Arrant Nonsense

You know, it don't ever go smooth, does it?

So, yeah, CONduit starts tomorrow. I've decided that printing out some business cards would be a good idea, because, you know, people like them, and I only have ten right now.

The Great Registry Fiasco means that my shiny fonts are in the wrong folder, so when I open up the WP Business Card file? The fonts are wonky. Whee. I get that fixed. Sort of. Because one of the fonts I used? Isn't in either folder. Yeah, I don't know either.

And now my printer is acting up. It's been trying to delete this print job for over fifteen minutes. I just ended the task from the Task Manager, and that seems to have solved it. I guess.

*tries again*

CRAP.

Yeah, I don't even know. Maybe I'll have to get up at ridiculous o'clock tomorrow and try to figure it out then, because this sucks.

So, I'm getting ready for LTUE, as I do, and I suddenly realized around 9pm that, hey, crap, I had no business cards printed out.

And, of course, I've gone through a printer change and a computer change since the last time I printed them out.

First of all, I made them in Wordperfect. Which didn't translate well to OpenOffice for some reason, go figure. So I had to install WP, which, fortunately, I knew exactly where that CD was, so that went smoothly.

It's been the only thing that's gone smoothly.

I (finally) got the front side to print out nicely (the margins were screwy and it shifted everything up about an eighth of an inch for some unknown reason). It would print just fine on plain paper, but when I put the business card paper in, it...didn't like that. I don't even know. I fooled around with margins and formatting and stuff and finally got that straightened out.

Now I'm trying to get the little flashfics on the other side of the cards, and that's a friggin' nightmare as well, and the trick I used to move the margins isn't working. So...I don't even know. I want to leave here around 7am, which means getting up at 6:30 at the latest, and what am I doing? Wrestling with this shit.

ARGH.

ETA: And I've finally gotten them printed out to my satisfaction. Not that I'll use all this, this weekend, but it's good to have them. And now I should head off to bed so I might actually get some actual sleep before the Con.

Bwahahahaha. Yeah. RIGHT.

I HAVE WIRELESS PRINTING. And lo, it is GOOD. Also, fast. OMG.

This means that, yes, I get to send the Cow story to the next market tomorrow.

Yesterday, we got a new printer. This means I can send out the Cow story again. Yayness. However, in attempting to get the wireless thingy to actually work, I managed to frell up our "network" (such as it is). I solved that problem today by rebooting the modem, which has gotten me back on the interwebs but still doesn't solve the "how do I get this thing to work wirelessly" problem.

Oh, hey, I may even be able to print labels again, which might make my subs look a little more professional-like. We shall see, I guess.

Today, we took the Cessna to Moab to look at some property down there. Of course, when we got there, the FBO had just sent their crew car out with someone else. Enterprise had no cars at all, so we couldn't rent one. Fortunately, I'd called the real estate agent yesterday to give him a heads-up, and he was able to pick us up at the airport and drive us around. Lunch at the Moab Brewery, and now we've got a decision to make. There's one I like, a whole heaping lot (two acres backing up to BLM land, what's not to love--except it's... out a ways. But. Still. Two acres backing up to BLM land).

Also, our local airport has at least three red foxes living there, and I saw all three of them today. I got pictures, although the camera couldn't zoom them in very close because they were way out there, but it was cool nevertheless.

My printer is three and a half years old. Yesterday, it had a paper jam while printing out my pages for my Writing Buddy--and has been malfunctioning ever since. We've lubricated the bar thingy that the print head rides on, which worked for a little while, although it was spooging random ink on the pages it was printing. That's fine for stuff I want to give to my Writing Buddy, or print out for Da Boy for school. Not so much if I want to send a manuscript to a professional publication for consideration.

Then it threw more "paper jams" at me, even though the paper was in no way actually jammed.

I want a new printer. This one's been sucking at me for awhile, actually. Hubby is balking. "It should last five years," he says. I tend to agree, but what are you gonna do? I can't be printer-less.

And then, of course, I was poking through the Cow story to see if I still thought it was up to snuff, and found some egregious extra words on page 44 where my editing job fell down.

Not a good day.

*chants* I have payment in the bank. I have payment in the bank. I made my wordcount for the week and might even have a satisfactory ending. Maybe. Ben is as whole as he gets, I solved my "dramatic tension" problem (possibly by cheating, but... whatever), and I had a good weekend wherein I got to hang out with other writers for awhile.

and I'll say it again.

I have a weird S&M relationship with my own writing, and half the time, I have no idea who the sub is.

Today? It's me. I should make an icon, because damn.

I finally got a "your story sucked" letter from Writers of the Future, which, I guess, means that I can send the thing off to the next place. I guess I should, you know, make a list.

The novelthing mocketh me mightily. At least my Writing Buddy (who rocketh mighily) gave me a reason why my Bad Guy would put a starving vampire in a room with a helpless werewolf, so I should be able to bang out 500 words of effortless prose tonight. I hope.

Whether that will bring me up to my Weekly Goal is anyone's guess; I need to Do Math again.

The Ghost Ship story is stalled.

The re-write for the Abducted!Werewolf story is ... going nowhere. Yeah, I don't even know on that one.

The printer is giving me fits. Again. Maybe we should just scrap the damb thing and buy a new one. *glares* I was going to have Pages for my Writing Buddy tonight. And that didn't happen.

Feh. Feh, fie, and woe.

ETA: And my bad mood is gone, just like that. I should have checked my gmail BEFORE starting this rant, clearly. I just got an email from the handsome and talented editor of Darwin's Evolutions, he still wants the Werewolf Fic, and he's in the process of sending me cashy money.

So, I started printing out the ArtFic, to send to a Major East Coast Market.

For once, my printer is being somewhat civilized. Yay.

Then I look at my header. You know, the part that has my name, the title, and the page number on it.

And Word, in its wisdom, has decided that a document that is formatted entirely in Courier New, including the headers, should have the page numbers formatted in Times New Roman.

SO MUCH HATE FOR WORD RIGHT NOW. HATE HATE HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE.

At least I only had eight pages printed out before I caught it.

And people wonder why writers drink.

...is completely and totally SHINY, dudes.

I learned how to scan with it today. It scanned 144 photographs in a little over an hour and a half. Then I attempted to scan some negatives with it, because it's supposed to be able to do that.

Once I figured out that I needed to take out the piece of backing that was blocking the light from reaching the negatives, it did fine. That only took me about a half an hour. *headdesks* I is smrt and a colledge grad-u-ate, I is. Reading the directions a little more closely would have alerted me to what I was doing wrong. Ah, the assumptions we make.

Now, one of the cool things is that the pictures it takes from the negatives are actually slightly better than the ones it scans from the actual pictures. It takes longer. Much longer. So I'm still debating if I want to get the 15 rolls of film I still need to develop actually *printed* or not, or just have them develop the film so I can scan whatever negatives I want into pix. I'm thinking it will save me some money, but I don't know how much, and there's something about having the actual photos in your hand that somehow doesn't get old.

That will be something I will need to ponder. And maybe talk to the nice folks at the Walmart photo counter about.

It's a long drive, and the beds were bloody uncomfortable, but a good time was had by all. I took lots of pix with my shiny new camera and am overall pleased with its performance. Obviously it's going to take me awhile to figure out all its little quirks and tricks to get it to take marvelous pictures all the time, but I love not having to worry about changing the film or even getting it developed anymore. *eyes bag full of film I still need to get done from the San Diego trip* And I've printed out one of the pix on my shiny new printer ("George"). After a hiccup caused by ME not knowing what I was doing, it printed a beautiful photo of Da Boy posing next to a bronze baby elephant. Honestly, I can't tell the difference between that and one done at a photo counter.

The Henry Doorly Zoo has a baby pygmy hippo. A mini mini hippo! And it's adorable. *flails* We got to see it swim from underwater and everything. And they got a Lesser Anteater since the last time we were there, which I didn't really get any good shots of, because, nocturnal exhibit. But I did get some good ones of the aardvarks in the same exhibit; go figure. *loves on the aardvarks*

Got the taxes done today. Whee. We're getting a refund; whee again. Nothing like giving the government an interest-free loan. Makes me feel very special indeed...

In other news, I got a review for Guiding Star at FFN that made me headdesk. Again. I love my readers, really I do. But when they say things like very good! whana reade more about it.. =) so please hurry up! it makes me wonder about their reading comprehension.

I'll forgive her crappy English, since it's not her first language. But she apparently missed the big fat "Complete" that FFN has handily included in their author tools, and the other big fat "The End" at the bottom of the story itself. Did she think I was just teasing? What exactly does she want me to "hurry up" and do? I spent six weeks writing the damb thing; nine times out of ten my writing has nothing "hurried" about it unless someone sets Antubis's tail on fire, which (sadly) hasn't happened in quite some time. *shakes head* I'm glad she liked it. I'm glad she liked it enough to push the "review" button. But I'm not her personal fic-writing servant, and I have other things to write now. *eyes ficathon assignments warily*

And oh, yes. I am holding and squeezing it and naming it "George." I looooooves it, I does. I went from "Oh dear, the idea of making pins from LJ icons for the nice folks at writercon isn't going to work at all because these printouts SUCK" to "Oh my gosh, wow, photo-y goodness, these are SHINY."

After playing with the settings a bit, I've determined that the optimum size for these bad boys is an inch square. And NOW I get into legalities. Most icons are fandom-related, made from copyrighted images. Using them for LJ is toeing a fine enough line, legally, although I think the argument can be made that this is "fair use." Making a profit on them, however, is a whole 'nother biscuit.

So, I probably can't "sell" them as such. But...taking donations to cover cost of materials? That should be kosher, shouldn't it?