So Very Helpful…

I’m not impressed by “helpful” computers. That doesn’t mean I want to chisel my books into stone slabs–it just means I want my computer to ~help~ me accomplish things, not slow me down and fuck me up.

Case in point–I spent hours (during NaNo!) Friday night, last night, and this morning fighting the magically appearing auto-formatting in my ebook versions of Burning Bright. On Amazon things were shifted just a little. No big deal, it was completely readable–just made me look like an utter newb. On Smashwords it was my title page, copyright info, chapter headings–all were being treated as a numbered list making the entire book look like carp. Still readable, but it kept me out of the premium catalog, which means no Apple or Barnes and Noble sales. Not. Good.

So yeah. That’s what I’ve been flailing with today. And it just…I want a lot of things, but I’ll tell you one thing that would make me really happy. (Though if I got exactly one wish, it would absolutely be world peace because PEOPLE NEED TO STOP KILLING PEOPLE BUT ANYWAY)

I want back all the time that I have wasted trying to make a computer do what is wanted. Not just my computer, but my boss’ when it wouldn’t print to the printer attached to it by USB though it acknowledged it was there and said it was printing to it. All the time I’ve wasted trying to get coworkers’ computers to find the printer on the network that’s RIGHT THERE. All the clicks wasted when Excel decides “oh, hey, you selected short date as the format for this column and it’s been like that for a month, but right now I’m going to turn your dates to a number that only means anything in relation to something deep in my programming that you will never fix.” All the helpful autoformatting I didn’t ask for and didn’t want. All the stupid frakking things Word and sometimes even Open Office does because you couldn’t possibly actually have meant to do that, could you?

And how about all the time wasted hearing “it only does what you tell it. Be smarter than the machine!” because anyone who’s used their computer for more than five minutes should have figured out by now that sometimes they just do shit. I don’t care if it’s just a piece of technology and it has to be programmed. Sometimes they just do shit.

Grr…

Windows 8, you may guess (or remember), was my bête noire. We fought, Windows 8 and I, like cats and dogs. Like Thor and the snake that girdles the world. Like the bride in Kill Bill against all those other people. Good lork I was so happy when I found out I’d be able to switch to Windows 10. What was it like? Didn’t know. Didn’t care. It wasn’t Windows 8!

And it is not Windows 8. It is better. It really is. There are still some truly annoying things about it, of course. Like the way it doesn’t give me an option to shuffle my wallpaper slideshow. The way it hides stuff that I have used for ages (took me a while to find the blasted command prompt!) and the way it, like Windows 8, thinks it knows what I want.

Man, I hate that.

Anyway, someone else hated the Windows 10 Shuffle Wallpaper thing too, and figured out how to get around it. I found the command prompt and made it happen, and then I saw the part where I could make it a shortcut, and now I have it stuck on my start menu.

Thank Lork.

In Other News

I’m hearing good things about Burning Bright though no one has reviewed yet. If you’ve read it, won’t you please? Here it is on Amazon, Smashwords, and Goodreads. And if you don’t have a copy–well hey, give me a poke. I’m willing to hand out some free copies for some honest reviews.

In other writing news, NaNo goes. Now that I’ve switched projects, I’m catching up (only four days behind! Whoo!) I have all my people in the right place finally. Next step is to write the attack. Of course, it would help if I knew who or even what is attacking, but hey. Sometimes we just gotta go with what we do know. There’s an attack. It’s a start.

In other other news, I need this shirt. I’m getting my kid this one for Christmas, probably, but I need the first one.

Ghost Adventures is totally relevant to my life.

Did you know you can turn your phone into an EMF detector?