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On the writing front, I've gotten eight stories back into the (e)mail. One got rejected the next day and resubmitted elsewhere, but it still only counts for one point. The seven stories I haven't resubmitted are candidates for self-publication. I'm currently working on that. My score to date:
Stories published online: 7 (1 point each)
Stories submitted to editors: 8 (1 point each)
Novel query packages: 2 (5 points each)
Total: 25 points (plus 7 from the last report)
I'm doing a lot of driving these days, and it looks like I'll soon be doing more. I drive my lovely and talented wife to work every morning, and pick her up every evening, as I've done since getting laid off. It gives us time together to talk, forces me to keep to a daytime schedule*, saves us having to pay the exorbitant downtown parking rates**, and saves her having to drive herself.
Now that we've moved to the new apartment, what had originally been a 10-15 minute commute is now a 30-45 minute commute, depending on traffic conditions. One way. So I'm spending considerably more time in the car these days--between two and three hours all told. Still, it's not bad. I talk to my sweetie when we're together; I listen to the radio when I'm alone. And I still have plenty of time during the day to run errands, do chores, and write, now that I'm back to writing.
Once I start driving Twoson to or from school (he's starting massage school shortly) two evenings a week, it'll be even more. He's learning to drive, so eventually I'll be off the hook for that, but the daily commute to Snippy's office won't change. It's just part of the new normal for us.
And speaking of chores--I had to be here between 10 a.m. and noon today for the cable guy. See, we got phone, internet, and cable service from Comcast in the new place. We'd rather have had DirecTV (which we loved for years), but our apartment faces north, not south. So no dice. We also got DVRs for the living room and master bedroom.
Comcast DVRs (by Motorola). They sucked. We can live with cable rather than satellite. But after being spoiled by Tivo, the Motorola DVRs were bigger, slower, and crappier in every way. They were slow to respond, sometimes failing to respond to the remote at all the first time you pushed a button. You could turn them off all too easily***--and a DVR that's been turned off doesn't record anything...which is the whole point of having a DVR. Worse, they had an aggravating habit of turning themselves off at random, or losing their tiny electronic minds and turning into paperweights until we called Comcast and got them reinitialized.
Even the remotes were bigger, clunkier, and less user-friendly than the Tivo remotes. In short, they sucked. So we bought a couple of Tivos and signed up for Tivo's service. We had to have the Comcast tech come out to provide the cable cards to allow them to work with the cable system. (When I called to arrange that, and to cancel our DVR service, the customer service gal didn't ask why. I suspect we're far from alone in our assessment of the Motorola DVRs.)
The Comcast technician turned up on time. He was friendly and helpful. We started up the Tivos, he installed the cable cards, and then went through the start-up procedure on one--the one wired directly into our network router. The other was supposed to connect via a wireless adapter we also bought from Tivo. We couldn't get it to work--it couldn't connect to the network. Eventually I figured out, by reading the router manual, and the Tivo website, how to make it connect. Then it worked fine. All in all, a painless customer service experience.
Once the Tivo in the living room was fully functioning, I played with it a bit. Ah, it was so much better than the Motorola DVR. Until four hours later, when Twoson alerted me to the Green Screen of Death. Yes, four hours after we set it up, the Tivo in the living room suffered a complete hard drive failure. There followed much swearing by Yours Truly. Hours later, all efforts to reboot it (in the vain hope that it wsa simply a data corruption issue, as sometimes results in the GSOD) had failed. I called Tivo customer service, which was an adventure in itself I don't care to dwell on.
The short version: that Tivo is really most sincerely dead. So we've ordered a new one, and will be shipping this one back to them for credit. So we're without a DVR (or cable box) of ANY kind in the living room for the next few days. Fortunately the Tivo in the bedroom is working properly, so we can at least record our shows in the interim. I'd say "so much for the vaunted Tivo brand," except that nobody's perfect. Hardware failures may be rare, but they're not impossible. We had years of reliable Tivo service in the house, and I expect years of reliable service now. Once, you know, we get another Tivo....
In still other news, I think I'm going to raise the white flag and buy myself a new Windows machine. I love my linux box. I really do. But the cumulative issues of working with it have simply become enough--in aggregate--that I think I'll be better off going back to Windows. Between the .rtf format issues in OpenOffice (a known and unfixed problem that is unacceptable when some markets for my writing insist on .rtf submissions), my inability to read Word notes in OpenOffice, my inability to get any sort of wireless networking to function on my machine, the possibility of playing some of my old Windows games again, and the ability to use various other programs available for Windows but not linux...well, I think the handwriting is on the wall.
It feels like a defeat, but I'm trying to think of it as a compromise instead.
*Left to my own devices, I'd develop a nocturnal schedule.
**We're buying more gas, and putting more mileage on the car, but not as much more as you might think. It's not distance so much as traffic that lengthens our commute. And even so, I think we still come out ahead.
Stories published online: 7 (1 point each)
Stories submitted to editors: 8 (1 point each)
Novel query packages: 2 (5 points each)
Total: 25 points (plus 7 from the last report)
I'm doing a lot of driving these days, and it looks like I'll soon be doing more. I drive my lovely and talented wife to work every morning, and pick her up every evening, as I've done since getting laid off. It gives us time together to talk, forces me to keep to a daytime schedule*, saves us having to pay the exorbitant downtown parking rates**, and saves her having to drive herself.
Now that we've moved to the new apartment, what had originally been a 10-15 minute commute is now a 30-45 minute commute, depending on traffic conditions. One way. So I'm spending considerably more time in the car these days--between two and three hours all told. Still, it's not bad. I talk to my sweetie when we're together; I listen to the radio when I'm alone. And I still have plenty of time during the day to run errands, do chores, and write, now that I'm back to writing.
Once I start driving Twoson to or from school (he's starting massage school shortly) two evenings a week, it'll be even more. He's learning to drive, so eventually I'll be off the hook for that, but the daily commute to Snippy's office won't change. It's just part of the new normal for us.
And speaking of chores--I had to be here between 10 a.m. and noon today for the cable guy. See, we got phone, internet, and cable service from Comcast in the new place. We'd rather have had DirecTV (which we loved for years), but our apartment faces north, not south. So no dice. We also got DVRs for the living room and master bedroom.
Comcast DVRs (by Motorola). They sucked. We can live with cable rather than satellite. But after being spoiled by Tivo, the Motorola DVRs were bigger, slower, and crappier in every way. They were slow to respond, sometimes failing to respond to the remote at all the first time you pushed a button. You could turn them off all too easily***--and a DVR that's been turned off doesn't record anything...which is the whole point of having a DVR. Worse, they had an aggravating habit of turning themselves off at random, or losing their tiny electronic minds and turning into paperweights until we called Comcast and got them reinitialized.
Even the remotes were bigger, clunkier, and less user-friendly than the Tivo remotes. In short, they sucked. So we bought a couple of Tivos and signed up for Tivo's service. We had to have the Comcast tech come out to provide the cable cards to allow them to work with the cable system. (When I called to arrange that, and to cancel our DVR service, the customer service gal didn't ask why. I suspect we're far from alone in our assessment of the Motorola DVRs.)
The Comcast technician turned up on time. He was friendly and helpful. We started up the Tivos, he installed the cable cards, and then went through the start-up procedure on one--the one wired directly into our network router. The other was supposed to connect via a wireless adapter we also bought from Tivo. We couldn't get it to work--it couldn't connect to the network. Eventually I figured out, by reading the router manual, and the Tivo website, how to make it connect. Then it worked fine. All in all, a painless customer service experience.
Once the Tivo in the living room was fully functioning, I played with it a bit. Ah, it was so much better than the Motorola DVR. Until four hours later, when Twoson alerted me to the Green Screen of Death. Yes, four hours after we set it up, the Tivo in the living room suffered a complete hard drive failure. There followed much swearing by Yours Truly. Hours later, all efforts to reboot it (in the vain hope that it wsa simply a data corruption issue, as sometimes results in the GSOD) had failed. I called Tivo customer service, which was an adventure in itself I don't care to dwell on.
The short version: that Tivo is really most sincerely dead. So we've ordered a new one, and will be shipping this one back to them for credit. So we're without a DVR (or cable box) of ANY kind in the living room for the next few days. Fortunately the Tivo in the bedroom is working properly, so we can at least record our shows in the interim. I'd say "so much for the vaunted Tivo brand," except that nobody's perfect. Hardware failures may be rare, but they're not impossible. We had years of reliable Tivo service in the house, and I expect years of reliable service now. Once, you know, we get another Tivo....
In still other news, I think I'm going to raise the white flag and buy myself a new Windows machine. I love my linux box. I really do. But the cumulative issues of working with it have simply become enough--in aggregate--that I think I'll be better off going back to Windows. Between the .rtf format issues in OpenOffice (a known and unfixed problem that is unacceptable when some markets for my writing insist on .rtf submissions), my inability to read Word notes in OpenOffice, my inability to get any sort of wireless networking to function on my machine, the possibility of playing some of my old Windows games again, and the ability to use various other programs available for Windows but not linux...well, I think the handwriting is on the wall.
It feels like a defeat, but I'm trying to think of it as a compromise instead.
*Left to my own devices, I'd develop a nocturnal schedule.
**We're buying more gas, and putting more mileage on the car, but not as much more as you might think. It's not distance so much as traffic that lengthens our commute. And even so, I think we still come out ahead.