The Journal of Michael Merriam

The writing has been going slowly the last couple of weeks, swallowed up in computer woes and a new kitten. I’m hoping to get back on track by writing a little this afternoon.

Belyn, aka Temp-to-Perm cat, has been neutered and given a clean bill of health by the veterinarian. He and the Reverend Selena have seen each other through a screen. The Reverend Selena made a sound like an air raid siren before settling down to glare malevolently at Belyn. For his part, Belyn’s noise was something more akin to an agitated teakettle, though he quickly became bored and continued his quest to escape the crafting room.

The release date for Last Car to Annwn Station has been moved back to June 27th (One month! OMG!). I should have postcards to give away at 4th Street Fantasy Convention and CONvergence.

( Snippet #2 Behind the Cut )

Technology continues to frustrate me. My laptop, which is my primary computer, rolled over and died on Thursday. It’s been running wobbly for a long time and to be frank never ran all that well to start with, but now it has crashed. I’ll never buy the display model ever again, no matter how much money it saves.

Since being a one-computer house is pretty much impossible around her with me trying to write and drum up freelance work and S running a small business and finishing grad school, measures are being taken.

Buying a new computer right now isn’t really an option, though buying a rebuilt might yet happen. In the meantime, I’m exploring other avenues to get help replacing the machine, have a loaner laptop that I’ll set up this afternoon, and will try revive my old laptop by installing a new OS.

We’ll get something sorted out, and yeah, I know in the grand scheme of things this a first-world problem, nothing terribly important in the end, but I still find it frustrating.

My venerable (for a computer) HP Pavilion kicked the bucket after 8 good years of service. Considering the lifespan of most electronics, I really can’t complain. I didn’t lose anything, since we keep all of our doc, pics, and music on the network drive and back it all up regularly to the laptop. That said, I’m thinking about signing up for DropBox. I will working on the laptop for the time being, though we are considering buying a laptop with a docking station so that I can work at my more ergonomically correct desk and use my huge (seriously huge) monitor.

In happier news, I sold my short story “Steadfast” to Flagship. This is a space opera retelling of The Steadfast Tin Soldier. I’m pleased to have sold it.

And a reminder that I will be at Paganicon (http://tcpaganpride.org/paganicon/) this weekend. I will be doing a reading/storytelling event on Sunday, where I plan to present “Four Minnesota Fantasy Tales.” There are also some other author events that I will probably see attending on Saturday and Sunday.

It is cold. Really, saying anything else is just adding emphasize to how utterly cold it is. So, it is cold. Yeah.

Also, we have snow. This should come as no surprise, what with living in Minnesota, but it occurred to me that this will only be our second "White Christmas" since moving north from Oklahoma. We had a white Christmas the first year we lived here (1999), but have gone back to Oklahoma every year since, except for 2003 when the family came here and it didn't snow. So yeah, white Christmas, looking forward to it.

We still have no power in the garage. Neither does my immediate neighbor, but we can't find a tripped breaker or GFI anywhere, so tomorrow the electrician is coming out to take a look. If it involves more than mine or the neighbors townhome (or terraced house, depending on your part of the world) and garage, I may have to send them over to the association office to discuss what shall be done. I'm supposed to be doing my holiday baking tomorrow. We shall see how this turns out, with the possibility of having no power for part of the day. The electrician will be here at 7:30 in the morning, so I'm hopeful.

I reset my workspace, moving all the stuff that will be going to Goodwill or disbursed among friends into the study closet until such a time as we can have friends over to take what they want before loading up the rest and taking it away. I have the Dell laptop (the one with broken lid hinges) on a docking port and acting as a desktop. It's running like a champ, but this is also the machine that burped and crashed and lost everything a couple of years ago (fortunately I had backed-up most everything on CD, so I only lost a few pictures and a couple of days worth of writing). Right now it's still running Windows XP and MS Office 2003, but if (when) it crashes again, I'm wiping it clean and installing Linux and Open Office. In the meantime, I'll make sure to back up any documents I work on every night. I bought a little 2GB Cruzer Micro for just this purpose.

I'm working on Rija's Tale, moving along at a reasonable clip. All the short stories have stalled, which means they still are not ready. I add a sentence or two here and there to them from time to time, or make some notes, but I guess things need more time to percolate in my brain before they're ready to be real stories. In the meantime, we've reached the "Torture Rija" part of the novel. I'm sure my poor character is not looking forward to this (I'm not either, really). Of course, later she gets to bite someone on the nose, so hey. As a character, Rija is really starting to grow, going from reacting to having developed enough experience and confidence to act first in a tight spot. I'm also seeing a darkening of her character as she become less naive and angrier at her situation. Eventually I may have to work her away from the darkness and anger, but she is a somewhat amoral character to being with, and life's hard knocks are not making her any softer or kinder. We shall see where she goes from here.

Rija's Tale

It has been a very busy this week. It has all been fun, I'm starting to feel a little worn.

I'll be out of touch by email and other computer means this weekend. We are heading up north to celebrate akillianna's birthday. I will be taking my laptop, because I'm an early riser and will likely find time to write.

I have an interview on Monday morning. It's a bit of a bus ride to were I'd be working, but at this point I'll take any escape hatch I can find. I guess I'll need to learn to write on the bus. Maybe by talking into a recorder.

Yesterday I had a moment of panic and suddenly wished I hadn't bought the new laptop because we have to get the chimney cleaned and it's almost time to pay estimated taxes again and what was I thinking spending money all willy-nilly...

careswen whacked me over the head and brought me back in line, of course. That's one of the many reason I keep her around.

I'll be back Sunday night or Monday afternoon. Don't break the interwebs while I'm gone.

Wictory! I has win at data recovery (mostly), despite the O/S crashing twice during the recovery process.

There were a few photos that were too damaged to save, and a few others that vanish out-right, but I saved about 90% of them and found about the same percentage in my lost writing work.

I feel so much better.

Right now the data is sitting on my thunb drive and the harddrive of the desktop. Tonight I will burn it all to a CD or three.

There was going to be a post about CONvergence. I had kept a log of what I did and thought about and all that good stuff.

There were going to be pictures that greykev took at CONvergence and loaded onto my laptop as well, including careswen's purple hair.

There was going to be all these things, before the laptop keeled over, died, and lost all my files.

We lost all the CONvergence photos and I'm set back about 4 days on my writing, because I wasn't doing back-ups at the Con to my flash drive. I had planned to back everything up at home today.

I want to swear and break things.

Last night I decided to bring up all my old electronics I didn't recycle and store them in the living room until after the guy finishes the sump pump stuff tomorrow.

I was just sitting around afterward, so I plugged in the laptop and loaded up a floppy disk with diagnostic tools, one I'd used before without success when the laptop wouldn't work. Not only did this allow me to get into the set-up for the laptop, but it let me get to the built in IBM diagnostic tools as well. For some strange reason, this time I was able to bust into DOS and reset some stuff that looked wrong in windows. On re-boot, Windows 98 went into safe mode. From there I was able to re-set more stuff. Suddenly I had a working laptop again! The only problem was that I didn't have full screen on the monitor anymore, just three-quarters. This morning I dug through the IBM online help guide (something I got real good at during my last job) and was able to download a fix for that little problem also.

So my laptop works again. HURRAY!

I wrote nothing today. There were too many last minute projects before tomorrow, and the kitchen door had swollen and stuck closed after last night's rain. However, now that my old reliable laptop is back up and running, maybe I'll get some done tonight!

I'm so happy

Michael

But I hope to get back at it tomorrow. "Move Along Home" is stalled out, but I plan to hook up some jumper cables and shock some life into it. Raymond Chandler said that if you ever find yourself wondering what to do next in a story, have someone pull a gun. Works for me. So I plan to do something sudden and dramatic.

The basement work is at a standstill until Thursday, when they come and get the trash and recycle. I may have a guy coming tomorrow to pick up all my old computers and other electronics. I does look like I'll be ready for the guy to come install the sump pump next week.

My attempt to get a second computer up and running failed miserably. Two hours of work for nothing, nada, zip, zero. All that obsolete crap downstairs is so out of date it's not funny. Truth be told, I really can't see to work on the insides of a PC anymore. *sigh* Them's the breaks.

Looks like the buses may at last be running soon. That's good news because I really didn't have any idea how I would get to my classes otherwise. My fingers are crossed.

Maybe I'll post more tomorrow

Peace and Tacos

Michael

I've been busy this week and weekend. The various news I received about Social Security Disability Income, and classes at Vision Loss Resources kept me pretty busy over the last few days, plus careswen and I did some social stuff over the weekend.

While I admit to being very excited about starting classes at VLR, I am also, well, a bit worried. I'm not worried so much about class; I know I'll manage, if for no other reason than I must, no matter how hard it gets. I am a bit worried about getting back and forth; the buses are still on strike, and I'm fairly inexperienced bus rider, at least in the Twin Cities. But again, I'll manage, because I really have no choice.

What I'm worried about is deep cuts in my writing time. I admit to having been spoiled over the last several months. I've been allowed the opportunity to stay home and focus on writing, which I've done. But the last several days I've been unable to write due to other projects (okay, the basement) and I am feeling the strain. I really need to write, something, anything, even if it's just this Live Journal Entry. I afraid that when I start classes, the writing will stop completely. Between classes all day, the daily ordinariness that must get done during the evenings, and the various stuff (fun or otherwise) that comes up over the weekend, I'm going to be left little time to write.

One thing I plan to do to help myself is build a second computer out of all the spare parts downstairs. The laptop served that second computer function, but alas, it is no more. If I setup a second system, one just for writing, then I can work at night as the whim strikes, and there will be no wrestling for computer time with careswen, who has her own projects to take care of.

I know I must sound like I'm whining about this, and I probably shouldn't do so. After all, I've enjoyed a great opportunity over the last few months (which I've taken full advantage of), but I feel like I've wrapped up a lot of my identity in the writing, and if I'm forced to stop now, well then, who am I?

Yeah, whatever.

Michael