« My Linux Holiday Home | Main | After Sluggish Production, Author Boy Suddenly on Fire »

January 29, 2006

Normal Service Resuming Shortly

See, if this was a Warner Bros. cartoon of a certain vintage, I'd right now look a lot like Daffy Duck, having just had either a bomb go off in front of his face, or an Elmer Fudd point-blank "Duck Season" shotgun blast. Which is to say, charred, beak on backwards, smoke pouring out everywhere, and blinking in the sunlight, muttering darkly.

You have to understand I'm something of a fiddler. The knowledgeable out there reading this will nod sagely and go, "Yeah, is that right?" because they've known me a long time. Others, perhaps new to this venue, will probably either snicker, use a "L for Loser" gesture on their foreheads at my expense, or otherwise mock me. There are times when I deserve a good mocking, I must say.

On this particular occasion, it went like this: I had a perfectly nice setup on the computer, where I had a nice Linux partition, and a nice Windows XP partition. Life was good. As of, uh, a day or two ago, I now have a computer with nothing but Linux, and Windows XP a passive-aggressive sort of memory that troubles me at night. In between was a great deal of teeth-gnashing, hitting my forehead with the palm of my hand in exasperation, and mighty frustration. I think at one point, over a two-day period, I ended up having to reinstall my current version of Linux (Fedora Core 4) an astonishing three times. On another occasion, while trying to put a version of Windows on a spare hard-drive I also have in this computer, I wound up wiping a shiny, freshly installed version of Fedora, and replaced it inadvertently with WinXP because you don't get a choice about where the bloody thing might go, so it defaults to your main drive.

Suffice to say my family have been gravely concerned, and have at times resorted to snickering at my expense. So far Michelle has refrained from doing the "L for Loser" gesture. This I think must be True Love.

However, I'm not a complete twit. Before I embarked on all of this installation and reinstallation nonsense, I *did* back up all my vital data from Windows onto a CD. Much of it, including all my book-related files, is also on a USB flashdrive. So that's good.

Upshot: the Bedford computer is now all Linux, all the time. And, sheepishness aside, I'm pretty happy with it. I have now, after a couple of further days of fiddling, got it running Just Right. My current novel project, UMBRA, is all safely backed up, along with all my development notes. And, just now, I've got the mail filters on Thunderbird working correctly for the first time in days.

[heavy sigh]

It's almost as stressful and worrying as having to pack up and move to a new house. I've done that a few times, and it certainly is comparable--just with a lot less heavy-lifting.

* * *

Speaking of UMBRA: guess whose novel manuscript, despite all this nonsense going on in the background (and often in the foreground), has by now cracked the psychologically very important 75,000-word mark? It's been a long, long slog, but there are now times when I think I might possibly have something here. Not often, but sometimes. It's starting to head roughly in the right direction. I still don't know if I'll have to rewrite it completely, or if I can "fix it up in post".

* * *

Michelle and I have now booked our LA Con IV hotel rooms, too. We'll be staying in the Anaheim Hilton, the main convention hotel. We had wanted to have a few days either side of the convention to (a) get over jetlag a bit before the convention (because we know too well what it's like if you don't do this), and (b) recover from the convention, sight-see a bit, and take care of any extracurricular, um, activities that might occur. You know, things having vaguely to do with that whole "Project Mimosa" business. Anyway, it turns out the hotel has made it possible for con-goers to have the special convention rate of US$99/room for at least a whole week either side of the convention. This was very pleasing indeed. Next step, sometime soon, will be arranging the flights. *gleep!*

* * *

Am still awaiting word from the Acquisitions Editor at "Sharper Pollens" re, um, book-related stuff. Waiting is driving me--and sadly my whole family--nuts.

* * *

Last, if you've sent me email any time in the last, um, few months, and I haven't answered you yet (on account of being a lazy, slack-arsed bastard), I'd appreciate it if you could send me a fresh note to respond to, perhaps updating what you were saying. I did manage to save a lot of important data from the Windows thing, but unfortunately my email--along with an archive of many thousands of emails dating back several years--was lost. This naturally includes my address book. Thank you.

* * *

PS: You would not believe the vast oceans of cash I've made in the last few months. It seems I have a knack for winning various International and European Lotteries. Sometimes as often as a few times a day an email turns up announcing that I've just made, say, US$1.5 million! This has happened almost every day for ages. I'm just gobsmacked. What to do with all this cash? I'll have to rent one of those personal storage units or something. Michelle wants to know if this means I can help with the mortgage. Oddly, there appears to be a slight problem actually collecting all this loot. Hmm. Suggestions welcome.

Posted by adrian at January 29, 2006 02:53 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.kabedford.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/30

Comments

Posted by: river selkie at February 11, 2006 11:32 AM

That's genius!! It's got the new outfit and a sonic screwdriver and everything...

...It's a FIGHTIN' HAND!!!

(Sorry, got carried away a bit there.)

Posted by: pastamasta at February 9, 2006 12:06 AM

Posted by: river selkie at February 5, 2006 02:06 PM

Particularly like "gleep" as an exclamation, and shall be using it as often as is appropriate.

Perhaps your tribulations with the Windowy substances should be transcribed (in suitably obscured fashion) into your new book? I'm sure it would elicit a knowing sigh of empathy from many of your readers.

I wonder if the lottery you didn't realise you'd entered is being run by my good friend Dr. Oluweyo, erstwhile employee of the Central Bank of Nigeria, who assures me his coffers are simply bursting with ready liquid capital and just wants a bit of help with the transfer fees?

Posted by: pastamasta at February 2, 2006 05:46 PM

you know, disneyland is just across the street from the anaheim convention center, and the hilton too i think. you might consider spending a few hours at the park to see what it's all about... [i own 3 disney stocks, so i gotta pimp it when i can. ;) ] if you like disney stuff at all, you'll enjoy it. and at the very least, downtown disney is free and worth a wander.

plus, i just put that week in my planner so i can remember to make a trip out to cali then!

if you have any questions about anaheim or southern cali or anything, let me know. i grew up not too far from there so i know the area a bit.

Posted by: river selkie at January 31, 2006 01:38 PM

75K? Superb, old bean. I have hit the also-pschologically-significant mark of 20K in my current WIP.

Linux all the way, eh? I still have to get up the nerve to try putting my copy of Linux in a dual-boot partition on my laptop.

Funny you should mention hitting the international jackpot, I just received notice that I have walked away with scads of loot in an Australian lottery I never heard of let alone entered. How 'bout that? Of course, I ordered my plasma hi-def television straight away. Why wait?

Posted by: Charlie at January 31, 2006 02:19 AM

Oh Mr. Bedford. "If it ain't broke don't fix it" was never so true as where Windows is concerned.

I could tell you the terrible saga of my lost Easter (2002) when on the Thursday arvo prior to Easter I foolishly decided to upgrade my work laptop from WinNT to Win2K and ended up with an apparently perfectly installed Win2K that simply blue-screened during boot up if other than "safe mode" was used. I spent the whole of Easter desperately attempting to save all my installed apps, files and so forth (interrupted only by my water heater leaking everywhere followed by much fun and expense getting a plumber in on Easter Saturday). But I won't, it's too awful to relate.

Great to hear the book is going well though, I am amazed at your ability to write while fscking about with Windows *and* Linux. Just awesome.

Posted by: David S. at January 30, 2006 06:31 AM

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?