Here After Syndrome*

Nope, it has nothing to do with The Here After. It's when you walk into a room, look around, and say, "What was I here after?"

I've been doing that a lot today. I didn't sleep well last night, so I've spent more time than usual staring into space. Usually when that happens it's because plot bunnies are stirring. Today, not so much. I can report that I have another 21 lbs. of clothing ready to donate, bringing my total for the year to an even 200 lbs. That's not including the junk mail I've tossed.

Plans for tonight include backing up my hard drive. Living on the edge, I know, but I'll try to restrain myself.


*It's more or less the opposite of But First Syndrome, when you have to do this, But First you have to do that. I do that a lot, too.

Toasted hard drive

It's not a computer this time, thank goodness. I was watching recordings on my DVR Sunday evening when the screen went green. Neon radioactive pea soup green. That's never a good sign. I rebooted twice before calling the satellite company. After wading through the annoying automated thingy and two customer service reps, they pronounced it dead and promised to ship me a new box. It only takes three business days!

Of course, my first reaction was, "THREE BUSINESS DAYS!!! I have to go THREE BUSINESS DAYS with no DVR???!"

I didn't say it out loud. There was nothing the guy in South Dakota could do about the shipping time, and it's not his fault I'm so spoiled with being able to pause, rewind, fast-forward through commercials, and record.

So we're roughing it this week. We're limited to DVDs downstairs and a non-DVR box upstairs until the new box comes. I did have the foresight to ask if the new box will have the capability to support an external hard drive so I don't lose all of my recordings when the new box GSODs* on me, and he told me it will, so we'll be looking into that, too. He also suggested we look into an HD converter box so we can at least get local channels when the satellite gets rained/snowed out.

I really love the DVR, but somehow I think life was simpler when we had the antenna and VCR set-up.

*Green Screen Of Death, similar to Microsoft's Blue Screen Of Death, but I think Microsoft copyrighted the blue.

Done!

The final "Sword And Scabbard" typo check is done! I'm working on the title page, acknowledgments, cover copy, etc and will be uploading to Lulu in the next few days. What a relief!