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In Which Our Heroine* Is Hysterical**
Computers are evil. Computers are death. Computers are bane and abomination. I HATE COMPUTERS. HATE. HATE. HATE.
You may possibly remember that last Friday I had semi-promised you the first part of the lullaby from PEGASUS this Friday—?
The day began badly. I was just strapping hellhounds in to the rocket launcher when the phone rang, and it was Peter saying, in a commendably calm tone, that if I get any emails from UPS, not to open them. Peter actually uses UPS, so it was plausible. . . .
Yes. Plausible but hostile. By the time hellhounds and I returned from pounding a little more Hampshire countryside back into place again*** the Trojan horse had burst like a piñata . . . all over the innards of Peter’s computer, which is, for the moment anyway, an ex-computer. One of Asmodeus’ minions is going to fetch it away on Monday and see if any of his incantations† can recall it from the land of the dead. Peter, poor man, has spent most of the day on the phone . . . first trying, under instruction, to limit the damage, which I gather was a bit like trying to claw the tide back from ebbing with a fork, and then trying to convince his laptop that it wasn’t just a typewriter with a screen, it could do computery things, like check email and ask Google questions. But it kept wringing its little memory modules and saying no, no, no! Beat me, spurn me, feed me to hellhounds††, but don’t make me go on line!
Meanwhile I had a piano lesson this afternoon. I’ve actually written the, or anyway some, music for the second and (so far as I know) final part of the lullaby this week, but I trust my own judgement even less than usual with the ME roaring in my ears, so I wanted to take both the corrected first part††† and the new second part to Oisin. He did print it out for me, and I should have just made the final adjustments with a pen, but you know, you have this fabulous, inbloodysanely complicated software for which your husband paid rather a bomb, you want to use it. . . and there was no going back after I’d written a phone number, a succinct shopping list, and the first bar and a half of a new piece across the top of Oisin’s print out.‡
My printer at the mews is one of the reasons I need an Asmodeus minion to pay a visit, and Peter’s ancient but reliable printer is so old that the pages it produces are really not good enough for scanning. So I brought the mews laptop—which is the one with Finale‡‡, my composing software, on it—back to the cottage tonight. And plugged it into the cottage printer, which is the good printer, except when it’s in a bad mood, fired up Finale, and prepared to print out.
Found new hardware, said my computer.
There was an error in gijjeebling with the new hardware, said my computer. New hardware may not work properly.
Then the Install New Hardware Wizard popped up. Go away, I said and closed it.
So I went into ‘printers’ and made sure that the correct printer was ticked. It was. Listen, I’d had Computer Men install the freller on all sixteen‡‡‡ of my computers; I knew it was there. It was there! It was theeeeere!
Went back to Finale. Opened lullaby, hit ‘print’.
Document failed to print, said my computer.
ARRRRGH, I said. I deleted the print queue.
It was now seven-fifteen, and I have to go bell ringing in fifteen minutes. I rebooted.
Found new hardware, said my computer. We don’t like this new hardware. We don’t like its shoes. We don’t like its haircut. The Install New Hardware Wizard popped up again. And cleared its throat meaningfully.
I closed it down again.
I tried to print the lullaby again.
Document failed to print, my computer said again. Gleefully.
The Install New Hardware Wizard leaped out of the shadows, waving exuberantly. Let me solve all your problems! I can go on line and download everything you could ever need!
I’m not in a very good mood about downloading stuff from the internet right now, I said. Let’s try something else.
Then give me the Mystic Install Printer Disk! said the wizard joyfully.
Yes. I found the Mystic Install Printer Disk. Now this is where you think that it’s all going to be all right after all, don’t you? You’d be wrong.
I put the Mystic Disk in the little drawer. It spun. It loaded . . . almost.
It was within a fingernail paring’s breadth of finishing when a Large Red Error Box with Lots of Red Xs in it exploded over the install box, saying, Some Crucial Windows XP Files Have Been Overwritten And You Are in Deep Dog Crap. Give Us Your First Born Child, No, Wait, You’re Too Old For That One, Give Us Your Windows XP Professional Install Disk And We May Save Your Ass. Or, Then Again, We May Not.
Meanwhile, the almost-loaded mystic printer disk is making small flailing motions and trying to boost itself up to peer over the edge of the Large Red Error box. Wait a minute! it says. I was here first! Let me finish!
We Are Windows. We Rule. Get Out of the Way Before We Step on You Like An Outdated Motherboard. Crunch.
I take the mystic printer disk out of the little drawer and put the Windows XP disk in.
Hey, says the New Hardware Wizard. That was bloody rude. Cancel these Windows yobos, whoever the hell they think they are. Put the mystic printer disk back in the drawer. Now.
Don’t Touch Anything, said the Large Red Error Box, or The World Will End in Fire and Peripherals.
Blow me, said the wizard. Let my mystic disk finish loading, or I’m going to crumdang the josselwidgers, and then you’ll be sorry.
You wouldn’t, said the Box.
I would, said the wizard.
At this point I have about eleventy hundred little ‘open’ boxes in hydra-headed heaps on the what-you’re-up-to bar at the bottom of the screen. None of them will close. And nothing else works either. I hit ctrl-alt-delete and the Programme Tyrant box stomps into view, cracking its whip.
Make them behave, I say.
The Programme Tyrant strives mightily for a minute or two but the wizard and the Box are locked in mortal combat. Ow! Dranglefab! WHAP! BLANG! THUMP!
So I turn the whole thing off. CRASH. I can frelling hear the components clanking together like badly rung bells.
And then I run/totter off to tower practise.
So the story thus far: I need Blogmom to load the sheet music to the lullaby on the blog. This means I have to print it out, scan it back in again, and tack it on as an attachment to an email, and send it to her. I have, thus far, done none of these things.
Tune in tomorrow for the next exciting episode.
* * *
* You may replace this with ‘matriarch’ if you prefer
** Yes, I do read too much Wondermark.^ http://wondermark.com/ Wait, is it possible to read too much Wondermark?
http://wondermark.com/601/ Ahem, says she who eats everything with chopsticks.
^ Does he do matriarchs? I don’t remember matriarchs
*** Landscape gets uppity if you don’t tramp on it regularly. See, you’re helping save the planet when you go for walks. It’s not just a question of your waistline.
† Asmodeus is expecting Peter to provide his own dragon’s blood, eyelash of salamander and powdered mandrake root. At the prices they charge, I feel these should be included.
†† Ha ha ha ha ha. Although you don’t know, they might have a taste for computer components.
††† And a good thing I did, since I’d managed to make one of the corrections backwards
‡ Like we aren’t frelling drowning in second sheets, from all those blank-backed galley proofs. We have scratch paper for the next million years.
‡‡ Having now had it, used it, and been slapped around by it for a year and a half or so, I like the name no more than I did in the beginning. It said, You’ve had it! You’re finished!, a year and a half ago, and it still says, You’ve had it! You’re finished! to me now.
‡‡‡ Well. Four. And one of ’em’s retired.
Photos and Guest Posts
Blogmom suggested a spiffy new way of dealing with Wordpress’ bad attitude toward photos, which bad attitude sometimes results in making potential guest posters crazy which from my perspective is seriously counterproductive.
So here’s the new system. When Wordpress pitches a hissy fit, you get a teaser, like the following, and a pdf. I would rather have it all here on the blog, which is what we’ll continue to do when possible. But when it isn’t possible, a pdf means you can still have the guest post. And I can still have the night off. And everybody leaves with the marbles they came in with.
Hurrah for Blogmom
Hurrah hurrah hurrah hurrah hurrah. Days in the Life has an opening page again instead of a screenful of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey*, also the head, ears, body, and legs, and what are all those cogs, wheels, driveshafts, sparkplugs and those aren’t really falchions, gisarmes and halberds, are they? . . . uh, pieces. Which is what it looked like last night. I’m also relieved it wasn’t my eyes.
Back to PEGASUS. Tick tock. Thank the gods for that five hours’ difference between me and Manhattan.
* * *
* Or possibly pegasus, in which case there are also wings that need pinning
Technology is hell
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT.
My guest blog folder has DISAPPEARED.
I have no idea, except that I assume it’s all a part of the recent ruckus with Outlook. Outlook has been stealthily eating my address book since our rebarbative association began; apparently the mere disappearance of a few contacts—which furthermore I probably have hardcopy of*–has become insufficiently infuriating. My blood pressure doesn’t go up more than a point or two when I discover someone else has vanished. Since—see below—I am likely to be visited by Computer Men some day very soon I will ask if my guest blogs can be retrieved from whatever ether-eal hell they have been inadvertently consigned to. But, because I am a well-tutored pessimist about all things computery, would every/anyone who has sent me a guest post which hasn’t appeared yet please send it to me again.* And this time, believe me, I will keep a back up copy on a memory stick.
Frelling frell frelling. FRELLING. FRELL.
And if that wasn’t quite enough . . . I’m off line again. I assume I’m going to be able to plug in either to Peter’s desktop connection or back at the cottage to post tonight but here on the mews laptop where I write probably five out of seven blog entries—which occupation requires constant application to Google and other there-are-certain-kinds-of-embarrassment-I-would-like-to-avoid fact-checking sites** not to mention the possibility of the insertion of fascinating links*** —I am dead in the virtual water. Arrrrrgh.
We also rang this morning like a bunch of one-armed dipsomaniacs the morning after tying a particularly rich one on. There were six of us, all of us theoretically method ringers, but we couldn’t get through anything without clanks, crashes, and frantic shouts of rounds! STAND! from the beleaguered conductor. Some Sunday mornings are like that. Are bells technology? Well, smelting metal usually counts as one of those basic technological-enabling skills so for the purposes of hellishness, bells are today honorary technology.†
When I snuck out of the tower—days like today you don’t want anyone to see you climbing down the ladder from the bell chamber—there was no Peter waiting for me. There is supposed to be a Peter waiting for me Sunday mornings after ringing unless the weather is completely filthy. Which it is not. †† I hung around long enough to start feeling faintly worried ††† and then started back down the hill . . . at last to see Peter toiling up toward me.
He had been having his own collision with technology. He’d had his shower and was getting dressed in his bedroom when both his smoke alarms went off. I’m sure that in the middle of the night when it’s saving your life a smoke alarm is a wonderful thing, but the problem is that smoke alarms are frellingly proof against any kind of tampering, in case it’s an electrical fire, so if they go wrong they go wrong with great stamina and determination.
Peter guessed that the steam from his shower must have set them off‡, so he opened all the doors and windows and got a terrific through draught . . . and the alarms kept on. He crawled into the crawl spaces and stuck his head in the attic in case it was an electrical fire, but there was nothing . . . except the alarms going on and on. He went next door to reassure his neighbours, and they came round and made helpful suggestions, none of which worked. I’ve had problems with those ‘reset buttons’ myself: you lean on one and the technology goes DON’T YOU TAMPER WITH ME! WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP! By this time the next neighbour in the row had turned up and made more useless helpful suggestions. The reset buttons had of course been pressed and prodded any number of times and each infernal machine would shut up briefly and then start yelling again.
Finally, as much by accident as anything, Peter pressed the reset button on the one upstairs while one of the neighbours was pressing the reset button on the one downstairs‡‡ . . . and silence fell. At last. And so, Peter says, the conclusion seems to be that you have to press both reset buttons simultaneously . . . which is difficult for a person living alone.
There are going to be a whole assortment of urgent phone calls going out at 9 am sharp tomorrow morning to professional technology-bashers from the McKinley-Dickinson ménage.
* * *
* When I can find them. And of course every time I update the RaspBerry whatever Outlook has been up to gets transferred too, so back up becomes de-back up, or front down, or something.
* Whimper. And please the gods you’ve kept copies.
** Including on-line dictionaries and a thesaurus or two, since my Oxford reference shelf, never the most stable of delicate artistic souls, has lately taken to responding ‘iFinger did not find anything matching blah’ when blah is a perfectly good word like assythment or gorcrow or archfiend^ or piepowder. This is very undermining to the middle-aged brain, which is getting pretty gappy anyway. iFinger is also an absolutist: you either get an answer or you get ‘did not find’. The on-liners tend to offer alternatives from which you may be able to grope your way toward what you were looking for.
^ Just to be sure I wasn’t being unfair, I looked up ‘fiend’. It said, among other things,+ ‘see table at devil’. So I looked up the table at devil+ and found listed Arch-fiend. Okay, I said, and typed in ‘Arch-fiend’. iFinger did not find anything matching . . .
+ Synonyms included hellhound
++ Good book title: The Table at Devil. It’ll be scary. I don’t want to read it.
*** For example there’s an article today in the Observer Magazine called Sleepless? Stressed? Anxious? Exhausted? by William Leith, which is about the fact that this is increasingly the norm in the first world. Some of us go on to develop ME/CFS or some similar label-able but un-pin-down-able disturbance, and some of us are just tired. One of the key ingredients in the modern developed-world overload is its 24-hour-a-day-ness: and first in that list is the 24/7 internet. And before several dozen passionate web bunnies write in berating me for demonising^ the web, I’m not. I’m a web bunny too, in my cranky, middle-aged, Facebook- and Twitter-less, uncool way. But I’m also someone with no ‘off’ switch—which is why I’ve got ME. The web is like the biggest toy box you ever dreamed of when you were four—it’s not just the shopping, it’s the everything—but Mum doesn’t make you put your toys away and go to bed at 7 pm any more.
But the small personal irony here is severalfold: in the first place, I probably wouldn’t have read the article if I weren’t banned from on line. I spent last night—my Saturday night off—doing autumn plant orders, and I was hoping to finish^^ this afternoon. On line, of course. In the second place, I thought, blog. And wanted to go on line and find a link to the article for you. And in the third place, William Leith has written a book: ‘It’s about what it’s like to be middle-aged and exhausted. It’s called Bits of Me Are Falling Apart.’ I thought: okay, I’m there. And wanted to go on line and look it up, see if it’s out yet, and if there are any reviews.
Sigh.
. . . Okay, that was implausibly easy: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/12/chronic-fatigue-stress-modern-life
Oh dear: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/aug/09/philosophy.society
But take your pick: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/14/william-leith-falling-apart
http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/902746/part_2/really-not-happy-at-all.thtml
^ or archfiending
^^ Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I do try to do the majority of my plant ordering in two huge, terrifying wodges, summer and winter, for autumn and spring, so that aside from the lists that I fanatically keep+ I have some sort of sense of what and how much I’ve already ordered.++
+ keeping does not necessarily mean being able to lay hands on when desired
++ Too much! Too frelling much!
† Although strictly speaking it wasn’t the bells. Hey! It wasn’t me boss! Not this time!
†† Or only in random outbursts. We’ve been having random-outburst weather the last couple of days.
††† Peter is 81 and a half, and I worry easily
‡ The fire brigade—who was applied to at some point this morning—concurs that humidity can set the frellers off. But they had no magic for deaf and hostile reset buttons.
‡‡ The tall neighbour. The second smoke alarm requires a ladder to get at for ordinary humans, which is bizarre, not least because the previous tenant was seriously short. Maybe he had excellent aim with a broomstick.
SUNSHINE visible
So back at the beginning of April I got a polite little query in my email asking if a journalist named Jayne Nelson* who was writing an article for the Special Vampire Issue of SFX Magazine** might chat to me about SUNSHINE?
The first thing that happened is that I thought oh, cool, sure . . . and forgot to answer.
The second thing that happened, about a week later, is that I belatedly wrote back that I’d be happy to chat except it was probably too late–?, thinking, you moron, here’s a British magazine trying to pay some attention to SUNSHINE . . . and I’m being a cretin.***
Only it wasn’t too late. And we had an excellent chat, based on the simple fact that she really liked SUNSHINE, although I don’t envy her trying to take notes, since when I’m nervous–and interviews always make me nervous†–I tend to talk at a million miles an hour.†† I admit that some of the resulting ‘quotations’ make me giggle because I doubt that’s exactly what I said††† but she was nice enough to let me see the article before it went to the printer and while I’d begged for this favour I’d also promised I wouldn’t ask for changes unless she made me say something like ‘I think all women should be just like June Cleaver’ and she didn’t.‡
She’d said that they were going to do a ‘feature’ on SUNSHINE but I was still pretty startled when she sent me the layout, which is what you see here. ‡‡ Golly. They meant it, about the feature.
ARRRRRRRGH. NO, THAT IS NOT WHAT YOU SEE HERE, BECAUSE IT HAS DISAPPEARED. I WILL ASK BLOGMOM TO REINSTATE AT AT HER EARLIEST CONVENIENCE. ARRRRRRRRGH.
[Blogmom: alrighty then]
And while I can’t find any mention of it on the SFX site‡‡‡, the Special Vampire Issue is supposed to have hit the stands today. So please go buy it and revel in a terrific plug for SUNSHINE.§
She also said the editor said I could ‘quote a few paragraphs’, so:
What comes before Twilight? Sunshine, of course.
. . . The book did well in the States but struggled in the UK (not for want of good reviews, however; SFX gave it five stars). While Meyer’s vampire saga ran off with the book sales . . . Sunshine has stayed on the sidelines. And yet everybody who does read it seems to adore it. §§ . . . McKinley is . . . inundated with requests for a sequel . . . the author is waiting for the ‘Story Council’ to send her the inspiration for the next part (”It’s so frustrating,” she says, of the people who beg her to write it, “I got another email just yesterday saying, ‘Won’t you please reconsider?’ Reconsidering has nothing to do with it! I would love to write a sequel!”).
. . . Excuse us if we don’t mince words here – Sunshine deserves to be bigger than Twilight. With a cast of well-rounded characters . . . a fully realised universe and its strong sense of the otherworldly . . . this book is so intricate and beautifully shaped it’s almost criminal that it’s not The Next Big Thing. . . .
. . . Buy Sunshine. It’s The Next Big Thing That Should Be.
* * *
* http://jaynenelson.wordpress.com/2008/01/27/nelsons-column-er-blog
*** Expletives deleted. I worked for that restrained, courteous ’cretin’.
† Like ringing handbells for weddings
†† I’ve told the story several times that the first speech I ever wrote, which I think was after BEAUTY came out, but it might not have been till after SWORD, lasted me years, because I read it off so fast no one could hear me and therefore wouldn’t recognize it if they heard it again.
††† And then again it might be. Nerves have an effect on brain function too.
‡ http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_P-0bkMcgIVE/SEX6ILPwbcI/AAAAAAAAAuw/ADH9YTnYfM8/s400/june_cleaver.jpg
I was hoping to find a photo that had not only the pearls but the cocktail dress and the high heels under the apron while she makes cookies. Pearls alone are not conclusive–I wear pearls while I make cookies. I like pearls. (I like cookies.)^ But this will have to do.
And anyone culturally deprived enough not to know about Leave It to Beaver . . . lucky you. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leave_It_to_Beaver It was one of the many plagues and blights on my young proto-feminist life.
^ I even occasionally wear an apron. Possibly the one that says, I want it all. And I want it covered in chocolate.
‡ It is now obvious that she wouldn’t. But I didn’t know that to begin with. And I’ve had some very peculiar dealings with other journalists. Very peculiar other journalists.
‡‡ The quote with my name after it that they’ve decided to pull out and headline–which I think you can’t quite read^–says: “I’m not terribly interested in graphic sex or endless foreplay”. Siiiiiiiigh. Context is all.
^ Jayne originally sent me the layout pdf as my copy of the text too. And I couldn’t read the freller: the type kept breaking up. So she sent it to me as a Word document as well. But this afternoon when I was trying to stick the layout into tonight’s blog entry as a photo, it suddenly got all huge and clear. Arrrrrgh. Jayne had said that SFX didn’t mind if I quoted from the article . . . but I doubt they’d be pleased if I inadvertently published the whole thing. So Blogmom shrank it for me.
‡‡‡ More siiiiiiighing.
§ Any BUFFYites out there, Jayne says there’s an interview with James Marsters in it too.
§§ Mmm. . . . she should see some of my mail. . . .
