C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 114
July 30, 2012
Cuckoo’s Egg and Serpent’s Reach are now on audible.com.
They’re producing these faster than I expected.
July 29, 2012
And if you wonder why Jane has not posted…
1. I accidentally loaded Facebook as my home page. Jane figured it out.
2. I couldn’t get the webeditor to work. Jane solved it.
3. We got wood rot in the feet of the garden arch. Jane’s fixing it.
4. We tried to use a Seagate megadrive for backup. First it wouldn’t talk. Then we got it to talk. It’s been backing up for 2 days. Jane’s running it.
5. The desktop computer is dying. Jane is trying to keep it going.
6. Jane finally gets the HP laptop reformatted for the third time.
7. It takes an Acronis backup to be sure we don’t have to reformat a fourth time.
8…do you know how many updates Windows has if you install an original Win 7 on a computer? It installs them in groups of 200. Slowly. Jane’s in charge of it.
9. Jane reformats C again. It’s not working.
10. Jane reformats C. Many updates of windows. Many. Many.
11. Did I mention our dishwasher quit having power? We went through all the breakers. Seems to be a loose wire.
12. We got Jane’s old laptop back to use as an interim desktop. Jane’s trying to get the thing to talk.
It keeps screwing up.
12 a-24a. The Intuit (accounting software) screwed up and Intuit doesn’t want to talk to us. We end up ready to file Intent.
25. Jane helps me get the taxes off the dying desktop. Between trying to keep the garden tended.
Ongoing…we’re trying to find a decent file-compare, because we have backups all over the place.
So if you wonder why Jane is behind on posting—
She deserves e-hugs.
The millennium has arrived…I’m starting to make changes in cherryh.com…
It’s only been two years since I got this computer—and lost all communication with my website.
I’ve got a modus operandi, now.
I’m having site problems in general…
…site would lock on me due to a malfunctioning counter. Anyone out there notice, or is it my copy of Firefox that’s had a hiccup?
July 28, 2012
July 27, 2012
A nice finding from ancient Rome…
Romans were literate—prostitutes read and wrote. Soldiers did. Slaves did. Roman mothers were the elementary teachers in their own houses, for reading and math. Roman fathers took over the boys as kids grew older, taking them to work every day. Roman children played AFTER work hours, thank you. Otherwise they assisted their fathers or mothers all day long, then got their time to play, as the day wound down, or somewhat during siesta. The boys made friends of other boys in the care of fathers who came and went to THEIR father’s business. Even senatorial kids were to sit outside the senate and listen to the debates. Occasionally the marshal had to go out and tell them to pipe down out there.
And because they wrote—there is a WEALTH of graffiti—poignant stuff, some of it. When you read the one about the bread, recall that one of the things they found in Pompeii was the ovens, with the day’s baking in progress, before Vesuvius blew. There are things from bars, from public latrines, from alleys and thoroughfares. It’s a window on the common folk. Mind, it is pretty racy. Roman Graffiti from Pompeii
July 26, 2012
We DIDN’T walk today…but the fact that’s news is a good thing. We had a bout with Vistaprint…
…you know, the company that claims to get it right when other companies can’t? Took us 2 and a half hours to make a simple check order through their incredibly bad site-navigation…and then had them screw up the credit card. We aren’t even mentioning their changing the price on Jane while she was in the act of ordering: another call to them got that right. In the latter instance we got hold of a supervisor and made clear our opinion of their website. They then offered us other products with the fervor of a merchant in a tent bazaar…and when we had shaken off all those, they wanted to send us (for a price) some address labels with our company name treated as a personal name. How do you do, Mr. Inc?
Idiots. I then tried to call the credit card company on another issue. Sorry. The phone company is down.
Then we tried to install the printer to the ‘new’ office computer (Jane’s old laptop) and it needed the disc—then complained it needed more drivers. Then Quickbooks, to which we thought we had gotten ALL the other patches—needed more patches.
I was trying to get all these packages of returned items and bills and such and our primary votes all gotten to the post office—but no sense going without the quarterly state Business and Operations tax forms, so I delayed for that.
But we need the printer for that, and it’s still installing patches. Arrrgh.
The really great news is—really good news, actually—we have hit on a method of diet that does seem to be reversing the weight gain and peeling the pounds off fast. It’s very simple. We have a modest breakfast (small slice of bread, butter, jelly); a slimming lunch (diet powder from Costco, with almond milk); and whatever we want for supper. Anything. The trick is—I’m using the salad plates for a dinner service. I found a modest 4 place set of dishes with an 8 inch flat salad plate (our regular ones are 12″) and I am putting onto those plates ANYTHING we want—steak, fish, chicken, meatballs and spaghetti, porkchop—with a veggie and salad. The deal is—you get an 8″ plate.
A lot of the weight gain is my fault: I love to cook. WHen I get going, I pile in more ingredients. I pile the plates high. So I just reined that in. Whatever I cook has to fit on that plate. That really curbs any tendency to open another pack of anything. And we have 1/3 of the plate as a simple Caesar salad, with bacon; 1/3 as veggie of some sort. So far, since my magic plates arrived on Monday, I have peeled off five pounds—back to the lowest since May. I have my wine in the evening. Jane had a little bowl of chips. We had our supper. We walked. And we dropped another pound.
I am willing to recommend my magic plates. The Magic Plates They’re pretty, they seemed apt, and our other plates are getting scarred, chipped, and kind of tired, so I have just put them away for a while. These are light, chip-resistent, and actually feel like glass instead of plastic. And the cups are a meaningful 8 oz size. For a confirmed coffee drinker, this is good. 8 oz cups and 8″ lunch plates.
July 25, 2012
July 23, 2012
Software nightmares…or, What they don’t tell you about Win 7…
I should let Jane tell you this one, because she knows all the technicals, but she’s recuperating in a warm tub.
The main computer of our housenet is about to die—any minute, it could stop working. It holds all the tax records, going back over a decade.
The new computer which is Jane’s older HP laptop, is now refurbed and ready to stand in. It is Win 7 Home. Our main desktop is Win 7 Pro. Our software is Quickbooks Pro. And its alternatives are not ready for prime time…I’ve tried.
They know they’re the only game in town and act the part.
We ran into a nice little business wherein we finally found this cryptic notice on the internet: “Those of you who had Vista will understand this…Win 7 has a feature called Ownership, which Win ME didn’t.” Why MS thought this was a good idea–who knows. But you only THINK you own your computer. When you get into the nitty gritty of ‘Permissions’ to add programs or to change things, there is a layer beneath Administration.
News item #2. Programs as attitudinal as Quickbooks can be INSTALLED by any admin person. BUT they simultaneously reach deep down into the Ownership layer and create a couple of NEW Admins they don’t tell you about, which even as the machine’s sole Admin you can’t get at, and if you don’t get INTO the Ownership layer, you can’t possibly root them out. Getting into that level is a poser. It can be done. But getting rid of those other admins? It’s easier to wipe your computer back to zero and completely reinstall. Why MS thought it would be cute to reinstall this little Vista feature is a question. It’s an even deeper one that Quickbooks can operate at that level without advising the owner of the computer or the software. This, at least, is what I understand that damned thing was doing.
Then—being the only game in town—QUickbooks people don’t like it that I’m on 2011. WE have a 32 bit machine (the dying one) and the new 64 bit. They won’t play nicely with each other’s programs unless you have some upgrades which, catch 22, you can’t get without the program on your disk, and if you can’t install the program because of the glitch, you can’t get the fix. I don’t do well at talking to software people about the situation when they’re launched on why you’re expired and need 2012. No. I shouted, alas, I did shout something like “What I want is what I’m entitled to as the owner of a 2011 disc, which is the patch you’ve got on your site, which I can’t download without your giving me the access link you promised me an hour ago!”
Turns out they not only hadn’t sent it, they’d wiped my addy from the computer, which I’m not sure was an accident, (this, from the company that buries links so deep even IT can’t find them) but I foxed them—the fools had sent me a ‘how’d we do?’ survey with the case number on it. So back we came. By this time I had called Jane out of the tub, and we had an administrator, who established yes, I should have an address, and did have an account, about 8 of them. So we sorted through that for a while (I’ve run this software since forever) —and we FINALLY got through all that to a download that would work. I mean, we have our disk, our serial numbers, all of that: give us the friggin’ file in its most patched form! Buy a new 2012? Not until you prove you fixed 2011 so it’ll run on a 64 as promised…
The air turned blue for a while, but after 3 days and as many wipes and TOTAL Win 7 reloads with all 300 updates—we now have a functioning copy of 2011 Quickbooks WITH our datafiles transferred over by flash drive.
ARRGH!
Day 2 of the walking program. A front came through last night and thank goodness…
Jane got up and folded the patio umbrella, which was making a racket.
At 1:30 AM a front barreled through of the strength we used to get in Oklahoma, the sort that as it hits you can almost feel the walls balloon for an instant: it thumps. Then wind. And if that umbrella had still been up, we’d have been sorry.
Beautiful day, after that. Temperatures in the high sixties, sun, breeze. WE had our walk, and then the opportunity was just too rare: I got out the weedeater and cleared the diagonal pavers, the garage walk, which had gotten nasty, blew that off with my wonderful new blower-vac, and planted some of our new plants—remember the resolve that we weren’t going to buy any this year? —Gone with the wind. I set in some elfin thyme plugs, something blue called lithodora (rock-gift) and a dwarf double pale yellow hollyhock that has to be seen to be believed, while Jane attacked the front weeds.
Beyond that, we’ve got the pond in fair shape. Ari dinged her nose going after a kibble among the rocks and I’m watching that carefully: the treatment is to haul her out of the water and pour hydrogen peroxide on it, and that’s her nose, and near her mouth and eye. Barring any worsening and any change in her voracious appetite, I’m just going to keep the water quality up and let her try to heal on her own.
She’s about 15 inches long and fat, and just removing her from the water would stress her, not to mention the damage she could do fighting the net. So meanwhile we just cross our fingers.
Met our across-the-street new neighbors: they seem very nice. Ex-military. And they’re on a program of fix-up of the things that got out of hand when our former neighbor was ill so long. That’s a massive house, and important to this whole street, so we’re very happy with that.
