http://events.wirralglobe.co.uk/m6/disp.asp?i=208246 gives information about my activities this coming Friday.

I've just put the finishing touches to Punch, a 1,500 tale of a seasonal party which is my contribution to Riverside Writers' project this month, which had to be on the theme of a punch bowl.

My puuter won't let me log-on to my Wirral Globe blog. I've been communicating with their techie folk. Either I don't exist or cookies are being pesky. Hmm... And how do you allow cookies on Vista? I haven't a clue, because I've yet to find the right facility to add permissions! Heeeelp!!!

Meanwhile, who's been watching the new version of Survivors on TV? It's not a patch on the old version, which went into far more detail about the practical issues of being one of the few remaining people on Earth. In one (new) episode, Greg put a splint on a man's broken leg, completely missing out the earlier version's purposeful dialogue about how relatively mundane injuries had now become life-threatening, and about the survivors' lack of survival skills. The new version has the characters living off foods and bottled water from shops, whereas the old version introduced ideas about having to rapidly re-learn largely-forgotten skills such as soap-making, growing vegetables, hunting, weaving, living without modern fuels or medical resources.

My puuter is feeling better now. A clever techie fellow upgraded its RAM, did battle with the tail-end of a Trojan which I’d already found and deleted, and he tweaked its internal gubbins—and now my computer is running faster than it ever did before. Lots of accumulated junk has disappeared, which means it now completes its switch-on in half the time. He said my tower was full of dust, and he’s painted some stuff on something-or-other to deflect heat away from something-or-other. (See how I really understood what he was talking about?!!) Oh, and he replaced a graphics card. (It has card?)

When he returned my tower, I asked how he’d managed to hack my password, as I had forgotten to tell him what it was. He just smirked and said they’re really easy to get round if you know how. So much for security, hmm?

Ok, now I know not one of you will believe this - but perhaps that's a good thing, and it's entirely your choice anyway, but....

So, yesterday I decided to clean up the amount of Word files sitting around in My Documents. I carefully transfered them onto a brand new CD-R disc. However, when I came to transfer the last file, all the other files bar one had vanished off the disc. Even the title of the disc had reverted to the default date title.

Rats, I thought. Now I'll have to retype all those chapters.

Then I remembered that I already had the first six chapters on another disc. My habit is to leave files/chapters in My Documents and then transfer them onto CD disc in batches. (These six chapters had earlier been put back into My Documents from the disc while I edited them.)

I lifted down the plastic box that my computer CDs live in, opened up the lid, put the old disc in the computer - and there were all the "missing" files.

Now, I know I couldn't possibly have mixed the discs up, as I didn't touch the old disc until after the CD-R disc had zapped its files. And I know I hadn't already downloaded the files as that's not my habit - if they'd been downloaded, they would have no longer been in My Documents.

So how did the files transfer seemingly by themselves to another disc?


Blame the pixies!

How do I save typing as a rich text document?

I've got windows XP. Where do I find choices of file types?

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelllllp!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Edit: Ignore this post - I've found it now!!

There's a lively debate on constructive crit for writers here:- http://adele-cb.livejournal.com/125658.html Join in, if you wish!

My modem's drivers mysteriously reappeared. I'd been working on a 2,000 Sci-Fi story, The Immortalists, when the telltale arrows started flashing near the little clock in the corner of the screen. Sure enough, my drivers were back. Where had they been? I have no idea...!

The Immortalists is only at first-draft stage. I've no market in mind for it yet; it was simply the kind of story which demands to be written and pesters like crazy until you've got the job done. The idea partially came from this month's project for Riverside Writers; this time around we're using a photo of an unusual multi-level stack of caravans (which seem to be lived in) as a base for our work. My story places this in the grounds of a hospital where people have been regenerated from their DNA samples.

The idea also partially came from someone who wrote that no-one had written a Sci-Fi story about this subject. I couldn't say if this was accurate or not.

Meanwhile, I had to get Emily to the vets this morning. She'd been sick numerous times last night, and was limp and shivery. This morning she was no better, so I booked an emergency appointment for her. My suspicions that she'd eaten something which she shouldn't have - a frog, maybe? - were confirmed by the vet. So Emily had two injections; one to calm her sore tummy and reduce nausea, the other an anti-acid shot. She was also given some powder to be mixed with water to replace electrolytes (which she adamantly refuses to drink!) One hour after the shots, she was charging round the garden with a squeaky rubber pig between her teeth, walloping Ygraine with it.

Hmm...

Well the pesky thing worked perfectly last night. During the moonlight hours, however, my modem's drivers apparently decided to do a flit. Where did they go, and how? I've no idea - but you guessed that already, right?!!

"Ah, zere iss no liife in ziss box...!"

It has power, but no connection; no life via Firefox or IE either. And it refuses to connect via Control Panel/I Options/DialBB either. At least the person on the other end of the Helpline rapidly identified the problem by its Error Number. That's a first; (here's hoping they're right!)

All I have to do now is wait for an up-to-date Installation CD to arrive via snail mail.

In the meantime, if you need me, try telepathy.

If you were on any of my mailing lists, please be aware that they've all been deleted!

So, if you wish to receive news from Riverside Writers, please send an email to riversidewriters@aol.com to be re-added to that list.

If you wish to be on my own mailing list, please send an email to ACBwrites@aol.com to be re-added to that list.

This does not effect The Muse's Mouth or my Yahoo! newsgroup.

So, erm, yeah - I now have my ISP back up and running. The problem was caused by the new security suite, which was either faulty or simply not compatible with my ISP. I spent HOURS on-line working with my ISP's "help" (who accidentally deleted all but one of my screennames/email addresses). Three days later I called out a technician, and it took him two hours of head-scratching to isolate the problem.

So now I'm using Microsoft's own firewall, and a VSG anti-virus, which are compatible with my ISP - hence my being here!  I've got my email addresses back, but my address books/mailing lists have been wiped clean.

Isn't it as well that we're not in a spaceship, relying on my techie skills for oxygen and such like stuff....

I'm being driven slowly up-the-wall by my new internet security suite, which try as I might won't let me connect to my ISP's homepage.

The technician who "helped" over the telephone has managed to delete all but one of my email addresses.

So if you emailed anything to me, it's missing presumed zapped.

I've been attempting to fix it for two days now.

I am not amused.

Emily decided that my modem cable looked tasty. So this morning, despite torrential rain, I had to go into Birkenhead to buy a new one.

She ate the cable yesterday, while I was engrossed in the fascinating task of cleaning out more kitchen cupboards. (I found a packet of noodles which were a year over their use-by date! Ugh!!) Is it my fault it has hardly stopped raining for four days, which means she hasn't had a walkie? Hmm, apparently so...!

My puuter has now been sent home from "hospital" with a clean bill of health. Wipeee!

An amiable fellow named Eddie kitted it out with a new cordless mouse and keyboard made by Logitech, and order seems to have been restored. Even the tempremental Control Panel now behaves itself, which is amazing in itself. It hasn't done that for over a year (at least).

Eddie said there was no trace of any virus or programming error, which isn't too bad - especially as I'll be the first to admit my techie skills are limited.

Now all I have to do is get used to this new keyboard, which feels very different from my old one. The keys are much smaller, for one thing. And there're lots of mysterious buttons, too. Mind you, I never used half of the buttons on my old keyboard, anyway; the F buttons or the numerical ones, for example.

Anyhooooow - a big thanks to all those kindly folk who left "Get Well Soon" messages for my poor, suffering puuter. It appreciated them, it truly did!

Ah-ha! I seem to have fixed it.... Sort of.

My computer went haywire yesterday. Whenever I tried to view a webpage, it would rapidly scroll up and down by itself, making the page impossible to read. So I ran anti-virus, anti-adware, anti-spyware - and finally, after nearly four hours of running these boring things (and meanwhile wandering into the kitchen to bake mince pies and roast a chicken) Search and Destroy found a spybot. Having zapped that, things seem to have returned to normal.

However, I also want to delete cookies and browser history, and Control Panel won't let me. The first screen appears (usually), where you can select which option you want to work with. But then the page for Network and Internet Connections refuses to manifest. Attempting to open this freezes my computer up, so I have to use Ctrl-Alt-Del to escape.

Actually, my Control Panel has been temperamental since the SP2 update was installed. It worked fine before that.

Heeeeeeeeeelp!!!!

I have been trying (and failing) to add a tag-board to my website. In theory this looks easy. Pick a tag-board host, twiddle with the settings to taste, then copy and paste the HTML code onto the website. So much for the theory. Instead of a tag-board, my efforts produced a webpage decorated with a blue box. As blue goes, it was a pretty shade. As tag-boards go, it was spectacularly non-functional.

After combing through various "Help" lists, I finally found a tiny footnote which mentioned that not all websites will accept the tag-board host's version of HTML.

Oh great, there is more than one version? Just when I thought I was getting to grips with this computer malarkey...!

See you all in the Circle of Hands chat room on Saturday!

I saved some Word files onto CD, and now my computer won't let me open the CD again.

I get one of three notices: "The parametre is incorrect", or "Incorrect function", followed by "You do not have access to file R. See your administrator." But I am the computer's administator....

Other CDs can be opened as usual.

Heeeeeeeelp!!!

There is something extra special about the first cup of tea imbibed after arriving home. I’m just back fromBirkenhead. Wooow, did it rain or what! Fortunately much of the town centre is partially under cover. All I wanted was magenta printing ink and a supply of those rather handy plastic document pockets, but the call of the book shop is always irresistible…. And I renewed my multi-vitamin supply and picked up some Siberian pine nut oil, too.

Can someone please tell me how to remove this irritating doodad in Word? I’m not sure what it’s called (which hardly helps my cause!) It is a bold black horizontal line, approximately the length of three letters, which sits at the start of each line of type and causes havoc if I need to relocate the curser on the same line as itself, (to correct a typo, for eg.) as then it blacks out the entire line, as if to delete it. I’ve even closed Word down and started it again, but it’s still there.

Help!!!

Edit: The pesky doodad has now been banished!

On my computer, every time I run my McAfee internet security, there are three 'unnecessary files' from message boards (the same ones each time) which I dutifully delete. But they don't get deleted, as they're there again next time despite that fact that I stopped visiting these places light years ago, and despite the fact that they're not bookmarked or cookie-enabled or stored in any way that I'm aware of. I have run 'search' in the hope of finding these files on my computer but to no avail. I've run up-to-date anti-virus/spyware/adware and found nothing.

Any bright ideas, anyone?

A thoroughly exasperating morning was spent trying to coax Microsoft’s auto-update to behave itself. Mine refuses to download new doodads.

I’ve added the right URL to my trusted sites list. I’ve ran up-to-date anti-spyware/adware/virus – oh so very exciting, as you can imagine. But when I use the update facility on Microsoft’s site all I get is an error code: 0x80246002. And can I find the meaning of this code anywhere? No! I hunted here, I hunted there, I hunted till my eyes felt like they were ready to bleed – but all I could find was a “code does not exist” declaration. Funny how it exists (repeatedly) in my updates history list!

*Sniffs airily* We are not amused.

And now... (cue drum roll) ...the 50 Questions Quiz elegantly swiped from gingerspark

( Read more... )

Dear Myself,

Next time your computer monitor acquires an interesting haze of red, green and blue - panic not!

Do not wail and moan or declare, "Alas, poor monitor, I knew you well!"

Instead, simply plug the thing in properly.

Oh.

Ooops.

Oh dear... My monitor looks AWFUL today! The screen has bright green borders with a crimson-ish splodge in the middle... It doth not bode well, good people.

What a nuisance! I went to Birkenhead with the sole purpose of buying a replacement cartridge for my printer. One hour later, as the bus was almost there, I suddenly remembered I’d forgotten to make a note of the cartridge’s code number! Trying to guess which might be the right one would be hopeless, of course. So now I’ll have to go all the way back again tomorrow because I absolutely need that pesky magenta cartridge! Ugh, how annoying! And how completely typical of me…

Blame it on my artistic temperament. Please?