Musings, and suchlike...

This week's LJ Idol theme is "smile," which is about as broad as "uphill, both ways, barefoot" was narrow. This state of affairs has its good points and its bad points.

On the plus side, it means you can write about nearly anything, as long as a smile appears (or is mentioned) somewhere in the story. Looking at my entries from last year, for example, I note that a large chunk of them include the word "smile," and one entry might even be said to have pivoted around a smile.

What is good is also bad, for if you can write about nearly anything, I find it's more difficult to focus on something specific. Aside from going through old posts, I've started a list of "smile" ideas, and while it's getting pretty long ("Mona Lisa, anyone?"), no one idea has yet turned around to slap me upside the head.

But hey, it's only Tuesday.

* * *Talking about getting slapped upside the head, I better start focusing on work, as it's starting to pour in.

Cheers...

Something went 'twang'!

I hadn't realized we had been here long enough to fall behind in paying for Internet, so Comcast squeezed the pipe, vectoring all browser requests to their "High-Speed Internet" page, which makes no sense at all, but I got the message, went online via my BlackBerry, and paid the bill.

Service would be restored, I was told, within 24 hours. It wasn't.

And I just finished an extended session with a Comcast 'analyst' which didn't solve the problem.

It turns out, based on my limited knowledge, that the basic connection is there. I can ping various web sites, so the pipe is open. I just can't browse, nor can I skype or do anything else useful.

I am not a happy camper, but on the other hand, I translated just over 5,000 target words today, so I suppose I am actually a less-than-deliriously happy camper, but happy nonetheless. I would almost say I'm smiling, but that might sound like an attempt to address the theme of the week, so I won't.

Another 12,000 source words came in today, displacing a file that had been assigned yesterday. I'm not at all sure I'll be able to do anything with any of it until tomorrow morning.

I'm also not sure I'll be able to address anything at all to do with Nanowrimo tonight either (and falling behind is a deadly bad thing to do with Nano, because it puts you almost permanently behind the power curve).

Thank goodness for my BlackBerry!

Cheers...

Aaarghh!

I really hate it when a slip of the fingers on the keyboard initiate irrevocable actions - even if the appropriate warnings are issued. I just managed to lose a bunch of new Nano material because I did something and then hit the Escape key, thinking it would back out of whatever idiocy I'd asked for.

It turns out that Escape, in this case, means "Yeah, go ahead and delete all the stuff I've been working on without saving it!"

I should probably jump in and try to reconstruct as much of the lost text as possible, before it becomes too much of a memory. Still, I'll pause for just a few seconds to entertain some uncharitable thoughts.

Cheers...

UPDATE (10:12 pm): I'm at 4305 nanowords; 695 behind the pace. Not good, but not fatal, either. Three down, 27 to go.