Category Archives: Cyberspace & Technology

Cosmic Shift

So somehow, without me poking at things, the LJ feed of my blog began to work again, although Karine and I both tested the Google Reader feed and it’s still dead. [ETA: No! IT WORKS NOW TOO! That means the feed in general is working again, somehow!] Feed aggregators originally choked on the weird error message that appears at the top of the template and I couldn’t eradicate no matter what I did, and I effectively fell of the face of the earth for people relying on those readers. So at least my adoring LJ public will again read the scintillating minutiae of my life, which I am sure they are terribly excited about.

Seriously, I did nothing. I bashed at this problem for so long back when the WP upgrade broke things, and gave up. Some sort of cosmic shift must have occurred overnight. Of course, that means it might vanish again at any time but I’m thankful for what I can get right now.

If you read Owls’ Court via RSS feed on LJ, please remember that it’s a feed and I don’t get notification of comments on it. I’ll try to remember to check, though.

ETA: HANG ON.

There is no error message at the top any more. The footer is in the right place. Everything is displaying like it’s supposed to.

I am absolutely flummoxed. What, was I hacked in order to be fixed or something? I worked to find the problem for months and gave up for two years, and now everything suddenly mysteriously works?

I’m taking what I can get. Thank you, universe.

Hey, can people who usually can’t comment because the comment box doesn’t show up try leaving a few words, please? If the weird there/not-there comment box problem is gone too, then I have some serious libations to pour for whichever god is in charge of my blog and software.

Timing

We threw out the toaster this morning.

It was a huge four-slot jobbie, with two separate dials to adjust each pair of slots. We inherited it from my parents years ago when they downsized to a toaster oven. (That should give you an idea of the size of it, as well as the age.)

The toaster’s been acting up for years. Sometimes the dials gave you the same degree of toastiness if you set them both to the same setting, but most often they did not. For three years the left dial only yielded warm bread or charcoal, no matter where you set the dial. It changed its mind last year for some reason, and we thought it had moved past the adolescent unreliability and rebellion, settling into responsible adulthood. Still, sometimes the springs stuck, sometimes you had to toast things twice; it was always an adventure with this toaster, the kind of adventure you usually aren’t physically prepared for at a certain hour of the morning, waiting for coffee to finish brewing and your breakfast to be ready. We observed it and learned its little foibles, adjusting our technique and approach to match its output and needs as they evolved. Despite its capriciousness and unreliability we treated it well, wiping it down and shaking out the crumbs regularly.

HRH and I idly discussed replacing it every year or so. But a toaster isn’t really high on the list of priorities when there’s food to be bought, shoen to shoe your ever-growing progeny’s feet to be purchased, utility bills to be paid. After all, it worked… some of the time. To a certain degree. Even if that degree was undetermined on any given day. Then a couple of weeks ago we made a sweeping decision: we would not move this toaster. No, we would toss it in the bin when we left this house, a symbol of leaving make-do behind, and we would Buy Ourselves a New Toaster with which to celebrate the purchase of our first house.

Today, the toaster died.

HRH set it to make toast as usual and went about the rest of breakfast-making. Except the toaster didn’t jauntily toss its toast in the air with the sudden snap-release of the internal mechanism. No, it wasn’t until HRH poured his coffee and turned to manually whack the lever up. Because sometimes, you know, you have to do that with this toaster. It only works to a degree, remember. It’s part of what we do when we use it: we don’t think about it, we just do it if it needs doing.

A slab of charcoal rose to the top of the slot. So, too, did a leaping blue flame from the elements and wires inside. And that was that.

We’re in the market for a new toaster a bit sooner rather than later, it would seem.

Stuff

Firefox’s auto-fill function tells me that I’ve used that title before. How unimaginative of me, on more than one level.

Hello, world, I’m really tired. I’ve been doing a lot of work, which is good for the financial side of things (alas that invoicing and accounting department turnarounds are not instantaneous), but draining on the mind and body level. And I’m pretty much just a flopsy, unfocused, warm body right now, which is not good for the current deadlines I’m working on. I find myself just kind of staring into space for longish periods of time. And I have no appetite, as is usual for this time of year, but which doesn’t help matters.

Speaking of work, I signed the contracts for the one-shot editing/re-purposing gig this fall (this is not the copy editing one but the second project to which my networking goddess of an editor at my publisher connected me) and mailed them off yesterday. Basically, I am taking an existing manuscript and cutting it in half, moving things round as necessary for clarity and flow. I’m looking forward to it, because it feels so much more proactive than reviewing manuscripts and pointing out what kind of editing they’re going to need in a very polite way via a 24-page evaluation sheet, but not really doing anything beyond pointing out what someone else will need to do to get it to publishing standard.

I finished a major backup of the Mac mini to data DVDs (because yes, I am paranoid, thank you very much), took a deep breath and wiped my external hard drive (which I backed up a few weeks ago), and then set it up as a Time Machine drive. So now I am backing up hourly, and I should stop worrying about losing stuff. I’m still going to back up writing, new photos, and music to data DVDs every month, because did I mention that I was paranoid?

Moving-wise I’m at that odd sort of point balanced between “I need this stuff for everyday living and working” and “holy cats I need to get all this stuff into boxes,” which is not good for my sanity or equilibrium. Yesterday I started the process of notifying everything that needs to know our address is changing. Bell, your website is annoying, and why bother to fill in an online change of address thing if I can’t confirm it online and you’re just going to have to call me anyway? I’ll save time and call you directly at some point. Hydro was lovely and straightforward, you can hit six fundamental departments of the provincial government with a single form, and the next time I’m at a real post office I’ll pick up a mail redirection form. (The tiny postal counter round the corner where I went yesterday to mail my contracts didn’t have said forms, which I sort of expected, but annoyed me nonetheless.)

I now have an Excel spreadsheet of what needs to be done between now and the move. It is depressingly long, despite crossing about ten things off yesterday.

The major bridge we have to cross between the current residence and the new one is doing weekend work through August and September, and guess which weekend they have chosen to reduce the three-lane southbound side down to one lane for major maintenance and reconstruction? Why yes, our moving weekend.

The boys come home early afternoon today, so I need to get as much crammed into today as possible. All I really want to do is go back to bed with a warm kitten to purr at me.

The Week’s Work So Far

For the past day I’ve been sorting through all the files on my 300 GB external hard drive. I’m prepping it for reformatting to serve as my Time Capsule backup destination disk, so I can set my Mac to initially back up completely then incrementally upon changes. I actually have all those files on my Mac (most of them more current) which is why I only backed up about half of the external music and documents to data DVDs. My external hard drive stuff is about four months out of date, but it’s better to have slightly out of date stuff than no stuff at all. And in fact I am doing this with the intention of being redundant, because I plan to back up the current documents on my Mac to data DVD as well. I added my newer music to the fourth music backup data DVD already.

And I have just realised that I have to back up all HRH’s stuff as well, since we put it on here when he switched computers two years ago. And he has about 10GB worth of files I have to sort out and put on two data DVDs before I can reformat the drive. Sigh.

So far this week, I have:

– done an entire manuscript review and handed it in (there was a bad moment where I thought I had a day less than I did, because I’d typed the wrong due date into my agenda; the day-later deadline was very welcome after the not-much-done day of Monday, when the boy was home)
– got the approval for it and closed the file
– sorted through all 300GB of my external hard drive
– backed up about half of my music to data DVDs (I didn’t bother with the stuff I own on CD)
– backed up the important documents to data DVDs (about half)
– baked foccaccia for lunches
– baked a loaf of bread
– did laundry
– reworked the first five pages of Orchestrated
– wrote about 800 words longhand on the Victorian supernatural story
– had the boy home on Monday, ran errands, went to the library

Now because the heat has finally gotten to me and I can’t focus at the computer any more, I am going to go spin for a while.

Stuff

How’s that for an inspired post title? That’s pretty much where I’m at.

It’s been a remarkably awful week. Not in terms of bad things happening, but in terms of not having enough time to do everything that needs to get done, and the literal (oh, how I wish it were figurative) nigh-incapacitating headache I’ve been fighting since Monday morning. My schedule is insane, and the insanity continues through to next Monday. I owe people stuff like replies to e-mail and uploaded writing and it’s just not happening. I’m writing this post to cover a lot of what otherwise would be a series of “I can’t respond due to workload,” the number of which would take up more time than the post itself. Essentially, I’ve been miserable and stressed, and it’s been building for a while (this week has just been the final-straw kind of thing) to the point that I am almost 90% sure I’m going to contact my doctor and talk about going back on medication, a decision that upsets a couple of other life choices, which in turn stresses me. (No, there is no winning in this situation, and it sucks. And no, I’m not convinced it should be the fibro meds, either.)

I may go back and do a proper weekend roundup (I’d like to, as there were a couple of things I’d like to write out for posterity) but in brief, it was lovely Victoria Day weekend with my parents in which the boy learned how to climb a tree (with help; he got out on his own quite handily, though, and no, that does not mean he fell). I picked up a refurbished Airport wireless card for the iBook I have on semi-permanent loan, so now I have a laptop that can access wifi, for which I am truly thankful. I was testing t!’s Asus eee, and while it’s okay, it’s a tad too small for me (scrolling back and forth to see a full display of a browser or word processing window is Not On) and runs so hot that it hurts my lap. If I were to get a netbook I’d go for one that has a 10″ screen instead of the smaller 7.5″. If this iBook ever gets recalled to its rightful owner, then I’ll just pull the $20 card and there’s no great loss.

We hit the ground running at home on Tuesday. I had a freelance thing I needed to have done by Thursday at noon, which looks great on paper, but Wednesday was a complete write-off due to errands, travel time, and house hunting. And even with Wednesday struck off the workday list, I would have been able to finish it by noon on Thursday if I hadn’t found a tumour-like object on Nixie’s stomach that was large enough and sudden enough to merit an emergency trip to the vet Thursday morning. (Thanks for cranking that stress up some more, there, universe.) That vet visit turned out to be a great relief, as the vet has pronounced it a non-infected mammary cyst that needs removal, but is fairly certain it isn’t cancerous. We’ll schedule surgery for her next week.

I got a few hours of extension for the assignment thanks to the emergency vet visit, and I had just as much trouble with this one as I’ve had with others recently. I think part of that has to do with how I’m second-guessing everything I write in the evaluation thanks to criticism, and while I know I’ve got great support for my recommendations I’m worried it will come back to me for major rewrites as the others have done, for tone if nothing else, even though I did what I could. I have other pro bono freelance things on my plate; there’s two pages of questions I need to answer for an interview with an e-zine, due May 31, and they’re insane. Each question is actually four jammed together. I’m going to have to pick and choose what to reply to, because otherwise it’s going to take about three solid days of work that I didn’t have time for before, and I certainly don’t now. Last week it was decided to do programme notes for the Canada Day concert, too, a decision I fully support because we’re playing an original piece composed by our conductor and artistic director that deserves notes (thank goodness they already exist), but that means I need to fit writing those in somewhere, too. The original due date was June 1, but the manager told me that I could have an extension, bless her.

This weekend is cello-intensive. I have a lesson tonight, a group rehearsal tomorrow afternoon, and a piano rehearsal with my accompanist tomorrow afternoon. This weekend we also really need to fit in a grocery order, buying new sandals for the boy (whose toes are peeking out last season’s, and half his shorts are too small with the other half being too big so I should buy a couple of pairs of those, too), and Pointe-Claire is having their twice-yearly Cultural Rendezvous where the weaving guild is hosting an open house type of thing, and I promised I’d stop by at some point to meet them and tour the guild room. That may be what falls off the schedule, alas, because we have house visits scheduled on Sunday late morning/early afternoon, which also means the boy will be missing his monthly pagan playgroup meeting.

We had our first round of house viewing on Wednesday, and it was… interesting. We love our agent. What I do not love is the fact that you have to go into every house looking for the bad stuff. The third and final house we saw Wednesday afternoon was very close to a Yes, except for the fact that it was close to the Louis-Hippolyte bridge, and I am so very tired of living near bridges and highways; I want something more quiet. That and the fact that the company next door built too close to their property line and as a result has annexed a chunk of the middle of the house’s back yard in order to have their code-required-15-foot-clearance around their emergency exit meant we crossed it off our list, which saddened us, because otherwise it was brilliant: solid construction, fabulous new kitchen, excellent-sized rooms with new windows, new roof, good layout, huge yard (except for that annex) and a full-height unfinished basement. Properties are cycling fast, so good ones will continue to pop up, though.

I tried to install the secondhand Airport Express last night, which failed miserably because neither it nor my computer sense one another as wireless devices, even though my computer is firmly under the impression that it has a wireless network set up. I picked it up with the intention of streaming my computer music to the living room stereo, but I gave up on it after an hour of trying to get it to work before I broke something, and installed the printer instead. That, thank goodness, worked. Yes, I ditched my failing-and-not-fully-functional HP Photosmart that lost the ability to scan when I switched to Mac a year ago, and whose ability to do straight printing degraded so badly that I banished it. (No great loss; I found the bill for it and I paid $50 for it on sale three years ago, so it had a decent run for the money.) We bought a new Canon MP560, which works like a dreamy charm with no hissy fits. HP and Apple had a weird sort of ‘nyah-nyah-can’t-hear-you’ thing with the all-in-one printers, where each claimed the other was responsible for creating new drivers so the all-in-ones would work properly with Macs. Every single HP product I have had has failed in some way, so I am more than happy to ditch them and start dating Canon. HP, we are breaking up for good and I will never, ever buy another one of your products. Go cry into your beer with Sony over there. In researching a new printer I discovered that Canons have a really good reputation for being Mac-compatible; in fact, Apple sells them in their online Apple store, which says a lot to me. So we picked one up last week on mega-special, and after testing it this morning I am very, very pleased indeed. I even love the bundled software, which is wildly unusual for me.

We had a ridiculous mini-heatwave this week that killed my appetite and energy levels. My sleep has been broken, which hasn’t helped the general state of things. I am, however, astonished at what I’ve been able to pull off so far this week. I will probably pay for it in spades next week.

I haven’t had time or energy to write, or warp the loom. I got half an hour of cello done Wednesday morning, but that’s it.

Today’s schedule:

– I am currently baking bread and muffins for tonight’s preschool potluck picnic
– get at least one load of laundry in (I have no idea when we’ll get the rest done)
– take bus+metro to the south shore to meet HRH (11:00), and to pick up my laptop that he took into work (I can’t carry that plus all the baked goods)
– head over to preschool to pick the boy up after his lunch, drop off baked goods (12:45)
– kindergarten orientation (1:00-2:30)
– take boy back to preschool (2:45)
– drop HRH back at work; go to office supply shop, then a Second Cup with the laptop to work on those interview questions (3:00-4:30)
– pick HRH up from work :94:45)
– go to preschool for the boy’s play (5:00)
– potluck picnic with kids and parents (5:30-6:30)
– take HRH and boy home, pick up cello
– cello lesson (8:00)

I should probably schedule in “pass out,” but I suspect that will happen regardless. Either that or I’ll lie awake for hours, like I did earlier this week.

Woes

As I mentioned, the camera died.

I put it down Thursday night. When I picked it up Friday morning, it took photos with dozens of thin white lines across the image, and/or overexposed the whole thing. Quick research pulled up the likelihood of a faulty CCD image sensor.

I called Canon this morning. It was out of warranty, they said, so they couldn’t do anything except direct me to open a repair request online for an estimate. I filled in all the info required, and was told that to repair this camera, it would cost us at least $99, plus tax, and shipping.

Really. For another $50, I could buy a new camera under warranty.

So this morning I dove back into the world of researching digital cameras. And I am considering running weeping from the room, because I am remembering with horror the last time I did this, and how confusing it all was, how unreliable reviews were, and how hard it is translate words into the actual use of a physical object. Two hours, and I’m ready to hide under some pillows.

All I’m looking for is a point and shoot, with the most important things being low shutter lag and decent shot-to-shot time (both with and without flash). I want something with a manual mode as well as presets, which takes good indoor and outdoor photos. We loved our Olympus Stylus before it dove off a shelf and killed itself; our Canon Powershot was a bit slow and clunky, which made things frustrating with a kid around. If anyone has suggestions, I’m open to hearing your opinions about your cameras, both the good and the bad.

Wiktory!

I have my loom! I’ll do a photo post when I get home from my trip.

I’m going out to the fabric store today to get a bit more polar fleece to extend the homemade duffel bag I found that almost-but-not-quite fit it, and some cord with which to reattach the apron rods to the loom, because it’s currently got a series of loops attached via lark’s head knots and they’re not all even with one another, so the rods don’t sit snugly when under tension. I’m going to do the zig-zag lacing thing with one long piece of cord instead of separate loops. The loom is very light indeed and folds quite cunningly, and we’re now trying to figure out a way to kitbash a box for it so I can check it as baggage on the train home. I can’t carry it on, as the length exceeds the max carry-ons can be. Yesterday we got some yarn with which to sample a pattern for a Seekrit Progikt, and I’m going to do a test warp for the sample this afternoon.

The girl who sold it to me is my age or a bit younger, and got herself a small used Dryad floor loom so she didn’t need this one any more. She also had a Lendrum wheel and baskets of yarn everywhere. Heh. I wish we lived in the same city; we probably would have gotten along just fine.

Mum is doing very well indeed. She’s using the cane while in the house now, and the walker only when we go out, which we’ve been doing once a day to shops and things. The food has, as usual, been brilliant. Last night, for example, we had scallops au gratin, with steamed asparagus and brown rice. Mmm.

The nightly video chat with HRH and the boy back home is a great idea, and it’s been fun, but they’ve been having problems with the microphone on the webcam back home (translation: it wasn’t picking up sound at all, so we used the telephone as a speaker) but last night it worked for some reason, and it made the chat much easier. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that tonight and the rest of the nights go as smoothly. Living in the future is pretty darn cool. I miss them a lot, and seeing and talking with them every night helps. ( “Having a Dada and no Mama makes me very sad,” the boy told me solemnly last night before leaning into HRH for a hug. Only three more sleeps!)

I’ve burned through three books since I got here, and I can’t recommend Alan Bradley’s The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag highly enough. The other book was Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker, which was good, but the Bradleys were really spectacular. I also hand-wrote four pages of novel material in bed this morning.

Okay, off we go for today’s outing. Have a wonderful day, gentle readers.