Isn't It Always the Way?,

Just when I decide to start blogging again, the 'e' key on my computer gave out. That's right. The 'e' key. Not 'q'. Not 'x'. Not 'z'. 'E'.

But, you say, you're using your computer now and there doesn't seem to be a problem.

You have no idea how hard those last 2 sentences have been. I have to do this pokey/slidey thing to activate the 'e' and it's annoying.

Well, you say, then do what I do: just blog at work until you get a new computer.

As I've explained to you before, that's not really an option, for a lot of reasons. For one, I share my office with MAB so when I'm not working she knows. And yes, I am allowed 2 15 minute breaks and 30 minutes for lunch but I don't usually take the breaks and lunch is usually spent eating at MAB's desk playing Monopoly (the card game...way faster than the board version). Plus, for me, blogging on company time isn't really company time. It's your time. Your taxes pay my salary and I have this big thing about not being a "typical government employee". I'm at work to work, to provide a service, and by cracky, I'm going to do it.

The Spouse did mention that he saw HP laptops at Costco for $400. So I may soon be taking some of that salary you so graciously allowed me and getting a new computer. One with a functional 'e' key. Also, one that doesn't require hitting ctl-alt-del every time I want to click on something other than the thing I'm doing right at the moment. And one that doesn't inadvertently click, drag and highlight whole sections of a page in a very random and weird way. And one that doesn't suddenly go "oorrrggg achugggggg". Or that doesn't occasionally pop up with a "no hard drive found" message that requires a panicked rebooting right in the middle of paying bills.

Yeah, I really need a new computer.

Sharing Hardware

This whole dead power cord thing is now officially old.   And, much as I had predicted, the extra "rush" money The Spouse paid to get it here today resulted in, uh, no power cord.  Stoopid Dell.

I have to share The Child's laptop.  Which I can do because I'm the boss of her.  But it's still a pain.

The good thing?  The Child has her playlist a'playin' and I have to admit I'm impressed with the breadth of her musical taste.  Oh, sure, there's ample popness of the sort that makes Uncle JP's head squirt but swirled in there is the likes of the Beatles, T Rex, The Clash, Gang of Four, Muse and The Decemberists.

Just gives you hope for the future, don't it?

(And now to perform a naked pagan dance to the FedEx delivery gods).

A Close One

Last night I thought my computer died. Little accident involving a glass of wine. Granted, the vast majority of the wine in question went on the floor but there was enough of it on the keyboard of the laptop that it started to make some very unpleasant and this-can't-be-good sorts of noises. So I turned it off. And was sad.

Then I was a little happy because I remembered that I have my own money now and if I need to I could replace my laptop without impacting the family budget.

Then I was a little sad because I realized any computer I got would probably come loaded with Vista. I hate Vista.

Then I was a little happy because I realized the way around that was to get a Mac. Then I was a little conflicted about that because I don't really like using Macs, finding them to be no where near as "intuitive" as everyone claims (or perhaps it's just that I've only ever been a PC kinda gal so the learning curve doesn't seem worth it).

Then I went to bed.

This morning I turned on my computer, without thinking...force of habit and all that but the dark screen, despite the appropriate blinking of green lights, reminded me. So I got some coffee and went off to sort through some stuff in the other room and when I came back what should I see but my login screen?

So my computer isn't dead and I don't have to buy a new one, Mac or otherwise.

Sometimes it's the little things.

How May I Help You?

It's not often that I have call to rave about an experience with a company call center but today I'm gonna.

I manage the content for the house website. Just getting the website into a form that makes sense for it's numerous uses (information, story telling and fundraising) has been a challenge, partly because I've been working with a web designer who has been doing this as a volunteer. Ouch. But we finally have the templates where I want them and now it's up to me to add the pages and content that will take the site from a vision to a reality. There's a lot of work ahead (including adjusting a picture the second I get to the office today because I just saw what it looks like on a little monitor) but it will be fun. Lots of writing (which I love) and just enough geeky stuff to keep that side of my brain from atrophy.

That said, yesterday I needed to add a Paypal button to the site. Easier said than done, primarily because the software I use doesn't show me the html. Most of the time I don't need to see code. I'd rather not; I'm not that much of a geek. But in this case, I couldn't figure out how to make the string of code Paypal gave me turn into a button on the site. I called Paypal and they were all, "Uh, ma'am, we don't do that sort of thing". So I called Adobe, makers of "Contribute", which is the software I use.

First I talked to "Georgia", who swiftly turned me over to "Amy". (Those are not their real names. Neither were the names they gave me because I don't know a lot but I'm pretty sure DeAnn and Beth aren't common Hindu names. (And yes, JP, I almost taped the conversation to send to you and Smay)). Now I admit, I have big problems with call centers in India. Big problems. Politically, economically, and frankly, just from a plain old customer service point of view. I want to talk to a person who has a command of the same language I speak (selfish like that) and who actually understands my problem and is not just reading from a script. Fortunately, yesterday that was exactly what I got.

"Amy" knew her stuff and she led me through all my options until we found a solution that worked. (And let me tell you, the final solution was way, way more techie than anything I would have ever thought myself capable of, let alone accomplished with the assistance of someone in an off-shore call center). "Amy" stayed with me through the whole process and voila! there was my Paypal button. And it works. It was superfantastic.

Then I made some changes to the home page. Without any help.

Then I pretty much spent the rest of the day playing with MAB because sometimes we work really hard and sometimes we need to make scrapbook pages.

I have a great job.

Oy! The Drumming!

The great thing about getting a new email is that for a while the spammers leave you alone. And then the only stuff that is in my in box is stuff I want.

The lousy thing about getting a new email is going to every bloody on-line account I have to change the information.

This is not really how I wanted to spend my Sunday afternoon.

There's a Partridge in my Pear Tree

Did everyone have a happy Christmas?  Us too.  Lovely, lazy snowy day.  Nice presents (my big surprises...an iPod AND a big ass digital camera with all sorts of lenses and buttons and stuff.  Makes me feel like Annie Liebowitz).  There is something to be said for not entertaining on Christmas, let me tell you.  We lazed around and played and napped and didn't have to rouse ourselves to bustle and clean.  We ate late.  Most enjoyable.  

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You'll recall I was having some problems with viruses on my computer.  Last night The Spouse informed me - after hours of Avast and Adaware scans - that my computer is "well and truly buggered".   He's going to have to flatten my hard drive and start all over again.  

Stupid spyware.

Hopefully fixing my computer is fairly high on his list of fun things to do next week while he's on holiday.  Pretty sure it is...right under playing with his new X-box and improving his Wii scores and...ok, maybe my computer isn't going to be fixed any time soon.

Well and truly buggered indeed.

Point is, if there's any blogging in the next little while it's because I was successful in dangly shiny items in front of The Child and distracting her long enough that I can get onto her new Mac.  

Now you'll pardon me while I use afore mentioned Apple to go change all my account passwords on every frakking thing.

Stupid, stupid spyware.

I'm Not Being Coy

My computer has been weird. The Spouse did some detecting. He described my hard drive as a "petri dish". 'Nuff said.

Then there's been the whole Arctic Blast-7-inches-of-snow thing.

Holy Moly

Heeding the advice of all you Firefoxy folks, I just downloaded it. I. Am. Sold. It's not just that now I can open up websites without that stupid "Internet Explorer operation aborted" message BUT when I was done with the download it asked if I wanted to import all my favorites! I was so dreading going back to every damn website I have bookmarked and now I don't have to. PLUS it imported my homepage. I call that downright civilized, thankyouverymuch.

This is almost as exciting as making friends on Facebook.

Far Flung

I love my site meter. In the early days of blogging I was completely obsessed with it, checking it at least every hour and my mood rising or falling like the tides depending on how many hits I got.

I'm over that now and usually only check it once a week or less. But my favorite part is the world map. I click to see the last 100 readers and it is just too cool. This morning, for example, there were hits as far flung as Wellington, New Zealand and Barrow, Alaska. The UAE, Chile, Germany, Nova Scotia (where I hope to someday fly my Lear jet to see the total eclipse of the sun). Then there were all the little clusters on the US map. I can make assumptions about some of the little dots, Dame Judi was just on as was Poodle. But then there are surprises, places where I don't know that I know anyone and I wonder who they are, if they are regular readers or just passing through.

And I even wonder what the weather is like where they (you) are. It's a lovely day here. Is the sun shining as generously on the brownstones of the Bronx or the rooftops of Lambeth, England? I wonder if they (you) all had a good night's rest (I didn't) and if you started your day with a lovely hot cup of something (I did). What will you be up to today? Any interesting plans for the evening? Are you well?

Yep, I like my site map. It makes me think globally. I like that.

And I didn't sleep well because I have this stupid cold that makes for snorking and other nonsense and I kept walking myself up. I'll tell you one thing, though, that Spouse of mine totally took the "sickness and health" bit of our vows seriously. He's been doing all sorts of homely things this morning so I don't have to. Which is just superfantastic of him.

And if I end up taking to my bed, he will bring me tea and soup and make sure I'm comfy. I don't think it will come to that. I just need to not overdo, drink my fluids and maybe take a nap later.

I'll amuse myself by playing videos over at The Club for a while. (We've been very busy, figuring out how to download and upload videos ourselves. Thus we are creating a little cache of videos (did I say little? JP says it's looking like it will be 3000 before we are done) so that we can always play what we want when we want. It's a lot of work (for a hobby) but it's liberating, too. And I just love production meetings).

Have a lovely day, wherever you are.

Still Ignoring The Letter

My computer doesn't possess the needed plug hole for the other key thingy so efforts to circumvent the horrid key continue. My new key thingy, however, just delivered, believe it or not, sits here now for The Spouse to fiddle with this evening.

My morning meeting went long & I go to meet friends for pho in mere minutes. Things will get done following the noon hour.

I love the people @ Dell. Not 24 hours following my order & the key thingy is here. Joy spills forth.

We viewed "Little Miss Sunshine" in the evening. Review will follow when the key thingy is restored.

The Dog is funny. The other pet is, too. She is recovering, I think, from her illness & seems much her old self. This is good.

I love U2 & REM. The Gogos, too.

I'll be very joyous when I no longer must circumvent the horrible letter. It's required for useful words.

I hope your next 24 hours bring you good things.

Dude, It's A Dell

I called Dell. I talked to Kevin. Yeah. Really. I did not know 'Kevin' was such a popular Indian name.

I'm getting a whole new keyboard. Free. My warranty is still good. Who knew.

Past, Present, Future

Yesterday

The Child was helping me unload groceries from the car. Which was very nice and helpful of her. Then we were talking in the kitchen and it felt cold. I asked if the door was open. It was. Which meant that The Dog was gone. He would never miss an opportunity like that.

The biggest challenges were that we didn't know how long he'd been gone (possibly about 10 minutes) and his tags recently fell off and we haven't troubled to attach them to a new jump ring and get them back on his collar. The guilt I felt over the latter was huge. If we didn't find him right away, how would anyone know to contact us if they found him. I almost cried but didn't, mostly because I had to help The Child keep a lid on her own hysteria.

She grabbed the walkie talkies and got on her bike. She went north, I went east as these are the 2 directions he's most often gone in times past. Every 2 minutes The Child would call me, with a wavering voice, to see if I'd found him yet and to say how badly she felt about not closing the door properly. Every 2 minutes, 10 seconds I'd tell her to keep looking, remain calm and pray to St. Francis.

As I began walking what we call the Boofacina Mile, I ran into a man taking his schnauzer for a walk. I told him there was a little black schnoodle on the loose and to please keep an eye out for him. I was about halfway along the Mile when the walkie-talkie cackled at me...it was The Child and she had The Dog. (The man with the schnauzer had been a help in his retrieval, btw. Yay for the kindness of strangers).

I found the two of them at the corner of our street. The Child was sitting on the ground, wearing her bike helmet and weeping into The Dog's fur. He was sitting calmly on her lap, looking up at me with wondering doggie eyes. "Mama," she sobbed, "I saw him in the alley and I said, 'Come Dog, I have a treat' and he came running right to me and he didn't even try to get away and I hugged him and gave him a treat and the treat was love". And then she started bawling again.

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I finished my test yesterday. The one for The Job. It kinda kicked my ass, not because it was really all that hard. I knew what needed to be done but there was also a lot of second guessing and rewriting and obsessing over details. Which is probably what they want but considering that I wasn't actually given a paradigm to work with I wasn't always sure that I was obsessing over the right details. I finally had to shake myself and say, "Hey. You're done".

Part of what I did for the test, though, was make one of the recipes. There were things about it that I just wasn't sure about so the only thing to do was make it. It involved sweet dough and frying. Yum.

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The Child has a Science Fair at school on Sunday. She finished her project last night. I'm very proud of her. This is also the last science fair of her elementary career. (They do it every other year). This does not sadden me.

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Today
I woke up thinking about a few changes to make to my test. I was excited as these were bits of phrasing that had been eluding me the entire time and they came to me in my sleep. All I needed to do was plug them in , spell check it, have one other set of eyes read over it for anything I might have missed and I could send it in, with time to spare.

So of course, the network had gone woogly in the night...something it does when it matters most. Yes. I had saved my document. But I have some weird thing going on with Word wherein once I close the program, whatever I've done gets all wicky in the whacky woo and has to be completely reformatted. (Yes, Gina, that's still not resolved). It only happens to my stuff. So I hadn't actually closed Word through all of this. But now it closed itself. And I was none too happy about having to completely rewrite the whole bleeding thing.

Which is why I was very happy when The Spouse decided to open it on his computer and email it to me.

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I have more dough to fry. Won't that be lovely?

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Remember Macaroon? The big sister The Child never had? Well, she is now tutoring The Child in math on Saturdays. They work for an hour and then I give them money and they walk down to the coffee shop and have girl time. It is very awesome.

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Tomorrow
Oscar Night. Yay! The Neighbor is bringing BBQ.

Something I've Figured Out

I love writing on a computer. I type very quickly (about 70 wpm with 96% accuracy) and my mind moves almost too fast so it's a very good combination.

But I have a problem.

Hi. My name is Lorraine.

(Y'all: Hi, Lorraine).

And I'm an addict.

I'm addicted to email. I check it constantly. I'm depressed when the only new email is from Spurlington J. Megasparks selling me pharmacy drugs at rock bottom prices and elated when there's message from a real person. I'm also constantly checking for the emails that alert me to new comments on the blog. And, because I'm compulsive that way, I usually stop to answer those emails or comments the second I receive them. Which takes a lot of time.

So what I've figured out is that when I'm done blogging and ready to work on the book I have to do it the old-fashioned way. I have to turn off the laptop (thus eliminating the distraction of the "you've got mail" ping), sit down with a notebook and a good pen (one of the heavy ones - not a Bic) and start writing.

Before the advent of the personal computer the middle finger of my right hand had a flat, hard callus, shaped and polished by the weight and pressure of holding a pen to write. WWJAD. What would Jane Austen do? That's my motto. Betcha Jane had a callus*.

*Usage note: The adjective callous, as in "her life on the streets had made her callous to the suffering of others" - meaning hard, indifferent - is not to be confused with the noun callus as in, "I get a callus on my finger when I write a lot. " I did not know that.