that's enough re-installing for now

I haven't put *everything* back on the Thinkpad, but I've put back everything I need to actually be able to work. Moderately urgent things left to do -- the secondary security programs, Dragon Naturally Speaking (which will involve copying the data files over), the camera software, and getting it to talk to the wireless print server that also acts as a wifi relay point for the desk workstation. The latter is going to have to wait until Other Half returns home, because he has the software disk and current settings. Bad Jules, no biscuit, for forgetting to round up that one before starting, or at least before Other Half went on a business trip.

A good chunk of the time on this was taken up with backing up, and then backing up again, and then backing up a bit more, and then one last copy of vital files to a thumb drive (which I promptly lost, necessitating some urgent Googling later for how to take ownership of backup files when the machine name has changed). Another good chunk was taken up on waiting for the new isntallation to fetch five years' worth of Windows Update. The rest of it was just that fiddling about with medication dosage that affects attention span is not the ideal time to be running a full install of Everything.

The last time I did this I didn't have a Day Jobbe, and it only took me a couple of days. This time it's been mostly done in the evening after work, which really doesn't help even without the meds issue. I've created a checklist as I've gone along, because the last time I did this was some years ago, and I didn't remember to do or how to do some things, which necessitated some Googling.

The thing that actually prompted this outbreak of masochism in the first place was deciding to try Google Chrome, and having the machine fall over crying and complaining within a few minutes when I tried to run it. That was the final straw after some months of the previously stable install getting ever flakier. But just in case it was Chrome in and of itself, that's not going on until I've run another "clone disk" backup.

Autopope reminded me that there is a Lotus fork of Open Office. I hate Word, and I hate the Open Office word processor for exactly the same reasons, but sometimes I have to handle Word files, and Lotus Symphony is probably the least bad option, so I shall install that as my not-SmartSuite word processor. Maybe I will hate the Word mental model less now that I have had a couple of years of compulsory Word use at the Day Jobbe to get used to its horrible ways.

On Word Pro...

I decided to go and look up that Lotus Word Pro Fan Club exchange on rasfc. :-) Ironically, this was a thread that started with me grumbling about a (very rare) glitch I'd had when saving a file, but segued on one branch into a discussion of why some of us much preferred Word Pro to Word and Wordalikes. The Word Pro worship shows up elsewhere in rasfc (as Jacey once pointed out, it lacks Word's irritating tendency to try and take over and second guess what you want to do and how you want to format something), but this was pure quill.

( all praise to the Word Pro )

Book log: Bob Shaw -- Shadow of Heaven

39) Bob Shaw -- Shadow of Heaven

[NEL abridged edition]
Short novel set in a future where an act of terrorism has rendered much of the world's arable land unusable without reducing the population. As a result, most of the first world population is crammed into narrow urban strips along the seaboard, with much of the feed coming from the sea. There is a small amount of arable farming carried out on multi-mile-wide anti-gravity disks high in the atmosphere, where some of the remaining uncontaminated soil has been placed for security. No people are allowed there and the disks, nicknamed Heaven, are farmed by robots. But when a reporter's brother goes missing, he realises that Johnny has fulfilled a childhood fantasy and run away to Heaven. Stirling follows him, using his job as a reporter as cover for tapping into the underground railway. What he finds there is a community of refugees, and a rule that nobody can break the community's cover by returning to the surface. Stirling has no intention of staying, but his brother has no intention of letting fraternal loyalty get in the way of his plans for the disk.

It's an interesting concept and story, but time has not been kind to it. Giant anti-gravity disks, but the press room where Stirling works uses card indexes to store their data? There are too many things to break a twenty-first century reader's suspension of disbelief for it to quite work for me now, which is a shame. One for the Oxfam box.

LibraryThing entry

book log: Jacqueline Rayner - Doctor Who: Winner Takes All

40) Jacqueline Rayner - Doctor Who: Winner Takes All

Third in the New Who novel line. Now this was a definite improvement over the previous title in the series. It's a revisit of the Last Starfighter scenario, but with some nasty twists, and not just the one you find in Ender's Game. Rose and Nine drop in to the Powell Estate to visit Jackie, and find that there's a new video game being promoted by people in porcupine costumes, using scratchcards given away with any purchase at local stores, no matter how small. Mickey is one of the people who's won a console, and as he explains, the console has only one game, but it's still good value, because it's so realistic, and complex enough to be a little different every time you play. Of course the Doctor can't resist showing off and beating Mickey's score, doing so thoroughly that he becomes number one on the aliens' list of useful humans to acquire.

The plot's interesting and the characterisations for Nine and Rose are good. But where the story really shines for me is in one of the one-off characters. Robert is a young teenager, complete with young teenage boy anxieties and fantasies, and his interior monologue is wince-inducingly realistic. He's someone a lot of fans will be able to identify with.

Enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours. This one I'll probably re-read.


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book log: Ursula Vernon -- Digger [graphic novel]

41) Ursula Vernon -- Digger [graphic novel]

And this is what ate my Good Friday in 2011, courtesy of a link at Making Light -- the webcomic "Digger". There is not a single mention of the Abrahamic religions in it. However, there's a lot of thoughtful exploration of ethics and morality, and the author's background in anthropology shows, in a good rather than bad way. I got dropped into it via link very early in the archive, where the heroine (a wombat mining engineer by the name of Digger) has just dug her way to the surface after an encounter with some toxic gas, and finds herself in a temple with a statue of the Hindu god Ganesh. A statue that is an avatar of the god, and is still talking to her even after she's had a few lungfuls of clean air and is therefore not hallucinating. I found it interesting enough to backtrack to the beginning, and got sucked in.

Originally a webcomic (which is what I read), but also available as a series of five graphic novels.

http://www.diggercomic.com/

LibraryThing entry