C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 132

I've killed another keyboard…

I love Dell. I've used their machines since, oh, the 1990′s; and right now I have problems—I nurse the thing to give me functionality—oh, heck, just forgive me the misspellings this thing is causing; and the fact the mouse thinks it has a stuck key….and

I get to Dell technical. Now, if you pay for the at-home/office service option, you get the US thoroughly knowledgeable tech office, with nice folk who will ask you to run Diagnostics, (the Fn key plus power) and record the error messages. You go back on chat (you could skip a step if you just ran diagnostics first)—and give them the error message numbers, and that lets them know any hardware problem.

So because I insist on a trackpoint mouse instead of a touchpad, it takes me one extra day for them to fly a key board to the Spokane techs, but I'll get a nice guy with a pocket protector, a screwdriver, and a new key board and face for my computer, probably about Tuesday, and meanwhile I can kind of limp along with our backup machine, another Dell.

Seriously, if you get that onsite service, you've got every chance of having your computer fixed in your living room, and I've already renewed the policy on this jewel once. It's a Latitude 5500, from about 2004, and it's had 3 keyboards over the years, none of which cost extra. The techs also ask if you've got any other issues like missing feet or loose hinges they can fix all on the same run—just really nice, "keep the machine I live by in top form" kind of service. Yep, the home-service isn't cheap, but this machine's second service policy expires in 2013, which is a pretty good life for a computer. I've upgraded the memory to 4 g, as much as it can take, and it's, yes, a 2004 machine, but it's tough—except its poor keyboards, but hey, my typing has fragmented IBM typeballs and sent plastic shrapnel to every corner of the room, has had Smith Corona keys flying off so I had to search up the m-slug repeatedly, and I wore out the cams on that machine in one year—that was the tough one. The only thing that's retired with honor is the old Underwood I learned on, but that one had already fallen out a second story window and been refurbished, so nothing I could do could kill it.

Anyway, hurrah for not having to mail this machine in or wait for repair on some local shop shelf—I'm in mid-galleys and trying to finish a book, and I can't wait for weeks for my keyboard to get fixed! I'd run mad in the streets and DAW would have an apoplexy.

 

 

Got a question for Foreigner readers:

In which book did Tabini marry Damiri?

No snow—yet. And we got back on the ice—

I, however, got chilled. There's something about perpetually being exposed to 32 degree cold: you don't get cold, really. But it's the better part of two years since I've been that much on the ice, and the rink was, shall we say, hyper cold—I got so chilled my fingers passed beyond hurting over to numb, ditto the feet were getting cold—I'm nearly immune to cold feet. And I decided I was approaching Not Comfortable, so I got off, ran my hands under ice water until I could get them warmed up and use the warm tap a bit, and then changed to street clothes—by which time I was having that old hip pain which I get now and again since a real nasty flat-out-sideways drop onto the ice from a fairly fast circular pattern: ie—I was practicing crossovers at speed, hit a blade, and went airborne.

Well, that one hurt. That was a couple of years ago, directly after a Bloomsday Run, meaning my legs were exhausted, I got cocky, and I've paid for that one ever since. Now and again it gets me. And the cold did it. I was so cold the pain lasted through lunch at the Doors and going home and trying to warm up in bed under covers. That didn't work. Neither did Advil. But a hot shower finally began to warm the muscle up, and finally it stopped, just like flipping off a switch. Cold is a remarkable thing: dulls some aches, and exacerbates others.

The galleys for Intruder arrived, and I am up to chapter 5 doing checks—most of what's happened is something funky with the punctuation. I didn't do it; but sometimes when you translate from Word Perfect, which I use—into Word, which DAW uses—(sigh)—well, Word is a weird and quirky program.  We hates it.  And I can only imagine what that wretched program does when they use it to create e-files: it loads a thing up with more garbage than can possibly have a use.

Anyway, I am using it in pdf, yet one more very 'dirty' program. I tell you, Word Perfect goes like a lamb into e-book correction, and any novice can get directly at its printer codes, first try, easy to fix. It has NO junk attached, goes in clean, loads into html clean. Word Perfect, or Adobe—rife with gingerbread. Why does the business world choose Word?  I echo Meg's opinion.

Anyway, we are home today working: Jane planned to skate, but stayed home to solve a problem; and I stayed home because  I'm trying to take it slow getting back to the ice, let the muscles recover, then do it again. I want to get back to flying around the rink again. Right now I'm going pretty cautiously…don't want to fall until I've got the muscle padding built back, and I've had enough birthdays that doesn't happen overnight.

 

 

 

We braved the Black Friday sales and got Christmas presents for each other…

For those of you overseas, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Fr...

We started out sharing an omelette at the Swinging Doors, our favorite pub: they had 50 dollar gift cards for 25 if you showed up at 7 for breakfast. So we're getting 100.00 worth of dining out for 50.00.

We then went to Lowe's, where we decided half price on big saws which mean accurate cuts for our home repair projects is a good thing. They were sold out of the 69.00 table saws, but honored the price via a desk order; so we got that; we were able to pick up a mitre saw for the same price (cuts at angles better than a table saw). And with that we can do the basement flooring ourselves, and redo a number of hated rubber baseboards, not to mention putting actual framing molding on the door we installed this summer. We also were able to replace our Dremel, which had gotten wet and rusted beyond electronic safety, for 30.00. And with that we can do a lot of little projects.

Doing some of the things we do with a little hand-held finishing saw is challenging on the one hand and not as accurate or as safe as a table saw with proper guides. So figuring our fingers are precious, we got equipment that can do a job in a proper way. [Yes, we do know about knotholes, boards bucking, wet wood, hidden nails and other surprises. We usually don't work with re-used wood; and if we do, we're really careful. Our dads taught us from way back, with homemade saw guides, etc, and no protective shields, so we know about careful!]

Anyway, we decided this would be worth it.

A happy Thanksgiving to us in the US, and a happy day elsewhere!

May you have fair, or at least interesting, skies—enough to eat and a warm spot in your heart.

Here, we have snow melt and only rain, which means no shoveling (we've had so much rain if the early cold had persisted, we'd have had five feet of snow)—and no berm from a snow plow, more to the point. Our place has catch-22, meaning we have a marvelously clear main road, but up to a 2′ berm overnight from the plow,which passes 3-4 times every 12 hours, and seals our 20 foot of driveway from that nice clear road: and you can't push a snowblower through a berm: plowed snow compacts to ice pdq.

But right now, not a speck of snow or ice, and a nice Turkey day. (The church up the way has a sign saying "God loves even the biggest turkeys…")

For the traditional dinner, we've opted for pepperoni pizza, mine.

And the soup turned out so well, I'll write down the recipe.

I used sirloin for the meat, which worked out to have that really good beef flavor it's known for throughout the soup, and to be really low-fat.

Saute and brown in skillet: thin strips of beef, 1 lb, with: teaspoon and a bit more of black pepper, 1/2 tsp paprika, teaspoon of chipotle chili flakes, teaspoon of salt, 2 teaspoons of dried basil, with a tablespoon of olive oil. When done, pour all contents of pan into crockpot or stew pot.

Add: can of black beans; can of coarse-diced tomatoes; half a bunch of celery, sliced: I just bisected the bunch and used the top end of it—which includes the high-flavor celery heart and finer leaves; quite a lot of raw baby carrots; enough water. Cook forever. Reheats nicely. Has practically no fat. Lots of meat.

You'll note no onions or garlic: we're allergic to same; no thickener; it come out very savory, and the beans add a little substance; could be served over rice or noodles for supper. Also possibilities: cornbread; or toast.

 

 

 

Anne McCaffrey has left us….

Sad to hear. Massive stroke, gone the next day. She was an active woman physically and mentally, and a kind woman who loved her readers and her friends and most all of the world around her. To those who never met her, you'd have liked her. If you like at least something of horses and poetry, tall tales, the future, the past, heroes, and the green earth, you'd and she'd have found something in common and you could have talked for hours.

Speed of light broken?

Cern is asking—did it happen? Or is there an error? Or is there a situation we don't understand?

Snowing steadily…

WE had a 17 car pileup at the bottom of one of our hills—we aren't San Francisco, but on an icy day, we have significant hills.

We're tucked in not going anywhere. Which is a good thing.

We're really glad to be tucked in not going anywhere.

Just working away.

 

Well, it didn't snow until late. And it's actually warmer today…

…but don't trust it.

I have every confidence it's coming. There's some potent cold air up in those hills.

Mostly we're just kind of nothing today. I want to go back to bed, and may for a while. I haven't got two functioning brain cells. I fear if I did anything I'd screw it  up.

The snow is coming:

we've got the snowblower by the back door.

Jane is baking an apple pie with a recipe that involves whiskey.

We could accumulate 8″ over the next few days, and OSG could get more than that, living a couple of hundred feet higher.

For those of you in the snowless south, it works like this: you figure the weather report, and you look at the elevation at which it will snow, versus rain: when it gets to 2000 feet, we tend to get snowed on. There's a hill over by the airport: it would be raining at our old apartment, but then if you drove to the airport it would be snowing as you got to the hilltop. Here, we live on a hill, and past us it only gets higher.

Conversely, they threaten you with snow, but it says elevation 4000 feet, which means only the top of Mt. Spokane gets dusted, way up there, but you're going to get rained on.

And snow here is so neat. In Oklahoma, when it snows, everything gets covered and it blows in drifts; but in Spokane wind is not a constant, and when I first moved here, the sight of neat green-grass circles around all the trees was puzzling until I realized that in Spokane weather does not blow sideways: it falls gently straight down, and the evergreen branches were holding all the snow.

Life without a perpetual 20-30 mile wind going is just different.