Themes, Maureen Johnson, and Apple stickers.

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

ELUSIVE, EVASIVE, EXCELLENT

I come to you live from my charging new Macbook. Eighteen hundred bucks and here I sit, tapping away at these shiny black keys that still hold all their letters. My 'old' laptop was starting to fade. Here's the funny thing about the 'old' laptop, and I say 'old' because I've had it a few years but not long enough to deem it ancient, it's crashed more times than I can bear.

In late 2007, I believe, my computer had to be sent into California for repairs. Unfortunately, we did the whole backup process involving DVDs and didn't correctly do them, or I suppose we simply didn't check them to make sure they were sufficient. Needless to say, I lost everything. I cried myself to sleep. Then in 2008, I had another issue looming near the NaNoWriMo start period. We backed up the computer to an external disk, sent the computer off to California again, only to get it back a week later with a silly note that said 'Too much damage, cannot fix'--in so many words. We took it to Circuit City, had the thing assessed and then sent to Texas for repairs. The only thing that was wrong with it was the fan damage and that had nothing to do with why they sent it back. They were talking about aesthetic damage, which was ridiculous. In January, possibly February, my laptop totally bit the dust. As in, the P.O.S. went into Kernel Panic and nothing we could do would fix it. It went to California for the fourth time, as the third time had nothing to do with the hard drive or lost data, returned with a new hard drive and I was content to use it again.

Needless to say, by the time my laptop was FIXED, I had missed NaNoWriMo completely and had failed to participate completely from my grandmother's Dell PC that's slower than a sloth. I kid you not, that PC would not run at a reasonable pace. I would often sit in front of it shaking my fists in rage. It grew frustrated at simply starting up. I could watch an entire commercial free section of a show and it would fail to load anything. It was so slow I grew to prefer handwriting things--and I abhor handwriting things. It defeats the purpose of a laptop--it really, really does.

So now, as I sit with my gorgeous, shiny, amazingly wonderful Macbook, I can't help but feel nostalgic about having to suffer through the Acer. Note to the wise: DO NOT GET AN ACER. If you can save up the money for a Mac, do it. Especially if you're interested in writing; the iWork program is phenomenal. It has so many options. I'll admit, I am not used to options. Options make me a very happy girl.

I just have one problem with the Mac. And that is that in the black case that the programs came in, and what not, there were two apple stickers. Just tell me, quickly, what exactly those stickers are for. Because their purpose is completely lost on me.


THEMED [Parks]

Ironically, it's April 1st and in two days, there are several movies planned to 'pop up' on the big screen. One of these movies is called Adventureland and it was filmed at Kennywood, which is very, very close to my home. As in, a matter of thirty minutes on a good day. So the fact that KStewart and Ryan Reynolds were even in Pittsburgh is pretty incredible. Needless to say, all of us want to see that movie pretty badly. It looks really good.

I'm actually hoping that I can get up the urge to create my own theme for the BEDA Ning. Mostly because I don't want mine to be the same as someone else's, but also because I'm really good at that sort of thing. And I understand CSS, at least for the most part. So there's potential that my page will be changing, and I hope that it does. I'm also currently hoping that my Mac will end charging some point before class as I'm worried that I've somehow angered the battery. My misadventures with technology are a testament to the fact that they all fall to their ultimate demise. This aluminum case is no match for me and my tech challengedness.

No, challengedness is not a word. But perhaps it'll suffice for now.


MAUREEN JOHNSON [And how she ruined my day]

Actually, I'll be honest. It wasn't MJ's fault. It was my own. I was procrastinating! I admit it! But actually, I'm headed to SRU with a major in Creative Writing, I feel it's important to know what the effectiveness of an Agent is, how things go down, what to avoid, etc. So I happened to accidentally click a link on Maureen's site and boom! There are more links, one specifically to a conversation that she had with Daphne Unfeasible (one of many that I follow on Twitter). So I clicked it and I listened intently for what felt like an hour as I'm also at work which means I'm up and down, up and down. It's very hard to keep one's train of thought while bouncing between a Mac and a chocolate machine. Damn you, chocolate!

This conversation explained the process of querying an agent and also what to expect, watch out for, and refuse to do. One of such things was making a note to not even think about Agents and Publishing until after said book is written. Does anyone know how hard this is? Because I know exactly what I want to write about, but I'd much rather find out that it's a shitty idea now than later--you know, after I've taken a year or two to even write it.

I also wonder if my potential B.S. in Creative Writing is going to pay off or not. Am I even good enough to think about publishing? Should I, instead, be looking into being an agent instead? Should I be handling queries? These thoughts taunt me, you know, the ones that scream with relish "YOU MOST DEFINITELY ARE NOT A GOOD ENOUGH WRITER TO BE PICKED UP BY AN AGENT. YOU CAN'T EVEN GET PAST CHAPTER THREE."

To which I reply, "I know! I'm so pathetic and sad! I should just quit now while I'm leagues behind, cut my losses, and move on." But my heart just won't give up writing, which is why I'm still here, on my Mac, tapping away. There's something distinctly soothing about the tap-tap-tap of the keyboard. I'm so content to simply tap-tap-tap all day. Though it does often involve more that three taps. I tap a lot more in a minute that one would think.

But yes, I suppose that brings me to amy last topic, which isn't 'BEDA', but more rather Script Frenzy. In April, on Scripped.com there's a 'contest' much like NaNoWriMo which involves writing 100 pages of script in 30 days. This averages out to 3.333 pages a day. I think I can handle three and a third pages of script every day in April. I have my topic set, I just have to start writing.

I'm hoping that Pages on the Mac will help a lot more than MWord would have. Silly Microsoft and its ridiculous Conficker worm.