Wording

A severe case of pagigration

Nearly two months after leaving AOL, John Scalzi continues to inspire the creative efforts of others. No, he's no longer doing the meme-with-links-to-your-blogs thing; he's passed the baton on that (*ahem*). But over in his blog Whatever, he frequently tosses out an idea for a fun activity to keep his large readership amused. Back in January, for example, he parlayed a typo into a writing prompt, "I Met John Scalvi," and encouraged readers to describe their encounters with this fictional person. Other times he's set up a premise for readers to turn into posters and lolcats and such. And today (okay, yesterday), he declared it to be "International Make Up a Word Day."

I came up with the following:

Awakested - simultaneously too awake to go to sleep, and too sleepy to accomplish anything.

Bookcreep - the stealthy migration of books from the shelves where they belong to untidy piles all over one’s desk. Also called pagigration or librigration.

And of course I had to mention my husband's word, inanimosity, which refers to the hostile behavior of objects. I find it a very clever and useful term, and promote it at every opportunity.

To which I now add

Calibording - stopping at a booth near the Arizona - California border, ostensibly to reassure the state that you aren't importing ferrets or insect-infested fruit, while undergoing profiling as a possible illegal alien.

That's enough for tonight. I got a nap earlier, but that doesn't mean I should stay up for another hour, making up words! I'm trying to fight my dawntending, the process of going to bed later and later until all sleeping is done by daylight. That's a word I came up with over 20 years ago, when John and I shared a single Mac SE, and my sleep schedule was even screwier than it is now.

And tomorrow I'll emipagigrate those L'Engle books, I promise!

Karen

We Love Our Internet - But Sometimes, Not So Much

Soothing image #4866

Tonight's online time-wasting has been slightly different from most nights' time-wasting:

1. We need the form to get the form. John discovered that he never got his car registration renewal notice in the mail. In Arizona that's essentially the new registration itself, except that it's not valid until marked as paid. In practice that means that either you go wait in line at the MVD, mail it in and wait for a new copy to arrive by mail with tags attached, or go online and take care of it, print out a receipt, and wait for a new one to arrive by mail with tags attached.

The online renewal option, from a site called ServiceArizona.com, is generally efficient and painless, but not in this particular instance. Because John doesn't have the renewal, he's worried about going to the emissions place without the renewal. and without the emissions printout, he can't register online and get the new registration form. I navigated ServiceArizona for a while on his behalf, but basically he's going to have to let the emissions people take his info from the old registration. He'll be fine, really. But the online portion of the process was a bit Catch-22ish tonight.

2. Wikipedia is depressing me these days. First there was a push to delete "nonfree" images (any image the copyright holder hasn't released into the wild) unless they had some sort of fair use explanation attached to the article or the image. Then it had to be attached to the image. Then it had to say certain things in a way that a software bot can read it. Then it needed a separate one for each use in an article, with the article name attached. Then the article name had to be written in a specific place so the bots would see it. And now, even if one goes through all those hoops, there are people looking to delete as many fair use images as possible anyway, based on the strictest possible interpretation of guidelines. So I've been trying to fix the images I uploaded, but I'm sure I've missed a few here and there. And meanwhile, every day some article I watch has an image deleted because whoever uploaded it isn't on Wikipedia anymore, or doesn't care enough to jump through the hoops, or because someone or some bot accidentally deleted something that did have a valid fair use rationale. Suddenly there's no picture of Madeleine L'Engle, Annette Funicello, the Mickey Mouse Club logo, and on and on. The only image on each of various Doctor Who episode articles is falling daily, almost unnoticed. Debate rages about whether an article about the Doctor is allowed to have one tiny image of the Fourth Doctor as part of a changing faces montage, and a second image as part of a detailed discussion of the Doctor's changing tastes in clothing, most notably the long scarf he used to famously wear. And the Back to the Future Timeline just survived another challenge to its existence. Honestly, it feels like the forces of repression and paranoia are out to strip Wikipedia of anything remotely informative or fun. That's not quite what's happening, but it feels that way. Last night I uploaded a "free" image of the Hotel Congress to Wikipedia. Try to clamp down on that, anti-image warriors!

And remember all the stuff I wrote nearly a year and a half ago, when a certain person made my Wikilife miserable for months on end, saying horrible things to me and others for not wanting him to turn the Disemvoweling article into an attack on the technique and its inventor? After a year of peace, that's all started up again, too. This time, somebody else with an axe to grind is trying to claim that the technique (which consists of taking all the vowels out of someone's comments) is used to stifle dissent. The problem is, the example given, according to the moderator, at least, is actually about making rudeness harder to read. And now the person who called me names throughout that previous dispute has turned up again to spew more bile. Frankly, I'm not even going to read what he wrote this time, much less try to negotiate with him and this other person. Lt smn ls dl wth t fr chng. I feel a little guilty about that, but I can't face the aggravation again.

3. Please log in again, even if we make it impossible. I tried to pay bills online the other night. Most of them were no problem, but one well-known credit card bank's web site said the site was unavailable, and to try again later. So I tried again tonight. I was redirected to a page that said my login had timed out, and to login again. So I clicked the login link, and was sent to a page that said my login had timed out, and to login again. This wonderfully frustrating time loop took place no matter how I tried to get to the login screen. I even deleted two cookies for that bank, whereupon the page got hung up in and endless loop and wouldn't load at all. And the asp still said my login had timed out.

Then I went to the site using IE instead of Firefox and got right in. D'oh!

Enough. The more I work on this entry, the more annoyed I get. Time for bed!

Karen

(Not Responding)

Just the usual.

Oh, how I'm starting to hate those two words "Not Responding," almost as much as the slow-moving blue circle that says the computer isn't in a hurry to do much of anything. I've had intermittent trouble with this laptop almost since I got it; my favorite glitch was the night it decided that English is typed from right to left, and rendered my text accordingly. But the past week or so, I've hit a whole new level of malfunction and inanimosity.

Some symptoms:

• My AOL Mail tab in Firefox creates a popup that advises me that a script is causing the something or other to respond slowly, and asks whether I want to stop the script. Clicking Yes will occasionally fix the problem temporarily, but more often the words "(Not Responding)" appear at the top of the popup. And when I do manage to get rid of the popup, I get one or two more of them, saying the exact same thing.
• Clicking another tab in Firefox has no effect for a minute or longer. Sometimes the entire application gets whited out for a bit of "Not Responding" time.
• Scroll down? Are you mad? Here, have a rotating blue circle instead.
• An AIM Alert that Scalzi or Chuck or whoever has posted a new AOL-J entry consists of a little blank box.
• AIM and IM windows stop responding, and AIM loses the connection with the cable modem/wireless network.
• ArcSoft PhotoStudio decides in the middle of a tricky photo edit that it isn't going to work any more until I reboot.
• It takes forever (perhaps two minutes, but it seems like forever) for "Import Media Files" to get started when I plug in the camera.
• MS Word stops responding too, but that's standard practice, isn't it?

And so on. And the computer starts doing all this within an hour or so of shutting down completely and then starting up again. It gets old really fast, ya know?

So tonight when I got home and rebooted, Windows volunteered a window that listed a few dozen problems over the last several months and offered to look for solutions. In my experience, such things almost never find solutions, but it was worth a try. In a moment it said it didn't know why I was having the first batch of problems, but it traced a second batch to an Intel graphics accelerator chipset driver (or somesuch) and blamed everything else on Firefox. Well, that last part out I'd worked out already, thanks. The acute difficulties date back to the latest Firefox update. Others seem to date back to the latest AIM update.

Not much I can do about Firefox until they issue a fix, unless it's to break down and use Internet Explorer instead. Am I that desperate? It may come to that. But I went to the Intel site. It told me how to identify the driver I have now, so I duly looked that up, and the version of Vista when it asked for that. It directed me to a certain download, which I saved and then tried to install. That's when it said it was the wrong driver for my computer! Then why did you direct me to that driver, you stupid website? Needless to say, my feedback to Intel about their website was less than enthusiastic.

But I ran Windows Update, and it claimed to give me Service Pack 3, if I read that aright. Maybe that will help.

There it goes again, freezing up for thirty seconds as I try to select the label "Inanimosity."

Sheesh.


Karen

Crashing Through Time

Okay, I wasn't sleepy until about a minute ago. Now that I am, I need to go to bed - but first I need to get this entry in!

First off, in answer to frequent questions from Tuffy's well-wishers, I have no particular news to report on her health. She gladly ate steak fat scraps this evening, but was sporting a dirt-covered nose from burying dog biscuits, something she tends to do when she gets bored with them. She's energetic when we come in, and behaves normally other than the eating thing, but her wet snoot tells us that all is not well. Two treatments to go!

The Tenth Doctor checks out the back of his "own head"

Today I've mostly been goofing off at the computer and watching Doctor Who - no surprise there, especially on a Saturday. Friday was the premiere of "Time Crash" in the UK, which John tracked down for me online so I can watch it repeatedly. This is an amazing Doctor Who mini-episode, which aired as part of the BBC's annual Children in Need charity telethon. Although the clip is available online for a week in the U.K., for some reason the BBC website won't stream it to the U.S., which I find somewhat nonsensical and annoying.

The Doctors differ on the virtues of the "desktop theme"

It's a cool thing, though. The 7:40 story is crammed into the 1:20 of "Last of the Time Lords," between Martha's exit and the crash into the Titanic. We know this because "Time Crash" actually begins and ends with the same footage (well, mostly). In between, the TARDIS has an emergency, as the result of which the Fifth Doctor turns up a few feet away from the Tenth as they both try to figure out what happened on the same TARDIS console. The Universe will blow up in five minutes, but the Tenth Doctor wastes most of that time enthusing about (and occasionally criticizing) the Fifth Doctor, who has no idea who this "skinny idiot" is until the Tenth Doctor spells it out for him. The Tenth nonchalantly performs a last-minute, extremely risky maneuver to save the day, but afterward confesses that the reason he knew what to do was that he remembered the Fifth Doctor seeing him do it! Best line: "What have you done to my TARDIS? You've changed the desktop theme, haven't you? What's this one, Coral? It's worse than the Leopard Skin!" Thus, writer Steven Moffat and the Fifth Doctor explain away 44 years of periodic changes in TARDIS design and decor. Heh, heh, heh. Second is the Tenth Doctor's farewell to the Fifth: "All my love to Long Ago."

The Fifth Doctor fails to identify his tormentor, despite many hints

I have a few quibbles about this little masterpiece, but overall it's a fabulous bit of connective narrative between thus year's season finale and the upcoming Christmas special. Nor is it the first time I've enjoyed a Doctor Who bit made for the Children in Need appeal. Back in November 1993 I was practically in tears when an incomprehensible two-part Multi-Doctor story, "Dimensions in Time," was shown at a Doctor Who convention the same day it aired in the U.K. It was a crossover story with a show called EastEnders, in which the Doctor and his companion constantly changed from one actor and character to another. It's not considered canonical, largely because it's virtually impossible to make logical sense of the story. But it was the first new Doctor Who story in four years, and I was thrilled to see it. In November 2005 another new "Pudsey Cutaway" (don't ask) scene aired, in which the newly-regenerated Tenth Doctor had to convince Rose of his identity, and then went manic with post-regeneration instability, on his way to the coma that lays him out for most of "The Christmas Invasion." That one is canonical, and I've watched it a zillion times on DVD. I have the same main objection to both the 2005 and 2007 scenes: in each case, a character is more clueless about the Tenth Doctor's identity than really makes sense. The Ninth Doctor just finished telling Rose more or less exactly what was about to happen, but she still didn't believe it. I guess she was in denial. And a number of things the Tenth Doctor said to the Fifth were pretty clear indications of who he was, but the Fifth Doctor was too annoyed and distracted to pick up on them. Let's just say that in both cases it strains credulity a bit, although I love the scenes otherwise.

Being grateful for all this, then, I tried to donate online to Children in Need on Friday night. What a farce! Whoever designed the donation form clearly never considered the possibility that Americans might want to give money to the charity. The form required an initial before the first and last names, required the county name, had no provision for a state name or code (so I showed them in "County"), rejected a five-digit postal code as the wrong length, and didn't even have USA in the country drop down! I ended up filling out my info more or less as follows:

Donation amount: £5

K. Karen Blocher
6666 Calle Something
Tucson, Pima County, AZ USA 857xx-xxxx

I then sent the form. A pop up told me to wait, that it was processing. I clicked ok. That was the end of it - there was never any response at all to indicate that the donation did or did not go through. I then filled out a contact form to tell them about it. That one gave me an error message, repeatedly, when I tried to hit Send. So I ended up sending a note to the BBC Complaints Department. That one went through! Sorry, BBC! Sorry, needy children. I did try!

And now it's ridiculously late, and I'm going to bed. I've managed to crash through a lot of time myself, procrastinating my way to the end of this entry. Good night / good morning!

Meanwhile, in a novel in another room (Vampire Science), the Eighth Doctor just made everyone some breakfast.

Karen

Always More to Want

It's been a frustrating evening. Other than sleeping in, going to see The Simpsons Movie, a little work on Wikipedia, research on the origin of Mickey Mouse, shopping, reading Doctor Who: World Game and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, watching several Tenth Doctor episodes and downloading updates for my new computer (Oh, is that all? You know, the usual), I've mostly been editing Mages of Mâvarin all day. I've made progress, but it's been a tough slog, mostly because MS Word keeps giving me an endlessly rotating blue circle and a "Not responding" message. This has happened at least four times today. Arrgh!

There are several issues involved, most likely, and I can't really blame the new computer for any of them (she said defensively). For one thing, I've been updating my word count table for Mages, which tracks words and page numbers of each chapter. Reasonable thing to do when editing a novel, right? But this document is a Word file with an Excel spreadsheet embedded in it, and it's always been a troublemaker, going back at least to my first laptop, if not the iMac that predated my return to school. Once I edit that embedded spreadsheet, there's always a good chance that Word is going to soon stop working. I've tried recreating the file, but it doesn't help.

So that's one problem. Another is that I'm working in MS Office 2003, which is only vaguely compatible with Vista. If I can get it working properly, I get out of spending $130 on Office 2007, for a while at least. Meanwhile, I should at least update my copy of Office with any downloads that might help. So I've been to the Microsoft web site, and checked for updates. Now I'm downloading 14 updates, 188.9 MB worth in all. Since I'm on dial-up, it's going to take a while. Overnight, probably.

And that's the third issue, because getting a nice new computer does nothing for the fact that my connection to the Internet is more of a leaky faucet than a firehose. As I download these updates, the modem and phone line struggle to get messages through between America Online and my AOL software, between Microsoft and my copy of Explorer, between Google and my copy of Firefox. There's also an issue with RealPlayer and possibly Windows Media Player, the latter of which I haven't tried yet. The BBC web site has claimed several times, even before I started this big download, that I don't have the software to play their video clips. Is it a firewall issue, or my slow connection, or a missing plug-in? I'll figure it out, but it's clear that the slow connection is the biggest issue right now. Well, that and the unresponsive Word docs!

It's kind of annoying, this dissatisfaction with my Internet connection and Word's unreliability, coming as they do at a time when I've just spent $600+ on a new computer. Can't I be fully satisfied, just for a bit? Apparently not. I suppose even if I got Office 2007 tomorrow, and John hooked me up to the cable modem at last via the wireless network I bought months and months ago, I would find something else I really need. Darn it.

Meanwhile, though, I've gotten Mages edited through Chapter Six, which is where I left off in my previous edit. When I got to the uncompleted scene with Darsuma and Fayubi's spirit, I basically skipped over it. I'll wait until I get to the other scene like it in Chapter Nine, and then decide whether to expand or cut or merge. But I reworked some dialogue between Rani and his grandfather, found some characters whose names weren't on my master list yet and added them, renamed the tributary that flows around the Palace (the Daga, as in Onondaga), and tightened some wording here and there. And my Lopartin glossary is coming along nicely.

There are a number of things I'd like to have done online tonight, including an entry for the fiction blog and checking out Pat's contest on Here, There, and Everywhere, which ends tomorrow. But I'll be lucky to get this entry to post, much less load other people's blogs while that big download is going on. Heck, I've had the AOL Welcome page fail to load numerous times over the last few days! But if I don't get roped into taking another friend to see the current Harry Potter film, I'll try to get to it tomorrow afternoon. And maybe, if both my brain and the computer cooperate, I'll get that letter from Jace to Sandy written tomorrow evening. Meanwhile, good night!

Karen

Ain't Technology Wonderful?

Weekend Assignment #153: Share a story of true computer horror. Your computer blow up just before a big presentation? You forget to take down a compromising picture before the in-laws come over? Ever thought you were IMing with one person but in fact were IMing someone else? Share! You'll feel better. Really.

Extra Credit: So, ever actually hit your computer in frustration?

You know, I'm sure I must have experienced some major computer failure at some inopportune moment, sometime in the 20+ years I've owned computers. But all I remember is dying monitors, software incompatibilities, frozen programs when an IM pops up to use the last few K of RAM, and all manor of temporary glitches, the sort of thing you spend an evening recovering from, and never fully trust your computer again. The image above was photographed during one such evening, when my previous laptop was acting up. The worst was perhaps the night last April when I tried about twenty times over the course of seven hours to post a one paragraph entry from an expensive New Mexico hotel room, when the phone line refused to connect to AOL for more than a minute at a time. Equally annoying are the ongoing problems, like the time I spent weeks trying to uninstall every trace of Norton SystemWorks and related programs and start over, or all the times I've reinstalled AOL itself, or the shareware anti-spyware program that insisted daily on removing a program that AOL/AIM immediately reinstalled. But no, I have no dramatic stories for you tonight of a computer's inanimosity, and no, I can't recall ever hitting a computer, unless you count a measured slap to encourage a monitor to show the right colors, or my dying CD drive to spin faster. That's not frustration; that's the scientific method. And I've reached my one paragraph limit. Good night! I'll catch up with everyone's Round Robin entries Friday night. Or maybe Saturday.