Tag: technology threat or menace

Remote writing

So, Sunday. Dim and damp. Big breakfast of scrambled eggs with inclusions. Need to make something for lunch realsoonnow.

One thousand two hundred five new words written today, putting the WIP well over fifty grand — 50,570(ish), for those keeping a spreadsheet.

I’m contemplating a nap. I prolly won’t take one, ref make lunch, above, but jeezlouise is it a day for a nap.

In totally unrelated news, this morning I was thinking about Something Else, and a character wandered into my head, as they do, this one bearing the conviction that she’s from Chicago. Well. Everybody’s gotta be from someplace, I guess.

How’s Sunday treating you and yours?
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Bread’s in the oven. Remote arrived. I have achieved a kludge blu-ray system by which I need to start the disc playing manually, but once that happens, I can use the remote to start the movie, fast forward through previews and all like that, which is to say!

I will, indeed, preorder a copy of Hadestown, and when it arrives it will be more than a pretty ornament.

I would like it noted in the log that my test disc was Jupiter Rising and that I did not watch all of it.

I am a Tired Woman, for whatever that’s worth.

Everybody have a good evening. I’ll check in tomorrow.

Friday evening

Aaaaand that’s enough fun for one day. I’ve downloaded the user’s manual for the Sylvania blu-ray DVD player, and ordered in a remote, because a review of the material on the Sylvania site for this particular blu-ray player (manufactured in 2010, for those who have their BINGO cards out) indicates that this remote is missing from my collection. I have decoupled the DVD player from the VHS player, figuring to solve one problem at a time*.

I’ve also put the house back together, done all the PT homework, overthought the scenes I wrote this morning, but didn’t Figure Anything Out. As far as I know, I guess I should say, because honestly, I’m just the typist, here.

I’ve also amused myself by putting stickers on my new rolling cart. I should go back over my notes for Class One, but it occurs to me that I’m probably overthinking that, too, so yanno what?

It’s Friday. I’m gonna have a glass of wine and, oh, read a book.

Everybody have a good evening. I’ll check in tomorrow.
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* Yesterday evening was enlivened by trying to figure out did the DVD player work? My first opinion was YES, followed by NO. I dug out four? five? remotes from behind the TV, but none of them would allow me to move from the screen that says “TA-DA!The DVD is loaded! If you wanna watch the movie, hit PLAY.” Nothing I did convinced the on-screen PLAY button that I did, indeed, want to watch the movie. And so we come to today.

What if I’d been the one to say good-bye?

Aaaand. Back pain has returned. We. Are. NOT. Pleased. Currently working on trying to up the efficacy of my superpower by doing what needs to be done, and when there’s a spike, telling myself, “It’s only pain,” and keep on with whatever it is I’m doing. Let it be known that I’m not doing the wire act, and certainly not the trapeze.

The local post office gives me to understand that the Perambulating Package is on the route jeep and scheduled for delivery at my house today.

Yeah.  We’ve heard that before.

A question for the Tech Folk, Internet Domain Division. If someone has registered a domain through a wholesale service and “can make any changes to the domain” that they wish to make, does that not make them the owner of that domain, regardless of if they allow someone else to register the domain with a provider, post content and act in all ways as if that name belonged to them? That the person registering the domain can, in theory, and at any time, evict the person using that nameserver?

Spanish Aunts.

…it seems that standing up is the current correct position insofar as my back is concerned, so I’ll be bringing the pages I have left to read of the WIP to the standing desk for perusal.

I have Tali in position under the standing desk in my office, and Rook in his box on the edge of the big desk, where he can get the breeze from the open windows, it being a nice enough day, so far.

What’s happening with you, today?

Today’s blog post title brought to you by .38 Special, “If I’d been the one.”

The Rule of Three

Tuesday. Sunny, with a cool breeze. Trash and recycling at the curb.

Breakfast was hummus on rice crackers with a side of cherries.

Woke up this morning reminding myself of the Rule of Three*, which is only a little unsettling. After breakfast, I spent about an hour on the phone with a young person at Fidium whose name I heard as Alistair, but my ears probably dropped syllables. He was very helpful and patient and has, he said, gotten the landline to forward to the cell. Fingers crossed.

Though Alistair was very helpful and kind, I found the whole experience rather stressful, since we had to deal with Fidium’s lack of previous record-keeping, such as not removing Steve as the account manager, but merely adding me to the account, when I called them in 2024, so there was a lot of scraping off of old paint and serial numbers so that new could be applied.

I do need to unload the dishwasher (which is working nicely, and is slightly quieter than the previous dishwasher), and change out the cat fountains, but after that, I may just find a sunny chair and read. I’m thinking a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch. Maybe a grilled ham and cheese sandwich.

The cats have been on the case. Tali, in particular, took up a position under the ledge of the stand-up desk while Alistair and I were doing business, and pressed herself, warm and cat-solid, against my thighs, which was very good of her. Rookie brought me his pink ball, which was of course a comfort. Firefly sat in the window, and occasionally looked over her shoulder and smiled.

For those keeping score at home, preorders for the ebook edition of The Fey Duology as of this morning: Amazon 131; Apple 23; BN 7; Kobo 16.

So! What’s happening in your life this morning?

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*The Rule of Three is the principle that what you do returns to you three times. It’s most usually invoked as an argument against doing harm.

It’s been a long week already

So, that was not how I was going to spend my morning.

In early March, I paid off the installation of the new French doors in Steve’s office. The check cleared. I foolishly thought that was that.

Until today, when I open a statement from the finance company which states that I owe them the full amount.

I call. The story at the finance company is that the check was “returned to maker” — IOW, it bounced.

I look at my account online. Nope; check cleared. However, there is a noted “returned” check for the same amount after the original check cleared.

I call the bank, which goes into their files, and says that it looks to them like the check cleared, THEN IT WAS SUBMITTED AGAIN — and the second submission bounced. As it should have done.

Call finance company back. Am told several times at length by the first line customer service person that the check bounced. Finally win a conversation with a “specialist,” with whom I go through the whole thing One! More! Time! including the fact that I have of copy of the cleared check with the finance company’s stamp on the back, and he creates a Ticket.

I’m to hear back from the Banking Experts in 48 to 72 hours. And I’m wondering if people can actually shake themselves into a decline.

Argh.

First cat fountain swapped. Guess I’d better go get on the second.
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And on the plus side of the ledger, dishwasher repair guy will be here “today.”

Guess I’d better rustle up some lunch.
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And Ray says the motor’s burned up. I have purchased on his advice, a Whirlpool which will hopefully be delivered sometime next week.

Argh.
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Home now from needlework, which I’m glad I just didn’t decide to stay home and brood.

Yanno what?  I’m really looking forward to walking that alpaca tomorrow morning.

She’s all that I have left, and Music is her name…

Thursday morning, quickly. Warm and looking for precipitation of an Undecided Configuration.

Firefly and I had a Very Serious Talk while we enjoyed the Happy Lite, and find ourselves as one on every topic of importance.

Breakfast was oatmeal with semi-sweet chips and almond butter. Lunch will be a garnet yam. In-between will be entering corrections to Kin Right. I’m about half-done with the narrative, after, I need to write a Thing and also the cast of characters. Then? It will be free to leave the building.

One of the things I intend to do, once Kin Right has gone on to its next stop on the publication trail is to reissue the Fey Duology as an electronic omnibus. At the moment, I am leaning toward making it available through Baen only, for completeists. It can’t go up on Amazon, because I can’t cope with the grief they will give me regarding my ownership of the content. Such discussion always made more enjoyable by the off-stage threat that Amazon will delete all of my content if its AI or whoever’s answering the phone today decides that I’m lying.

Sigh. Thus, the Brave New World.

And a phone call! The computer repair shop reports that my printer is fixed and ready to come home. Two hours on the bench; $100. Bargain.

But now? I need to get another cup of tea, Tali having just inspected the mug on my desk and pronouncing the beverage icky — and go make corrections in a manuscript.

What’s happening with you today?
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And! Correx entered. Printer home, where it immediately found and log itself into the home network and printed me a lovely copy of the printer for LUC6.

Well worth $100.

Now to chop up onions and get lunch cooking.
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I used to adore the internet, back in the day before it became a hellhole.

That is all.
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Brought to the top because apparently I needed to say this. In re the internet, and Miller and Lee.

The green-screens were Da Pits, but the connectivity was mind-blowing. We were part of the early BBS networks in the mid-1980s, before we moved to Maine, which was about people connecting with people. Then when we came to Maine, in 1988, and found out there were nothing like it in our part of Maine, Steve got so offended he built Circular Logic, which became one of the biggest and most sophisticated bulletin board systems in the state, (this is still prior to the W(orld) W(ide) W(eb)), which is how we got hooked up with I-want-to-say-Usenet — EDITED TO ADD: FIDOnet — the listserv that went ’round the world, and arrived at Circular Logic at about 2 am every day, and had to be uploaded to the conversation section of the BBS, so people who were talking to their friends in Australia would get their answer in a timely manner, which is how we eventually got connected to Pardoz, who set up the very first Liaden Interest thread that went ’round the world, and so the Friends of Liad were born.

Steve had actually been on … bah. ARPANET? when he was doing online cataloging at University of Maryland, before I met him, in the late 1970s.

Well. Sorry about that. Guess my fingers needed exercise.

 

Today’s blog post title brought to you by Crosby, Stills, and Nash, “Southern Cross“

One foot in front of the other

What went before: Tuesday: So, that was no fun. Woke up sobbing sometime around midnight, apparently so I could buckle down and get the thing done properly. The cats piled on and did their best; Rook left at one point and came back with one of the floppy foxes he uses as wrasslin trainers when Tali don’t wanna, and tucked it under my chin.

Long story short, I finally went back to bed around 7, woke up around 10, with a headache naturally, and all things taken up and tallied, I do believe that today I’m taking one of my banked Sick Days.

Do feel free to talk among yourselves.
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Wednesday. Sunny and going to be warmer.

Slept long and hard, assisted by coon cats. Woke up hungry, but haven’t done anything about that yet. I’m thinking scrambled eggs and sausage are on the menu, as soon as I’m finished here.

Today, I need to go out and run errands. Notably, I need to take the Epson ink jet to the repair shop. The proposition that I do so was not met with Wild Enthusiasm, but an agreement that they could “look at it” and see if it was something simple. If not, printers being so twitchy and hard to fix and all, the advice is that I would be “better off” buying a new one. So, we’ll see, I guess.

Also need to go to the grocery store and probably the post office. Then back home for some more reading of the WIP. Oh, and figuring out how to cancel Cook Unity, instead of just stalling it, which is what I did for this week.

I still have the lingering rags of a headache, and I’m inclined to call Foul, but, hey, maybe breakfast will help. EDITED TO ADD: Breakfast has been et. Feeling much more The Thing.

How’s everybody doing?
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Ink Jet Printers: A Teaching Fable.

Once upon a time, printers were rated as to the number of pages per week they could be expected to handle without having a screaming breakdown. Those printers that could handle a heavy workload, week in and out, were called “office printers.”

We here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory legitimately ran offices: we printed letters, and manuscripts, and flyers, and all sorts of things, and because we subscribed to the Asimov Theory of Typewriters (paraphrased): “Always have a spare, and a spare for the spare, because you don’t ever want to be in a position where broken technology means you can’t write” — we each had our own printer and (usually) a printer that still kinda sorta worked, which had been semi-retired, and could be pressed back into service in case Catastrophe Struck.

We bought, in a word, for the Ages. At the moment there are two high-capacity printers in this house, both inkjets, both work horses, neither cheap. Both are, yes, more than 8 years old, because I remember Steve carrying them into this house like they were infants.

In comparison, back in 2012, I went to live for a month at the ocean, where I was going to be finishing the second Carousel book and making a good start on the third. Obviously, I needed a printer, but! I didn’t want to schlepp my good printer to the ocean and risk getting sand in the workings.

So, I went to Staples and I bought, I kid you not, a sixty dollar inkjet printer, which came with two ink cartridges, guaranteeing, I think, 600 pages between them. Subsequent cartridges cost Approximately The Earth. Important Plot Point.

Off to the ocean I went. The Sixty Clam Printer worked flawlessly for the entire time I was away, and I did not stint it. When the month ended, I brought it home, and put it online as a “spare,” mostly to use up what was left of the ink.

Two weeks after I got home, the Sixty Clam Printer died the true-death, without even finishing the ink in the second cartridge. I took it to the local computer recycling joint, and waved good-bye. Sixty Clams owed me nothing, and it certainly wasn’t worth getting it fixed, not with what the home office was charging for ink, and I had a Good Printer at home.

Moral! Not all ink jet printers are cheap pieces of crap that ought to just be thrown away when they develop a glitch. Analysis is worth your time.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

In which the squeaky wheel gets the worm

Thursday. Sunny and chill. The cats are sitting in the sliders in Steve’s office, squirrel watching. Am sitting in the comfy chair in my office. Drinking a cup of Darjeeling, I think, (edited to add:  It was Lapsang Souchung) and basking in the happy lite.

I find that I really don’t have much to say this morning. I’m going to go get breakfast and hide inside my story.

How’s everybody doing?

Dictated to my phone
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Worked. Made stirfry for lunch. Scrubbled cats. Have a few things to clean up in the business office, need to wash the pots ‘n pans, and do one’s duty to the cats.

Then I believe I shall go back to Steve’s office and recover the old, ill-tempered GNOME-based system, because COSMIC? Is not ready for prime time. I hate it that stuff gets released when it doesn’t work, and by “doesn’t work” I mean — surely, the primary use of a computer is to handle files? I means, yes, they also do math, and play music, and host games, but these things are also file-based.

I see No Benefit to … anyone … in a computer system that can’t reliably cope with its own files. So — big step back for me, and fingers crossed that the recovery process is fairly seamless.

In other news, not content to nag me to sell my house, now there are people who want to buy my car. Given a new Forester costs on the order of +/-$40grand and I’m being offered +/-$27grand for my current Forester — I don’t see the appeal, aside having a new car, and it happens I ain’t jonesing for a new car right now.

For those keeping score, the snow is melting fast under the sun and (cold) breeze. I had a go at smashing up the ice in the driveway yesterday, which, among other things, is pretty good therapy. However, I will not be so indulging myself today, because I really can’t afford for my back to go out again.

I have not today seen the news, but I don’t suppose we’ve jumped to a better timeline. Call me a pessimist.

I think that’s all I’ve got.

Hope y’all are having a good day.
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I’ve been having a fascinating discussion with System76 Tech Support, who assures me that COSMIC is functional for many of their users, and incorporates all of the things those users depend on, which — it boggles my brain, but I Am Only A Writer, and this thing is barely doing anything that I need and depend on.

Apparently, however, the ability to order one’s own desktop is not a top-tier “feature.” They’re still working on that one and should have it ready by June.

In the meantime, the recovery … didn’t, so I’m kinda stuck. Happily, I am from the Past and still have access to sneaker-net. But it is kinda off-putting that I can’t backup my day’s work to the portable drive (in addition to Dropbox), because while I can see the damned thing in the margin, when I hit Copy Files To — it disappears.

*throws hands in air* *catches them*

Anyhoots. I did work today. Tomorrow morning, Sarah comes to clean, and sometime tomorrow my first delivery from CookUnity will arrive.

Exciting times.

Everybody have a good evening. I’ll see you tomorrow.
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Squeak, squeak, squeak.

Tech Support sent me a restore file, which I flashed to a thumb-drive and booted from and!

I’m back!

And all of my files are intact!

Cabana boy! Wine!

And a glass!

Anything can happen day

What went before: Wednesday. Sunny and cold. Snowed a couple in on the overnight and today the beans are calling for temps near 50F.

My lap is Cat Central at the moment with Tali and Firefly, bumping, purring, prancing, and putting my tea in peril.

The plan for today is to write, write the small breaks for chores and meals. I really really want to get this book done.

What’s everybody doing today?

Dictated with some difficulty to my phone
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Firefly, Queen of the Toys

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I have Done Work. I’m not how much work, because I am now entering the squishy bit of the narrative, where I was just writing stuff down to hit a stopping point.

Tomorrow, I think I need to go back and mumblemumble, which will in theory help me to see the firm ground to the Real The End.

In the meantime, Steve’s computer is upgrading to COSMIC DESKTOP, which is reported less quarrelsome than GNOME. Not that I’ve noticed GNOME being particularly quarrelsome, but I’m not a developer or a programmer, and System 76 does all the quarreling on their side of the transaction before ever it gets to me.

The cats are politely rampaging all over my office, in a gentle attempt to point out that it is Happy Hour.

Spoiler: It is not.

God She knows how we’re going to weather the time change. P’rhaps I’ll lock myself in the basement at 4 pm.

And so glad to hear, as I emerge from a day of staring at words, that congress doesn’t care to stop the little man from burning the earth. So I guess that’s fine, then.

Sigh.

Everybody stay safe. I’ll check in tomorrow.

I hate this timeline.
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Oh, dear. So not a fan of COSMIC, which has sorted my desktop files into a configuration that possibly makes sense to it, but does not make sense to me, and — I can’t reorder them. This is not only Not Cool, but it’s actively upsetting. I need to have the files in a Certain Place that makes sense to me.

Sigh.

Also, I lost my cool wallpaper, which is a shame, but not fatal.

Have written to System76 Support. They’re gonna love me, over at Support.

May your days be brighter

And a blessed Imbolc to all who celebrate.

I celebrated by changing out the cat boxes, and vacuuming the basement.

Because my roommates are not good with telephones, nor, frankly, with understanding when I might need them to use the telephone, a couple years ago, I upped the population of Google Nests in this house, making sure I had one in more or less every room.

I have at last count 7 Nests, and when asked all will give me the current weather in the city in which I live.

Except for the Nest in the bathroom — you know, the room in the house where people are most likely to fall?  Yeah.  Well, for the past two years the Nest in the bathroom has operated under the persistent illusion that I live in Portland. Or at least that the bathroom is in Portland.

I have today — I believe — repaired that delusion. I will of course test this multiple times, but just now, after the fix and the reboot, when I asked it what the weather was, it gave me local conditions in this, my own, city. And when I asked it where I was located, it gave me the correct zipcode.

Other things accomplished today — books pulled and boxed and ready to go to the bookstore, where they will be entered into The System, and brought to the library on the day of my event.

The aforesaid changing out of the cat boxes and vacuuming of the basement, moving clean dishes from the washer to the various cabinets where they belong. I still have to wash the pots and pans and then? It will be Coon Cat Happy Hour.

So, yanno, not an earthshaking kind of day by any means, but I got through it, and that counts.

Tomorrow, PT first thing, then I have to stop at the bank for the first time in at least a year, then home again for work on the WIP and revising the Remarks. Oh, and I should write my wrap-up for Conflict of Honors, seeing as I’m halfway through Plan B.

Everybody have a good evening; stay safe.

I’ll check in tomorrow.