It occurs to me, rereading the end of the previous blog,** that:
WHERE THE JOLLY DOODAH DO THEY GET THEIR DEFINITION OF FORMAL WRITING? BECAUSE THE DOCUMENT IN QUESTION IS 1,000,000,000,000,000 WORDS LONG? HOW STUPID IS THAT????
might be misinterpreted. It could mean that possessing, indeed being responsible for the creation of, a document 1,000,000,000,000,000 words long is stupid.
We won’t go there.***
Oh yes & I started writing this blog post on Saturday. Last Saturday, as you read this, on whatever day it finally goes up. Grumplehurst Day or something, to go with the New UnReality of Microsquelch.
& I am further contemplating the distressing fact that that un-chronologically-identified post excerpted above is the short version. The excised-chunk version. One of the ways I’m planning, that’s PLANNING, planning not exactly being one of my strong points, to keep the new blog going, is by writing shorter. Yes. Well. Maybe when Young Beowulf finishes breaking the new MS Word into little tiny pieces that I can sweep up in a dustpan & set fire to . . . um. Also when sixteen other catastrophes aren’t happening simultaneously & he can get the blog moved to its permanent home . . . MAYBE THEN. Maybe then I’ll learn to write crisp brief insightful posts . . . Okay, probably not the crisp & insightful. I’m still going to yearn after brief.
Meanwhile. As I’ve been saying/screaming/texting to various friends & anxious well-wishers I am at this point so far out of my comfort zone I don’t have any idea even where to go looking for it.† & the final straw, which is approximately the size of a 3000-year-old giant sequoia, is that winter arrived here about a week ago. It’s not enough that Microsquelch is, at the moment, winning?†† No. It isn’t. The temperature dropped like a brick from four storeys up & made a nasty mess when it hit the ground. Then we had snow. Then we had sleet.
Then we had unwalkable-on pavement because . . .
. . . Okay. Wait a minute. The ongoing outdoor disaster that is the weather & concomitants is worthy of its own post. Meanwhile, the ongoing indoor disaster that is technology. . . .
. . . & THE SECOND WORST THING ABOUT THE NEW ARRRRRRGHBLASTEDFRELLINGDOODAHMICROSQUELCH PACKAGE? Any of you out there who actually write documents will probably already be aware of this &, indeed, be waiting for me to light off about it.
When you open a document you’ve been working on, you are right where you left it. Just like in the old, outmoded Microdross Word. You’re there for about a second. You may, being accustomed to the OLD OUTMODED Microdross Word, even have your fingers poised over the keyboard to begin work.
You’re there, looking at your document, for about a second. Just long enough to identify that it is, indeed, the correct document, & at the correct location.
& THEN IT DISAPPEARS. THAT’S DISAPPEARS.
D I S A P P E A R S
DD II SS AA PPPP EE AA RR SS
DDDIIISSSAAAPPPPPPEEEAAARRRSSS†††
So let’s consider this in a calm, grounded, contemplative manner. Anybody who writes things for a living—& LOTS of us do, not just writers of stories—what do those of us dependent on Word, or word, or possibly wordiness,‡ MOST NEED our writing programmes for? Um . . . to write in? & then SAVE? SAFELY? RELIABLY??
Do I hear any cries of agreement out there in the aether?‡‡
There isn’t much I can think of that is scarier than opening your document & watching it DISAPPEAR. A giant semi/tractor trailer/lorry/large 4-or-16-wheeler with attitude driven by a rabid werewolf aiming straight at you, perhaps. But, you know, if you’re a dark spot on the road, you no longer have to worry about disappearing documents.
& this is another of those known issues. You go hang out in Microsquelch help‡‡‡ or sisters-&-brothers-doing-it-for-themselves threads, watchucallems, & there are a lot of other people out there who are struggling with just this exact same sordid blasted demon-possessed glitch from the Programmer Moron Division—& are Microsquelch covered in embarrassment & promising a fix, TODAY?, LAST WEEK?, LAST YEAR??, that actually fixes this problem that should never have happened if anyone with a brain was paying attention?? No of course not.
Meanwhile, back at the coalface/computer screen, you stare at emptiness, remind yourself that this is now how it goes, EVERY TIME you open a document, & wait for your heart rate to slow down. Then comes the even more fun part, trying to winkle your document back out of the black heart of Microsquelch.§ Sometimes tapping the little scrolling square over in the right-hand margin will bring it back. Sometimes it doesn’t. But if it does, it probably doesn’t take you to where you left said document, forty-five minutes or four days ago. If it takes you anywhere remotely useful, it will probably take you to where you were at the beginning of your last day’s work, not the end. Depending on how good your memory is, this is more or less helpful. In my case, less. I have very little memory about anything§§, & on the forty-seventh re-tweak of novel-in-progress I have no idea what it even is, let alone what I was trying to do with it, or where I was trying to do whatever it was.§§§
So perhaps tapping the scrolling bar doesn’t produce the desired result. Page up/page down has never done anything, during this revolutionary epoch of the Ghastly New Microsquelch, but make my eyes ache with all that flashing whiteness, so I’ve stopped trying that one. The next thing possibly worth venturing out on a limb with, is rushing the scrolling bar up & down. Your hand may be shaking a trifle at this point. But rush away, shakily as necessary, as if you’re balancing on a disagreeably flexible tree limb in a high wind, & there will SUDDENLY BE TYPESCRIPT on the left side of your screen.
Probably.
The last thing to undertake, like climbing Annapurna wearing All Stars with a sandwich in your pocket, & by this time the panic, the heart rate, & the shaking hands, are starting to, you know, get away from you ¥, so tie yourself to your chair first, take a deep breath, & then hit control + home. So far this has always rescued Eurydice from the clutches of hell.
Just don’t look back.
* * *
* The new blog hasn’t really been around long enough to have continuity to lose. Attempting to Restart the Acquisition of Continuity.
**I’m not going to say yesterday’s blog or any confusing time-line type things like that. I’ve been howling at the moon a bit anyway^, with everything that’s been going on, & one of the things I’ve been howling lately is that the poor new blog is going to wither & die before it even gets started. See: Continuity
^ & there’s hardly any moon to howl at, right now, it’s barely past new, which is unsatisfying+
+ THAT WAS TRUE WHEN I FIRST WROTE IT. IT’S GETTING ON FOR HALF FULL AT THIS POINT.
*** I’m also trying to shorten it. TRYING. Unfortunately pretty much every time I take 500 words out I write 750 new words somewhere else.
† If I could explain ‘comfort zone’ to Genghis he might find it for me. He likes sniffing around for things. Unfortunately his idea of comfort-zone is taking up MOST OF THE SPACE on the chair we share, that’s share, & with FOOD & WALKS regularly provided. He looks at me blankly when I say ‘blog’. Or Microdemon. When I say ARRRRRRRRRRGH he closes his eyes & goes back to sleep.
†† sic. Slightly depending on your definition of ‘winning’. I will mention just in passing that the first time I was trying to write this post was a Friday afternoon, which ended (again) in burning tears of RAGE &, of course, it being by then (another) Friday night, no hope of Young Beowulf succor till Monday.
It is now yet another Friday afternoon . . .
††† I am again hampered by the limitations of the current blog technology. I would like to INCREASE FONT SIZE & ADD SOME COLOUR but I don’t think it’s available. Mere bold is insufficient to express my feelings.^
^ ::understatement alert::+
+ In bold.
‡ Some of us may be a trifle inclined to run long. Ahem.
‡‡ Aether is perhaps what we had before we invented virtual. I suppose one could refer to virtual aether, but it makes my head hurt. I’ve told you before I’m very retro.^
^ Bring back the IBM Selectric.
‡‡‡ Suckerrrrrrrrrrrrr
§ Software dark-heartedness is a lightless void with glowing eyes. Narrow, unfriendly, glowing eyes.
§§ Don’t remind me what day it is. I’m nothing like ready for Christmas.^
^ The real problem is that I don’t particularly want to be ready for Christmas. Grinches of the World, Unite.
§§§ DON’T SAY IT. WHATEVER IT IS, I GUARANTEE^ IT IS THE WRONG THING TO SAY.
^ Okay. Almost guarantee.
¥ You know, as if you are climbing Annapurna in All Stars, even if you have two sandwiches in your pocket(s).