Sheila's Guests and Reviews

I'm screaming... crying... flinging my hands in the air in abject despair, and I'm wondering if the computer would do the same if it could. But it's been a good week, seriously. Look at all those book reviews I posted, and note my frequent absence from Facebook and Twitter. I've been writing and editing and even beta-reading for a couple of friends. And today... Today was the day I was going to finally finish that last read-through of Infinite Sum, ready to send it back to the publisher. Today was going to be great! Except... My computer took 15 minutes to get from gray screen to blue, brought up an error message, took 15 more minutes from okay to black-screened unresponsiveness, produced a start button which I pressed in hopes of stopping, took 15 minutes to the next error message and even more to shut down... And then I began to wonder if my seriously good and wonderfully productive week was suddenly at risk. When I tried to switch the computer back on, it screa...

My virus-scanner broke this morning. Probably clicking "yes" to downloading updates wasn't such a good idea while jet-lag rules--I only got back from England yesterday. I clicked "yes" to removing the previous version, and "yes" to restarting my machine. Altogether too many "yes"s. When Windows came back neither old nor new virus scanner could be found anywhere. Jet-lag still ruling, I proceeded to panic and search for my account on the internet. I typed my virus scanner key-code in and was told it was invalid. I looked for downloads and tried again with similar lack of success. Then I phoned Best Buy since that's where I bought the computer and virus scanner in the first place. Best Buy keep great records. They also have great geeks in their geek squad. Soon a very nice stranger was moving the mouse about my screen, downloading and activating the latest version and confirming all was well. While installation and updates proceeded, sl...

It's a puzzle working out why buying a new computer means my printer won't work anymore. But the printer's a wireless HP and the computer has Windows 7. Apparently HP drivers don't work properly beyond Windows XP - at least, not if you want to go wireless, and not if you want to use double-sided printing. Suddenly my printer becomes inaccessible whenever I switch it on (because the IP address might change). My scanner won't work (because the software "fails to install"). And my nicely formatted books now have be hand-fed page by page into the printer because the new (not XP) drivers scale the image and add extra margins at inconsistent sides of a landscape page (making the middle shift in opposite directions so you can't fold the page). Aghghghg! Anyway, here's a much more interesting puzzle. Just click on it, and a nice little jigsaw puzzle site will let you waste precious minutes trying to solve it. Drink coffee. Eat chocolate... And if you want ...

I think it's Murphy's law that says if I really really want to write then something's bound to come up. So here I am, all inspired by my characters bouncing up and down in my brain, Snowflakes ready and eager to organize me, and... Well, the dishwasher leaked, which was wet, and the man came to mend it, which was wetter. My son's computer arrived, not wet because I stayed close enough to the door to hear the doorbell (i.e. I wasn't on my computer). The odd rattly thing in the case sent me phoning tech support who tried not to laugh and said it was a light. (I didn't know computers had lights.) Then we went shopping for a monitor, but they'd sold out of the one my son had so carefully researched, so we drove further... Meanwhile, I wanted to write, and I have a ton of books that I'm meant to be reading and reviewing, and our book group meets tonight. Windows 7 was fun though. We switched on the machine and it recognized the printer straight away. It even...

I thought I was the patient one. I patiently hadn't done the yardwork yet when the wind suddenly fell on us and spun the patio dry. It was pretty dramatic. So was the thunder and lightening, but we weren't worried--we'd already switched the computers off. Except the Vista one was updating still. And the power went out. Now we're playing that uphill game, trying to get our Windows back. The world outside the glass in the family room has gone dark. And the world in the computer went light and dark, light and dark, light and dark... till we found a way to stop it from restarting and said yes to the option to repair itself. That was hours ago. But it seems my son's the patient one after all, relaxed and unconcerned while the computer says "preparing to install" unchangingly. Of course, if it fails to install, it's me will be reinstalling Windows tomorrow, but at least I won't have to clean the patio.