Aha.
Due to irreconcilable differences with my previous host, my domain name will be changing. By the end of the week, all Owldaughter content will be accessible at:
And yes, the Owldaughter email accounts will be up and running again, just with the new suffix instead of the old.
I love bureaucracy.
This has been a frustrating day.
It began when the power went out around midnight last night. Well, it didn’t go off, exactly; it fluctuated in various stages of brownout, setting all the sensitive electric sensors for emergency lights and alarms in the building off at irregular intervals.
By this morning, neither HRH or I had had really decent sleep, and the apartment was stone-cold once again. At various times through the night we had each arisen to unplug power bars and sensitive electronic devices in an effort to protect ourselves from frying expensive stuff. Of course the digital alarm clock wasn’t functioning, due to the lack of continuous power, so we sort of awoke later than we normally do. HRH had begun developing a nasty cold last night, and he was in no shape to squire our goddaugher off to daycare this morning, so I went instead. Of course, the single battery-powered clock we had in the house was half an hour fast, so I discovered on the way to pick her up that I had thirty minutes to kill. I did, with a doughnut and hot chocolate.
After dropping her and her dad off at various places, and having checked the prices on small filing cabinets, I returned home and discovered that the power had still not come back up to any level of useful application. Trusting my intuition, I booted up my laptop on battery power and found an urgent edit sitting in my inbox. This, paired with the book reviews due today, meant that I had to cancel my lunch date with MLG.
The edit’s done, and the book reviews are almost there too; I’ve done longhand work and now that the power is finally back on, I’ve been transferring them to the desktop computer. I took a break earlier to go pick up that parcel which I missed on Friday, only to discover that it hadn’t reached the post office yet.
Yes, it’s been frustrating.
On top of it all, my Owldaughter domain seems to have fallen between the cracks in accounting with my old web host. Skippy came over Friday night and we set up a new hosting space, but my domain still seems to be in limbo – technically still held by my old host, but not paid for (long story, which involves hosting as a gift from someone else whose payment info expired, requiring the substitution of my own info to renew service). I’ve been having problems extracting any sort of useful information from the support team for the last three months, in an attempt to avoid a snarl-up somewhat like this. My efforts have been in vain. (And yes, the lack of return communication was the key reason I chose to take my business elsewhere.) So this has resulted in more frustration.
Now, however, the sun has reached an angle to shine in through the back window, which means that spring is nearly here. I managed to finally get through to my doctor’s office, and as a result I not only have a renewal of my medication, but I also have an appointment to discuss these headaches and worrisome sensitivity to light with her next week.
Perhaps Monday has seemed worse than it actually is simply because it came right after a fantastic Sunday. The class I taught on Norse and Druidic methods of magic was great; the healing ritual I participated in was phenomenal; and on top of it all, I got to game last night too.
Today is just such a… Monday. You know?
Fnyeah. Perhaps Ginger‘s right; we should just declare all of February a holiday.
If I find the phrase “you should” one more time in this manuscript, something dies. In a messy fashion, very likely.
The only things keeping me sane right now are Evanescence, Howard Shore, and a bottle of ibuprofen.
A wand is a power tool and a ritual instrument for invoking deities.
I kid you not.
And no, the author didn’t mean it in humourous reference to the potenially high-energy applications of the wand. Maybe I have power tools on the brain these days, or maybe this is just poorly worded.
Every once in a while I just throw back my head and howl reading through this book. Sometimes in agony, sometimes with laughter. This one was a bit of both.
We just picked up the photos.
One entire roll didn’t take; something went wrong with the camera. The other roll doesn’t have a single usable picture on it; they’re either too bright (resulting in blinding white skin, red eyes and fuschia lips), or underexposed.
My emotions can’t decide whether to let me be angry, or just cry.
I’ll make an appointment with a professional studio this week. I was trying to avoid this because I hate sitting for portraits. I was more comfortable with someone I know doing the shots. Professional pictures always turn out with me looking like I’m wooden, with a hideous plastic smile. The really horrible part about this is that the poses and shots on the film that came back were good; just over or underexposed.
I think the anger is definitely turning into a desire to just cry.
Is it too much to ask that the electricity we pay for stay on for at least three days in a row?
Yes, we lost power again last night. Four hours of no heat during the coldest part of the night means that we lost all the warmth stored up in the apartment once more.
I no longer care what the reason may be – whether it’s the major NDG power transfer system finally dying due to old age, or the lousy wiring job in our apartment possibly shorting out the entire block – I just don’t care. I’m tired of resetting clocks, alarms, and volume levels. I’m tired of having to blast all our ineffective heaters just to get things to a comfortable temperature so I can function like a relatively normal human being again.
At first it was charming – we’d light candles, sit and chat quietly, watch the snow fall. Then it became slightly irritating, as the power would cut out when I needed to reach a deadline, make dinner, was expecting a call, was in the process of finishing something valuable on the computer, or some such thing. Now it’s just an instant anger-inducing inconvenience that makes me growly no matter what I’m doing, even if it’s as benign as reading on the sofa with a pile of cats.
Forty-seven days until spring. As the days count down, the temperature will rise, and people will consume less electricity, reducing the stress on the outdated power grid. Perhaps then we’ll experience fewer interruptions in our electrical supply.
I’m trying to be optimistic about it.
The high-speed package arrived. Yay! said I.
There were a couple of issues. Namely, the fact that all the manuals were in French, and that even though the salesguy had been told that we already had Sympatico service and wished to keep our e-mail address, we were assigned a new address, and a new user ID. I know how bureaucracy works. We’re likely to lose our current e-mail for a time, if not forever, while they sort things out.
Despite all this, I tried to install it this morning.
The operative word being “tried”, of course.
I wasn’t home when the salesperson originally came to our door. My husband therefore handled the transaction, with the best of intentions. The salesguy took a look at the back of our computer and checked off certain things on the contract, like the fact that we have a USB port.
“We don’t have a USB port,” I said when my husband told me this.
“Sure we do!” HRH said. “The salesguy checked!”
Yeah, well, guess what. The installation software ran a diagnostic on the computer and told me that I couldn’t install my new high speed kit because of two reasons: my hard drive wasn’t big enough, and I had no USB port.
The software doesn’t allow you to choose what hard drive to direct it to. My C drive was partitioned when Skippy constructed my machine, so of course it says it’s smaller than it actually is. I use my new second hard drive for programs now.
So: Sympatico gets called tomorrow. The high speed thing gets cancelled, and I’ll return this useless kit. When I’m ready, I’ll call and upgrade my service myself. I have been promised a new/old computer by the end of February (thank you, Ceri and Scott!); I’ll try again then.
My technical frustration has been assuaged by the production of an entire short story (which means I can take one of my story assignment postcards off my bulletin board), and eleven hundred words of a second new story. And a new version of the anthology proposal. And a glass of champagne celebrating t!‘s 100,000th word of Baker’s 12.
Plus t! said that the whole idea of being a gutsy author was nonsensical, since he had solid support from fellow writing-type friends which filled him with confidence.
Still, I’m vaguely frustrated, for some reason. There’s a warm bath in my future.