Just got a call from a job recruiter for a position that has my name all over it, at the last place I worked as a contractor. It’s only an 18-month contract, but it would be more money, fewer hours, and closer to home than the full-time job I have now. God, but it’s knotted …
Category Archives: Uncategorized
New PC: First Steps
First, clean off the old PC and prep it for its new owner. I’m giving it to my friend Scott, which makes me de facto tech support. Therefore, I want to include some tools and tricks that may make recovery and troubleshooting easier. Also, there are a few interesting little bits of software and other …
Blog diet
Up till the middle of last week, I had about 80 blogs on my Bloglines list. Many of them were divided up into Monday, Tuesday, etc. categories, as they didn’t update often but I didn’t want to miss them. So I’d be able to check them at least once a week. But I found myself …
Retiring from the Nanowrimo field
I was looking forward to it this year, but hit the sand early and never recovered. I started out as I had done last year, with an image, a situation, and then started to run with it. But the material didn’t form under my fingers as naturally as last year. I finally switched from a …
The Revenge of the Novelist
From the NY Times obit of John Fowles. As much as it frustrated some of his readers, Mr. Fowles always believed he had done the right thing by leaving the endings of his most celebrated novels open-ended. But he was not above bending his own rules when the occasion called for it. He once told …
"Due to…"
From Melvyn Bragg’s latest In Our Time newsletter: Monica Grady’s other mission seems to be to stop her students saying “due to” when they ought to say “owing to” or “because of”. She pointed out that in the case of libraries, babies and rent you can use “due to”, everything else is “owing to” or …
NaNoWriMo: The Adventure Begins
Yes, I’m one of the hairpins doing the NaNoWriMo challenge, though I will only use lowercase letters from here on out because those intercapitalizations drive me nuts. Last year, I signed up on October 31st, just for a lark. I wasn’t working, nothing was going on, and I thought it would help me pass the …
Online holiday games to play
For those of us who just don’t get out enough into the real world… Note that some of these require Shockwave or other plugins to work, and probably a fast connection as well. Carve a pumpkin — Be sure you wait to see it light up Shoot zombies–my personal favorite Scarecrows and ravens (not a …
10+ year old files
During the New PC Blues upgrade process, I ran across a 5.25″ floppy disk Liz had used to store files related to a musicology paper she wrote back in 1989 — well before I came on the scene. Why we hadn’t done anything with this diskette before, I don’t know. But what to do with …
RSS Feeds – one day at a time
This item from Merlin’s 43Folders blog knocked me for a loop and I took a few examples from the Probations idea and from others in the comments to adjust how my Bloglines feeds are displayed. * First, I always have the option checked that only updated feeds be displayed. When I began editing my list, …
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