Good Grief - ROW80 - Preptober

 

Bedwriting

I haven't yet started the writing portion of my goals or the scavenger hunts in my files but I've done fairly well on the other aspects.  My primary focus has been on prepping for writing.  It is after all Preptober, the month we prep to make NaNoWriMo a success.  I tweaked the goal for the NaNo project though and by doing so have backed away from the rebel choice to rework a previous NaNo novel.  Instead I'm combining those characters with the characters from another previous NaNo novel and therefore creating a new novel.  See below in the goals section for details.

Tho I've done a bit of the storydreaming for the novel my main focus has been on prepping my environment to facilitate writing.  Environment covers physical locations and physical objects but it also covers self-care and time-management.

One of the things I've missed as my eyes deteriorate is writing by hand.  When I still worked on typewriters it was never on rough drafts so composing on the computers has always felt off--awkward, sterile, too much like editing even when I forbid myself to backspace or correct in any other way.  It tripled or even quadrupled my wordcount per session but the quality degenerated.  Or, let me qualify that.  The writing tends toward the quality of non-fiction when I'm composing on the screen.  Thus it works for Blogging and Journaling, Letters and Essays but it sucks the life out of fiction scenes.  I tend to write about the story instead of using all of the fiction techniques to tell the story. I've just come to accept that that is my shitty rough draft style working at the keyboard and depend on the rewrites to resolve it.

Maybe it's just because composing with pencil on paper was the way I wrote my stories for the first thirty years that was the way my brain learned to enter and remain in the storydream while translating the dream onto paper. Who knows.  All I know is I miss the old magic and want it back.  So I set out over the last several months to figure out how to make it happen.  What did I need?  Could I get it or make it?

What I have ended up with so far is a cozy little writing nest on my bed which is a mattress on the floor next to Mom's bed.  For a lap desk I'm using a cute decorated box from a craft store with vintage images of peacocks and butterflies.  It is shaped to resemble a book with the front cover being the lid and at 3 inches deep is just the right dimension to hold a nice pile of clipboards, notebooks and filler paper up to 8x11 inches and a scattering of pens and pencils.  But it was too hard for me to get the right angle of light such that I wasn't getting in my own light when bending over the page so I solved that by getting a lightbox to light the page from underneath. I can even write without turning on other lights.

To augment my vision I also have reading glasses with 3.5x magnification and another device designed for crafting and hobby work which has a set of interchangeable lenses with magnification ranging from 1.5 to 5 (I think tho I may be remembering that high number wrong).  I got them for my fiber art work but soon discovered the 1.5 worked for reading the computer screen from a 'good posture' position.  But what makes them ideal for use for handwriting in iffy lighting is the little directable light positioned just above the nose.  They have also made it possible for me to read treebooks with regular print again for more than a few minutes at a time for the first time in years.  I meant to put them in the picture but forgot.  I'll probably make them the star of a future fiber art post.  Or maybe a post about vision aids.

Another prepping activity that has been eating up the writing time is prepping my computers.  Both of my Windows computers have been acting glitchy for months.  The primary laptop a 15 inch HP went blue screen on me in July and freaked me out but it rebooted OK after a forced restart.  But that put me on a path to figure out a way to back up my files more reliably with less thinking about it.  Also while I was at it I wanted to figure out how to make changes to the same file from either computer without risking getting confused as to which one had the most recent new work or forgetting that I'd created new work on the HP that hadn't been saved to the external drive yet and then opening that file on the Acer Switch and adding new work.  What would I do then.  I could only have the external drive connected to one device at a time.

I think I have solved those issues with a My Passport Wireless Pro.  I've had it for a month but haven't broke it out of the box yet. This is partly due to the fact tech tasks had always been something I turned over to my husband and tho I've gradually learned over the years of our separation to take on some of the simpler things it was always with guidance from him over the phone or vid chats the first time I tried something new or complex.  But I was determined to figure this out at the time I ordered it.

It is just that that is when my 11 inch Windows Switch went glitchy and I have spent hours and hours trying to figure out how to fix it in the last couple months.  It seems to have choked on updates and hasn't had a successful one in nearly a year.  But it cut me off from access to admin tools like troublehooting and disc cleaning and Fresh Start which is a clean install of Windows 10 sans applications.  It also has trouble getting online and staying online which may contribute to the issues with installing updates.  It keeps warning me there are security and stability issues but reports back errors when I try the suggested task.

Because the Switch was out of commission the HP has been doing double duty which meant I was overloading the RAM with all the extra aps and tabs open and pushing my luck putting off restarts because there was so much to tend to checking on each open tab for task completion state and making appropriate notes before closing them.  As October began the NaNo panic started closing in and I realized I could not depend on the HP to see me through it if I did not have a way to split the task load again.

These are the things I used the Switch for:

• Reading PDFs  With the keyboard detached and the now tablet held portrait style the reading experience was as comfortable as reading ebooks on my android devices but unlike the 7 inch Androids the Switch screen was big enough to have a whole PDF page on the screen with fonts big enough for me to see especially with higher magnification reading glasses.  This did away with having to scroll sideway for every line of the page.
• Reading books borrowed from Internet Archive and Open Library.  Ditto explanation re PDFs.
• Reading books borrowed from Libby/Overdrive with my library cards.  Not as necessary as for PDF as I'm set up to do that on two Android devices but it was still nice. Especially when I ran the battery down for both of those devices at the same time.  And reading the Libby books on the HP--actually any sustained reading on the HP--puts a crick in my neck and between my shoulder blades because it is too bulky and heavy to pick up and hold at the right distance and angle.
• Watching/Listening to videos. Often while working on non-creative tasks on the HP such as file sorting, metadata fixing in calibre, email inbox decluttering, task list making.  Or maybe while playing a game on an Android tablet or crocheting.
• Keeping up with current events via text and video.
• Listening to music while working at other tasks on other devices or physical space decluttering, exercising on the mini-tramp (exercise is too strong a word as stand and sway is about the best I can do).
• Writing.  Mostly at the kinds of writing that didn't involve making changes to projects on the HP.  Writing exercises like morning pages, sprints, prompts, notes and musings about one of the stories on the HP. Also journaling, email, social networking and blogging.  This worked especially well with cloud based aps like Google Drive, One Note, and Evernote. Because I could open the piece from the HP and copy/paste into the appropriate file.  It was also nice to be able to write elsewhere in the house as it was more mobile than the HP due to size, weight and battery life.

There were a few more things I did with it but that is the heavy work it did and in the last weeks all of that gravitated to the HP and started pushing out the serious work.  Especially WIP in WhizFolders and Scrivener.  You see it is my habit of keeping tabs I'm planning to return to soon open in multiple aps which fills up the RAM and then as described above it becomes inconvenient to restart because the task of shutting down the aps is overwhelming so then the cache of the aps fills up and the computer gets slow and glitchy.  This was an issue with both the HP and the Switch even before the Switch went on strike.  It may also have been why the HP gave me the blue screen of death in July.  So even tho I've decided to replace the Switch this is an issue I need to work on in the category of self-management.  It is probably not conducive to productivity to have my attention always scattered that way.

I replaced the Switch with a Windows 10 tablet sans keyboard.  I could get a keyboard that docks with it but it is a Bluetooth device and nearly a year ago I got a Bluetooth keyboard that works with all my Android devices as well as the Switch.  Not the HP tho as I goofed when ordering it in not realizing it was not Bluetooth and that irked me no end as I have Bluetooth speakers, earbuds, mouse and five Android devices which would be able to access my ebook library without USB and from any nearby room if only the HP had Bluetooth.  But as soon as I get the wireless external drive set up that problem is solved.

Anyway the new Fusion5 Windows tablet arrived yesterday and I've spent many hours already getting it prepped for productivity: setting up preferences, learning my way around, introducing it to keyboard and mouse as I hate using the touchscreen for anything but a simple 'button push' act. Don't get me started on manipulating the taskbar or ap windows by touch.  I never got the hang of that with the touchpads either. 

I've also added programs from the Windows Store because I discovered that it arrived in S Mode which means it will only install aps from the Windows Store. It provides a way to exit that mode but it is a done and done deal.  No going back. And they make it sound alarming by implying that only by staying in S mode can they guarantee the stability of your device.  

But my productivity will suffer if I can't have the programs I'm used to.  The whole point of having two Windows devices was so I could have a more mobile one that could still work on the same aps like calibre, Scrivener, WhizFolders, Adobe Digital and Adobe Acrobat, Open Office, VLC video, Gimp, Doodly.  And what about Chrome and all of the Google aps including Google Drive.  All of my browser bookmarks and passwords are held by Google and accessible from all my Androids.  Why is that suddenly a problem for Microsoft?

I made a serious effort to find Windows Store aps that could duplicate as many of the tasks as possible that I'm counting on the Fusion5 tablet for but I'm clear now I'm going to have to exit S mode.

All of this has kept me enough distracted from grieving in the last couple of days that I've only wept quietly a few times. Today's tearing up was triggered once by encountering a tech conundrum and casually thinking I need to ask Ed about this and once by suddenly remembering in a moment when my attention wandered off a focused task that sometime today the funeral home had picked up Ed's body and moved it to the crematorium.  I will probably be getting a call tomorrow about next steps.  

Am not planning any service at this time due to the Covid rules.  But I've already arranged with Ed's brother to transport the ashes to the Rogue Valley when they go down later this month for his mother's funeral and they will bury his ashes with her in the family plot up in the Applegate forest.  Groves of trees were his goto for stress relief.  I know he loved it there because he said so when we attended one of his cousin's graveside services thirty odd years ago.

Stood on the scales before my shower today and found I've dropped 7 pounds in the 8 days since I learned of Ed's death.  So grief has an up side?  Good grief?!  Who knew.

Backstory highlights and high and low notes:

2013 Piles of Painted Echoes

2013 Our Broken Valentine

2013 Together We Are Amazing

2015 My Heart is the Lake of Fire

2020 Who Am I Without You?

2020 Sunday Serenity - Sorting My Stuff

2020 Of Truth and Words and Rude Epiphanies.

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 4 2020

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

NaNoWriMo 2020

2020 Round 4 ROW80 and NaNo goals:

Sleep 7.5 hours Daily Minimum --  This used to be a major challenge for me but I've got it managed since mid March.  Or at least I had until this past week.  Grief has taken a toll.

Move/Breathe/Meditate 15 min Daily minimum  -- proven to provide a high yield return on investment as whenever I've practiced any of them it stimulates creativity, memory, and insight; lowers anxiety, and increases energy, stamina and a positive mood.

Storydreaming with note-taking tools at hand. 15 min Daily MInimum -- This is a technique I learned from Robert Olen Butler in the book From Where You Dream.

Read Fiction 30 min Daily Average

Read/Study Craft 15 min Daily Average 

Social network activities 30 min Daily Minimum (writing Joystory posts doesn't count only social reaching out like reading/commenting on other blogs, guest posts and posting to fb, twitter, pinterest etc) -- something I've a strong resistance to.  The autism diagnosis helps explain this but doesn't let me off the hook.  If anything it makes it more important.  Plus this is preparing the ground for future promotion once I'm ready to publish

30 min Daily minimum engagement with a scavenger hunt though all my creative writing files including Joystory looking for better than shitty first draft scenes, sections, stories, poems and essays and edit, organize and make hard copies. --  It's been years since I've made clean copies of manuscripts in my portfolios and for most of the noveling writing challenges I've never printed hardcopy.  That is a lot of words to mine as between 2004 and 2015 I participated in more than one such challenge per year-- Nanowrimo, Junowrimo, Camp Nano, ROW80 and Sweating for Sven.among them.  That is a lot of novella length WIP just gathering electron dust.  A conservative estimate is over 20.  I've been wondering for sometime now if the neglect of these stories after the challenges were over is at least partly responsible for the storyworld's elusiveness over the last several years.  I'm hoping that this exercise in honoring their existence will cure my character's recent shyness.

To prep for self-pub: Gather all my poems into a single Scrivener file. Minimum one poem per day until all accounted for.  Adding new ones encouraged.  This will take most of the Round as there are over 80. See Poems by Joy Renee Portal.  Another exercise in honoring old work to encourage new work.

Via the above mentioned Scavenger hunt: Collect everything resembling personal essay into a Scrivener file.  Either this will be added to the self-pup poetry ebook or will become the second ebook.  Or a combo of those options.

Personal Journaling 20 min or 500 words whichever comes first Daily Minimum -- This is the heart of the writing challenge.  The preceding provides the structure and the nutrients that nurtures and honors the work which I've learned over time must exist to ensure that this becomes more than just dabbling.

NaNo Novel 1666 words per day on average. Am going to rebel a bit and bring back a previous NaNo WIP and rework it.  It is fitting because it's premise was rooted in the dynamics of my own marriage. I'm hoping this can be an exercise in grief processing. It's title is The Storyteller's Spouse and it was an exercise in 'unreliable narrator'.  The wife in my story is a YA novelist and the husband is a life-of-the-party natural born storyteller aka raconteur aka tall-tale-teller. I think the reason I got discouraged with the effort after that NaNo ended was because I had tried to lay all the unreliableness at the feet of the husband not realizing how much the wife's denial about the extent to which his storytelling was not confined to social gatherings put her squarely in the same camp. Older and wiser now.
   Am tweaking this goal to combine Storytellers Spouse with another story.  I had forgotten that I've made it a tradition since 2008 to write my election year NaNo in the same storyworld as Mobile Hopes which is set in a mobile home park called Hope Estates.  Each of the novels is set during its election year and the families in the park are living the issues that dominate the campaigns: health, jobs, housing, immigration, women's rights, law and order, climate change, race relations and so on.  Alll I have to do is have the characters move into Hope Estates and share the novel with several other families and I don't have a reworking of an old NaNo but a new story in the Hope Estates series. 

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Blue Screen Angst - ROW80 Check-In

Blue Screen Angst

On the evening of Tuesday, June 23, while my mom was preparing for bed my computer froze in the middle of a video and then presented me with the above screen.   I recognized it as the screen that announces "Your computer has a problem.  We're gathering date and preparing for a restart"  But the text was unreadable with the pixels all crawling all over each other.  Half an hour later nothing had changed and there wasn't any sounds of hard drive activity.  I planned to do a forced restart as soon as Mom's lights out ritual completed but when I returned from Mom's room the screen was black with white text that read: Please insert boot disc.

I yelled down the stairs for my nephew who came up and sat in front of the screen shaking his head for a long time.  I was freaking because I'd just realized that I hadn't backed up my files onto the external drive for months.  Not since at least last summer well before I started prep work for NaNoWriMo.  Tech geek tho he is, he had no better idea than the one I'd been planning to implement on the first screen:  forced restart.  So with my blessing that's what he did.  And I lucked out when the restart ended on the usual sign-in page and the sign-in landed me on my desktop.  But he cautioned me that since we had no idea what triggered the issue I should not open the browser nor any aps until I had rescued my files.  That way if opening a file or ap triggered another crash at least I would have my files.

That took the entire night.  The last of the file transfers happened nearly twelve hours from the moment the blue screen appeared.  By then Mom was awake and dressed and awaiting her breakfast tray.  And I had found myself passing the 24 hour mark awake for the first time since the April read-a-thon and for the only time in several months that had nothing to do with an event for which I'd planned to stay awake.  There was a time when I would have seen this as a failure because I'd broken the long streak of successful full night sleeps but I was able to see it instead as a simple anomaly and be grateful I had been able to stay awake to rescue my files and confident that it was not an harbinger of a return to hit-and-miss sleep.  I knew I had the tools and skills to get right back on track.

And so I did.  I planned my day to make sure I was ready to crawl into bed as soon as Mom was ready for lights out Wednesday night and I slept twelve hours and by the time I'd had my first coffee Thursday I felt as though nothing untoward had happened.  Mood, energy, stamina, brain power were all back to the status quo I'd been enjoying for months.

That brings me to today's events that are affecting the fulfillment of the ROW80 goals I just posted Monday.  My computer started getting sluggish late Tuesday and then it told me it needed a restart to install updates.  But I as usual had too many aps and browser tabs open with tasks awaiting completion so getting those handled had to take priority over the ROW80 goals especially any that required opening any more aps or windows.  Tho I did allow myself to open browser tabs to complete social networking tasks, visiting ROWers to see their goals and leave comments.  I probably tripled the goal for that while completely bypassing anything involving opening a word processor or Scrivener.  I wrote long comments in a few cases which might be considered a substitute for journal entries.

To add to today's angst, my sister informed me late last night that she was going to have to take Mom to the doctor today and ended up spending the afternoon and evening in the ER with Mom who'd been exhibiting signs of a small stroke since Sunday night. Mom has been spending the week with my brother's family and the symptoms weren't texbook so it took awhile for the back-and-forth texting and phone calls between my sister and my brother and his wife to lead them to that conclusion. Turns out there were no signs of stroke in the scans so it's still a mystery why her speech is slurred and she's listing to the right.

Do I need to spell it out that this has taken up a lot of mental and emotional bandwidth for the last 24 hours?  If I could have opened my journal and invested that particular angst into it that would have helped but I couldn't or rather I couldn't open the established one on my main computer and the alternatives I've worked out since and discuss below had not yet occurred to me.  i.e. having alternative journal options for emergency situations. 

Overall tho I consider the first half week a success.

2020 Round 3 ROW80 and July Camp NaNo goals check-in:

* Sleep 7.5 hours Daily Minimum --  Very Good

* Move/Breathe/Meditate 15 min Daily minimum  -- Satisfactory effort

* Storydreaming with note-taking tools at hand. 15 min Daily Minimum --  a technique I learned from Robert Olen Butler's From Where You Dream. -- Satisfactory effort

* Read Fiction 30 min Daily Average -- Above and beyond

* Read/Study Craft 15 min Daily Average -- Satisfactory effort

* Social network activities 30 min Daily Minimum (writing Joystory posts doesn't count only social reaching out like reading/commenting on other blogs, guest posts and posting to fb, twitter, pinterest etc) -- something I've a strong resistance to.  -- Above and beyond.  Probably clocked two hours each day.

* 30 min Daily minimum engagement with a scavenger hunt though all my creative writing files including Joystory looking for better than shitty first draft scenes, sections, stories, poems and essays and edit, organize and make hard copies. --  Zero effort but understandable due to circumstances so will not say unsatisfactory.

* To prep for self-pub: Gather all my poems into a single Scrivener file. Minimum one poem per day until all accounted for.  Adding new ones encouraged.  . --  Zero effort but understandable due to circumstances so will not say unsatisfactory.

* Personal Journaling 45 min or 1000 words whichever come first Daily Minimum -- This is the heart of the writing challenge.  The preceding provides the structure and the nutrients that nurtures and honors the work which I've learned over time must exist to ensure that this becomes more than just dabbling.  . --  Zero effort but understandable due to circumstances so will not say unsatisfactory.  

note to self:  set up a tree notebook journal I can default to in future and/or an Evernote notebook I can access with one of my android devices and the Bluetooth keyboard I use with them.  Having alternatives provides flexibility and encourages thinking outside the box in the midst of unexpected events and stressors. Lack of flexibility is an issue with Asperger's and if I knew how to create a measurable goal to address it I'd include one for ROW80.  These concepts just came to me while I was prepping this 'report card'.

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Taking a Switch To It

Acer Aspire Switch 10 SW5-012 10.1" Laptop 2GB 64GB 

Altho I love my Nexus 7 and seldom go anywhere without it--not even from room to room--there are some things it won't do for me:

• It won't let me play music while I read or write
• All of the office productivity aps I've tried so far suck for anything more than note taking
• Transfering those notes over to the Aspire and into my prefered Windows aps is a pain
• Reading PDFs is nigh impossible for me as they won't wordwrap so when I set the font so I can see it I am forced to scroll sideway back and forth for every line
• It won't run my favorite aps.
• 
  

The PDF issue by itself was enough to justify looking at a 10 inch tablet but when I realized I could get a refurbished Windows tablet/laptop for about the same price I got my Nexus I did look back.

It didn't hurt at all that it was also an Acer Aspire just like the refurbished 17in laptop I've been happy with for over two years now.

It took me longer to shop for the cover.  Hours and hours of reading the fine print of the tech specs on nearly a dozen 10 inch tablet w/keyboard covers.  Until I found this one the only time the SW5 model was mentioned was to rule it out.

Here is my Nexus 7 case on top of the Switch.  I can't show the Nexus itself as it's the camera.  The Switch is just a tad bigger than my 11 inch Windows 7 netbook which was my only computer between January 2010 and September 2013.  But the Switch weighs about a third of the Netbook. Even with the case.

Since it arrived on Thursday I've only been doing set up tasks with it. I haven't even tried to read a PDF on it yet.  I always seem to forget how long it takes get preferences and other settings adjusts to my satisfaction.  

I'm not going to start doing anything too serious with it until after it upgrades to Windows 10.  It came as 8.1 with elegibility for the upgrade.  It is 0000000000busy downloading that in the background.  First it had to download over 160 updates to the current system which took hours Thursday evening.

There is one thing that frusterates me but its not unique to the Switch it is a bane for me on all Windows computers and that is their insistance on using 9pt font in all their dialog boxes and their refusal to allow me any control over it like the did in Windows 95 and XP.  Their so called accessibility options add more frustration than thay take away.  The magnifying glass forces parts of what I'm looking at off the screen and I can't track it when moving the mouse to scroll over to what I need to look.  Often something else I need to see at the same time disappears off the other side.  Its very inconvienient.  And there is no excuse for it.

All of their high contrast themes except the black and white gag my eyes.  I hate the colors and they won't let me create my own version.  I worked with the black and white one for awhile on the 17in Aspire but found that loosing the cues provided by color was too high a price for the very slightly clearer fonts.  Really it looked nothing so much as white sand after birds with wet feet walked across it.

My nephew has suggested I try changing the DPI to make everything on the screen 125%.  I saw that option but it said 'not reccommended' with warnings that sounded dire to me.  Whenever it says 'not reccommended' I feel guilty as I did as a child when my Dad frowned at me when I disregard and unless I know absolutely for sure the possible consequences I can't bring myself to disobey.

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Up Time is Over -- ROW80

Up Time: 78:09:00:17

Per my stated intent in Sunday's check-in I got the overdue update and restart accomplished in time for today's check-in.

The state of my desktop as revealed in the screenshot for last check-in plus the sluggishness of the computer due to having so much open at once on top of being deprived of updates and restarts really cramped my productivity on all fronts.

But in order to get that restart done I skipped sleep last night altogether which is also a poor choice for encouraging productivity.  It wasn't intentional.  Especially since I knew I was to be on duty with Mom from noon to midnight.

I had finally got all the aps and tabs closed about 6:00 am and was imagining a quick update and restart and then off to bed for 4 or 5 hours before time to make Mom's lunch. Instead the updates were still downloading when Mom got up at 7:30 and I helped get her breakfast and when I got back it was still at only 4%.  I was beginning to wonder if something had gone wrong and it was just spinning its wheels.

But I'd fixed my 'breakfast' too and so I called up the browser and watched Malcolm in the Middle while I ate and waited.  Still at 4%.  It was around then I got the idea for this post and started doing what prep I could without the picture that I wouldn't get until just before the restart.  By 9 it was finally in the teens% and by 10 it was heading into the 50s where it got stuck for another hour.  It finished downloading about 11:30 and then started the installs which took nearly an hour.

I grabbed the screenshot and started the restart just before heading in to fix Mom's lunch.  Once I served her tray I came back to check and found it on the desktop but asking for more updates which took another hour to download and install including another restart.  During which time I was having lunch with Mom, reading to her and then cleaning up the kitchen with occasional darts into the office to see if I needed to click a button or type a password.

It was 3 in the afternoon before I was safely back up on the desktop for good.  Then I discovered that my Bluetooth speakers would not connect to anything but the system sounds and it took me at least an hour to figure that one out.  By then I had about an hour before time to go figure out what's for dinner and fix it.

And you wonder why I keep putting off the restarts.

There was a lot of personal-life drama going on in the interstices of that day.  It's nothing new just another refrain of the same old song.  One that I sang here two years ago this coming week.  But its a song that, like bindweed, tends to strangle all competing songs.

I wonder sometimes whether there is some magical ratio of personal drama to storytelling drama for writers such that when the mix is ideal the ability to produce excellent stories is optimal but when the ratio is skewed so there is either too much personal drama and it's choking the life out of the stories or not enough personal drama and there are never any storyseeds to be planted in the first place.

Because I've learned in the last two years that whenever I'm steeped in the personal dramas I'm telling myself that story from five dozen angles 24/7.  How could there be room for anything else?

I'm pretty sure that has played a role in the sparsity of new word-count and completed edits in the last two years.  Maybe several before that.

My Round 1 intentions: seek to regain my joy/Joy in writing and to prepare the soil for its blooming with these time investment goals:

• Storydreaming 15min Daily (I never lost this one since instating it in my first round in 2012.  A ROW80 win!) 100%
• Read/Study Craft 15min Daily 50% (reading blog posts on topic)
• Move/Breathe/Meditate 15min Daily 50%
• Personal Journaling 15min Daily 0%  [this should be added before next check-in.  it was the needed restart making me reluctant to open another ap, file or tab before the restart.]
• Read Fiction 30min Daily 100%
• Social network activities 30min Daily (writing Joystory posts doesn't count only social reaching out like reading/commenting on other blogs, guest posts and posting to fb, twitter, pinterest etc) 50% 

Current Joy Meter: under 50%  That is up from a dip into the teens last weekend.  Mood has been volatile.  I'm starting to practice mindfulness for brief minutes several times a day.  Either its helping or this is just another normal fluctuation of the mood cycle.  But I've not had a meltdown in over a week..

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Up Time -- ROW80 Check-In

Screenshot of  My Entire Screen

I have been working since Friday afternoon after Mom left to spend the weekend at my brother's at getting my computer ready for a restart and update.  No one would believe it without proof so I took a screenshot of the entire screen after arranging for as many as possible of the open aps, browser windows and tabs to be visible.  To top if off I show the Task Manager with the clock counting the hours since the last restart circled.

They call it 'Up Time' and as of this afternoon it stood at 75 days 10 hours.

This is what comes of using open windows and tabs as a to-do list.

My sister has gone after Mom so my time to focus on this task is ending and it isn't much better than when I started.  Some things were closed.  Other things were opened.

When I bring tabs or windows forward to close them I start working on the task they represent instead of bookmarking or noting the task in my actual task list.  I started reading ebooks.  I started watching videos opened via links in emails. I returned to research represented by Google search tabs and the tabs opened via its links. I lurked on social media.  I fiddled with Calibre ebook library metadata. And I started working on the Candy Kiss rewrite after allowing it to sit on the taskbar since early December without touching it!

And of course, after getting the idea for the screenshot, I reopened things I'd already closed for the photo op.  And started using them again.

This is seriously impacting (as in jarring crunch and derailing) all my goals.  ROW80 and health and business and crafts and relationships.....

I was really hoping that this check-in was going to be about the update and restart past tense.  But instead I'll have to declare that it is my intent to have completed the update and restart before Wednesday's check-in.

My Round 1 intentions: seek to regain my joy/Joy in writing and to prepare the soil for its blooming with these time investment goals:

• Storydreaming 15min Daily (I never lost this one since instating it in my first round in 2012.  A ROW80 win!) 100%
• Read/Study Craft 15min Daily 30% (reading blog posts on topic)
• Move/Breathe/Meditate 15min Daily 10%
• Personal Journaling 15min Daily 0%
• Read Fiction 30min Daily 50%
• Social network activities 30min Daily (writing Joystory posts doesn't count only social reaching out like reading/commenting on other blogs, guest posts and posting to fb, twitter, pinterest etc) 20% 

Current Joy Meter: under 50%  That is up from a dip into the teens last weekend.  Mood has been volatile.

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Sunday Serenity

Bradley's Not Too Sure About This Thing

 Bradley joined in on my quiet afternoon of reading ebooks and organizing ebook files and metadata on three devices--Blaze, Nexus and Aspire.    He'd been nudging my hand holding the Blaze up to the Nexus camera, jostling my shots.  Then one of my alarms went off.

He backed off and crouched like he was guarding a mouse hole with a lion inside.

I also had to do some maintenance with the Blaze as it was screaming about low memory after I reinstalled Amazon and MoonReader Pro and several other aps that had been on the sd card that died a couple weeks ago, crashing the phone and taking to its grave the over 200 photos stored on it.  Along with the dozens of ebooks and half a dozen audio files.  And the aps.

Those were all just copies of files safe on other devices or in the cloud.  The original before edit photos taken with the Blaze had not been.  At least not by me.  I discovered later that most of them had been backed up by Google and/or Picasa but there were over a dozen missing--pictures of the bookmarks I gave my Aunt and cousin when they visited in October, a series of pictures taken as I repaired the hole in the afghan Mom crocheted as a teenager, some of the pics from the beach, some from the box sort project in the basement, some from my split chin, some from the run on the dike with my cousin's wife.

I had blog posts in progress waiting for me to edit the pictures and upload them.

The Entertainment Desktop
on My Blaze

As you can see I have six book aps and no games.  I find the screen too small to enjoy games.

My MoonReader Bookshelf

In the pic at top the Blaze is showing the Kindle bookshelf.  I found some of the memory I needed to allow backups again and a reinstall of Chrome by removing dozens (hundred+?) of books from the Kindle and GDrive 'keep on device' files which apparently aren't stored on the sd card.

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Stardate What Now?

What could you do with the world’s smallest 3D printer? Klaus Stadlmann demos his tiny, affordable printer that could someday make customized hearing aids — or sculptures smaller than a human hair. (Filmed at TEDxVienna.)

Can anyone tell me what the Stardate is?  The Star Trek replicator is now here.  Maybe the transporter is next?

I am over-the-top excited about 3D printing.  I can imagine a hundred applications a minute just in my areas of interest.  For starters:

• creating that miniature bodkin for tucking the beginning and ending threads on my thread crochet
• beads of every size, shape and color
• scrapbook misc
• Christmas ornaments
• cake decorations
• babydolls
• knickknacks
• jewelry and jewelry making misc
• organizing containers in custom sizes
• bookmarks
• shoes with perfect fit
• replace missing parts
• toys
• puzzles
• games

Imagine taking the web entrepreneur concept to the next level.  Today many of the online stores sell digital products like ebooks, music and video.  What if they could sell physical products that you download the minute you pay.  

Of course it is still a digital product--the program that instructs your own 3D printer in making the physical item so you would be supplying the raw materials in the substance used by your 3D printer.  Of which there are quite a few alternatives already though each alternative raw material requires its own printer.  

The materials in use already include paper, plastic, nylon, metals, ceramic.  The printers themselves come in various sizes from large industrial sized that can make things the size of a car and bigger down to this small one featured in this video.

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For Net Neutrality SNIPS InterTubes

Net Neutrality = Neuter the Gatekeepers

The FCC's Net Neutrality Proposal Is Out: It's Time to Make Our Voices Heard: 'via Blog this'

Net Neutrality on Wikipedia

This is a more complex topic than I thought going in and after reading arguments on both sides I feel incompetent to make my own with cogent logic.  So I admit flat out that I'm taking my stand on gut feeling.

Just based on the lists of proponents and opponents to Net Neutrality legislation and regulation I would have to choose the proponents to stand with as I respect the range of philosophies and political affiliations of most of the names I recognize whereas I cringe at most of the names I see on the opponents list.  Some of whom I know think library users are freeloaders and would consider me a parasite for needing tax payer support and like to talk about boot strapping yet are now advocating for having those bootstraps cut just as I'm about to lift myself up by them.

A partial list of proponents and opponents is in the Wikipedia article.

I find the idea of an ISPs ability to discriminate data transmission based on ability to pay a downright deathknell to the inde startup entrepreneurs like I'm hoping to be.  That they have and thus could be allowed to use the technology to decide how fast data between my business sites and my customers and clients can move based on whether I can afford to compete with billionaire corporations able to pay for premium service that provides their data cutting edge speed makes me alarmed that my prospects for success have been neutralized.

Even more alarming is the ISP capability of censoring data according to content or the application it was created by and for.  Audio Visual, including VOIP, being slow-streamed for non-premium customers for example.  I imagine with horror what that could mean for my vid chats on Google and Skype with Ed or the book trailers for my self-pub ebooks.

What if they can discover the political or religious views contained in the data and censor it according to their own preferences?

And there have already been attempts by ISP to redirect traffic to a premium client from their competitors.

What would all this mean for the non-profit organizations?

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Scrivener and the Whiz

Scrivener

 At this time last week I was having very intense, long, focused and productive sessions with the rewrite of my story Blow Me a Candy Kiss.  Then I got the idea that I needed to go ahead and get Scrivener so I could use it's storyboard and split screen abilities.  I'd used a free trial for NaNoWriMo in 2011 and by winning was eligible for a 50% discount in December of that year but dithered too long.

By winning Camp NaNo in April I was again eligible and leaning hard towards getting it.  So last Friday I did.  After three days working the interactive tutorial and three days getting the working rewrite draft set up I'm am finally ready to get back down to business.

Left to Right: WhizFolder main window; WhizFolder Editor Window; Word Pad

 This is what my desktop looked like when I was working on the story last week.  On the left is the main window of WhizFolders my preferred note taking, resource organizing and rough draft application for over a decade now.  In fact if you include the years I used its precursor, WhizNote, it's nearly two decades.  I'll continue to use Whiz as before for most info organizing and rough drafting tasks.  I can't imagine my days without it.

In the middle is the Whiz tabbed Editor window.  When working a draft hard I set it up like this so I can have one topic window open in the main window for reference as I type in the other.  It might be an earlier draft of the scene I'm working on or another location in the same draft or notes relevant to the paragraphs I'm working.  Scrivener's split screen function does this well in a single window.   But that isn't enough of an improvement to warrant switching out of Whiz for revising the rough draft.

The rightmost window is the Word Pad draft of the story I sent to my one Beta Reader who sent it back with her commentary embedded in the draft with distinctive fonts or highlights.  I was going to import it into the Research section of the Scrivener draft to make it available for the split screen but I'd already put the original copy of that draft there so instead I'm copy/pasting her comments into the comments function attached to the same line in the story in that 1990 draft.  They will then be available via sidebar or a hover text in the draft.

Scrivener Split Screen

That comment function is handy also for tagging something needing fixed that I come across while scrolling past on another task. It would also work for transferring the notes I scrawled on the hardcopy as I read Les Edgerton's Hooked. Today while setting up the rewrite draft I found several places where I'd left a sentence or a dialog exchange unfinished due to an interruption while working last week.  Luckily I still remember what my intentions were and was able to tag them and indicate those intentions in a comment.  I had good ways of doing the same thing in Whiz so, tho it is slick looking and invisible until I need it, that wouldn't have been enough to pull me away from Whiz for drafting beyond the rough first draft.

Basically it's the storyboard that was the draw.  I need that function for taking my unstructured rough drafts (all those WriMo messes) and creating the architecture of a story that works. The hierarchical outline Whiz uses is great for a lot of things in the way I work but I couldn't make it work as a substitute for a storyboard.

Ironically it was the storyboard like way that WhizNote functioned with its endless desktop on which I could open the individual topics and move them around at will that got me hooked on Whiz.  After I got WhizFolder I kept WhizNote in use for that storyboard feature as long as it was supported. That support ended with Windows XP so after I got my Windows 7 netbook in January 2010 I scrambled for substitutes and found possibilities in Xmind, Freemind, and the Celtix script writing software but they each seemed more of a distraction than a help.  It's possible I just didn't give any of them enough time for familiarity of their function to tip my focus off the tool and onto the story.

As for Scrivener I'm excited about the prospect of working a clean draft in an uncluttered environment.  In the spirit of that need for no clutter I think, since most of my novels in progress are really collections of short stories, I will create a Scrivener file for each story for storyboarding and drafting through to the final draft.

For drafting I want to keep the distractions as few as possible. Thus for the novels if I open one at all it would only be for storyboarding the collection of stories into a coherent arc.  I can think of two exceptions. Both are multi-POV (20+) using short vignette or flash fiction pieces that wouldn't hold their own outside the structure of the novel.

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A Nexus of Aspirations

Nexus 7 in Keyboard Case

Another one has fallen off my Lust List.  I've been wanting the Nexus 7 since 2012.  Even before my netbook began acting up.  I wanted it primarily for an e-reader.  I liked that it was about the size of the smaller trade-back--one size up from the paperbacks.

Then when I learned they made keyboards as accessories for them I saw a lot more possibilities.  That is why I made the keyboard part of the original order and not something I'd plan to get later.  For this makes the Nexus 7 as much a writing machine as a reading machine.  And that's huge.

Naked Nexus 7 on ASUS Aspire

When my new 15 inch Aspire became my primary working machine in late August, I lost the portability of the 10 inch netbook.

Sure it is still a laptop and still small enough to pack around.  Technically it's portable.

But practically it isn't.  It is always a major production to get all the cords untangled--power, headphone, USB chargers--all the aps shut down to save battery, and then packed up with whatever accessories I can't do without--mouse and mouse pad, thumbs, earbuds...

It can take longer to do this than it takes to get dressed.

So I seldom moved it off it's desk.  Whether away from home or just to another room, I rarely took it with me.

This had another repercussion in that I hated to be without it so I resisted going places.

Nexus 7 Keyboard Case Closed

The case and keyboard were a unit--a single product.

The view above is of the side the tablet is ensconced in.  The round hole top left accommodates the camera.  The nearly square flap with a lifting tab in the middle is the stand that props the keyboard at the right angle for typing as seen in the top picture.

Closed Nexus 7 Keyboard Case Side-by-Side with
the Hacker Rules for Writer's
a 5X8X1 inch book

Here you see the keyboard side which is fairly featureless.

ASUS Netbook Cradles Nexus 7

The keyboard is Bluetooth.

The pictures above and below compare its size as a unit with my netbook and Aspire.

Nexus 7 on the Lap of Aspire

This is not a review.  You might say it's an announcement.  I'm still on the steep slope of the learning curve and the rocky path between factory and personalized.  It will be awhile before I get all the aps I need in place, the files I want downloaded and all the settings established.  I'm still working at that for the Blaze smartphone that Ed got me for my birthday in November so I expect a similar experience.  Tho it helps that the Blaze and the Nexus run the same Android OS..

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Friction 'tween Artist and Machine

For the last three days I've been having adventures with the Speech Recognition ap on my Aspire laptop.  Wednesday I'd got the 'bright' idea that I would have a better chance of reaching my 50K if I could just talk and let the computer type it.

Ha.  Shows what I know.

It might work once I've taught the ap to recognize my speech patterns and all the special words for my story world.  That's probably going to take weeks or even months of steady practice stopping to correct every mistake immediately.  Which is not a good way to stay in that dreamy place where the story lives.  It means inviting the editor harpies in when they are least wanted or needed.

I did get over 8K words in under 3 hours but I can't really use more than 15% of them for the NaNo draft.  It consisted mostly of me saying the same word or phrase over and over in hopes it would show up right or enough so I could expect to recognize it next week or next month.

That eventually devolved into me talking back to the ap calling it names and saying things like:

• I did not say that.
• What?
• NO
• That's not right
• How did you get _____ out of _____
• This isn't going to work is it?
• Oh am I talking too slow?  Try to keep up with this
• Are you even listening to me?
• And you're supposed to be assistive?
• You doofus!
• Are you retarded?
• What planet are you from? 
• Ah so you can get planet right as long as I'm not talking about Mourna's planet.
• Give me a break
• You are garbling every word
• NO NO NO NOT gargling furry worms
• nope not Greta Garbo forms either
• not gobbling 4 warm seas
• I said you are garbling every word
• NO NOT gambling better or worse
• nor gurgling ovary womb.
• OMG You are incorrigible!  CHEW ON THAT ONE

That last as I left the room to go eat turkey dinner with the family Thursday evening.  When I read what was typed later I found the word incorrigible correct but little else of my parting lines.

Thursday evening when Ed and I started our vid chat I was getting no audio and he suggested I close the speech ap and as I fussed with it I was talking to it just like before when I was alone not realizing he had fine audio as well as picture. I was loud, animated and snarky,

When I returned to the Gmail Talk screen he was cracking up.  That's when I started wishing I had a video recording of the hour or two exchange between me and the ap before dinner Thursday.  I bet it would go viral if I uploaded it.

Below, for your amusement, I've taken the first 600 or so words of the old draft of the story I'm doing for NaNo, broken it down to phrases short enough to fit on one line (I hope here too) and then one by one I placed the cursor under the line and read the line aloud.  After the ap typed it's version, I moved the cursor under the next line.  And so forth.

It's actually doing better here than with the rambling thoughts I was using before.  But this is also done after I started teaching it names for people, places and things.  You should have seen me trying to get it to get Mourna or mourning mother,  or wailing womb right the first day.



Warm is his body and alive.
Warm ease his body and Mary

Secure in my arms, next to my heart, my son.
Secure and my arms weeks to my heart my some

Soft and supple his skin, deep and dazzling his eyes.
Soft and supple and skin guy and that's just one

Blue eyes that gaze into mine.
Allies that gains and to move

Soul to soul a bond of love is forged.
Soul to sollemn or bombed of mountains form

Stronger than the strongest steel.
Stromberg and the strongest below

More enduring than diamonds.
More and during the Indonesians


To hold him, to touch him, to kiss his rosy cheeks,
To hold them to touch cancers Wilson cheeks

to caress the smooth skin, to lay my finger gently on his throat
To caress the SMS king and Tulane receiver Jon Ley norms to

and feel the pulsing of his tiny veins
Until the close and Kingston Womb's

and know that life is in him and that life from me.
And all that life is an him and that might be

Passionately possessive I feel, ferociously protective.
Passionately incessantly of motions to

No harm shall come to him.  I will prevent it with my life.
No harm shall come to him or will prevent it was more like


He is mine and only mine, I think, and yet know that he is his own
He is among the OM-and that No-one to use his own

and the Womb’s above all.
In the Womb's and of all

 And sooner than I wish he will break free
In Sudan and I wish and we're treating


into the private world of his own soul.  He will assert his independence,
And as a private moment is Womb's shall most surgeons and an


leave my arms empty and yearning once more,
Leave my arms and to nine months.


declaring his dominion over the earth as all men have since the Advent.
Declaring his dominion over bars their zone in Iraq since the advent


But for now he belongs only to me
Walter now he belongs only to me


and the union of our souls is more passionate,
And the human reversals is more passion

more galvanic than that between a man and a woman,
More durable than the market and random

more profound than that between a soul and its Augmentor.
More profoundly not that of the sollemn often

***********************

Mourna awoke.
Mourna will

Tears washed out from beneath her lashes as she blinked her eyes open.
Tears were still were when the two lashes and she went to wrestle

Dreaming again.  Such strange dreams.
To remain in which drains during

Thoughts so foreign to her
Not so foreign to

 that even the images and words used to form them
The league and the images and words used to form an

had a strange feel to her as the dregs of the dream floated in her mind.
I was strange filter and some traits of the gym will that one

Augmentor.  She formed the strange word silently with her tongue.
Augmentor sheet from the strange words sound have come

The word did not belong to her.  But she still felt the emotion it conjured up.
The warden of the winter she still throw them in motion the computer

Awe and utter trust.
On a interest

And beneath that was the straining of energies harnessed and directed….
in banni they are was a string of human genes arms and directed


The images were fading.
The images were fading

She could never hang onto them for more
She could never hang on to them for more

than the moments it took her to come fully awake.
Then the moment a checker becomes only way

All that was left was the feel of an infant’s supple skin
A lot was left was a human being and supple skin and

and blue eyes gazing into hers.
A blue eyes gaze and others

And with these a feeling of desolation washed over her.
And of these issue in consolation were still

She came fully awake then, crying out,
Seeking fully awake and Karen L

"My baby.  Oh my son, I want my son."
My baby Only son of workplace and


And with the sound of her own cry
And while the sound of her own party

she remembered, and knew she would never see him again.
She remembered and then she would never see them even

A wave of desolation inundated her.
All or even desolation media are

Even now Jamyl could be dead.
The amount to milk the tour

 But no, somehow Mourna was sure
But no hot summer murder was sure

 that she would know when Jamyl no longer lived.
When she would know when gene Wunderlich

There was a bond between them,
There was a bond between

indefinable but indestructible.
Indefinable that investor

It had been there almost from the moment she became aware
It had been the wrong was from the moment she became aware

that life was growing within her.
That life was going in and

Jamyl had been torn from her arms,
John build up in tone arm around

had been banished from the Body.
Kevin bannished from the body


But only death could truly separate them.
That only god can truly separate and

 And that death would come soon for Jamyl.
And that doesn't come some regional

A matter of hours.
A matter of hours

And with his death total desolation of soul for Mourna.
And with his dad told us wish and sold them mournign

Her soul wailed within her
We're so well with them

and instinctively she put her hands to her belly
And it's taken when she commands to grow

where so recently he had lain curled.
We're so recently have rankled

A slight swelling still remained
This rights will instill in range

to testify to the truth of his existence.
To testify to retrieve the present system

There was an ache in her womb and an emptiness.
There was a naked woman in Kings

She felt the emptiness consuming her.
She felt being and is consuming for

Could she survive the death of Jamyl?
Can she survived the cut that amount

Did she want to?
Teach you want to

NO!  the answer screamed within her heart
No-one the answer screened within the report

like the cold winds of the Season of the Far Suns.
Like a cold winds of the season of that are signs

She must hold her son in her arms again or die!
She was older son and her arms again old daughter

With that thought she sprang to a sitting position on her sleep-couch,
With that thought she spread to a sitting position numbers retur

every muscle tense, every sense alert.
Every muscle tents and son to work

She must rescue Jamyl!
She must rescue Jamyl

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Morning Cuppa

This was the first picture taken with my Blaze 4G smartphone.

I took this picture of my breakfast because I was amazed how much it looked like a cup of fancy espresso coffee.  It is not.  It is my hot farina aka cream of wheat.

I doctored it with cinnamon, sea salt, Truvia and Pumpkin Spice before adding the water and heating and water was absorbed by the wheat.  Then added a tablespoon of peanut butter and a half cup of applesauce and heated it again.  By then I could tell I had not added enough water at the beginning as it was so thick it accumulated on the stirring spoon in a big clump that would not fall off.  So I added a third of a cup or so of water and heated again.

When it was just the right thickness for my taste (which is on the soupy side) I filled the 16oz cup two thirds full.  Then put a big dollop of plain yogurt on top with a couple teaspoons or so of half and half around the rim,  Then I sprinkled flax seed and hemp hearts over the top and gave the pumpkin spice jar a few hard shakes over the surface.

I spent many hours again today with my fingers glued to the Blaze,  But I had three clear goals:

1. figure out why I still can't make or receive calls. Very frustrating since the main reason Ed wanted to do this for my birthday was so we could communicate more often during the day.  We've only connected via the phone three times and they were all cut off after a short time.  Most attempts don't even get through.
   
   It's still a mystery but I think we're closer to solving it. Two error messages keep getting are clues.  One saying the SIM card is not ready.  The other saying something about not registered on network.  And that last seems to have something to do with using the Wifi here for calling.
   
2. get ebook aps for all the formats my ARCs come in and get all my ARCs loaded on the Blaze.
   
   I have Kindle and Adobe aps now but still need to find an epub reader.  Still haven't loaded any books and am thinking will run into the same problem as with any other attempts to connect device to device.  Error messages.
   
3. the third goal was to gather all the aps etc. needed to create a blog post start to finish.  Learn to use the camera.  Find and learn a photo editor. Learn methods for sending the photo where I can access it with Blogger.  I was hoping Picasa but every time I tried I got error messages.
   
   I have Blogger and Google Drive, Gmail and Google Calendar.  And having listened to Ed rave about it for months, I got EverNote.  That might have solved the problem of getting files to where another ap or device can access them as it apparently syncs across devices and interacts with several common aps.
   
   I wanted to be able to make this post start to finish from the Blaze but finally had to give up and email the photo to my sister so I could get to it via my Gmail on the Aspire to download it.

But if I had succeeded in creating this post from the Blaze, it would have been much shorter--little more than a caption for the photo explaining: 1st pic taken with Blaze.  1st post created from Blaze.  Because it is still a challenge getting any text typed on those tiny touch keys.

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My Fingers Should Be Smoking Hot...

The CNET Review

...having been glued to my new Blaze smartphone all afternoon and evening, from the moment Ed tried to call me on his lunch break and it didn't work thru the Gmail texting trying to solve that and then after he had to go right on thru until he messaged me again when it was time for our evening vid chat. Just over six hours.

This is my birthday present from Ed.  He put me on his plan and had the phone sent directly to me via UPS.  It arrived yesterday afternoon but I didn't know until evening as my sister knew I was still working on that review that was late going up and then she forgot to tell me until I came out and opened the front door looking for it after Ed, via Gmail chat, had told me that was where tracking said it was.

Actually it was Mom who told me my phone was on the couch and Carri overheard from the other room and explained why she hadn't brought it directly to me and apologized for forgetting after I had the review posted.  That's a good example of ADD at work in a family of multiple attention issue sufferers.  Knowing the danger of distracting me before an important task was completed, my sister had my back when choosing not to interrupt me.  But then her own ADD played a role in keeping it from me for an extra two or three hours.

 Carri and her son both have official diagnosis of ADD.  She getting hers after her son got his in grade school.  She then saw many of the signs in our Mom and our brother and his eldest son and me.  My brother's son did get the diagnosis while still in  high school.  As for me, no official diagnosis, but the med nurse is augmenting treatment of my depression/anxiety issues with ADD meds since it does run in our family.  But since attention issues are also a big marker in depression and anxiety it would be hard to sort out where to lay the blame.

Then there are attention issues atypical of ADD like those Mom now has caused by her stroke--memory loss and mild aphasia among them.  And like the weird hyperfocus thing both me and my sister's son do in which we stay intensely focused on a single task, topic, worry or activity for hours and even days at a time. Which is what happened to me today once I got started learning my way around the Blaze--settings, preferences, aps, touchscreen maneuvers, touchscreen keyboard, menus, widgets and so on and on.

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From Cranky to Calm in NaNo Seconds.

moar capshuns and kittehs  see  share   caption  vote

I went looking for a picture on cheezeburger.com with a cat looking at a computer screen, maybe paw on mouse or keyboard.  I wanted to make a caption that was a rant about malware and obnoxious ads that pop up on top of what you are looking at.  Because I'd just spent over an hour trying to figure out how to get rid of the ads that were overlaying my Blogger Create Post with links on top of the command icons!  I'd never seen ads on that page before and never seen anything like pop ups or banners on any of the Google aps.

I tried reloading the page, closing the tab, closing the browser, trying a different browser.  They just kept coming back.  I couldn't work on my post and it was already past my bedtime.  I was tired and cranky and starting to panic.  Then I happened to notice a very faint grey line of tiny text that said "Ads not by this site".  I Googled the phrase and discovered I had malware.

I learned I needed to uninstall the program with that name and disable and remove the browser extension.  I did the first with no problem but could not find the extension in Chrome.  I'm afraid the thing will replant itself during the next restart.  Memories of the whack-a-mole game I played with the worm that took over my laptop in 2006 flooded back. I do not have time for another such go-around.

The weeks I wrestled with that worm were the start of my blogging stepping up from once or twice per month to several times a week because I needed to vent. I'd go find the link to the one where I first used the phrase "whack-a-mole' to describe the encounter but I don't have time.  I need to be awake for vid chat with Ed in three hours.  Tomorrow I see my counselor and that is going to eat up the whole day.  My sister has an appointment in Portland for that same hour so I have to be ready when she leaves to take Mom to our brother's.  At 12:30.  Two hours early. Then hang in the waiting room another hour or two after.

Anyway... This picture caught my eye because of the laptop but with no cat 'working' the computer it wouldn't work for my plan.  But I kept coming back to gaze, drawn to it by some some deep and strong current in my psyche.  I yearned to crawl inside that picture and sit at that keyboard and type as I listened to the water below flow and the breeze stirring the leaves and the kitten purring and the birds twittering.

Within a few minutes I noticed that I was much calmer and no longer wanted to rant.  I decided I needed to caption this pic.  I was about to look for an author quote to grace it but a stray thought rose like a dolphin leaping from the sea:  Wouldn't this be perfect for NaNo?

I had my theme and an hour later I had my caption.

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