Sweater? What sweater?

I took this week off from the Eternal Sweater and worked on the novel at lunch.  My two beta readers (Hubby and Rox) have liked it so far.  Hit the thirty thousand word mark Thursday night, which means a nice black line on my progress graph.  Of all the utilities

Forcibly upgraded

My computer got upgraded at work.  While I am loving the new speed, wireless keyboard  and mouse, and new display options, I also got Internet Exploder 7.  I knew I'd encounter  it at some point, and I don't like it. The way they've done

Data recovery

BBC News: Top 10 data disasters revealed. Hard drives kept in dirty socks and the dangers of oiling your PC feature in a top 10 list of data disasters.  In one case, a university professor needed help after he tried to fix a squeaky desktop computer by squirting it with

Eternal sweater progress report IV

If you walk into a yarn store and say you're thinking of setting fire to a recalcitrant sweater, be prepared for some horrified gasps.  The sweater has a stay of execution, but I did wind the yarn for the next pair of socks and write over sixteen thousand

Of penguins and backups

My characters are misbehaving.  The geologist started out as an annoying egomaniac, turns out he's recovering from depression and has a decent side.  The two pilots were having an affair and didn't tell me, and my secondary character has elbowed her way into top billing.  I

Off and meandering

About 20 people turned up for the St Louis NaNo write-in on Sunday, all tapping away  on one Alphasmart, three Macs, and a bunch of PC laptops.  Almost everyone was wearing  headphones and ignoring the others, chugging coffee and slowly eroding their  fingerprints.  I am woefully  behind on word

Late starter

I have about 300 words on a NaNo novel.  I'm not aiming to hit the 50k word count, I'm just going to take my time with it.  But the sweater is driving me nuts and I needed a break.  Hubby is doing great with his novel,

Eternal Sweater progress report III

(or: Oh no, not again!) After Monday's rip out, I put in the armhole decreases and got back to work.  Measured front and back together, checked the sleeve will fit, and it didn't.  Not.  Even.  Close.  So I had to rip out a chunk of the

Racing robots

BBC News: Robot rally cars face tough race. Twenty-three cars are setting off on a remarkable race across the desert.  From a distance, the cars look like any other rally cars tearing down the dusty roads. But closer inspection reveals that something odd is going on.  There's

Unlucky Fried Kitten

It's been a long time since I put together a list for my humour section.  I learned from  the comedy courses at Writer's Village  University that comedy writing is  harder work than writing straight because you have to keep polishing the almost-funny parts until the