Category Archives: Cyberspace & Technology

Checking In

This week has been an exercise in frustration. Monday I finally admitted that I had a cold, and that’s been dragging on, although today’s been the best day of it so far.

I didn’t want to start working on anything new this week because I was expecting to be hit with a freelance gig right off the bat. This is typical, because they’re usually swamped with assignments and pass them out hand over fist. But this time, a freelance assignment didn’t land in my FTP folder till last night, after three work days of waiting. In the meantime I read through a chunk of my short fiction from the last ten years, and discovered that while they are all definitely first drafts, they do not suck as much as I was afraid they would upon rereading it.

I woke up this morning to a seized lower back. I’d thought it was better after taking care of it over the weekend, but evidently not. It was back to spasming, shooting pain, and inability to move. I saw the boys off, checked email, took a muscle relaxant, and went back to bed with a heating pad. Work would have to wait. Soaked up heat for an hour, slept for another two, and woke up feeling groggy but at least I could sort of move. Came back after lunch and decided today would be the day I finally engaged with Bell customer service to try to figure out what the hell is up with my email. Since the switch to the Mac, I haven’t been able to receive or send from my Sympatico address, nor use the SMTP to send from any of my domain-associated addresses. Bashing at the problem on my own and trying increasingly arcane Internet fixes hadn’t solved anything. I detest Sympatico service people with a passion, as they are very obviously reading from a script and ignore the information I give them right off the bat. Part of the problem got fixed in a surprisingly competent chat session that lasted under ten minutes; somehow my password had been changed. Aha! I can now download email! But it didn’t fix the sending. A second chat with another agent proved pointless, because Bell doesn’t support Thunderbird (why not?) and since his scripts didn’t cover my program, the suggested course of action kind of went like this:

Customer service guy: I can’t fix your problem from my script. Can I take remote control of your desktop and try to solve the problem that way?
Me: NO.
*goes and checks the Terms and Conditions, wherein it states that the agent has the freedom to install or uninstall stuff and change settings as s/he sees fit and isn’t responsible for anything going wrong*
Me: HELL, NO.

Because I know they’d end up breaking things that are working perfectly well at the moment, and leaving me worse off than before. And the Terms say that if that happens, too bad! I gave up the right to hold Bell responsible! So no thanks. I’ll just keep using Gmail as my primary, like I’ve been doing for the past 9 mos. And now I’m going to use Gmail’s SMTP as my outgoing mail server for my non-Gmail accounts, too. You are yet another step closer to no longer being my ISP, Bell.

Then I got an response to yesterday’s e-mail query about the ETA for my wheel from my Local Yarn Store, telling me that the manufacturer’s North American warehouse is still out of stock, and that they were told it would arrive “sometime this month.” The rest of the order the shop placed that day is in, but my wheel didn’t arrive with it. I said some very nasty things and grumped for a while. I could have bought one of three used wheels I saw listed in the past six weeks (and I just saw a fourth listed in BC, the same model I ordered, only used), and even with shipping I’d have paid the same or less than I’ve committed to for the new wheel. I am particularly wistful about the used Julia model in Maine that was selling for the same price as the new S15 I ordered. It is tempting to query about the $250 used Ashford Traditional in Georgetown, in the meantime. Because I could always resell it, right? (I should have queried about the $175 Kiwi last night before someone else jumped on it.) Because I really, really want to be spinning. And if the S15 doesn’t arrive in time for the spinning and crafting weekend we’ve organized on the first weekend of October, I will be very, VERY cranky indeed.

It’s not my LYS’s fault; they’re not happy about it, either. The North American supplier needs to get a move on. But damn it, I decided in July I was going to do this, and it is now September, and I just want my wheel.

On the other hand, I was working on smooth bow changes yesterday, and by the end of the practice session I did not suck as much as I did at the beginning. Lessons begin again this Friday night. And the principals from each string section in orchestra met yesterday to work out bowings for the first set of music we’ll be playing this season, and I’m very excited to know what those pieces will be. I’m really looking forward to working with Stewart as our new conductor.

I have no idea what to make for dinner, either. My creativity has run out in that department.

Wednesdays

While for other people it’s the middle of the week, it’s just another day for me. There’s bread rising, I need to go out and collect the tomatoes that are falling off the vines, and I should eat something. There’s a cello lesson tonight, too.

I discovered this morning that the Rock Band USB mic is actually recognized by the Mac, and records the cello. Unfortunately, it’s a mono mic and the sound is awful. But what I did discover by listening to the playback is that my sound is too timid most of the time. If I want it to sound better, I have to go all out; no holding back, giving notes their full value, especially before a rest, and so forth. Vibrato! Positions to avoid open strings! The whole nine yards.

In unrelated Apple news, I would like my Touch to actually connect to the internet when it says it’s connected.

It was cool enough this morning that I turned off the A/C and opened all the windows to let air move through the house. So much cooler, right away. The A/C and strategically-placed fans can only do so much for so long.

Twenty pages got edited yesterday. I found one last [write this bit] that I’d forgotten about, and that’s the last one in the book. Then I go back to trying to find a good hook to open with. I wrote a new prologue and a new opening page for the first chapter last week; let’s see if they’re still any good when we get to that point again.

In Which She Imitates A Sloth

Not purposefully, mind you. It’s just how I feel after overdoing it yesterday. Fibrosloth! (Hmm. May need a fibrosloth icon.)

Yesterday morning I found myself craving fresh peaches, with no idea where the craving night have come from. Amanda then told me that she’d seen the first Niagara peaches now available here in markets; Mum mentioned she’d bought her first peaches last weekend, but I thought it would be at least another week here. Yay! Then I had the weirdest urge to learn to play The Swan. What is *with* me today?, I wondered. So with an hour before I had to leave, I pulled out the sheet music to The Swan. (Well, I didn’t have peaches, so cello it was.) And lo and behold, there was much absence of suckage in The Swan! (Well, except for bar 8. Stupid scale run with accidentals.) Judging from my well-meaning but full of fail previous fingerings, I was enthusiastic but not confident enough in shifting before. Or rather, not confident enough in my knowledge of the geography of the fingerboard, meaning I tried to shift as rarely as possible, leading me to play in awkward positions longer than I really needed to. I even managed some nice subtlety of expressions and some very attractive timbre.

I headed out to meet friends for lunch via bus and Metro, and used the Touch as an MP3 player for the first time. It was stupidly exciting. Also embarrassing, because I couldn’t figure out how to actually get something to, you know, play. Oy. Yay for random button-mashing. (Or touch-screen mashing. Oh Apple, why can you not be consistent in what needs a double-click and what does not?)

Lovely lunch in the company of excellent friends, but I ended up totally wiped regardless. We had a three-hour lunch, then MLG offered to keep me company and drive me to the library as it looked like rain, but we walked all the way back to where he’d parked at Mackay’s, and that ten-minute brisk walk plus the humid air downed me. It’s a worse fibro week than I thought. So no Bibliotheque nationale for me; he drove me home instead, bless him.

So this morning I had to figure out whether I should drive downtown to the library after dropping Liam off and picking something up from Paze, or go in by bus and metro tomorrow. I felt so stupidly paralyzed by the decision. Thursdays always feel rushed anyway, but if I drove I could get the whole thing done in less time. And there’s always meter parking around Archambault around ten in the morning. I made the decision to go, but by the time I got to Paze’s I was wiped. Yesterday’s outing just killed me. By the time I left her place I knew I couldn’t go downtown; I could barely concentrate enough to get home. No driving downtown for me. I did do the local running around (had to hit the bank three times, because I forgot one of the several transactions I had to do EVERY TIME, gah) and came back home to do the freelance thing.

I started working on the last part of this particular freelance gig, and in waltzed the self-doubt. I don’t know whether some of this doesn’t make sense because it’s bioengineering-speak, or because English is the writer’s second language. It occurs to me that it might also be due to the fibro-fog, requiring me to reread sentences several times in order to make head or tail of them.

Well, I’m done now; I’m just doing a final reread to make sure I haven’t missed anything, before sending it off to the grad student. Then I think I shall pass out.

Stuff; Or, What I Did Today

The boy’s 49-months-old post is up and backdated. Thanks to Debra, I have a better idea how to use iPhoto and Preview, and so I could actually provide photos for the post. (I’ll get there, Mac.)

I’m currently editing a PhD thesis proposal for a biochemical engineering student whose native language is not English. It’s required me to look into the world of scientific style manuals, as opposed to the humanities style manuals I’ve absorbed over the years. Very interesting, though, and quite enjoyable. This is only one brief section of others that will come, too.

The boy left Blackie the bunny at home this morning, so I seized the opportunity that he has denied us for months and said, “INTO THE WASH, you innocent, horribly bedraggled thing!” Even soaking wet, I could see how clean Blackie was as I transferred him from washer to dryer. Four months of preschool grime really adds up on a best-buddy stuffed pal. When I took him out of the dryer, Blackie looked practically new. Aside from the four months of aggressive love that have marked him eternally, that is. I hope the boy is happy to see Blackie all shiny and clean and recognizes that he has survived the experience with cheer and aplomb, although part of me expects tears because I threw the rabbit in the wash without the boy’s permission.

Ceri and I were supposed to go antiquing and then to Ariadne this afternoon, but she was felled by a visit from the evil Migraine Fairy. I ended up messing with Garageband on my lunch break instead, and discovered that the Mac Mini doesn’t have a microphone jack. You need something like the iMic USB connector through which to run your microphone. So no sound clips of the 7/8 cello for you, Gentle Readers. I re-ripped a couple more albums and practiced the cello this afternoon instead. And I discovered that the Bibliotheque nationale downtown has tonnes of books on spinning, books that I’d otherwise have to buy. I’ll head down there either this week or next and get a library card, then take a pile of them home.

I really hope HRH is in the mood for Rock Band tonight.

Let’s Try Again

Lost an entire post just now. That hasn’t happened in quite some time.

Five loads of laundry yesterday. Five. That’s significant, right?

Apart from that, I managed to edit a whole eight pages of Orchestrated despite having the file open for hours. I’ve hit Part Two, wherein I’ve left myself notes in the text like [write dinner scene here] because I was intent on getting the damn skeleton of the story down and done with. This means my light edits/rewrites are turning into more substantial rewrites, meaning my already slow pace is about to turn into the speed boasted of by turtles. The fibro-fog isn’t helping; I have little focus.

Yesterday I also began re-ripping the missing albums that iTunes can’t/won’t find. Turns out a few of my CDs were originally ripped into .wma format, and iTunes on the Mac doesn’t have an import/convert .wma function. Not a big deal, really. It’s just that I’m trying to find where iTunes is ripping them to, and I can’t. All the logical places I look haven’t turned anything up. (The Mac: “Just trust me. Everything’s going to be fine.” Me: “I know, I know, it’s magic, but even when doing magic I like to know what the ultimate destination for my energy is, thank you very much.”) I want all my music in one place so that I can back it all up at once.

Speaking of the Mac, it doesn’t have a formal name yet. My PCs all had names drawn from Norse mythology — Freyja, Valhalla, Bifrost, the Dell laptop is Nehelennia — but I suspect the Mac has energy that’s more Egyptian in nature. The Wii is named Isis; I think perhaps this is Nephthys, although Ma’at is tempting. I’ll think about it some more. (The Touch may be Nephthys, actually, making this one Ma’at. Hrm.)

Pursuant to the spinning obsession, I found a used Louet S15 on eBay that was listed at a $50 opening bid and comes with a bulky flyer included, so I calculated shipping, looked at my budget, and bid on it. I’m currently winning, but if someone tops my highest bid within the next five days I can still add another twenty dollars before I hit my self-imposed max total of $200. Seeing as how a new wheel would cost me $400 at the least for the very basic entry-level models, $200 including shipping is decent indeed. If I win the damn thing my brain could give over the RAM it’s currently devoting to wheel research and reviews to things that need it, like planning dinner and actual work, instead of constantly returning to the wheel thing when it ought to be thinking of other issues. Actual spinning would be more relaxing and have tangible yield for the time invested than obsessive wheel research online (actual yield = time missing, nothing concrete accomplished, lots of info buzzing in the brain, irritation at the to-do list not diminishing). I know that realistically if I win the wheel, the Obsessive Research slot will be assigned to fibre. But I’m doing that already as part of the overall wheel research thing, so I am being optimistic about the possibility of some leftover RAM.

Huh. There is a ladybug on my office wall. I saw something crawling and did that hiccup of panic, thinking it was a spider, before I looked and saw that it was in fact a Coccinellid. She’s now crawling up the copper deer painting HRH did for me five years ago, and settling down in the knotwork:

Right. I need some Excedrin for this headache, and then it’s back to Orchestrated.

On My Way Out

The PC has officially been retired. Thank you; you did me good service when there was a gap. You stepped into the breach and soldiered on. Good PC.

And I almost forgot my appointment at Ariadne this afternoon to test spinning wheels! Thank goodness for playing with the shiny Touch, because I found a note to myself about it on my list of things to do today. I’m off!

Notes

I think all the e-mail addresses are working now. All I need is to go back to the PC one last time to make a second backup of the mail profile, the address book, and whatever else I think I need. Of course that means unplugging the Mac, which I am, understandably reluctant to do. Then ADZO has given me permission to hand the PC over to whatever charity refurbishes hardware for places that need computers, like other charities and churches and so forth. I want it out of my office by tomorrow. I want the space under my left-hand writing desk reclaimed!

I’m fumbling through the first few days of adjustment quite well. What keyboard combinations do I use to approximate this or that desired function? How do I sync the new Touch and the computer? Why has all the info on my Touch vanished after syncing? (Oh; one can only sync the desktop to the iPod. Well, that’s odd. It would make sense to be able to do it both ways, as the iPod acts like a PDA you carry around, so in my mind one should be able to upload changes from it to the main system.) Some things need to be double-clicked, some don’t. I’ve set up Open Office for now, till I get iWork. The screen resolution seems to have finally settled thanks to determined effort on my part to try every single possible resolution plus tweaking sharpness and interweave and mumblemonitortechspeak. My main problem is that everything is easy. Too easy. There’s a tiny bit of my brain that’s chittering away, saying, “But you don’t know how it works.” To which I say, “Yes, absolutely. Which means that it’s magic!”

I’m going to sound like a broken record: I can’t get over how quiet it is. I can listen to music playing in the next room with no difficulty. I am so relaxed, it’s slightly anxiety-inducing. It boots up incredibly quickly. The boy is very impressed that it makes “the WALL*E sound” when it’s turned on.

Today I went to the license bureau to pay for my next two years’ worth of driver’s license fees (why yes, my birthday was four days ago, why do you ask?), had a very enjoyable breakfast with ADZO, and went to the library to pick up an armful of reference books on Macs and how to understand the inner workings of iTunes (because things I expect it to do or recognise don’t happen), some graphic novels (who knew there was a whole section of English graphic novels in the back corner?), and a new book on writing by Graham Swift called Making an Elephant: Writing From Within. I’m always very excited when an author whose work I analyzed in my thesis comes out with something new. Which reminds me, I think David Lodge released a new novel recently. I’ve already read A.S. Byatt’s latest.

I am trying very hard to not think about how much money I have spent on major purchases in this past month. The new cello and computer have both been a long time coming, of course. I’m just twitchy about that much money going out within that small a timeframe.

Astute readers will have noticed that the monthly post about the boy hasn’t gone up. July’s like that: there’s the concert, then recovery, then my birthday, and the first two weeks just don’t really exist properly. And then this year there was the computer stuff, too. I’ll get to it next week.

To work! Which in this case is reading. And re-ripping the albums iTunes claims don’t exist. And there ought to be some more cello work, too.