MissMeliss: Escribition

I haven’t had the energy to deal with the amazing amount of words spinning through my head, lately, as I’ve been unnaturally tired. Today, I was up at nine, but then went back to bed until noon, and I only now feel human.

As I write this, my favorite comforter is being laundered, so that as soon as I finish dinner I can change the bedding on our bed. What I really want to do is go shopping for new stuff, but I’m going to be good and not do that til after my conference in August, especially since I just ordered a second headset, thinking the one I bought in Feb was having vista issues.

It turned out that I was having Vista issues, but since this one identifies itself correctly, it’s still a better choice.

And now I have a backup. Backups are good.

The rice cooker just flashed from “cook” to warm, so it’s time to but my turkey burger on the grill, so I can eat, finish the laundry and go to bed.

Ah, cool sheets.
I might have to squeeze in a bath first, so I can enjoy them properly.

There are times when, no matter how patient you want to be, little things just annoy you far more than they should. This week, partly due to funky, indecisive weather and an abundance of eye-hurting overcast days, and partly due to not sleeping well, and partly because I’m stressing about Fuzzy’s trip, and my parents’ arrival in a couple weeks, I’m cranky and peevish.

I was going to do a Thursday Thirteen list of “things that have been irking me lately,” but instead I’m going to list a few as a sort of purging measure. Many of these will be related to use of language.

Video Tutorials. Hate them. I am not a visual learner. I NEED words. I can follow the most convoluted written directions with ease, but if you throw pictures at me, my brain explodes. Also, if I’m doing something I require instructions in order to complete, I need to be able to flip back and forth, and video just isn’t a good choice for that - at least, not for me.

The phrase “return back to.” By definition, if returning is reverting to a prior state (of being, of ownership, whatever). The use of “back” in this phrase is unnecessary, and sounds really stupid. “I returned the book to the library.” “Let’s return to simpler times.” I realize that language evolves, but why are the stupid people in charge of the evolution?

Using IM instead of Email. Unless we’re in the middle of a conversation, chances are that even if my computer says I’m online, I’m really not. IM is for immediate chatting. I don’t like it when people use it as an off-line messaging service. I use three different computers all of which use different multi-chat software, on a regular basis, so chances are I won’t see your message anyway. At least five different people have left me messages on IM in this fashion in the last three days. If you know me well enough to be IMing me, you should have my email address.

“People that.” And general that/which/who issues. WHO is for people. THAT is for things and groups. “People who have blogs…” “Blogs that are about language.” (For a really good explanation of this issue (that/which/who) check out this page at GrammarBook.com

Websites, especially blogs, that require one to register in order to comment. With one exception, I refuse. If you’re so afraid of what people might write in your comments, why are you publishing your writing to the web?

“Engage with.” Again, it’s just clunky awkward phrasing. Bad: He didn’t engage the audience. Good: He didn’t engage the audience. (Not that not engaging your audience is ever good, but…)

I reserve the right to add to this list as more things occur to me, but right now I’m tired so I’m going to bed.

And made a podcast. Well, the demo of one. A mini-cast, I guess.
http://www.midnightteas.com/teatime/

I’ll be better next time.

The fact that both of us now have shiny new Vista-running laptops meant that we needed new Office software. Well, Fuzzy NEEDED it, I was doing fine with Office XP. I mean, it’s friendly, and comfortable like an old pair of sneakers or blue jeans that faded from wear and not some designer’s vision.

But I’m all about the shiny. We looked at the prices of the seventeen million versions of Office currently on sale (for those values of seventeen million roughly equal to four) and determined that a) we’re cheap, sometimes; b) we pretty much only use Word and Excel; c)We only needed to install software on three machines; and d) we were kinda curious about what OneNote was. We therefore decided that $150 (rounding) for the Home/Student version, which is licensed for three machines, was perfect.

(As an aside, I’ve been running XP in Crossover on my MacBook, because NeoOffice just isn’t pretty enough for me, and it works fine, but I can’t access my network drives from within Word within Crossover, so I splurged and ordered the Mac version of Home/Student last night.)

I’ve been using the new version of Word for about a week now, and…I’m not sure I like it. It seems that whoever designed Vista and Office 2007 sat down and said, “Let’s make software that is as UN-intuitive as possible, charge more for it, and call it an improvement.”

In order to get a simple word count, something I need on almost every piece I write for work, you have to go through seventy thousand (or three) levels of menus. Also, I cannot find the UNDO option. UNDO was totally my best friend in previous incarnations of Word.

Unrelated: don’t you live my universe where 17 million = 4 but 70,000 = 3?

“Pynk” is what I named my new Alienware laptop on our network, though not what I plan to call the computer itself. Actually, I don’t plan to call it anything except “my new laptop,” because while I do name cars, I don’t feel the need to anthropomorphize everything I own. My cello doesn’t have a name either, and I only refer to the weight machine as Marcy because that’s what’s stamped across the seat-back.

In any case, a shiny new computer meant that when I was writing an article about term life insurance earlier today for work, I wasn’t cursing because I never can remember that there’s no forward delete on the MacBook, or yelling at the poor mouse response from the touchpad on the Vaio.

Speaking of which, this machine has a touchpad that is seamless, and they also provide a cute texturized sticker to put over it, so that you can actually have better traction.

I’ve only had it since 5:00 PM CDT yesterday, but I’m already in love.

Oh, and the pink backlights and system lights? Were very pink, so right now I’m running with a combination of blue and deep green. Feels very oceanic.

I’m posting this as a service for all those people who have AT&T Uverse or DSL, who need to use the AT&T smtp server to send mail from non-AT&T accounts.

I was thisclose to throwing patio furniture at the next AT&T truck to enter my neighborhood, when I finally found the necessary solution on an external forum. Because I KNOW I’ll need it again, and because I suspect there are folks who don’t want to hunt down forum posts, I’m posting it here.

Several months ago, shortly after we canceled our ComCast account and switched to Uverse, which also required killing our backup DSL account (also through AT&T), we had to change all our mail settings because AT&T blocks port 25. No big deal, you just set your mail server to use port 465, and use login/password authorization based on your AT&T account.

For a while all worked sweetly. Then, one day in December or January, I stopped being able to send mail. Now, while I HAVE an at&t address, I don’t actually USE it, because I have my own domains. I also have work email addresses at their own domains. My Dreamhost accounts all have their own smtp servers, so that was fine for sending, except my parents’ server in Mexico wouldn’t accept relayed mail. The work pops don’t HAVE smtp service.

We called AT&T and explained the error, which at first was intermittent - maybe one in 12 email messages would bounce back with an error message that the server didn’t recognize my address. AT&T said, “Oh, we’re having a glitch.” The next day, all was well.

But then we started getting the error again, more and more often. Another call to Uverse tech support. “We can unblock port 25 for you, until we figure out what else to do.” Fine, okay. We have anti-virus and anti-spam software like crazy on our systems. We could deal with that. Except that after three weeks of this, we got a note from AT&T telling us that if we didn’t stop using port 25, they’d forbid us from relaying anything.

We complained about that. They apologized.

Meanwhile, when I tried to use the secure settings, I was getting more and more errors, until finally, this morning, I could not send mail at all. I sent in a ticket, they said, “We can’t find a problem, and we can’t reproduce it.”

I began searching the net for external information - users talk, after all - and found out that in order to send from an external email address, even if you’re using your own mail client (Thunderbird, Mac Mail, etc.) you have to log into your AT&T/Yahoo webmail, and add and verify all your external accounts.

Now, while this is time consuming, it’s not that difficult, and I’d have happily done so months ago, but AT&T NEVER TOLD US TO DO THIS. There was never an email sent, when the secure servers became required. The various calls and letters to tech support never included this information in their responses. And honestly, who would think to go to a webmail account they never use to set up external mail relay for sending through a regular client?

In any case, I spent about twenty minutes going through the necessary steps this morning, and while Thunderbird still can’t FIND my smtp server on my MacBook, Mac Mail works fine, and Thunderbird on my windows machines works fine, and life is good.

If you, too, need to make external email work on AT&T’s secure servers, the instructions you need are here:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/original/manage/sendfrom-07.html

Wrote another chapter in my ongoing-when-I-feel-like-it TNG fanfic “Color My World.” It’s Geordi/OFC, and really just a series of interludes atm.

Read it here: http://www.fanfiction.net/~missmelysse.

In other news, am cleaning out the fridge, so the cleaning woman doesn’t think we’re total slobs.