preraphaelitepunk.com

Labor Day weekend seems to be a very popular time to schedule activities — if I weren’t already committed, I’d be sorely tempted to trek up to D.C. for Taking Action for Animals, for instance. However, I shelled out for advance tickets months ago to DragonCon, so to DragonCon I am going, again. (Next year, I might have to investigate some of the other possibilities. It makes me feel guilty to know I’m off being all selfish and geeky when I could be working to, you know, actually improve external reality a little.)

It’s been a while since I’d checked the guest list for DragonCon, and I was pleased to note some additions since my last visit. Some of the best:

No Pratchett, Gaiman, or anyone Whovian, of course, but one can’t have everything. I’m just grateful to be getting some interesting guests; with any luck, they’ll continue signing some more people as the date grows closer.

The good news is that they’ve upgraded our software at work to Adobe Acrobat 7.0. Theoretically, this should be a huge leap forward and make galley preparation a lot easier and more user-friendly.

The bad news is, of course, that Acrobat 7 has eaten my installation of my section’s major electronic publicaton, the famous CD+. This is rather a problem, because I use it pretty much daily: if I’m editing, I’ve almost always got the old version of the chapter (using the other set of units) up on my screen for reference. If it’s irrevocably shot, then I will lose what’s left of my mind. Having to use the print volumes exclusively would drive me batty.

At first, it seemed to be just a permissions issue — the latest plugin doesn’t play nicely with last year’s DRM — but now we’ve moved on into exciting new frontiers of badness. PDFs that should be showing the first page of a chapter, or various navigation pages, are all blank; bookmarks and other non-content-related things do actually show up, but they’re displaying in gibberish font. I’ve tried repeated reinstallations, on the off chance that the PDFs somehow got corrupted during the software upgrade, but all that’s done is waste time. I’ve also tried poking around Adobe’s user forums, in the hopes of stumbling across some helpful tidbit (hey, it’s happened before), but no joy.

I will say, though, that the tech support guy I’ve been dealing with has been very polite, punctual, and helpful, though he’s probably regretting ever having signed up for the job now.

We’ll get it sorted out somehow, eventually. It’s just amazing to me how exhausting it is to spend eight hours of your day trying to bludgeon a computer into doing what it’s always done before but is now, inexplicably, flatly refusing to do. It’s only about 8:30, but I feel like going straight to bed right now.

(At least the water’s been back on since Wednesday morning. Things could be worse.)

(Edits to fix a couple of stress-induced typos. My apologies if I spam your RSS reader.)

You never really miss utilities until they’re gone. My flat has lost electricity on several occasions, once extending to several days, and I was astonished at how dependent I am on the stuff. Oh, I’m perfectly content to read a book instead of faffing about on the computer or staring at the television — at least half the time, I get bored by the shows I started watching and switch to a book anyway* — but the thing is that the sun tends to go down in the evenings, and if one hasn’t laid on a good supply of emergency candles, then you’re pretty much SOL. Also, reading in bed has that extra element of non-sleep-inducing danger when conducted with a live flame rather than with a nice safe Mighty Bright clip-on lamp.

Today’s vanished utility is the water. We were warned via e-mail that a leak would be fixed today, and that it would require shutting off the entire building’s water supply. Fair enough: it was supposed to take no more than three hours, and normal service should’ve been restored no later than 5:00.

Um, yeah. It’s now approximately 9:45 at night, and my water pipes are still full of nothing but air. Apparently no one thought to shut off the hot-water heater, either, because when I took Nigel out for his evening walk and passed the boiler, it was hissing and spitting angrily. That can’t be good.

This is maddening. If I’d realized it would be off the entire rest of the day, I would’ve stockpiled more water. As it is, I can’t wash my hands, take a shower — preparing dinner was an adventure, because everything I wanted to make required at least washing veggies, if not water for steaming. I’m reduced to giving the dog flat mineral water, which he thinks tastes funny but at least should keep him hydrated.

As for my own drinking needs, I’m having a beer. Hey, it’s liquid; it counts.

All I can say is that, in this heat (94 deg F/~34.5 deg C today), I am (a) extremely grateful that I still have electricity for the AC, and (b) really hoping that the water comes back on tomorrow, because otherwise my lovely coworkers will be somewhat dismayed when I return to work on Wednesday.

*** ***

*Tonight’s selection: Hellstrom’s Hive, by Frank Herbert. I reread his The Eyes of Heisenberg on the plane to Quebec City, and that got me started off on another jag. I must now read all of his books that I own; happily, after many years of being out of print and extraordinarily hard to find in secondhand shops, a lot of his non-Dune titles are being rereleased, so it’s a lot easier to find new-to-me titles than ever before. Yay.

Aside to the aside: I find it staggering that there are people out there who’ve never heard of Dune. WTF? How is that even possible?

And another aside: I was going to do this footnote using the Miniblog plugin for asides, but after looking at the interface I can’t be bothered to fuss with it at the moment.

Sorry for the long lapse between posts: while at the conference in Quebec City, I didn’t really have the time or energy for posting, let alone the uninterrupted Internet access necessary to blog. I’ve been back since Wednesday night, and am only just now beginning to get back to normal.

Although the convention was tiring, I loved the experience. I got to meet tons of interesting people, some of whom I’ve corresponded with for years but never met in person, and some of whom I’d never encountered before at all but hope to see again. It was rewarding working in the bookstore, too, even when the people weren’t buying any of the publications I’ve helped produce — just seeing how excited so many of them were by their purchases, and how important our work seems to be to them, was very encouraging. Sometimes, as an editor, you think that no one notices or cares about what you do, but meeting the actual end users of your books and seeing how much it matters to them is really very encouraging and inspiring. I also really liked helping with recording the seminars, though unfortunately there wasn’t time to stay to listen to any of them — there were quite a few that I would’ve liked to have heard. (Maybe I should order the seminar DVD . . . I wonder whether staff could get a discount? Hmm.)

Quebec City was also very pleasant — all the locals I encountered were extremely friendly, and amazingly patient with my laughably poor French. I did not have much time to explore the city itself, though. What walking around I did manage to do convinced me that, if I lived there, I would have no need at all of a Stairmaster, and would be in much better shape. :) The only thing is that it was just European enough that I found myself focusing on how European it wasn’t: how the old walled city is really quite new, comparatively, and how none of the older churches were proper High Gothic style, and so on. Very pretty, of course, but I found the newness a little distracting.

Cimetiere St-Matthew, right by the convention centre

At any rate, since returning I’ve basically been focusing on returning to a regular sleep schedule; last night was the first time I haven’t jolted awake at 5:30 A.M. with the ironclad conviction that I was about to be late for work. Still working on returning to regular eating patterns, too: remembering to eat in a timely fashion is still a problem. I’m mostly unpacked now, too, though I haven’t yet gotten around to putting away the things I unpacked. (One problem with seriously overpacking is that it’s so much effort to put the things away afterward.) At least I’ve got a long weekend to sort all that out.

Nigel has also been reinstalled in my flat, returned by my parents this afternoon (they were in town anyway to catch their flight to the Czech Republic). They were kind enough to keep him for the last two weeks, during which time he apparently ran riot, making them get up at 6:00 in the morning (they’re both on summer vacation at the moment), entertain him constantly, and generally indulge him shamelessly. All that being spoiled apparently wore him out, because he’s conked out on the futon at the moment, despite it being only about 6:30.

And, um, that’s about it at the moment. Not the most thrilling or elegantly written post, I’ll admit, but whatever. I’ll get more sleep over the next few days, I hope, and try to post something more coherent.