Helpers

Fiorella loves people who help her, like the man at HEB who got the leche down from the top shelf in the dairy case for her yesterday and the checker who taught her the Spanish word for "bag"--bolsa. Like Patrick at Click Computer Repair, who unfroze her computadora and put an icon on its desktop so Fio could do the job herself in the future. Like our Chase Bank person who listened to Fio babble on about Husband's hospital stays and comforted her.

God is good. People are good. All will be well.

Icon Madness

There are fifty-one icons on Fiorella's desktop, and when she's tried to drag them hither or thither, they mess up her other icons.  In fact, not only did her blog icon get buried and become an enormous orange B, but when she opens it, the page is one of her old blogs instead of the current one, which means she must go through extra steps to get to her composition page.

Fio wants to be able to arrange her icons  and repair her blog, and she wants to be able to move most of the photos off her desktop into some sort of storage bin. And she wants to write down the steps to do these things for her own private laptop instruction book.

Any takers?  Fio has a PC.

The Latest in Electronic News, New, News

Fiorella was trying to move desktop icons around yestrday afternoon and accidentally lost her blog icon.  She can still create a new blog, but she can't look at the posted versions of her older ones. Nothing to do but throw herself on the mercy of someone with an IT degree. Here birdie, birdie, birdie . . . .
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On the other hand, Fio has learned how to check sales rankings on WHAT THE HEART WANTS, which have been going up lately.  Hoping, hoping, hoping . . . .
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Oh, and Friend Claire shared her book back-up method with Fio: after she finishes for the day, she emails a copy of her manuscript to herself.  Copy, copy, copy . . . .

Fiorella Fights the Computer, Husband Wins

Sorry to be running late, but Fiorella had an adventure this morning.  Let's call it, in line with all those cutely-titled elementary-school textbooks, "Fun with the Computer."

Some background here:  Fiorella is computer-challenged.  Her mind does not compute computerese. Nice, helpful people have often explained to Fio what they are doing as they move their fingers like Chopin across the keys, but Fio's eyes glaze over and her brain moves on to more graspable things--like gathering together all her short stories into a book, like refreshing her Russian, like rearranging furniture and landscaping the yard, like working out the family finances, like what the heck she'll write on Fiorella tomorrow.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, Fiorella tried to drag a desktop picture onto this blog for your edification and enjoyment, but she ended up pushing both you and the internet half off the page, then couldn't either back on again.

Finally she invoked Husband, the family computer guru, and he galloped over to the couch on his white horse and rescued her.

And we lived happily every after.

Attack of the Machines

Fiorella is accustomed to computers attacking her.  The first mortal blow she can remember was many years ago when she took weeks recording the Christmas carols she had written, not by note, onto an expensive program Husband had bought her for her birthday.  The program produced sound, and she envisioned herself listening to her compositions in eterna.  But soon afterwards, the program rejected her, insisting she was illegal. Two years later, when Fio had to switch computers, despite Husband's assurances everything would transfer, all her music disappeared.

And that's the way it's gone through the years.  Computers have played Fiorella false, and now her jumpy Toshiba has lost the ability to connect with the internet.  Click, her trusty repair shop, says it's not going to be a quick fix, which means Husband will have to transfer all her documents to the upstairs desktop, which scares her because she understands mortal blows.

Wish Fio well.

Computer Madness

Will Fiorella's computer triangularization never end?

Her old faithful Dell laptop has fallen in battle.  Translation: Fio dropped it one too many times and its lid is tearing off, which is probably what is causing it to scramble words Fiorella writes, randomly fail to save, and sometimes erase what Fio has written earlier.  Her new Toshiba laptop has been captured by a browser hijacker.  Translation: Fio has inadvertently run ads down the side of her blog and can't reach Google, her favorite research engine.  Her upstairs desktop is old and clanky.  Translation: it doesn't have Fio's blog or updated work-in-progress on it.

On the other hand, Fio can still contact Google on the Dell, can use Documents without fear of electronic shenanigans on the Toshiba, and can answer email without weird things happening on the desktop.

The only solution is to copy Fiorella's work-in-progress to the desktop, rush the Toshiba to Click Computers as soon as Fio finishes copy edits, and pray for electronic sanity as Fio writes her blog on the remains of the Dell.

Weren't computers supposed to make our lives easier?

The Best-laid Plans of Mice and Authors . . . .

So now Fio has three computers--the clackety desktop model upstairs that doesn't have Documents on it, the eccentric Dell that she dropped on its head one time too many, and the brand-new Toshiba, which hasn't been loaded yet.  So much for chapters four and five of WHERE THE HEART LEADS.  So much for Fio's sanity, which may have been doubtful to begin with.