Blog entry February 2010

I got back from my long weekend away, turned on my computer and the fan again started making the nasty noise.  I thought I'd fixed it, but obviously not.  Oh, joy.

I pulled the computer out of its little cubby, took the blasted computer apart, and discovered it wasn't the fan I thought... it was the power supply's fan.  So I took the power supply apart, hoping I could just replace the fan, but the connections are soldered in.

The good news is that I know enough to do this, although I've never done it before.  Also, TigerDirect (now CompUSA) is only 7 miles away, a new power supply was in stock, on the shelf, and only $35.  And it only took me 5 minutes to put the new power supply back in.

I got everything back together and working fine, but I since I was down on my hands-and-knees putting the computer back, I saw how dirty it was under my desk.  So the next accomplishment was to pull out everything under my desk, wash the floor and the floor mat, and put everything back.

It's not what I'd planned to accomplish this morning, but I wasn't lazy.  Now off to lunch with a writer friend, then we'll see what this afternoon brings, since it's becoming aparent that my plans have no influence on the Universe's plans for me.

Turned on my desktop computer yesterday morning, and it began making noises that computers should not make.  Fearful of disk failure, I shut it off and called my boss and told him I'd probably be offline for the day.

Grateful that I have the knowledge and skills to diagnose the problem rather than having to take it someplace and wait, I dropped kid at school, came home and took the computer apart.

Luckily it was just one of the fans making the bad noise and not one of the disk drives.  But I tested out the drives, and then backed them up, which isn't a quick process when you're talking 1T of drive space.

So, I was down all day, but it didn't cost be anything other than lost wages, which is enough... but it could have been a lot worse, so I'll try to not complain.

I was checking today how long it's been that I've been working on Sarah's story (on and off, of course)... to discover that I put the first of the submissions to editors and agents in the mail on Sarah's fourth birthday... the exact day.  Weird!  :-) 

I won't go into detail about what a wild ride these last four years have been, or all the lessons I learned while writing Sarah's story, other than saying "wow!" 

Happy belated birthday, Sarah. 

Now if I could only get you to Shut Up! life would be a little simpler... but you're staying true to form, and the next story is likely to be just as wild a ride as the first.  :-)

A couple weeks ago I was talking to myself (something that I regularly do, having only teenage boys in the house) and told myself that it's going on eight years that I've been divorced and it sure would be nice to have somebody in my life.  Myself replies that before I go looking for somebody I need to fix "X", because even if I found somebody today, I wouldn't want them if they are willing to accept "X" as it stands.  I agreed with myself, that I indeed need to fix "X" before I go looking for somebody.  But since I'm not particularly interested in fixing "X", I put the topic aside and think no further on it.

This weekend a character pops up and starts demanding: "write my book, write my book".  I tell the character to shut up, because there are about 10 books in the queue before I can even think about a new book.  Said character quickly acquires a sidekick, and instead of shutting up, they demand even louder: "write our book, write our book". 

Being very unhappy about the added chaos in my head, I grouse about it to a good friend who knows about "X" and who's also a writer.  The friend replies, "you know... writing their book would go a really long ways toward fixing 'X'."

Fudge!  Good, bad or otherwise, writing the book would indeed fix a lot of "X", plus further analysis reveals their book ends up needing to be written before several other books on the list, as events in this book impinge on events in the other books.

Fudge!  **sighing in resignation**

At least the smug little bastards have shut up now that they know I have to write their blasted book.  **grumble, grumble**