Started out with a nice, relaxing Friday evening. Brewed some Harry & David coffee and mixed in the drinking chocolate teflaime gave us. Mmm, nummy mocha. Then watched trashy horror movies (The Craft and Jeepers Creepers II) with Hobkin curled up at my side. An excellent setting for much writing.
Got an email from a recruiter for a company in Dunwoody looking for a systems analyst. Went out to their website, and I liked what I saw. Nice benefits, and the commute wouldn’t be bad. Emailed him my resume. Waiting to hear back (I suspect not until Monday at the earliest). Hoping if they want an interview it’ll be a face-to-face one instead of a phone one.
But now the DVD burner (on our desktop) appears to be on the fritz. The computer refuses to acknowledge that it even exists. Bios is totally unresponsive. fosteronfilm can’t even get the tray to open, which is particularly bothersome because there’s a DVD in it. I’m at a loss at what to do about hardware. It leaves me feeling helpless and frustrated.
Writing Stuff
I did indeed come up with something to editorialize about for Tangent: the new Macmillan UK “New Writer” imprint, and The Guardian article about it. What did I have to say? Read the editorial!
New words: 544
On the folktale. Past the climax and starting into the denouement. Another good writing session and I’ll be at zero draft. Rah.
500/day
41
Are the power and IDE cables firmly seated in the back of the drive? Maybe switching different cables to it would help. Anyway, better a cable problem than a drive problem.
The DVD-ROM is the factory installed one that came with our system, so all the cables are internal, making them hard to get at. But fortunately, after the computer had a night’s rest, when we re-booted it, it recognized the drive again. Matthew did some other stuff to get it working, but I sort of gated his explanation of what he did out. We need to re-install Nero, but at least the burner is functioning again. Yay!
It’s a little worrisome ’cause I don’t trust it when hardware spontaneously heals itself, but I’m letting myself fall into “gift horse, don’t lookie” mode.
Get a “disk extraction tool” aka a paperclip. Unfold one bit of it. Look on the DVD drive. You should see a tiny hole on the front of the drive, usually just under the tray, for just such emergencies. Push the pointy bit of the disk extraction tool into the hole. The tray should open, allowing you to pull it open the rest of the way to get the disk out.
We’re familiar with the paperclip–>hole trick, but for some reason, the DVD-ROM doesn’t have one of those. At least in the place one would expect the emergency eject to be. Fortunately, the drive appears to have healed itself overnight. Weird. Demons maybe?
Wow, you would think Macmillan would be above such things. Sigh. Thanks for the illuminating editorial!
Glad you liked it! Yeah, I was surprised that Macmillan would be party to something so slimy. Maybe with all the backlash they’ll rethink their contract and policy. Maybe.
Macmillan
Is your computer a Dell? Mine won’t communicate with my Zip Drive.
As for the Macmillan thing, this is a pretty low blow coming from a classy outfit like them. And to hose writers on not only one book, but two? It boggles the mind. What will your donations be used for exactly? Granted, some of the so-called suckers going for this are likely untalented souls who have already exausted every avenue to publication save vanity presses, but the ones who really have a shot and are going for this need to be educated immediately.
Re: Macmillan
Our desktop system is a Sony Vaio. Normally I’m a big fan of Vaios; we’ve had good luck with them. Our burner problems appears to have spontaneously healed itself, which is a relief. Perplexing but nice.
“What will your donations be used for exactly?“
Uh, well, actually I meant that part to be mostly tongue-in-cheek. But if people do donate money via my editorial, it’ll go into Tangent‘s operating costs and therefore to bring more (hopefully) helpful and enlightening editorials by yours truly
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Re: Macmillan
Sounds like a worthy cause to me.
it’s quite scary what was in that guardian article, all the slime about leveling the field. I’m sorry, but that sounds like typical big-business philosophy: how do we get best-sellers without paying for them? I know, let’s get rid of all the expensive stuff–tours, advances, and just give the author two bucks for every copy they sell. Because authors are gullible. Publishing under Macmillian is better than running your book off on your own copy machine and doling it out on the corner, because, well…Macmillian is Macmillian! Yeah!
What’s just sad is that things like this seem to be becoming more and more common. I worry that even good authors, excellent authors, aren’t getting the opportunities they’re even entitled to…
agreed, if macmillan is not finding the talent they need, why don’t they start accepting unsolicited manuscripts again. they all but scream that this is the answer to their problem, “Like a lot of mainstream publishers we haven’t in recent years been accepting unsolicited manuscripts, but only ones sent through agents. And we are not discovering as many authors as we need.”
hmm… it’s like standing beside a fire with a hose in your hand. what could be the answer? read more freaking manuscripts? oh no, too terribly logical. the thing is, i almost could handle this as part of the self-publishing spectrum if it weren’t for the right of first refusal on the second novel. all they need is one hit to break the bank, and the author is powerless.