine, scan it into the computer, and then fuzz it out in Photoshop so that I can clearly see the color values." That's what I told myself.

I found a simple picture. I got my scanner down from the shelf. I proceeded to introduce my laptop to the scanner... For almost three hours.

If one reads this blog regularly, one would possibly remember that the reason the scanner isn't on my desk with the desktop computer is that the suckasses who invented Windows 7 made sure it didn't work with most things that used to work with XP, as in planning obsolescence. However, the laptop I have has Vista on it -- should be no problem.

Should be.

The scanner, I should add, was already obsolete when I bought it for very cheap -- it was a display model and didn't even have the manuals with it. Still, it worked just fine for me for years. Therefore, I was optimistic about it getting along with the laptop.

No.

It said I needed a new driver after I installed the software. So I found one online, and downloaded it.

No.

It said it didn't see any driver, and also, by the way, had no record of scanner software being installed. Fine. I re-installed, re-downloaded the driver.

No.

Still can't see the scanner, said my laptop, squeezing its computer eyes shut. And you need a driver anyway.

"Fine, you shithead," I replied, and went to the Canon homepage to find and download the manual.

Heh, said the laptop, and refused to talk to the printer in the other room, printing out only the last page of the manual. I stomped to my desk and turned on the computer there.

Oh, trying to send a laptop with Vista to do a Windows 7 job? the desktop sneered at me. The desktop jerked the printer's chain and I retired to the studio once more with a stack of pages in my hands.

Wait. The manual was for Windows 98, Windows Me... and XP. The laptop began giggling like a naughty teen in art class who has just poured Elmer's glue into a dozing classmate's hair. My scanner is that old?

"That's just ... fine." I said once more. I re-uninstalled all the scanner stuff, drivers, schmivers, what all. I turned the machine off. Then, remembering an issue I had with a previous computer, I plugged the scanner into a different USB port, and started the thing up again.

By the numbers, Baby, and I didn't really even need the damned manual. The scanner installed, the driver that came with the CD worked, and the laptop said, Ooo! A new toy! Let's play!

By that time, I really just wanted to sit with a glass of wine and read a paperback and pretend that there were no computers, but I scanned the simple picture, fiddled with it in Photoshop, and then selected a small, small canvas.

Long ago I swore I would nevermore try to paint on a white canvas, so I got a disposable rag and a tube of paint for priming. I chose my cadmium red, because I was still pretty hot under the collar about the whole computer thing, and began smearing the canvas with a light coat of paint.

Fine. The red paint, instead of looking red, looked a sickly pink, very unappetizing, very uninspiring.

"Fine," I said, and put the thing to dry, opened the garage door to vent clean air in, and got my glass of wine.

Yeah. That works. The painting sucks, but at least I got a lot of paint on the canvas, covering the stinky pink priming. "Fine." Now for a glass ...