Monday, November 29, 2010

Cyber Monday's weather is ironic

It's a drizzly mess today, perfect for staying inside and shopping online. Too bad I had to come to work. The trade off is I have Internet access here.

Parents got home Wednesday night about 11:30 with sister and nephew in tow. I sacrificed writing time to spend time with Atticus since my parents and his mother need to have frank discussions and I never get to see the kid. Frank discussions have yet to take place. *headdesk*

On the computer front: Dad doesn't know if he has any spare motherboards or not and could really care less compared to what he'd rather do (reading the two weeks of newspapers that piled up and football watching). The spare DSL modem that he's not sure works or not needs a power cord that neither one of us has in the correct voltage. *headdesk* Sunday, I asked for his laptop so I could get access to Quicken once again and figure out how to spend my December paychecks. That's STILL not done because after visiting the extendeds Atticus wanted to play board games with Aunt Kindra and we watched the first live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie plus three Biker Mice From Mars episodes. By then it was both our bedtimes. *headdesk*

Since I got work so insanely early, I thought shopping for motherboards would be a good idea. Apparently, I need more education because I don't recognize any of the terminology and I left the manuals for what I already had at home. I just bought RAM last year; I'd like to continue using it but can't remember the specifics. *headdesk*

So this is what kind of Monday it's shaping up to be.

Oh this looks really helpful: Computer Shopper's Complete Guide to Buying a Motherboard. Actually, I'd rather be on a current pizza commercial with this. In the commercial, the mom rattles off what she wants in a pizza and the choices shrink. I want to upgrade the motherboard to 2.8 GHz processor that's still able to run the old parts I'm keeping. I don't know why that isn't a check box for those requirements. ;)

Time for me to get to work on the paying job.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

I'm nearly convinced I have a busted capacitor

There is something underneath the slightly off-kilter capacitor and if it's not a trick of the light, there is a slight bulge on it.

Craptastic.

The good news: My RAM, fans, hard disks, DVD burner, audio card, ethernet card, modem card, monitor, and printers are all decent and should be able to move to a new machine.

Not so good news: CD burner gets cranky, USB ports are 1.0 (I think), and the graphics card is original with the computer. The monitor needs a new cable, but I have figured out how to tweak it to fix the color issue. The tower may or may not be salvageable thanks to the switch issue I've been having for years. Dad's supposed to be getting new cases though, so that maybe a free fix.

Bad news: buying a motherboard and a DSL modem at the same time.

So I'm probably offline until next Monday with only some borrowed computer time to check in. Biggest aggravation: my brain finally kicked into gear yesterday and I have things to upload to the Library. That's something I really don't want to do at work.

Hopefully this is an uneventful Wednesday before Thanksgiving, even though we are a woman down in the office. Hopefully everyone who is traveling to or through Baton Rouge will do it EARLY so I can get home at a decent time tonight. As opposed to 6:30 last night, after leaving work at 4:30, to cover a distance of 45 miles.

If I don't get to contact blog readers again, have a Happy Turkey Day! For non-U.S. readers, have a happy un-Holiday!

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Something fun

Via Mez.

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions:
• Copy this list.
• Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety.
• Italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read only an excerpt.
• Tag other book nerds.

I have read:

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
24. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
25. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
26. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
27. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
28. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
29. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
30. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
31. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
32. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
33. Emma -Jane Austen
34. Persuasion – Jane Austen
35. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
36. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
37. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
38. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
39. Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
40. Animal Farm – George Orwell
41. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
44. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
45. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
46. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
47. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
48. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
49. Atonement – Ian McEwan
50. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
51. Dune – Frank Herbert
52. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
53. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
54. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
55. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
57. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
60. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
61. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
62. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
64. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
65. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
66. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
67. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
68. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
69. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
70. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
71. Dracula – Bram Stoker
72. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
73. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
74. Ulysses – James Joyce
75. The Inferno – Dante
76. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
77. Germinal – Emile Zola
78. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
79. Possession – AS Byatt
80. Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
81. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
82. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
83. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
85. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
86. Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
89. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
90. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
91. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
92. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
93. Watership Down – Richard Adams
94. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
95. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
96. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
97. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
98. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
99. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo


That's how I got the list. Because I have MAJOR ISSUES counting an entire series as one book to read, I present the new and improved BBC list:

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring – JRR Tolkien
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – JRR Tolkien
4. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King – JRR Tolkien

5. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
6. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone – JK Rowling
7. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – JK Rowling
8. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – JK Rowling
9. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – JK Rowling
10. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – JK Rowling
11. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – JK Rowling
12. Harry Potter and the Deadly Hollows – JK Rowling
13. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
14. The Bible

15. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
16. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
17. His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass – Philip Pullman
18. His Dark Materials: The Subtle Knife – Philip Pullman
19. His Dark Materials: The Amber Spyglass – Philip Pullman
20. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
21. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
22. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
23. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
24. Complete Works of Shakespeare
25. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
26. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
27. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
28. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
29. The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
30. Middlemarch – George Eliot
31. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
32. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
33. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
34. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
35. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
36. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
37. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
38. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
39. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
40. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
41. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
42. Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
43. Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian – CS Lewis
44. Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – CS Lewis
45. Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair – CS Lewis
46. Chronicles of Narnia: A Horse and His Boy – CS Lewis
47. Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew – CS Lewis
48. Chronicles of Narnia: The Final Battle – CS Lewis

49. Emma -Jane Austen
50. Persuasion – Jane Austen
51. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
52. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
53. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
54. Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
55. Animal Farm – George Orwell
56. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
57. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
58. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
59. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
60. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
61. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
62. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
63. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
64. Atonement – Ian McEwan
65. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
66. Dune – Frank Herbert
67. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
68. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
69. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
70. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
71. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
72. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
73. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
74. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
75. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
76. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
77. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
78. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
79. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
80. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
81. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
82. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
83. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
84. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
85. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
86. Dracula – Bram Stoker
87. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

88. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
89. Ulysses – James Joyce
90. The Inferno – Dante
91. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
92. Germinal – Emile Zola
93. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
94. Possession – AS Byatt
95. Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
96. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
97. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
98. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
99. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
100. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
101. Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
102. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
103. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
104. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
105. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
106. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
107. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
108. Watership Down – Richard Adams
109. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
110. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
111. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
112. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

113. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Monday, November 22, 2010

I Don't Think I'm Addicted

But three days with only an over-sized paperweight on the desk has reached irritating status.

DSL Modem is probably dead and I had to reinstall everything to be functional once again. Well, last week the computer developed a will-not-stay-on problem. I thought it was the temperature acting up again, but it still cut off despite having the case open and a desk fan blowing into it. I was already having issues with the switch on the power supply, maybe the power supply has gone kaput.

Saturday a friend suggests another possibility: a capacitor has gone bad on the motherboard. So I'm looking at images of those and I'm not sure if that has happened or not. Ugh!

Thursday, I submitted "Covenant of the Restless," but I couldn't get into the mood to work on anything with the computer in pieces. It really doesn't matter, but at the same time irritates so much I don't want to be in the same room with it. *Shrug* That's going to make for an interesting holiday this week.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

This is troubling

My computer decided being closed off from the Internet isn't enough fun, and has started shutting itself off and on. I found out on Tuesday morning. I had temperature related shut offs a few months ago, but it hadn't been a problem since I rearranged the computer components. But I also had the AC on then. So I downloaded a program I thought could help me track what the internal temps actually are and see if that is the problem or if my power supply has gone to crazyville without the rest of the computer.

Last night, it wouldn't even stay on long enough for me to transfer the files and try the program out. Even with me opening the case and aiming a desktop fan into it. I'm not having high hopes for the drop in ambient temperature to help either.

If it's willing to cooperate tonight, I think I can get into the BIOS setup and at least turn on an alarm to find out if it is the temperatures doing it.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Monday, November 15, 2010

What Will It Take For a Win?

Getting to the internet failed again Friday night. A real doozy: computer says everything is connected fine, but none of the programs can update or go anywhere. So I called tech support for the DSL Saturday after my company left. Exhausted everything they could do, problem still unresolved, so they recommended I call in the for-pay tech support.

Sunday after I try shutting off the firewall and virus protection and still can't pull up a website, I call in and charge a one-time issue to my phone bill. First call's final solution: it must be an embedded virus so do a clean install of Windows XP. Second call to make sure I did the clean install properly after I had backed up everything I could to the external hard drive (the program folders kept having fits). Third call was because I still couldn't connect even with a fresh out of the box install of XP. It couldn't find Windows updates. Third call's final solution: the modem has gone bad (even though I can access all the setup stuff for it) and I have to buy a new one.

Final straw for last night: I finally figured out a solution to make an area to stack piles in, moved the piles to it, and now I have to shift the piles again to reach my shelf of computer software I have to reinstall. *headdesk*

So no progress with Elizabethan sea dogs this weekend, my headspace has been too present-day. I'm going to ask Dad if he has a spare DSL modem before I go buy a new one, just in case that isn't the issue. I'm supposed to have a dial-up back up connection but I have to reinstall that too, and I'm not sure if that is worth the hassle.

Also shifting the set of bookshelves in front of the telephone jack has made me realize I need a better set of shelves there and on wheels if I don't want to cut a hole in the bottom shelf to access the phone jack.

Today's plans: finish the edits to "Covenant of the Restless" on paper at least. Reinstall what programs I can to the home computer.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

PHONE!

I have phone. I have DSL. I have happy thoughts.

Apparently demanding a credit for time of no service really does get them out faster.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Monday, November 08, 2010

Weekend ARGH!

I am without phone service and DSL until Bell South/AT&T decides to finally send out a technician and give me a dial tone without harsh static feedback. That will be between when I reported it on Saturday to 6pm Thursday.

I wish I could report that I got so much done with my enforced offline status, but I'd be lying. Basically I took last week off of everything but housework. The dust bunnies are in shock.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Monday, November 01, 2010

November Already?

So NPI is over (I got longest run without using a reprieve and most reprieves left at the end WOOT!), Halloween is over, family drama is not over, and I need to have friends over before holiday crazies start. I do better when I actually have goals and deadlines, so what are my goals for November?

  1. Submitting "Covenant of the Restless." *Pause to kick the reflexive anxiety away.* Needs to happen. Also mean I have writing left to do. I have a game plan after having a chat with the Fear Monger monster that was stirring up my anxiety. Now it's just a matter of ignoring that anxiety and follow the game plan. This is a finish-able goal since I need to submit before Nov. 18th.
  2. Finishing Stellar Gift of Death's first draft by Dec. 31st. I have to write over 600 words a day now. EEP! This is a goal that will be plodding along in the background while I continue through my days.
  3. Focus on finances. I've gotten no where fast on money issues this year. My head's barely above water, which I wish didn't feel as familiar as it does. I need to stay on budget and save up for a laptop and other equipment to apply for a virtual call center job. If I get the budget focusing down cold for November and December, I think I can start saving for the laptop goal in January.
  4. Lose weight. My health demands it. Primal eating helps, but I cheated with too many carbs last month. And I don't exercise enough, so I have to do more of that.
  5. Post all fanfiction I have written. This is just some housekeeping so I can start next year with fresh projects.
  6. Keep a clean house and have a party. I haven't decided if this party is a glorified DVD and boardgame sleepover or extra help on remodeling the bathroom. Probbaly the first since I have no money for the second. Keeping the house clean is an ongoing goal. My schedule for when to do what is good; I just don't follow it. So I'm making an effort to cross off items on the to-do list.
  7. I should have a number 7 just to make it even and powerful and holy (according to numerologists). Sewing! I still have the Tin Man!Adora uniform to finish and my coworkers got really excited over a Steampunk Batgirl from Project Rooftop. Regardless, I have to start on them soon.


Okay, let's go ahead and declare this is the goal list for the rest of the year. Some items are finish-able; other more continuous. It's a starting point at least.

Read Free!
The BookWorm