Jinjifore's Journal

6:08pm: Losers by a Landslide
I am so behind on NaNoWriMo today. (So, naturally, I'm posting instead of writing.)

I've been playing with AO3 today and haven't even put word one on my NaNoWriMo story. I've got a comfortable cushion at the moment, but my goal is to be done before I go to my Mom's to become her Thanksgiving helper. The cooking process begins, ideally, two days beforehand, so that doesn't give me a whole lot of time. Granted, we're celebrating on Friday instead of Thursday this year, but that's only one extra day.

We're having Thanksgiving a day late this year for a number of reasons, one of which is that my sister lives in North Carolina. Many of you probably heard about the 1-40 landslide closing off the main route through the Smokies from North Carolina to Tennessee. A lot of you also probably saw the video of the landslide that occurred a couple hundred miles south, on Highway 64.

What you probably don't know, unless you live in the area, is that Highway 64 is one of the better alternate routes through the Smokies if one is heading from North Carolina to the area around Chattanooga, especially if one's hometown is right on 64 (like ours). My sister and brother-in-law are probably going to make lemonade from the lemons and just detour all the way through Atlanta so he can visit his family, but that's a pretty significant detour.

So, Friday Thanksgiving. At least the grocery stores will be open if we run out of stuff.

5:52pm: Elbow Room, Elbow Room ...
Aaah, the twice-yearly hard drive purge. Nine whole gigabytes in which to stretch out, for a while anyway. I tend to dread doing it, because while my backing up involves sticking a thumb drive in and throwing over the few tiny text files that are new, the Great Hard Drive Purge involves actually moving computer stuff around and disconnecting drives from PCs and hooking them up to Macs and other gargantuan efforts. Which is why I only tend to do it when I'm having to delete yesterday's podcasts to have room for today's.

I realize that 9GB doesn't sound like much, but my entire hard drive is only 80GB, and frankly, if it wasn't for my habit of saving certain podcasts, I'd probably not even be close to filling it up ever. Fan fiction, after all, doesn't take up a lot of space. It took me three years of obsessive story saving to hit 500MB on my Torchwood folder, after all. Though, admittedly, if I saved the HTML instead of just the text, it would likely be about ten times that size. Which is why I save the text. :)

Then again, I have about two terabytes hooked up to the PC, so it's not like I'm practicing hard drive economy anywhere else.

8:50am: Well-Meaning Cats


Greebo tried to assist in my word count yesterday. When I'm using the computer in bed he thinks it a prime opportunity for snuggle time. He may be right about this, but he also tends to want to snuggle right on top of where I'm using the mouse. This means that sometimes the mouse does things I hadn't necessarily planned, especially when I give up trying to move it around under seventeen pounds of cat and just leave it there. Yesterday, he managed to select all the text in my Nanowrimo file, and when I pasted it all in later my stats returned a miraculous 22K+ word count, almost exactly twice what the count should have been. One of us (and I have my suspicions) had duplicated the entire novel in the file.

Good kitty.

4:44pm: NaNoLOL


I'd totally forgotten about the NanoCat Word Counter. (Because it is very important to see my word count in as many forms as humanly possible.)

This is why I was very happy to see that the widgets are finally working today. Well, mostly working. There seems to be a bit of decimal issue with the full progress reports, but it's not a big deal. Unfortunately, I discovered that, despite my doing my own math, I actually missed my word count yesterday by 14 words. Fourteen. Words.

( Is this really a big deal? Well, okay, no. )

And yet, I have still managed to crack 10,000 words. :)

5:34pm: NaNoWriMo--Paranoid? Me?

3883 / 50000 words. 8% done!

I don't know if it's aided my writing productivity, but since I started using the CPAP machine I have dreamed and dreamed and dreamed. I had regular dreams before, but it's astounding the scope and depth and length of the dreams I've had the last four nights. I guess that's what happens when I'm not waking up forty times a night and interrupting my dream cycle. My brain has free rein to work through the day's crap without interference, and it seems to be making up for lost time.

I'm a bit paranoid about NaNoWriMo this year because last year was the first year I'd ever finished early and you all know what happened then. While I feel pretty certain that that was a one-time mishap (pretty certain), I can't help but think that I should maybe push a little harder this year, too.

Just in case. :)

8:30pm: This and That and NaNoWriMo
Yep, it's that time of year again, when I move my NaNoWriMo bookmarks up to the Toolbar. Of course, the site designers have, as usual, rearranged everything so that most of them are broken, but re-setting the links is always a nice time-waster those first few days.

I have to say that, despite thinking about what I'm going to write since the beginning of October, the actual arrival of NaNoWriMo snuck up on me this year. I've been tootling along with it in the back of my mind, then suddenly I look up and it's three days before the start.

In other news, I picked up my CPAP machine today. I think it says something that I'm looking forward to strapping the thing on at bedtime. (Probably that I'm willing to do almost anything for a good night's sleep. :))

I also discovered that if you wait until the last few days to buy Halloween candy, you a) don't have time to eat it beforehand and b) can get it on sale. Also, Cheetos are not kosher.

4:11pm: I Am Psychic with My iPod
I had my second sleep study over the weekend, and it went really well. I used the CPAP machine all night, and did not, according to the sleep technician, have any apneas. \0/ (I did, in fact, make actual victory arms when he told me this.) I did feel claustrophobic a couple of times, but it was very mild and I was able to talk myself out of it by remembering that the machine was there to help me breathe.

The mask wasn't too bad, and didn't really keep me from sleeping. We'll see if that changes once I'm no longer so tired that I don't care, but for now I'm more than willing to strap the thing on if it means better sleep. I'm also, on advice from thewordoffred, going to look into the possibility of just using a nose tube. We'll see.

I also found out that I apparently re-arrange my iPod in my sleep. I go to sleep listening to podcasts, and while I'm falling asleep I move the iPod from side to side as I turn over. This behavior, according to the sleep technician, does not change once I'm asleep (or, indeed, after the iPod's sleep timer has turned it off). As I toss and turn, I move the non-functioning iPod around with me without ever waking up. This may explain why I haven't yet strangled myself with the headphones in my sleep. :)

1:19pm: NaNo-NaNo
Since all the cool kids are doing it...;)

I'm doing NaNoWriMo again this year. I even have a story idea and everything. If you want to buddy me, my NaNoWriMo username is Jinjifore, my user number is 129439.

I don't tend to post a lot about NaNo during the month, bar the occasional word count updates, so if you're still putting up with my daily Torchwood tweets NaNoWriMo will be a mere drop in the bucket.

Also, for some reason the site isn't showing that I participated (won, even) last year. I need to find out what's up with that. ETA: Found out. I have to update it manually, which you'd think I'd know from having had to do it every year before.

6:44pm: An Eggs-acting Science
Remember the Great Boiled Egg Debate? My sister has unearthed the answer: We were all wrong.

1:02pm: Our New Heroine: Ardi
Boo has been really fascinated by the discovery of "Ardi." It started last week, when she asked me why we have hairs all over our bodies, and I explained about our evolutionary ancestors having hair to protect them. Just a couple of days later the news about Ardi finally hit the front pages. When the drawings of what Ardi may have looked like appeared, I showed them to Boo and explained a bit about how Ardi's traits have changed some of our thoughts on hominid evolution.

But I think the big attraction for her, really, is the simple fact that Ardi--and Lucy--are girls, like her. I know it was just chance that two of the major game-changers in hominid evolution happened to be females, but it really hit me hard to see how much that simple fact changed Boo's perceptions. Ardi and Lucy might be hairy, and have ape-like features and long arms and--in Ardi's case, anyway--feet that look like hands, but they're still both girls, and she can identify with that.

I really hope that as she gets older, we don't always have to go back four million years for our female role models. :)

7:38pm: Sleeeeeep... Apnea
In order to avoid blathering incessantly about Yet Another Health Issue, I decided--this time--to wait until I had a firm diagnosis.

( The desire to fall asleep into your mashed potatoes is not normal. Just so you know. )

6:01pm: Mama: 1; Vowels: 0
One of Boo's homework assignments is that she has to write a sentence every day describing something she learned in class. Usually I ask her what she wants to write, then I help her with the spelling by sounding the words out. Not surprisingly (because this is, after all, English that she's trying to spell), she doesn't always guess the correct vowel, and last night she got really discouraged about it.

This is one of those parent situations where there was really nothing I could think of that was encouraging. Saying what I felt was the truth ("Yeah, English is a bitch to spell and even if you're really smart you'll probably be really grateful for the invention of the spellchecker for the rest of your life") wasn't, I thought, exactly the uplifting words of encouragement she needed.

So, I told her about The Great Vowel Shift instead.

My thinking--if it can be called such--was that if she knew that the vowel sounds weren't always spelled the same, that they were arbitrary and messy, she might feel a bit better about finding it hard to do. Amazingly enough, this worked.

Later, I had to Google how to spell "pink" in Hebrew, but still, mostly a win in the mom column.

10:35pm: Speaking of Computers...
I'm restoring my confidence by messing with the Windows computer, and I decided that I would conduct my semi-sporadic search for a multi-file search and replace utility for Windows. At the moment, I'm completely unable to survive without TextWrangler, which allows me to re-do those teeny coding errors I might make across twenty files. The only difficulty is that it's MacOS only.

Shockingly enough, I found one this time. It's called Actual Search and Replace and it does exactly what I want. It searches across multiple text files for words or phrases, displays them in context and also--as the name suggests--can perform multi-file search and replace. (Take that, SmartQuotes!) Joy!

Well, if "joy" means "worth $30." The free version works for thirty days, which is enough time to make a decision about buying it, but I've been really spoiled by Bare Bones freeware the last fifteen years. Still, it would possibly enable me to not go completely insane if my Mac craps out on me, which is certainly worth thirty bucks.

I just hope I'm not jinxing my Mac by eyeing other utilities...

9:03pm: My Huge Computer Freak-Out
( I just had a huge computer scare, which I am going to describe in excruciating detail under the cut. To save you the suspense, I've left the resolution outside the cut. )

The anti-climactic conclusion: Computer restarted, everything's fine, I do not have to re-sort 3,000 files from the unsorted back-up. I'm currently testing the existence of the disappeared files by backing them the fuck up. Again. Then I'm having a beer. Possibly two.

I'm also taking this as a sign that it might be time to start saving for a new Mac laptop.

1:12pm: Best Thing Ever
Why didn't I know about the iPod Sleep Timer function before?! I discovered it by accident while trying to use the (useless) alarm feature, and it's the Best Thing Ever. I go to sleep every night listening to podcasts or audio books, and the biggest drawback is that if I fall asleep before turning it off, I have to backtrack for hours to find my place (not to mention the battery issues). If I turn on the Sleep Timer, the window shrinks to fifteen or thirty minutes. Best Thing Ever.

It's the little things that count, really. :)

6:22pm: If It's Alien, It's Ours
So. We have met Boo's new Head of School...

...and she is Yvonne Hartman.

My husband and I went to a Meet the Head of School and Have Coffee thing this morning, and as I listened to her talk and answer questions I really, really had to work hard not to roll my eyes. Okay, I understand that management jargon is probably the way Things are Done now, but I felt like I was listening to a politician dodge the press rather than a Head of School talk to parents.

I do understand that it's not an easy gig. (In fact, I was amused that the questions were evenly divided between "why aren't the kids running around more?" and "why aren't the kids studying math/science more?", neatly displaying the never-ending conflict of parent expectations in microcosm.) I don't, though, like to come away from a meeting feeling that the person in charge hasn't really said anything. I also feel like that a meeting with her would be more like a battlefield than a conversation.

It's entirely possible that this first impression will be proved wrong, and it's also possible that, even if it isn't wrong, these will be qualities that will make her a good Head of School.

That doesn't mean I won't still think of her saying, "If it's alien, it's ours," every time I see her.

12:09am: iMom
Spent the weekend at my mother's, doing iPod maintenance and continuing iPod education. My mom, as I may have mentioned, has two iPods in order to keep up with her audiobook habit. While we were on vacation, iPod number one--which had already shown signs of wear and tear--began to really screw up. I brought it home, downloaded the files from it (confirming, by the way, that it was Seriously Screwed Up), and put them all on a new iPod. So far, so good.

( This just in: WAV files are Really Big )

10:07pm: Helpful Mouse Tips
If you buy the same mouse for both your laptops, and for some reason are using both laptops at the same time, try not to wonder why the mouse isn't working every time you pick up the wrong one. At least not after the first three times you do it. Also, possibly be smart enough, after this has happened more than three times, to put stickers or something on one of them.

If you are smart enough to only use one laptop at a time, but have both the trackpad and mouse enabled, make sure that your cat is not sitting on the mouse while you use the trackpad, lest you become convinced that your computer has locked up.

3:40pm: The Great Egg Experiment
If you don't care about the color of the yolks of your boiled eggs, move along.

If, on the other hand, you're curious about the things that are topics of earnest debate in our family while on vacation, proceed to the cut for two amazing photographs of...boiled eggs.

( No, seriously, it's pictures of boiled eggs and a summary of different ways to boil eggs so the yolks don't turn dark. Don't say I didn't warn you. )

8:06pm: Cause and Effect
When Boo was around a year old, I was diagnosed with arthritis on the left side of my lower back. My doctor told me it's not uncommon for new mommies to develop back problems, because we spend a lot of time picking up and carrying twenty-pound babies, and tend to do it consistently on one arm/hip. I took an anti-inflammatory for a couple of months and changed how I lifted and picked up things and how I sat, focusing on making non-spine-twisting moves and on balancing my baby-lifting. That took care of the pain, and I hadn't had any problems for the last five years.

( You can probably guess where this is going )

I'm just hoping this is the last side-effect of my fall. :)

8:50pm: Catching Up
I've realized that I haven't actually, formally updated anything about my wrist lately. As it happens, no news is good news, but since I've been blithering about it for months I might as well offer closure, too. :)

( I am healed! )

All in all, I feel pretty darn lucky. It was a hellish winter, but I came out of it with all the important things (for instance, knitting) still possible, and I'm not in pain anymore. This is all good. :)

In other news, I'm done rescuing files from my Mom's malfunctioning iPod, and am about three-quarters done transferring the files back into iTunes so I can load them onto her new iPod. This has taken some time, both because I want to make sure that everything's being transferred, and also because I'm converting a bunch of WAV files to MP3. She has a machine that converts cassettes into digital audio, but it saves the files as WAV and we've never really coordinated that "How to convert files to MP3" tutorial I've been promising to do for her. So far, I've saved about 50GB (!?) of space.

I've also plowed through the backlog of Torchwood stories that were posted on LJ during my vacation. Without going into brutal statistics, I estimate that I had to read roughly twice as many stories, and tagged about the same net number as I would have pre-Children of Earth. I would despair, except that I sort of suspected that this would be the case. I also saved a bunch of stories that I didn't tag, some of which may end up working their way into the rec list. We'll have to see.

All in all, it's good to be back.

3:41am: I Have Returned
It's 2:30am, and I've reached skip=600 on LJ. Unbelievable as it seems, that actually took me all the way back to the point where I left.

The beach was completely wonderful. I managed to keep both Boo and myself from getting sunburned, despite the fact that she did nothing but run around in the mercilessly hot sun for six solid days. There were four adults to one six-year-old, and between all of us we managed to mostly keep up with her. Mostly.

There was no internet at the condo where we stayed, and I didn't manage to get to anywhere with wireless, so even with the backwards scan through LJ I still have some catching up to do. Starting with the huge pile of Torchwood stories posted in the last ten days. :)

6:22pm: Departing in Pieces
I'm leaving tomorrow morning for the beach. (Yay!) I won't have internet access for about the next ten days, so I won't be engaging in my usual hobbies of story-finding and Delicious tagging. I'm really hoping I can get occasional access and at least download stories and podcasts, because if not the ten-day backlog of post-Children of Earth stories alone will likely bury me.

I'm actually already packed, and am a little disconcerted with the crap-volume of my packing. Somehow, packing more than four shirts is not a priority, but having three spare sets of earphones is. I'm also thinking that, with my flip-flops and rubber beach sandals, bringing along my Birkenstocks as my civilization shoes might be overkill. There's absolutely no way, though, I'm going without both the PowerBook and the NetBook. And both iPods.

Let's also not mention the ten-day entertainment requirements for a six-year-old, which includes a shoulder bag crammed with sparkly pink My Little Pony accessories, three separate board games, and her own knitting bag.

*Checks priorities*

Yep. Looks good to me.

Take care, everyone!

2:24am: HTML and Accessibility
I saw this on metafandom, and think it's important to share:

Nerdy PSA by hope

It's a brief guide to some important information about using the right HTML to make your posts and/or pages more accessible to people who might, for instance, be using text-reading programs. I was really embarrassed to not know that the em and strong tags have an important function for text readers, that they actually affect the inflection of the reading, unlike bold and italics tags. I also wasn't using the title tag for my links--at least up until now--and I wasn't always careful about making the linked text informative. This is what happens when you learn just enough HTML to be dangerous around 1997-8 and never upgrade.

A lot of the information in hope's post is from the HTML Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. I feel that this will be an invaluable resource to help me join the 21st century. :)

10:21am: Boo's Beach Drawing
Every year, my mom takes myself and Boo to the beach. Boo drew a picture of the beach, and as it encapsulates our experience pretty well, I thought I'd share.

( Boo's Drawing of the Beach )