I promise there will be no rants today. =)
The wind woke me up just before dawn this morning. It is blowing a gale out there. You know, you watch the weather reports and the National Hurricane Center from June until the end of October. And finally you say, "Storm season is over. Whew!"
And then there's a storm!
Well, not a big storm. Just a rain storm with some really high winds. But I am consistently baffled at the way the weather reports here warn us about rain we never get, but they never mention high winds. If I'd know this was happening today, I'd have secured the lawn furniture. I think half of it has rolled down to the beach by now.
I woke up sad again. But I think I've figured it out. I wake up sad when I don't have a set plan for the day. No... that's not right. Let me reiterate. I wake up sad when I don't have any solid appointments for the day. Having a list of things to do somehow doesn't do it for me. But when I had a lesson scheduled at noon, I didn't wake up sad.
This sadness isn't from a lack of occupation. I have tons of things to do everyday. I have a list so long everyday that I never finish it in one day. But there must be something about actually having a set appointment -- whether it's a trip to the salon or a Skype call or meeting friends at the bar -- that staves off that first-thing-in-the-morning sadness.
I don't get it. I just observe and report it.
Anyway...
I'm having display issues with my computer. The day before yesterday, I had some display driver crashes while watching my Irish programmes on YouTube. And then I had some display weirdness ("snow" that moved across the screen as I scrolled or moused). So I rebooted. But last night, I had a couple of hard crashes where neither the mouse, the mousepad nor either keyboard (I use an extended Bluetooth keyboard) worked. Even got the Blue Screen of Death once. I ran virus scans and defragged and all that happy horseshit last night. It's not a virus. It acts like a display driver issue. And yeah, every once in a while when I click around too fast, my display driver crashes and my screen goes black for a second until it resets. But this wasn't that. This was pretty catastrophic. So I hope updating the driver will repair the problem.
I'm remembering with horror when my last desktop-replacement laptop lost its graphics card after only a year, and I am NOT accepting that that is going to happen with my new ASUS. It has been just over a year, but dammit, this machine was MADE as an entertainment system. How can the graphics card go in a year's time?
Well, of course it could. But I'm going to hope it's just a driver issue and update the drivers and cross my fingers and hope. I haven't gotten the freeze yet this morning, but I also haven't done anything display-taxing like watch YouTube. So I'm cautiously hopeful, but I'm still backing everything up and updating all the drivers.
I really CANNOT afford to buy a new laptop right now. It's the slim part of the year. And I have no desktop anymore.
In other news, my blog post on Minority and Endangered Languages got rejected... but it got rejected because the blog owner thought it was too formal and scholarly for his audience. So he asked me to write an article on my experiences learning Irish instead and fill it with stories and personal hurdles and stuff. "Write as though you're talking to someone who isn't highly educated and just wants a bit of advice or inspiration," he advised. And I think he's definitely got a point. I mean, what good is a scholarly article if everyone navigates away after the first paragraph. So I'm going to write one of my funny posts about learning Irish and hope it gets me lots of hits. Then I'll put the Linguistic Purism article on my own blog. =)
I'm learning a lot of new things about blog writing. You have to appeal to their short attention spans. Hook 'em and keep 'em hooked. It's sure not the traditional way of writing. And I WAS trying to write formally and not sound like I'm just typing off the top of my head like I do here. But maybe injecting a bit more of my personality would do the trick.
In any case, I'm really thrilled because this is a guy who only accepts high-quality blog posts. And while he rejected mine, the fact that he wants me to write something for him really pumps up my ego.
I haven't heard back from the big big blog, ExpertEnough, but I'm very hopeful about that one. Nothing from the other language blogger either, but it's only been two days.
Well, it's 7:30am and my dogs have not yet been outside. They don't seem too bothered about it. But they do need to get out there. And I gotta start my day.
Cross your fingers for me that my laptop will be healed!
ETA: The second language blog just wrote and asked to see my piece. YAY! And the first guy wrote again to encourage me to send him something less formal. You got it, boyz!
And then there's a storm!
Well, not a big storm. Just a rain storm with some really high winds. But I am consistently baffled at the way the weather reports here warn us about rain we never get, but they never mention high winds. If I'd know this was happening today, I'd have secured the lawn furniture. I think half of it has rolled down to the beach by now.
I woke up sad again. But I think I've figured it out. I wake up sad when I don't have a set plan for the day. No... that's not right. Let me reiterate. I wake up sad when I don't have any solid appointments for the day. Having a list of things to do somehow doesn't do it for me. But when I had a lesson scheduled at noon, I didn't wake up sad.
This sadness isn't from a lack of occupation. I have tons of things to do everyday. I have a list so long everyday that I never finish it in one day. But there must be something about actually having a set appointment -- whether it's a trip to the salon or a Skype call or meeting friends at the bar -- that staves off that first-thing-in-the-morning sadness.
I don't get it. I just observe and report it.
Anyway...
I'm having display issues with my computer. The day before yesterday, I had some display driver crashes while watching my Irish programmes on YouTube. And then I had some display weirdness ("snow" that moved across the screen as I scrolled or moused). So I rebooted. But last night, I had a couple of hard crashes where neither the mouse, the mousepad nor either keyboard (I use an extended Bluetooth keyboard) worked. Even got the Blue Screen of Death once. I ran virus scans and defragged and all that happy horseshit last night. It's not a virus. It acts like a display driver issue. And yeah, every once in a while when I click around too fast, my display driver crashes and my screen goes black for a second until it resets. But this wasn't that. This was pretty catastrophic. So I hope updating the driver will repair the problem.
I'm remembering with horror when my last desktop-replacement laptop lost its graphics card after only a year, and I am NOT accepting that that is going to happen with my new ASUS. It has been just over a year, but dammit, this machine was MADE as an entertainment system. How can the graphics card go in a year's time?
Well, of course it could. But I'm going to hope it's just a driver issue and update the drivers and cross my fingers and hope. I haven't gotten the freeze yet this morning, but I also haven't done anything display-taxing like watch YouTube. So I'm cautiously hopeful, but I'm still backing everything up and updating all the drivers.
I really CANNOT afford to buy a new laptop right now. It's the slim part of the year. And I have no desktop anymore.
In other news, my blog post on Minority and Endangered Languages got rejected... but it got rejected because the blog owner thought it was too formal and scholarly for his audience. So he asked me to write an article on my experiences learning Irish instead and fill it with stories and personal hurdles and stuff. "Write as though you're talking to someone who isn't highly educated and just wants a bit of advice or inspiration," he advised. And I think he's definitely got a point. I mean, what good is a scholarly article if everyone navigates away after the first paragraph. So I'm going to write one of my funny posts about learning Irish and hope it gets me lots of hits. Then I'll put the Linguistic Purism article on my own blog. =)
I'm learning a lot of new things about blog writing. You have to appeal to their short attention spans. Hook 'em and keep 'em hooked. It's sure not the traditional way of writing. And I WAS trying to write formally and not sound like I'm just typing off the top of my head like I do here. But maybe injecting a bit more of my personality would do the trick.
In any case, I'm really thrilled because this is a guy who only accepts high-quality blog posts. And while he rejected mine, the fact that he wants me to write something for him really pumps up my ego.
I haven't heard back from the big big blog, ExpertEnough, but I'm very hopeful about that one. Nothing from the other language blogger either, but it's only been two days.
Well, it's 7:30am and my dogs have not yet been outside. They don't seem too bothered about it. But they do need to get out there. And I gotta start my day.
Cross your fingers for me that my laptop will be healed!
ETA: The second language blog just wrote and asked to see my piece. YAY! And the first guy wrote again to encourage me to send him something less formal. You got it, boyz!