I have tried a number of things to solve this problem, including calling tech support, which I never thought of before. The only thing I haven't tried out of the many brilliant suggestions I've been handed is downloading Windows onto a flash drive and plunking the flash drive onto one of my USB ports and booting it up that way. I haven't tried it because a. it costs money to download Windows onto a flash drive and b. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work anyway. I think that last Windows 10 update just fried the poor little circuits on Scott. (My laptop's name is Scott. Oh, don't laugh. Everybody calls their laptop something, usually something like, "You stupid son of a--.") And, frankly, at the age of ten, Scott really needed replacing anyway.
Now, don't you worry about my data. It's all on Carbonite, so when I do get a new laptop (and it ain't gonna be this month) I can just download the whole shebang and everything will be Just LIke It Was. And, in a twist of irony, my Work in Progress is on Google Drive, so I can get to it from anywhere. That wasn't my doing. I was working on a program called Scrivener, which is from Zimbabwe, I think. (No, I never knew Africa was a hotbed of clever software programs either.) Listen, if you write anything of any length, you really owe it to yourself to check out Scrivener. I won't go into all the nifty features, but there's a lot of them, and they are nifty. And one of them is that you can work from a tablet, or even a phone, if you want, by uploading your WIP to Google Drive and connecting it to an app called JotterPad. Which is how I happen to be at the public library, little lines of text appearing on the bottom of my tablet screen as I type away with this cute little Bluetooth keyboard that was probably the best twenty bucks I ever spent. It even lights up in your choice of green, orange, pink or purple.
So I am technologically stunted, but I am not technologically bereft. And you wanna talk about your first world problems? Imagine striking up a conversation with a guy who, say, just escaped Nicaragua with his life, and all you've got to say is how much it sucks you're reduced to a tablet and a little Bluetooth keyboard. This actually happened to me once, sort of. I was in college, studying for an exam, and I made the mistake of lamenting to my neighbor how I was never going to pass this test,. She proceeded to tell me that she was from Northern Ireland. Her brother was in the IRA. Her other brother was a Black and Tan. Her dad was refusing to speak to either brother, her mother kept trying to get everyone to all get along again, and she left the country and came to the United States to go to college and get away from all the fighting. And there I sat with my test notes, feeling wholly inadequate.
(I passed the test, by the way.)
So when last we left this sordid saga, I had just turned 50, been without power for three days, and been very very very sick. You'll be happy to know I'm finally off antibiotics (I took them for just over six weeks). And since my leg didn't immediately puff up to a huge size, I think I am out of the woods. I am now wearing compression stockings, and will probably have to wear them forever. Once I got used to them, I actually kind of liked them, though I don't like the price ($40 per pair on Amazon, the cheapest place I've found them) or the fact that they basically come in two colors, black and white. While all that was going on, I missed a week of work. That was better than it could have been; the specialist wanted me to miss three weeks of work. Anyway, there is still some fallout but I'm sweeping it up and putting it into the little container with the trefoil marking as best I can.
My idiot neighbor, so called because he is an idiot, came over to our place and offered to cut our trees back (the ones along his property line) for a small fee. I said no. I have seen this guy with a chainsaw and I would not at all be surprised if he accidentally cut off his own arm or something and then sued me for damages. I hired an actual tree guy, one with employees and workers comp insurance and son on, who came to the house, did an assessment and knocked on my neighbor's door to find out when would be a good time for him to come onto the property and cut the trees back. My neighbor wouldn't let him in and apparently spent the whole of the five-minute conversation complaining about me. And didn't give him a time to come back and cut the trees. So there the matter stands. For someone who wnts the trees cut back, he's not doing anything to make it happen faster.
(By the way, in Dallas, as I imagine in most cities, if there are branches of someone else's tree overhanging your property, you are entitled to cut them back, and it's not considered trespassing to do so. So my idiot neighbor could cut them back any time he wanted to. Apparently he only wants to if it involves me paying him. Which I'm not gonna do, see above re insurance and lawsuits.)
In about two weeks I'm going to Austin for a CLE conference, and Joan is coming with me. I usually come back from these things all fired up and ready to restructure the entire office according to the guideliens of whomever spoke last at the conference. So that should be fun, for me as well as my office mates. My boss took a personal leave and will be gone probably to close to the end of the year, which has been interesting. A contract attorney is coming in to cover starting next week, which meant I got to write up synopses of all our cases so he would be able to see very quickly what's going on. I had to write these synopses without being even slightly snarky or telling jokes, which was really annoying. But anyway, it's done, it's a three-day weekend and so far I've slept through most of it.
All right, I'm going to go binge watch season 3 of The Good Place with Joan. Happy Labor Day, everybody!
(I passed the test, by the way.)
So when last we left this sordid saga, I had just turned 50, been without power for three days, and been very very very sick. You'll be happy to know I'm finally off antibiotics (I took them for just over six weeks). And since my leg didn't immediately puff up to a huge size, I think I am out of the woods. I am now wearing compression stockings, and will probably have to wear them forever. Once I got used to them, I actually kind of liked them, though I don't like the price ($40 per pair on Amazon, the cheapest place I've found them) or the fact that they basically come in two colors, black and white. While all that was going on, I missed a week of work. That was better than it could have been; the specialist wanted me to miss three weeks of work. Anyway, there is still some fallout but I'm sweeping it up and putting it into the little container with the trefoil marking as best I can.
My idiot neighbor, so called because he is an idiot, came over to our place and offered to cut our trees back (the ones along his property line) for a small fee. I said no. I have seen this guy with a chainsaw and I would not at all be surprised if he accidentally cut off his own arm or something and then sued me for damages. I hired an actual tree guy, one with employees and workers comp insurance and son on, who came to the house, did an assessment and knocked on my neighbor's door to find out when would be a good time for him to come onto the property and cut the trees back. My neighbor wouldn't let him in and apparently spent the whole of the five-minute conversation complaining about me. And didn't give him a time to come back and cut the trees. So there the matter stands. For someone who wnts the trees cut back, he's not doing anything to make it happen faster.
(By the way, in Dallas, as I imagine in most cities, if there are branches of someone else's tree overhanging your property, you are entitled to cut them back, and it's not considered trespassing to do so. So my idiot neighbor could cut them back any time he wanted to. Apparently he only wants to if it involves me paying him. Which I'm not gonna do, see above re insurance and lawsuits.)
In about two weeks I'm going to Austin for a CLE conference, and Joan is coming with me. I usually come back from these things all fired up and ready to restructure the entire office according to the guideliens of whomever spoke last at the conference. So that should be fun, for me as well as my office mates. My boss took a personal leave and will be gone probably to close to the end of the year, which has been interesting. A contract attorney is coming in to cover starting next week, which meant I got to write up synopses of all our cases so he would be able to see very quickly what's going on. I had to write these synopses without being even slightly snarky or telling jokes, which was really annoying. But anyway, it's done, it's a three-day weekend and so far I've slept through most of it.
All right, I'm going to go binge watch season 3 of The Good Place with Joan. Happy Labor Day, everybody!
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