Well. She tried. Until a fly fell into the last few drops of cheap red wine we were self-medicating with.
She’s so, soo cute. Come 4:30 in the afternoon, she dropped into the pool (like a fly into a puddle of wine, only DUCK-Duck can swim). Ruby and Cassie the Corgis went bat-sh!t, of course. Cassie has been distracted by Ball but Ruby is still running around in circles. Anxious. A very anxious little dog.
DUCK-Duck is a calm bird. Nothing seems to faze her, not even very anxious little dogs. Evidently realizes that the VALD can’t get through the fencing between Duck and Pups. Even if VALD could pull that off, by some magical canid trick, Ducks have wings. VALD’s do not.
Today has been a Day from Hell, oh so inappropriate for a Sunday. Especially the Sunday of a Memorial Day weekend. I guess it’s because we’re not singing for the summer, unless of course we could afford to go on the European tour. Those of us who are on Social Security, who believed the Mayo Clinic would ding us for something between three and ten grand, and who are generally flat broke under the best of circumstances do not fit into the European Tour category.
By late last night, it became apparent that DropBox, the system through which we deliver services to Our Beloved Clients, had cut off the Fat Lady from its sacred services. The Kid could still access it, but to her puzzlement noted that those things I claimed I was posting to Our Current Beloved Client’s folders seemed not to exist.
A little squirreling around revealed that DropBox was quietly — very, very quietly, yea verily almost inaudibly — saying that it was “not running.”
Not running on the laptop.
Not running on the desktop.
Not fucking running.
So to make a long story short, I started working at 5:00 a.m. of this lovely, crankifying Sunday. I worked until 2:30 p.m., with one midmorning break of about an hour to gulp down some fruit for breakfast, feed the dogs, and run a load of laundry.
Six hours of banging around seems to have caused DB to “run” on the laptop but not on the desktop.
Having been around the technological block a few times, I sensed that the damn thing was about to do quite the little number. Seeing the hundreds of thousands of megabytes that resided on DB still visible on my terminals if not on anyone else’s, I began the downloads.
Downloaded as fast as I could to flash drives (one was not enough to hold all the data, ohhh no). (We do run a bidness here, after all).
I backed up to flash drives. Backed up to the laptop’s hard drive. Backed up to the iMac’s hard drive. The iMac backed up to Time Machine.
These processes revealed some extraordinary weakenesses in our organizational architecture: to wit, this stuff has been growing like kudzu.
Grabbed a machete and started to hack.
Reorganized and sanitized the mess on one computer.
Cloned the reorganization and sanitization on the other.
Searched (and searched, and searched, and searched) for a fix online, since as is SOP for these accursed tech entrepreneurs, no human being could be reached.
Struggled and thrashed and banged and thumped and struggled. Eventually both terminals were back online with DropBox.
Let both Bidness Partner and Client know they could access the ongoing project.
Five minutes later, the iMac lost contact with DropBox.
Just this minute, the MacBook (laptop) still seems to be in touch. But I don’t expect that to last long and don’t give a damn. Whenever I sober up (which probably will be along about 5 tomorrow morning), I will open a new account at some other provider of free online Cloud space.
Pisseth me off.
Do you know how much productive work I expected to do today?
• Download and install Scrivener
• Learn to use Scrivener
• Apply it to at least one FireRider serial installment; but
• Ideally, apply it to three
• Check on new online stoonts
• Read the several papers early-bird online stoonts have already posted
• Work on Old New Bad Novel
• Come up with some spice to replace a very boring post-adolescent passage therein
• Clean the pool
• Walk the dogs
• Socialize with the neighbors
• Socialize online
Oh hell. At least we got the pool cleaned.
I love computers. I hate computers
Owwwww! My head hurts just reading about your Dropbox issues! I don’t store anything in the cloud, yet. Makes me grateful I don’t have to.
Sounds horrible, except for the wine and duck parts.
If you have trouble with Scrivener — and many people do! — consider purchasing Scrivener Coach (http://scrivenercoach.com/). It’s a bidness expense, after all.