real life

A 3822-post collection

Plus la Change, Plus la Meme Chose

Another book, another routine. Another chain of illogic to boggle your average nypical. It goes a little something like this:

  1. Hand-writing things may be permanently portable, but transcribing it to legible text just slows me down because (a) I'm the only person who can read my handwriting (b) I can't afford to hire someone who can read my handwriting and (c) I end up reading what I've written more than typing in the thing.
  2. It really is quicker and easier for me to type directly into some editor. I have used several, but lots of people prefer documents in MSWord97 for some reason 9_9
  3. I perform all my work on a Mac. In order for my good self to translate something into MSWord97, I have to have a Windoze98 emulator, upload my book to it, make sure it's all working properly, and tweak that which needs to be tweaked.
  4. Beloved can do this way easier, they claim, but only if the document is in Markup. Or Markdown. I forget which, and it seems to be interchangeable.
  5. This has now lead to me writing everything new in something approaching Markdown, as I'm an old hat at ASCII coding and it seems the easiest possible thing I can do.
  6. I need to have some files as mobile documents, since I plan to travel and write a novel at the same time, I need a mobile Markdown editor.
  7. I had two good ones to pick from, on Beloved's recommendation: Minimalist Markdown Editor and Stackedit which uses the cloud in 0 easy steps.
  8. Since it was a massive pain in the arse to even try to install the MME, and another massive pain in the arse to transfer stuff to and from the cloud with any reliability, I am now writing my latest novel in Stackedit with the help of Google Docs.
  9. So now I'm back to writing things in ASCII code with only a very few modifiers. Amazing.

I consider myself somewhat experienced with cloud editing. I wrote KFZ on Novl'r, which was convenient at the time. Now something else is convenient... and I retain knowledge on how to use all of these. So that's something I guess.

Plus working with a Chromebook means I can fart around with my free-range fanfics if I so choose. Just a few of them, though. I know damn well that having twenty stories at once is a recipe for nothing going nowhere. Two or three is the ticket. Novel included.

Attack of the Lurgi

Of course, once winter comes, so too do the winter colds. Both my little darlings are home for a couple of days and I am beginning to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous procrastination.

Of course, delaying at writing means that I spend less time working on sorting all my beads. Now that I have a new supply of dime bags [I should really stop calling them that. Besides, my new lot are half the size of your traditional Suspicious White

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Winter has hit

I know it's not officially winter yet, but you can't fool my bod. All the signs are here. It's dark in the morning. The incidences of Lurgi are increasing. I need a jumper and a huge box of tissues in the morning... and the heater is staying on without anyone wanting to turn it off.

It's very hard to get out of bed in the AM.

I've removed the non-helpful insole from my boots, and that has been very helpful in getting

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URGH

You ever have one of those days where everything and everyone seems to be conspiring against you to make sure every last one of your plans fucks up? Even the very elements of nature seem to be against you.

That's been my entire week.

The beads I thought were fine - aren't. If I want to pump out earrings at any speed, I have to delay by making my own pins out of the aforementioned scary thin wire. Which means I have

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SNAFU^2

Turns out that a shockingly large number of my seed beads don't fit on a standard pin. This is something of a major flaw in beads, generally. If they don't fit onto the findings - what the fuck are you supposed to do?

It would cost me more to send them back, so my plan is - use what I can and get beads from a different mob when I run out of useful ones.

Also - find a profitable use for

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::inchoate groan::

There is not enough coffee in my house to help me deal with today. There may not be enough coffee in the shops to help me deal with today. The world... might have enough coffee to help me deal with today.

Why?

Because I firkin woke up at midnight and had spotty sleep thereafter. Which does not do a damn thing to assist in my feelings towards peace, love, or your average mung bean.

That on top of the trip there and

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No business today

Chaos is due to seek help in Maroochydore again. And it's one heck of a long-ass trip there and back. The sooner that the nearer clinic has help for her, the better.

The metallic sharpies have a nib width that's too wide for legible printing, so Beloved and I went on an emergency run to Officeworks by way of Spotlight for something a little narrower. So now we won a double brace of metallic gel pens that are, quite frankly, made of

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The struggle continues...

It takes longer to twist a piece of wire into being a pin than it does to measure the firkin thing. I have proof.

[Shown here: two rectangular takeout boxes, one with bits of cut wire in it, and the other with wires bent to serve as pins]

That's three hours' work. With extra swearing at the pliers I have because the spring is firkin dodgy. I have to press it back into place between pins or suffer the consequences.

The first

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Fears Allaid!

I was worried that the gold wire I have would be too weak to support the usual wear and tear on earrings. As it turns out, even though it's scary thin and scary flexible, it's also scary strong. It's not going to bend, warp or mutilate those beads off of itself in a hurry.

I am going to have to warn my customers that the strands may bend easily, and give them instructions on how to fix that if they're bothered.

Turning

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SNAFU

My plans have, once again, gang aft agley. The bronze pins are too thick for some of my seed beads, so unless I want to slow down and find the wide-bore ones, I'm going to have to make my own from the wire I have. Turns out the holes are too small for any kind of pin.

Good news: I don't have to go trawling for findings again.
Bad news: A majority of my time, today, is going to be spent on

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So close...

I really want to be able to start making earrings on Monday. I have a plausible workspace set up. I just need to sort all my beads, findings, and whatnot before tomorrow.

If I can put in a minimum of two hours' work a day on designs, then that means stock in abundance. I know that if I put in too many hours at jewellery, my body pays for it.

I'm in the last stretch of bead sorting. Which means that I've

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Beloved bought me Factorio!

So you know where the rest of my weekend is going. Lol.

But first, my usual nonse and a call to MeMum. Because family is important and all that.

And in the unlikely event that I get bored with Factorio (more likely to be waiting for my machines to accomplish a thing) I have beads to sort. Small beads. Which means that I finally busted out my Aldi's magnifying lamp. Huzzah.

Good stuff: No assembly required.

Bad stuff: I need the right

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Intense, repetative, and thankless

All efforts to translate Adapting into Markup by automated means have failed abominably. Which means that I am left with copy-pasting text and then editing in the italics.

And when I've had enough of doing that, I go to my unsorted beads and frelling sort some of those shits out.

The lovely spouted bowl MeMum found for me is not that great with small, faceted beads. Those little shits tend to clump, so pouring large volumes of them into wee baggies is

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Knuckle down, buckle down...

I'm doing my first edit on Adapting today. I might even convince myself to transfer the entire text into Markup, so that Beloved will have an easier time making it dance for me. The more work I do beforehand, the less time it takes for Beloved to have it ready for any beta readers.

I'm thinking of sending out a new appeal. I can rely on MeMum and a single Friendo, and if I am lucky and can get Beloved to get

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Beads, glorious beads!

I've got loads of the fuckers, and I'm planning to get some more. Turns out the local post office has a jewellery stand with some interesting pieces I could definitely use. Alas, I have to wait for next payday.

So if I am still going there to collect parcels, I might grab me some nice looking beads to fluff out my already huge collection of interesting shiny things.

MeMum managed to secure a good two kilos or so from her own sources.

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