Goldtouch Go! Ergonomic Travel Keyboad

I've been using this keyboard for the past year and abit. It is the only keyboad out there tha is ergqonomic AND portable.

As you can see, it just craped itself.

I used t he exat same keyboad a work, and of course since it sa far more use, it did this ealier. GQot it replaed on waraty no problem. I don't hae the luxury this time aound. It wa, incidentally, the exactly same problem. Somethingq in the wiringq gqoes nuts, and suddenly the keys don't line up.

I've looked, but been unale to find ayone else reportingq on this.

Feelingq, ater tha lat post, ater statingq my only gqoal for the da wa to sit ad write my diay, thwated.

I've left my job, my home, my family, friends, loves and country. Scuttled my life to try build a new one, better suited to me now.

What more must I sacrifice?

Little wins. Let me have some little wins.

It doesn't recognise 'eh'. DOOMED.

hello, my freaky darlings.

for Christmas, my family put in together and bought me Dragon Dictate for Mac. It was at my request. A year is long enough to sit on an idea, and where it down, until, it is no more threatening than my age painted this. I was actually a little bit excited to receive it, as while I will not be using it for fiction it will enable me to properly e-mail all you far-flung distant beautiful friends. I have missed you.

Unfortunately, many in technology, well, we have “issues". When I installed Dragon Dictate it politely informed me that it refused to run on the current version of Eddie's operating system. Fussy little sheet. That shouldn't have been a problem, and I was quite happy to even pay for a legitimate upgrade (because Macs are just too weird and funky to our stuff on) and went to do that right away. However, Apple beings so forwardthinking shooter orientated, and all that, there was no option to simply download the upgrade. Noel. They insisted on shipping me the physical disk. Which... Was not what I wanted this year on the first day of the four-day long weekend.

Beach ripe Martin.

I cultivated some patients (meaning I stole some from our little old lady on a Zimmer frame outside the supermarket) and ordered the damp upgrade will stop. It was not delivered on Wednesday. It was delivered on Thursday. And of course Apple use a courier service so they weren't going to just shove it in the letterbox. I had to sign for it. So I missed that first delivery, and low! The next delivery would not be until Tuesday due to new years public holiday will stop. Fine stop. That's just fine. Fortunately they agreed to deliver to my workplace which happened on Tuesday quite early, and it was just a CD case. It's not even like it was a big cardboard box of new slots packaging will stop they could have quite easily have shoved in the letterbox. It was only $40. The.

After doing a quick backup of all my necessary files, of which I'm sure I forgot many, I upgraded Eddie's operating system. Which was surprisingly painless.

Then I ran Dragon Dictate.

Then, I pulled out the fancy Swedish headset that my family had also given me for an extra $100 and went to plug it in. The fancied swish headset has a USB plug that is the some reason ridiculously why stop.

Eddie has only two USB ports.

I could not plug the headset in and have my ergonomic keyboard plugged in at the same time.

Can't.

I can tell you right now I did not just say “can't" Asian stop.

So I had to unplug my ergonomic keyboard, which meant that Eddie could not sit in he's nice ergonomic laptop stand, as it covers his own keyboard. This seems to be, I don't know, ergonomic forces at wall? I know. Factions of occupational health and safety revolution coming into conflict and you're getting distracted so that they not actually fighting the problem which is RSI and instead bed is fighting each other and... It is a little bit frustrating. I'm going to have to buy a USB hub. The better Eddie gets for my hands, the first portable he becomes.

So. There we are a will stop. As you can see, I have a little bit of trouble ending sentences. I haven't corrected anything in this post. For ease of reading I will go back and insert paragraph breaks.

And then, I am going to teach this program how to swear will stop.

Expletive. Blasphemy. Expletive.

The Ghost of Harddrive Past

Eddie's first brain is dead. Long live Eddie. New brain has been installed. They don't make small 80GB brains anymore, so his brain is much bigger now.

Backups of all important work exists and is current.

Unfortunately, backups of files that are no longer active (not being worked on) were not so good. Or at least, if a backup of said files exists, I've put it in a Safe Place, which is pretty much the same as it not existing. One such casualty, in fact the only casualty I care about, is my Japan trip journal.

Most of it is online here, but there's still some two weeks of the trip I had yet to load up, and they're the best two weeks, Hokkaido, oh, Hokkaido, and uuuuurgh.

I didn't sleep well last night. It's hard to sleep when you're kicking yourself in the head repeatedly.

Data recovery is not cheap.

But trip journals stay with you for life. Travel writing is armchair travel, even more vivid when it's not poking your imagination, but nudging your memory. I'm buying my sixty-seven year old self a present (that's how I'm justifying it, at any rate).

And if any of you know where I put my legitimate paid-money-for copy of MS Office for Mac, I'd really appreciate a tip.

Oh Sweet Deities of Our Technological Advancement, I think Eddie just committed suicide.

ETA: Confirmed. Hard drive is malignant.

ETA: The people at the Apple service centre said, "The service centre is open Monday to Friday."

Pie!

I just cut the last ELEVEN! THOUSAND! words from my novel, because as indicated previously, I am a stupid stupid stupid stupid STUPID stupid stupid stupid STUPID stupid MUPPET.

STUPID.

ELEVEN! THOUSAND!

But hey, it's mince pie season again! Can't be that bad.

when you start the war, use arrows, spears, and swords grenades and cricket bats

Promotions!

Weird Tales won the Hugo, and there was much rejoicing! The magazine remains a fantastic piece of reading, each issue consistently surprising and brilliant in all it has to offer. Stephen H. Segal and Ann VanderMeer make for excellent skippers, and recognition of their excellence is far overdue. Huzzah!

Because they're so excellent they broke the excellence benchmark and have rocketed on through to being FUCKIN' OARSUM, our skippers are up for the World Fantasy Awards as well. Phwoar!

If I hang around them long enough, think some of the awesome will rub off?

My Name In Lights!

Gillian Polack announced the table of contents for Baggage, cut 'n paste below;

Deborah Biancotti
KJ Bishop
Simon Brown
Monica Carroll
Jack Dann
Jennifer Fallon
Laura Goodin
Y Green
Tessa Kum
Maxine McArthur
Lucy Sussex
Kaaron Warren
Janeen Webb

My emo-victim-poor-meeeeeee-waaaaaaaaah-oh-dear-lord-this-story-is-going-to-kill-me is among some fine company there. I expect it to totally lack manners and grace and embarrass the shit out of me.

Conflagration!

I figure, if you're going to set fire to Rome, you might as well do it properly. By 'Rome', I do of course mean my life, my social life, my health, my sleep, my flat, my absolutely everything. And by 'fire', I mean 'pull an asteroid from the sky'.

Things I have never done;

1. Collaborated on a story.
2. Written in a shared franchise world.
3. Gone from conception to final draft in one (1) month.

Things I just did;

1. ALL OF THE ABOVE

Which is why I haven't been posting. Or responding to my email. Or answering my phone. Or anything.

This is probably going to remain, for a long time, one of the stupidest things I have ever done. I knew it was going to be insane and intense when I agreed to it, though, and let's be honest, that is 100% of the reason I said yes when the suggestion was put to me.

It wasn't without cost. I've been spending 12-15 hour days at work, staying back after my normal day in order to write, because my flat was too cold to do so. My back hates me. My knuckles, fingers, hands, wrists, arms, elbows, shoulders and neck all hate me. My eyes hate me. I've been living on painkillers for a bit over a week now. I didn't do the dishes for two weeks and my flat stank. I didn't do any washing and rocked up to work very underdressed and got in trouble. I ran out of food because I didn't do the shopping. I've neglected my friends and my family (which is probably for the best, because if I'd actually exposed myself to any of them their might have been no survivors). I have lost my ability to sleep entirely, my brain has been so intensely focused and processing. I'm exhausted to the point I just about threw up a cup of tea yesterday, and then I stay up till three in the morning working some more. And then I go to work. And then I do it again.

I wrote a 15k first draft in 7 days, which is pretty impressive.

Then I wrote a 25k draft in two days.

I am an incoherent gibbering mess, and so is my poor long suffering infinitely patient partner in crime. When I got up this morning, and checked my email to find a note stating the story had been submitted, I burst into tears. I'll post the details later, when things are confirmed one way or another.

I'm still young enough and dumb enough to try and prove a point, and the point is well proved now;

I AM INVINCIBLE. I CAN DO ANYTHING.

AND THEN?

THEN THERE WAS ICE CREAM.

Dear Body,

We are very tired. When the alarm went off, we were not 'already' awake, we were 'still' awake. We have now been awake for over 24 hours.

We are not amused.

In the words of Miiru, 'die in a fire'.

No love,
Your Head.

Current mood:

If this is going where I think it's going...

...well, there'll be a lot more pictures like this.

Well, hello there...

Is that an electricity bill in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?
Oh, you're not pleased to see me.

Good thing I don't have a life, or this would severely cramp my style. Yikes. Guess I'm not buying another bookshelf next pay. Or, you know, eating anything other than plain cooked rice. You'll just have to put up with my continual whining about how cold I am, as that's clearly cheaper than turning on the heater.

that's just me running in the wrong direction

You see, I posted all that from the State Library. The lack of pianos had to be because I was inside, and the State Library is rather thick. No grand piano is going to bust through all the marble floors to kill my headache. This notion lodged in my mind.

As a result, I was some what hesitant about exiting the building.

That's just silly, I told myself, and walked home without having my skull crushed by falling pianos.

But then I wondered if maybe time zones were coming into play. Most people get online after dinner. China is only a little behind Australia in time, and Greece and Egypt another handful of hours on top of that. Maybe they hadn't checked their 'Requests From Foolish Mortals' email folder or blog feed for the day.

That's just silly, I told myself, and walked to work today without having my skull crushed by falling pianos.

But maybe they don't have any grand pianos. They're not really traditional chinese/greek/egyptian instruments, after all. Maybe they have to order them first, from the 'Requests From Foolish Mortals' Workshop of Divine Intervention.

Um.

Someone get this nonsense out of my head.
Preferably before I walk home tonight.

Who was the bright fucking spark who decided to make books different shapes, huh? Whose bright fucking idea was that? Clearly, not someone who has ever tried to move a whole bunch of different sized books from one home to another. Clearly, not someone who has ever tried to neatly pack said books in boxes, and found the nasty horrible little fuckers are uneven and don't fit together neatly at all. Clearly, a right fucking prick.

And you! You are all (mostly) writers! I SEE YOU. WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME?!?!?! FIGHT YOUR FUCKING PUBLISHERS. DEMAND REGULAR BOOK DIMENSIONS.

The Revolution Is Coming.