Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Disruption Sucks

Right now, I'm feeling a tad bit of sympathy for traditional publishers. Disruption in your work environment throws you off your game. You get disoriented because things aren't were you left them. You reach for something and your hand meets empty air because the item moved.

The last couple of weeks have been insane, and not just because of the move of 1200 miles.

As I said before, Isabella, my trusty Inspiron 700m, died. DH and managed to get everything switched over to Ivan, my backup Inspiron 700m. These were the lightest laptops on the market eight years ago, which is why I loved them so. We planned on getting me a new work computer after the end of the year, mainly because we've been promising GK a new machine for some time now, and we thought, "Hey! Great Christmas present!"

But I have had problems with arthristis for three years now. Yeah, I know I'm too young, but it's part of the whole screwed-up endocrine/immune system thing I have going. And well, you know where this is going.

I had gotten several work tasks done Saturday morning while curled up on the loveseat. I stood up to take Ivan to the kitchen, one of the few places I could safely plug him in to recharge without someone tripping over cords. And i watch in horror as he slid from my suddenly non-working hands.

And to top things off, I'd just received two new covers from my designer by e-mail and had not saved them to a flashdrive or the external harddrive yet.
I had a good cry and a shower, then DH and I sat down to analyze the damage. Even though the impact hadn't broken any external bits, it cracked the motherboard and screwed up something in the memory. Or so we thought initially.

DH, being the cool tech guy he is, performed emergency transplant surgery. But despite his best efforts, neither machines' screen would work. So now, I'm tethered to our wide-screen TV in order to see what the hell I'm typing on the Bride of Frankenstein.

Like a traditional publisher, I can get by for now, but the long-term prognosis sucks the big one. This means investing in new resources to make me more productive again. Because I doubt the local cafe owners would be happy with me dragging a widescreen TV into their establishments.

2 comments:

  1. You never know until you try...

    You could get one of those Chromebooks where everything 'lives in the cloud', although I admit I know little more than that about them.

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  2. Thanks for the suggestion, SAROE, but it won't help if I drop the Chromebook. Or the Macbook DH hinted at. All computers have tendency to break when you drop them. *grin*

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