Things That Make You Go - GRRRR!

In order of experience here is today's list:

1. Stroppy teenage tantrums

2. Ended up having to reverse down a narrow road due to road works even though the traffic lights were on green.

3. Work laptop wouldn't connect to printer despite turning printer on and off (repeatedly and turning hub off and on - again repeatedly). 

4. Figures in a spreadsheet that refused to add up.

5. Package delivered yesterday to home while I was at work and had to be rearranged for delivery today.  Of course, wouldn't tell me what time so on tenterhooks when I had to go out that it would be delivered when I was out.  Package containing leaflets urgently needed for work tomorrow delivered but turned out to be for a different company entirely! Still hoping (probably in vain that the correct ones will turn up).

6. Email on work laptop refused to work, despite (see 3 above).

7. Received a short story rejection in the post.

8. Received a rejection for another short story by email.

9. More stroppy teenage tantrums.

10. Received unexpected freelance work which needs to be done urgently, removing any time for writing.

Now, I think its time to go and have a glass of wine or three.

What things make you angry?

Unpredicatable

At the moment my life is very unpredictable and I'm struggling to plan any writing time.  Or rather I plan it and then life happens to get in the way.

Now that I am working three days a week (which could soon become four), a large part of my daytime writing time has gone.  

My freelance work is also picking up, but it always comes in when I'm least expecting it.  I sit down at my computer with ideas brimming for a story, I have a quick check of my emails and low and behold there is work to be done.

I can't knock it though, at least I'm getting some work.

At the moment I'm doing some audio transcription.  Years ago when I was a secretary, my boss used to record onto a cassette, which then when into a player which had headphones and a foot pedal plugged into it.

My boss then was based in London, while I was based in Chester and every day he would dictate his letters and then post me the package containing a tape.  Initially this was in the days before email, so I used to type out the letters print them off and fax each letter down to him.  He would then make any amendments and fax them back.

Well how times have changed.  On the promise of receiving a regular amount of work, I purchased some software which converts files into audio. On receiving an email, I download the file, plug my iphone headphones into my laptop and I'm good to go.

I'm a pretty fast typist so I've been trying to do this without the use of a foot pedal.  It's do-able but a bit fiddly so I have given in and purchased a foot pedal.  I'll see if it any easier when I type my next report.

So, what with all that, I haven't managed to do much actual writing recently.  I have been editing a novel wot I wrote though. It's in its fourth draft now and I'm hoping with some final tweaks I'll feel ready to start sending it out to agents.  Its a long job though, with little light at the end of the tunnel, so I may just have to write a story to break it up a bit.

Yesterday, to get away from it all, I decided to go for a walk down the Greenway which runs through the city and starts near to where I live.  At the entrance to the Greenway (on a farm) is a new cafe, so after my walk I decided to test it out.  And there I sat, writing away with no interruptions from technology (or my husband).  What bliss.  The only down side was drowning out the noise from the rest of the people in the cafe and several very loud children.  Ah well you can't have it all.

Have a good weekend everyone.  

A Very Frustrating Day

Technology is a wonderful thing – but only when it works.  When it doesn’t it can be very, very trying.

Stupidly I transferred a lot of my work from my netbook onto a memory stick when we went on holiday as I had downloaded a load of dvd’s.  When we got back I didn’t bother putting it back on as I work from different computers and it was much easier just to use the memory stick than to continually move stuff back and forth between the computers – I have little memory myself and get easily confused! 

At the back of my mind I kept telling myself to back up all my work in case I lost the stick but never got round to it.   You know what’s coming next don’t you?

I’ve been working on my husband’s accounts recently – only behind by about 6 months so decided to do it in the dining room, so I could watch / listen to the X Factor.   I’ve worked hard this week on that and amazingly am almost up to date.   But when I was at work yesterday I decided to look at something on my usb in my lunch hour.  Put it this way, I didn’t eat much when I found that the memory was completely empty of files. 

I wracked my brains trying to figure out when I’d last done a back up, how much recent stuff I had printed off and what I was going to lose.  I wasn’t a happy bunny at all and constantly kicked myself all afternoon for not backing up properly.  It doesn’t matter how many horror stories I hear, or even the fact the hard drive on our main computer crashed before now, I still don’t seem to have learnt my lesson.  

Lesson now sunk in – BACK UP! BACK UP! BACK UP!

When I got home I decided to do a test and to my immense relief, it worked on my net book and all my files were there.  I was so happy!   I have now copied all files back onto my netbook as well as on to another memory stick just in case. There must be something wrong with the connection though because it memory stick wouldn’t work on the kids’ laptop either.  Think I will throw it in the bin now!

So sometimes technology is a wonderful thing and sometimes… well there’s just too much of it isn’t there?  In our house we just have too many gadgets and now my son has bought an I-pod touch with his birthday money.  Unfortunately I’m the only one in our house who even has a vague idea of technology so it’s up to me to set them up and deal with any problems when it all goes wrong.  Last night I was trying to set up the Ipod, help son with his homework, drop youngest son off at a class and pick him up an hour later, clean the house, cook the tea and put the ironing away.  Needless to say I didn’t get much of anything done. A very frustrating day indeed.

Anyway, whinge over, normal service to be resumed.  I just can’t wait until the boys get older and can deal with the techno stuff!