Crazy-Making Website Update

Now I'm totally confused. If my site goes down for no apparent reason ...

well ...

there's a reason.

It's because I am an ftp amateur.

Pity me.

Crazy-Making Website

I've been working on my old website. I don't have anything new up yet--it's going to take me a bit of offline gymnastics to figure out how to upload the work I've done over the past few days. Watch out for that last step, it's a doozy ...

One of the things that I found particularly difficult was working up each page so that it fit the subject matter but also connected in some way to the home page. I don't think I was successful. There are things that I could do if I was working on Word that I can't seem to do with the themes in this program, like adjusting fonts. I can't adjust fonts on this thing or that thing? Really? And why is it that if I have access to this background here, it doesn't show up on the menu there?

It can be crazy-making.

The sooner I finish this, the better, is all I can say. I'll let y'all know how it works out.

Fire, Snow, and Book

I love the woodstove.  It keeps the house really toasty while saving us a heap of money.  We'll save even more if we go cut ourselves instead of buying it from our wonderful neighbor (who sold it to us for less than he could have gotten for it on the open market.)  Rory will enjoy chopping it up, too.  Funny how he loathes hauling water but really enjoys splitting rounds.  Anyway, despite all the niceties associated with having a woodstove (heated blanket at bedtime or warm your back or hands, anyone?) there are disadvantages.  One of them is that when there's no one to tend it for a long time, say if it's a weekend and we all have it off so everyone sleeps in, then the fire dies and the temperature inside the house noticeably drops.  Waking up to a 60F degree house in the morning isn't that bad, but it's definitely not comfortable in pjs and bare feet.  At least the floor is warm downstairs.  Having the woodstove going for so long, and having carpet, has allowed the cement floor downstairs to retain heat and it holds it pretty well.  That's in the environs of the woodstove only.  In my office the tile floor is toe-curling cold, and I'm not talking the good toe curling either.  

The kids had a snow day off today so they spent the day horsing around and I spent the day cleaning and working on my website (aka horsing around.)  I found out that my print options include saving documents as .pdf and that iPhoto can import .pdfs, so now I'm officially in business as far as graphics on the website.  All the novels listed on the Writing page have updated, cleaner graphics.  While I was at it I added Signet to the list.  

Speaking of Signet, I'm about 15,000 words in and having fun.  I like having Gutter around.  As in Masks, I'm not sure exactly what's going to happen.  Some people write out detailed outlines or build large diagrams to develop political or mystery novels.  I may end up doing that, but for now I'm free climbing, keeping myself open to those unexpected twists and turns.  I'm hoping there will be some good ones.  In Masks I got away with having a pretty simple problem.  In Signet, it's going to be a hydra, and Lark will have no idea where the heart is until it's too late.  That's just where he ought to be--up to his neck in teeth.  

Updates

Looks like my brother-in-law is in for a big fight, but one that he can outlast the enemy.  We're all thinking our best thoughts for him.

My grandmother suffered a blood clot injury that has permanently blinded her in one eye.  I'm just glad she didn't have a stroke.  More tests ensuing.  I thought from her description that something went wrong with a scar from her cataract surgery.  Now I'm so very sorry that I didn't worry more and insist that she go to the emergency room on Christmas Eve.  I guess no one expects these things to happen.  Secretly I hope that the doctors are wrong and that some sort of regeneration is possible so my beloved grandma can have sight restored to what had been her good eye.

In more lighthearted news, apparently we're in for a big snow storm.  I'm going to see if I can't get Rory to call in to work.  He probably won't, but it's worth a try.  The stuff they're having him do right now he's whipping through much more quickly than they've budgeted time for, so it won't hurt any projects, but on the other hand I don't think he wants to lose the work hours.  Plus, he prefers to be as dependable as is humanly possible.

I worked some more on my website.  It's really addicting.  I have to put some time into writing and marketing now, so that'll be it for the site for now.  It was fun doing something different.

Shameless Plugs and a Dog Note

I wanted to mention that my website and Rory's website are both at a point that we'd love to have the word go out about them.  Tell your friends.  Tell your family.  We'll keep updating them and adding stuff, but what we have there now (I think) is nice enough that we'd be happy for visitors.  And please feel free to sign our guestbooks.  It's nice to see friendly names there.  I have a feeling that eventually the spam bots will find us, and at that point we'll have to shut them down.  Before that happens, we'd love to hear from everyone that stops by.

Second, a probably needless reminder that Rory's book is available on preorder from Amazon.com.  He has a link to it from his website.

In other news, Finn has a yeast infection in his ears.  For those of you who have dogs with floppy ears in particular, but pretty much any dog, the ears should look really clean even if the rest of the dog isn't.  Dirty ears are often a sign of yeast or bacterial infections or mites.  Another sign is the head shaking.  Dogs shouldn't shake their heads very much.  This apparently is prime season for yeast infections in dogs, so keep a look out.  Finn is doing well and he'll be done with his meds in about ten days.  The vets were very happy to see him.  The last time he visited, he was about twenty pounds.  Now he's 88 and thriving.  Mojo's loss was hard on them too, and we all needed the pick-me-up of a healthy animal coming in for a minor problem.  

You're such a good dog, Finn.  Thank you for being a love.

So Far So Good

 We're still dry here in the office.  In other so far, so good news, chirontraining.com and kzmiller.com are officially live and hopefully well.  I think I got rid of all the place holder text, web links and email links with real ones or deleted the ones we didn't want, took care of some awkward writing, replaced Rory's home page intro with a modified one that sounds more like him, and took care of some ugly spots by replacing them with prettier things.  We still don't have the ability to load our own pics onto the website.  That will be coming soon, I hope.

I've got a big house cleaning and organizing goal, and so far I've made a few dents.  They're not as big of dents as I'd like, but in a lot of ways a household overhaul is a lot like moving (except that you don't go anywhere) in that what looks like a few days work just keeps going on and on until you want to start working with an axe and a flamethrower.  Normally a house overhaul is something I do halfway at best and I don't start until spring, when the good weather inspires me to go out and do crazy things like wash the windows, sweep off the porch, and burn piles of accumulated paperwork I don't need anymore.  I see no reason to put it off, which is a good enough sign to me to just go for it right here in December.

In the meantime I've got to keep writing, especially the query letters, which means putting together a final draft of my Masks synopsis and then modifying it according to the guidelines for each place I'm submitting to.  Ugh.  As much as I feel like I'm pulling teeth when I edit, when I'm forced to market I feel like I'm inside an iron maiden and they're tightening the thing incrementally every minute or so.  

I really need an agent, which will involve marketing but hopefully just in the short term, because I can take this iron maiden thing for only so long.

That's enough of all that.  Next entry, more crazy ladies, I promise.  I've got a good one this time.  Barbie crazy lady.  Wherever you are Barbie crazy lady, enjoy your $95 or so plus tax return!  

Kick 'em when they're up, kick 'em when they're down

So after working hard on setting up drafts of Chirontraining.com and kzmiller.com on the web, I had to take chirontraining temporarily down due to technical problems with editing that were not going away.  I can't fix any typos, add stuff to kzmiller.com or tweak awkward phrases because the same problems that plague chiron plague kzmiller, but kzmiller doesn't have as many issues as chiron so I didn't think I'd be as embarrassed to leave it out there flapping in the web wind.  Not that anyone except my closest friends will ever look at the darned thing, but there you have it.  My husband's coworkers do occasionally search around for him and he has quite a following on his blog, so chiron really needed to be lots, lots better than it is.  And it will be, provided iPower can fix this.

I'm really enchanted with iPower's low prices.  I'm not enchanted by their extremely long wait times for tech support, usually an hour or more on hold.  I'm sure they're not happy either.  They're flying on a new platform and it's making life difficult for everyone.  They're doing their best for me--I've been passed along to a level 2 tech.  I have to admit I don't know what that is, but it sounds like they've taken the next step to solve the problem.  So wish me luck, wish iPower luck, wish the poor souls who need help with their websites luck as they brave the hold music with a crick in their elbows and sore necks.  And may patience rule the day.

In other news not related to Kami's obsession with getting business-related webpages online, we've had a local flood warning issued by the weather service.  I get to see if our french drain will help deter the yearly flood 'o the office.  I hope so, because I have paper stuff on my floor.  Again.  As usual.

Maybe I'll work on cleaning some of this stuff up today.  Ugh.  On my list of projects during Kami's Marketing Month will be to finish tiling in here and organize my office.  Wish me luck with that too.

Nano Win and Website Building

I crossed the Nanowrimo finish line a day early, and proceeded to get myself entangled (after a long, late shift at work) in website building for the very first time.  But before I get into that:

I have to celebrate!  WEEEEEEEE!  I won I won I won I won I won!

There.  That's quite enough for the likes of me.

I started setting up Rory's new website at www.chirontraining.com first because he's got a book coming out and also because the sooner I set it up, the sooner he can start putting in more than just the placeholders I cut and pasted and wrote in.  Looking at it this morning, there are some things that don't make any sense.  I blame the late hour.  I called it quits about 1:30am today.  Normally I wouldn't have worried about having placeholders, but being a complete novice at this, I didn't want to leave blank spaces that we might not later catch or see.

That fear turned out to be unwarranted, as one thing that I left blank was still available to edit.  Doh!

I'm definitely annoyed at my own incompetence.  I have some neat stuff available to play with on Microsoft (evil!hiss!) Office, which is a format I'm comfortable manipulating, but I don't know how to do an ftp download to get stuff from Office onto the web.  So I'm using their pre-existing pages, and found some really nice ones, but I don't know how to add or subtract segments yet.  Add onto this that apparently the poopyhead interface is screwed up for Macs  and you have the sense of frustration that began to build yesterday.  Text editing fields turn black, and since the font is black I can't see what I'm typing and I don't see a way to change the text color while I'm typing.  Gah!  This seems like a basic problem that should not exist on the interface because I'm sure I'm not the only Mac user out there.  And I was unable to successfully download any pics from Jasmine onto the web for whatever weird, poopyhead reason.  I can do it here on Jestablog, but apparently not with iPower at this time.

It's a learning experience, and not a horrible one.  Even when I'm at my most annoyed, I'm still having fun.  It's all shiney and new goodness.

It's especially fun to look forward.  Coming to a web near you: kzmiller.com