technology

boring, with computer & kitten.

I have had this update window open for hours. I can’t decide if I have nothing to say or too much to boil down to a proper post.

I went from being crazy busy to not busy at all last week, so of course I managed to get a head cold. And now I’m busy again. I keep forgetting what day it is. I thought it was Wednesday for most of the morning, but apparently it is only Tuesday. That’s good, probably.

Here’s another view of Friday’s visual aid:

Shiny, shiny new MacBook Air. I keep thinking I’m going to put it down somewhere and lose it, it’s so skinny! Still getting used to it, but so far it’s been fabulous.

And now I’ve had this half-a-post in progress for several additional hours.

I might have to just face facts and admit that I am boring today. Or possibly this week. I am all to-do lists and Kleenex and learning about accounting. None of which makes for interesting blogging.

And the mailman neglected to pick up my outgoing mail. That is the height of excitement around here today, dear readers.

Here, in lieu of more interesting content, have a Tessa. She looks how I feel:

And she’s sitting on my book contract. Sigh.

By erin, ago

5 things for august 5th

  1. Nathan Bransford’s post on  “Lost” and the High Narrative Price of WTF. Nails a lot of my lingering LOST issues.
  2. My new Droid Incredible is my friend. My fancypants friend who confuses me with all its skillz & I’m still learning to type on properly, but I love love love having a phone that does more than make phone calls. Not that I can do much more than make phone calls and tweet on it right now.
  3. I am officially sick of summer and it can be glorious, glorious autumn any time now. Seriously. This humidity can die. The kitten flop-o-meter was off the charts today.
  4. I am, as you probably guessed, still deep in Revisionland. Like, Inception-style multi-level deep. It’s going really, really well, but there’s still a good long ways to go.
  5. I love when, in the midst of researching, I find historical things that walked right out of my imagination, like this House of Worth evening gown, circa 1898-1900.

By erin, ago

on working and technology

After almost a month of questionable network connectivity and trying everything we could think of to fix it, our Time Capsule (Apple wireless base station/backup device) was declared dead at the Apple Store yesterday. They gave us a new one. The network is now much, much happier and back to being quick like a bunny, and backups are no longer glacial.

*hugs internet*

Seriously, I’m a geek when it comes to my internet access. I get twitchy when I can’t check my e-mail. My Google Reader is my new best friend. Having to wait five minutes for a page to load makes me crazy. Sure, I like to unplug completely once in awhile but I don’t like having to do it involuntarily and when I have stuff to do.

These past few weeks of lousy connectivity (not completely lost, just intermittent and slow, which was almost more annoying because it was teasing me) made me realize how web-based a lot of what I do can be.

Sure, I can write and paint without the internet. I can paint without a computer at all, but I prefer typing to longhand writing. But I can’t manage anything in my Etsy store without an internet connection. Thus the sale on originals got extended longer than I’d intended, but that’s alright.

And I wonder, sometimes, if I’d be as inclined as I am to push forward with trying to get my novel published if it weren’t for the incredible presence of the publishing industry online.

There are countless informative blogs by literary agents and editors out there. I follow a handful of agents on Twitter, even. There are forums and websites and it’s all so accessible that I’ve learned buckets of stuff about an industry I had no clue about just about a year ago.

(Really. I had a vague concept of publishers and agents and whatnot but I didn’t even know what a query letter was.)

Because of all that easily accessible information I now have ideas and plans and I feel like I know what I’m doing. It doesn’t feel as daunting as it once did. The process of getting from manuscript to bookshelf seems challenging but not mystifying anymore.

I think the point of this post is that I love the internet and I’m glad my little network of computers is happy again because it makes me more productive, even though my job doesn’t seem all that technical.

By erin, ago