Category Archives: Cyberspace & Technology

Helpful You Are Not

Dear Word:

Please stop autocorrecting the word “planing” to “planning” in my document. If I’m talking about a luthier’s workshop, I truly do mean planing, as in using a tool called a plane to shave thin curls of wood off a flat surface such as a plank of wood. Contrary to what you may think, I am not dumb, nor am I misspelling the word, and your assumptions to the contrary are not appreciated. In fact, I’m going to turn the autocorrect function off, and I don’t know why I haven’t done so yet in this story.

No love,

Me.

New Speakers!

Oh, my goodness. A subwoofer makes all the difference. These Vivaldi cello sonatas and concertos? Positively creamy. A dark cream, but creamy nonetheless.

Liam fell asleep in the car on the way home from shopping, and I managed to not only get him out of the car without waking him up, but inside the house, into his crib, and out of his jacket. I’m feeling pretty darn smug, let me tell you. Of course, he’s going to be ravenous when he eventually wakes up, because he fell asleep before he could have his lunch, but now I have the time to fix his sandwich and potatoes without the boy having a minor meltdown about how cruel I am to keep him waiting the five minutes it takes to prepare his meal. I’ll just keep them warm. And then after lunch it’s off to visit with his godparents!

As an antidote to all that feeling smartness, I feel dumb because I can’t collapse the new umbrella stroller we used. At all. I like to think it’s jammed, but I probably just can’t remember the correct combination of push-here bend-there it requires.

A Good Day

A perfect day. Except for the cold coming back with a vengeance and settling in my chest, that is.

I turned out 3,095 words in Il Maestro e le Figlie di Coro, which is shaping up to be a novelette or novella and not a story at all. It stands at 5,281 words already.

I made beef stew, which has another half-hour to go in the slow cooker, and we’ll have it with the rest of the mashed potatoes seasoned with onion and sour cream that I made for feast following yesterday’s Samhain ritual.

I walked to the post office this morning to pick up a parcel from my mother, who sent me the two books she’d promised to lend me at Christmas, a selection of magazine clippings, and imported British chocolate bars as food for the soul now that the book has been handed in.

And on top of it all, I discovered that the set of speakers and subwoofer I’d been eyeing to replace those that died this weekend is on sale this week, at 50% off the regular price.

Yes, indeed. The day’s been a very good one.

So now it’s on to delicious stew, a soothing warm bath, and reading in bed for a while.

The Writing Soundtrack

Two problems.

One: I am astonished to discover that I have next to no Vivaldi recordings. I have the ubiquitous Four Seasons and an album of double concerti (for the double cello concerto, of course), and once upon a time there was also my beloved Il Giardino Armonico The Red Priest album that was enthusiastically lent to someone (who?) the week after I got it and subsequently lost track of it, but that seemed to be it until I remembered that all my cello CDs are on a different shelf. Still, there are only two more albums of cello concerti and sonatas there. Sounds like it’s time to invest in a couple of low-budget CDs of general instrumental stuff, and the Gloria, at the least. (Naxos, you are my friend.)

Two: The speakers I’ve been using for my computer have finally died. They died an honourable death, being the first set of high-quality speakers I received with my Discman back when I was seventeenish, so they’ve been in steady use for eighteen years or so. The only problem is that my sound card doesn’t have a speaker on it, so I’ve had to hunt out my big cushiony headphones and the cable extension to reach to the port on the back of the computer tower. Working with headphones is very odd. I’m not sure if I like it or not yet.

Bits and Bobs

Forty-ish pages left to go on this tech read. I’m pretty relaxed when it comes to doing tech reads on others’ books — after all, so much is subjective in the realm of alternative spirituality — but still, there are things I read that make me scratch my head. It’s usually a result of the author thinking one thing and the phrasing indicating something different, which isn’t immediately obvious to the person writing because they know what they meant. Been there, so understand that.

I updated Firefox this afternoon and consequently lost the ability to view a bunch of web pages. I allowed this to lurk in the background of my mind as I collected the boy from daycare and by the time he was eating dinner the common element between them all had become clear. I sat down and clicked through the Options until I found the Java and Javascript radio buttons, clicked them on, and all’s well again.

Also, I have discovered BitTorrent.

Liam had his first bubble bath last night. Hilarity ensued as he repeatedly ducked the ducks under the bubbles then let them go, giggling as they rose from the depths. Splashing is also more fun in a bubble bath, because he can’t see exactly where the surface of the water is.

I’ve been remarkably cold these past couple of days. I’d forgotten how damp and chilly my office gets in fall and winter. I have to remember to wear slippers and have a cardigan handy. I may find a small rug for under the desk itself; that would help too.

We watched the first episode of the second season of BSG a couple of nights ago (yes, we are way, waaay behind; no cable, remember?). Blade lent us the entire second season on DVD, so I think we’ll be watching another episode tonight.

We lost a fish today. She somehow got her tail stuck in the intake for the filter, and we surmise that while wriggling desperately to get herself out she managed to kind of crush her back end and wedge herself in more firmly. ‘Twas a goodly fish, though dumb (hello, goldfish?), and we will replace her this weekend. Most likely with two fish, because three seems to be a good number for Liam’s tank.

That is all for now.

New Toys — er, Work Supplies

I have a new mouse (a tiny little one which is great but takes getting used to), a new flash drive for work backups (because the other one vanished — this one is bright red, to make it harder to lose), a pretty new mousepad (unnecessary because the mouse is optical, but I don’t like the feel of a mouse skittering over varnished wood) and new ink cartridges for the fountain pen I found in my travel pencil case.

Maybe I should have bought a new keyboard as well, because this one appears to be freaking out, dropping chunks of words and repeating other letters, inserting spaces where letters should be and behaving in general as if it has been possessed. To paraphrase Blade, hardware that does not behave gets “resolved”. I’m going to go grab the cord keyboard from HRH’s desk downstairs again. And I might as well toss a load of laundry in while I’m down there.