Caught more than beads at the parades.

[nolawitch58]

I've been sick now for four days. The clinic was closed Tuesday so I went to the doctor yesterday and got something to kill the coughing. I feel better, but not good enough to go to work yet. However, that doesn't stop my brain from coming up with a better way to run test cases for the upcoming conversion over my bowl of breakfast cereal. Whoever designed that went a little overboard. They created one spreadsheet for the testers' actions going down a column and another containing the actual test data going over several rows. Why not combine them? Have the test steps, such as Tab to and enter field data, appear on Row 1 above the name of each field on Row 2 and the actual test data appear on Rows 3 through whatever. Seems cleaner, even to my recently-fevered brain. The testers wouldn't have to be toggling back and forth between two open spreadsheets.

My focus group consists of a busy bunch of people. I should have known that the one copy I got back a week later was an anomaly. She reads like I eat potato chips anyway. Crunch away at the tasty goodness and soon the bag is empty. Hubby is reading it too. He's convinced I need to rework the Prologue. I looked at it again and can't see anyplace I could trim without losing integral foreshadowing of plot. I think the first four chapters are pretty solid. I'm going to be adding more interactions with the ghost, who doesn't show up until Chapter 5. I'm loathe to actually jump in without having more feedback.

I've got my list of potential agents together from the AAR website. I need to get to the library, maybe Saturday, to look them up in Jeff Herman's Writer's Guide to Editors, Publishers, and Literary Agents as suggested by Susan Page in her book The Shortest Distance Between You and a Published Book. The founder of my monthly writers' group suggested I ask Rosemary James of the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society if she knew anyone. I might run my short list past her and see if she has any caveats about any of them.

We're taking an actual vacation next month to Florida. I want to see a space shuttle launch, and one of the last launches will be in late March. I've booked a good hotel in Titusville and we're driving 11 hours to get there. This is the loopy part to my mind. We're taking the cats. Hubby insists. He doesn't want to leave them for five days in the house by themselves. I've explained we can get someone to come in to feed them and empty the litter boxes. He's convinced that they (meaning his cat because Sonny is too old and sleeps all day) would have the house torn up by the time we got back. Too funny.

Comments

[saminz.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear. Get well soon!!

I very much enjoy your retweets, by the way :-)!

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

Twitter is problematic for me. You know how much I love to talk. I can't seem to squeeze a lot of pithy stuff into 140 characters. And I can't bear to go with standard "text-speak" abbreviations. I think my fingers would melt if I typed U meaning you. I retweet stuff that looks interesting. I tweet infrequently.

I'm getting sick shitless of my Facebook page. Every time they fuck with the format or functionality, it hoses up in my browser. It would be nice if they didn't assume that everybody is using M$ IE. I've sent them feedback, but they probably don't give a shit because Linux users are a fraction of the marketplace. I can't post anything anymore. All I can do is friend people back and comment on their entries.

[bloodyviking.livejournal.com]

I have been pretty much underwhelmed by Facebook. I have no interest in their games (I hide apps as soon as they hit my wall), and it is broken farr too often. And, by the way, my wife uses IE, and currently she is having to constantly log in because it keeps dropping her, so it isn't that it only works for IE. It doesn't work well for anyone.

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

How can they claim such success with such a lousy business model? I'm near to putting a message on my profile saying to look for me here on LJ for anything substantial.

[bloodyviking.livejournal.com]

I much prefer coming here for those who cross-post. LJ is just so much nicer. And yes, that means that when I see their post there, I come here to read it.

By the way, I hope you get feeling better. My wife has something nasty. Constant deep, nasty coughing unless she takes cough medicine. I hope your's isn't the same thing.

Oh, and I have stayed away from Twitter. I have no interest at all in that.

[saminz.livejournal.com]

Well - I don't do Facebook at all, and have little idea what I should do with the Twitter either, to be quite honest, even if I do enjoy finding funny and clever stuff on there frequently.

Why not direct people here? You could even open a separate group for them, after all.

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

I will as soon as the damned thing lets me edit my profile. I might have to use someone else's computer long enough to fool with it.

I need to upgrade this to a newer Linux OS. It's been good for five years, but it's time for something fresher.

[patrixa.livejournal.com]

I'm a Mac-ette and joined FB shortly before the changed t he format. This new format is not an improvement and I sent feedback burt also did not get a response! Therefore, all I do is what you do. If it weren't for the photos of far away family and friends, I doubt I'd bother.

Hope you feel better soon.

Hope hubby takes care of the vacationing cats -- Oh, please let your readers know how that works out. OMG -- a movie maybe?

Get well.

[athlonsg.livejournal.com]

Get well soon, as for catching more than beads at parades I can relate. As for social networks I come on to LJ anymore I have had fun with Myspacespaz and I am over that...