Dorothy Marley's Journal

Aaah, the twice-yearly hard drive purge. Nine whole gigabytes in which to stretch out, for a while anyway. I tend to dread doing it, because while my backing up involves sticking a thumb drive in and throwing over the few tiny text files that are new, the Great Hard Drive Purge involves actually moving computer stuff around and disconnecting drives from PCs and hooking them up to Macs and other gargantuan efforts. Which is why I only tend to do it when I'm having to delete yesterday's podcasts to have room for today's.

I realize that 9GB doesn't sound like much, but my entire hard drive is only 80GB, and frankly, if it wasn't for my habit of saving certain podcasts, I'd probably not even be close to filling it up ever. Fan fiction, after all, doesn't take up a lot of space. It took me three years of obsessive story saving to hit 500MB on my Torchwood folder, after all. Though, admittedly, if I saved the HTML instead of just the text, it would likely be about ten times that size. Which is why I save the text. :)

Then again, I have about two terabytes hooked up to the PC, so it's not like I'm practicing hard drive economy anywhere else.

I'd totally forgotten about the NanoCat Word Counter. (Because it is very important to see my word count in as many forms as humanly possible.)

This is why I was very happy to see that the widgets are finally working today. Well, mostly working. There seems to be a bit of decimal issue with the full progress reports, but it's not a big deal. Unfortunately, I discovered that, despite my doing my own math, I actually missed my word count yesterday by 14 words. Fourteen. Words.

( Is this really a big deal? Well, okay, no. )

And yet, I have still managed to crack 10,000 words. :)

Yep, it's that time of year again, when I move my NaNoWriMo bookmarks up to the Toolbar. Of course, the site designers have, as usual, rearranged everything so that most of them are broken, but re-setting the links is always a nice time-waster those first few days.

I have to say that, despite thinking about what I'm going to write since the beginning of October, the actual arrival of NaNoWriMo snuck up on me this year. I've been tootling along with it in the back of my mind, then suddenly I look up and it's three days before the start.

Part of my distraction has been my nesting behavior over at the new rec journal. I'm really, really glad I moved all the rec stuff. Not only am I no longer spamming people who are not necessarily interested in the recs, I've also been able to do a lot of tagging and organizing that wasn't really practical here. I feel like the rec journal can now be an actual resource that will, hopefully, remain useful even if I stop having the time to do as much recommending.

In other news, I picked up my CPAP machine today. I think it says something that I'm looking forward to strapping the thing on at bedtime. (Probably that I'm willing to do almost anything for a good night's sleep. :))

I also discovered that if you wait until the last few days to buy Halloween candy, you a) don't have time to eat it beforehand and b) can get it on sale. Also, Cheetos are not kosher.

I had my second sleep study over the weekend, and it went really well. I used the CPAP machine all night, and did not, according to the sleep technician, have any apneas. \0/ (I did, in fact, make actual victory arms when he told me this.) I did feel claustrophobic a couple of times, but it was very mild and I was able to talk myself out of it by remembering that the machine was there to help me breathe.

The mask wasn't too bad, and didn't really keep me from sleeping. We'll see if that changes once I'm no longer so tired that I don't care, but for now I'm more than willing to strap the thing on if it means better sleep. I'm also, on advice from thewordoffred, going to look into the possibility of just using a nose tube. We'll see.

I also found out that I apparently re-arrange my iPod in my sleep. I go to sleep listening to podcasts, and while I'm falling asleep I move the iPod from side to side as I turn over. This behavior, according to the sleep technician, does not change once I'm asleep (or, indeed, after the iPod's sleep timer has turned it off). As I toss and turn, I move the non-functioning iPod around with me without ever waking up. This may explain why I haven't yet strangled myself with the headphones in my sleep. :)

This is a search that tends to come up a lot, so I decided to just go ahead and pre-emptively make a master list of Torchwood BDSM stories. Since most of the time the request is for Jack/Ianto, and also specific about who the Dom is, I've split the list into three parts: Jack/Ianto where Jack is the Dom, Jack/Ianto where Ianto is the Dom, and other pairings with the Dom indicated in a note. I've tagged all three lists as follows:

storyfinder:bdsmjackiantodomjack for Jack/Ianto stories where Jack is the Dom.

storyfinder:bdsmjackiantodomianto for Jack/Ianto stories where Ianto is the Dom.

storyfinder:bdsmotherpairings for all the stories with other pairings.

All three lists are consolidated under the storyfinder:bdsm tag.

( Jack/Ianto BDSM, Dom Jack )

( Jack/Ianto BDSM, Dom Ianto )

( Other BDSM Pairings )

In order to avoid blathering incessantly about Yet Another Health Issue, I decided--this time--to wait until I had a firm diagnosis.

( The desire to fall asleep into your mashed potatoes is not normal. Just so you know. )

One of Boo's homework assignments is that she has to write a sentence every day describing something she learned in class. Usually I ask her what she wants to write, then I help her with the spelling by sounding the words out. Not surprisingly (because this is, after all, English that she's trying to spell), she doesn't always guess the correct vowel, and last night she got really discouraged about it.

This is one of those parent situations where there was really nothing I could think of that was encouraging. Saying what I felt was the truth ("Yeah, English is a bitch to spell and even if you're really smart you'll probably be really grateful for the invention of the spellchecker for the rest of your life") wasn't, I thought, exactly the uplifting words of encouragement she needed.

So, I told her about The Great Vowel Shift instead.

My thinking--if it can be called such--was that if she knew that the vowel sounds weren't always spelled the same, that they were arbitrary and messy, she might feel a bit better about finding it hard to do. Amazingly enough, this worked.

Later, I had to Google how to spell "pink" in Hebrew, but still, mostly a win in the mom column.

I'm restoring my confidence by messing with the Windows computer, and I decided that I would conduct my semi-sporadic search for a multi-file search and replace utility for Windows. At the moment, I'm completely unable to survive without TextWrangler, which allows me to re-do those teeny coding errors I might make across twenty files, and also is the secret behind my thematic lists. (What, you think I have time to read 3,000 stories for mentions of blue cupcakes? ;)) The only difficulty is that it's MacOS only.

Shockingly enough, I found one this time. It's called Actual Search and Replace and it does exactly what I want. It searches across multiple text files for words or phrases, displays them in context and also--as the name suggests--can perform multi-file search and replace. (Take that, SmartQuotes!) Joy!

Well, if "joy" means "worth $30." The free version works for thirty days, which is enough time to make a decision about buying it, but I've been really spoiled by Bare Bones freeware the last fifteen years. Still, it would possibly enable me to not go completely insane if my Mac craps out on me, which is certainly worth thirty bucks.

I just hope I'm not jinxing my Mac by eyeing other utilities...

This list was made in response to this request for timetravel fix stories (not "fixit"s necessarily, just stories that altered canon events) on twgenrefinders. It's tagged on Delicious under storyfinder:timetravelfixes.

( Time Travel Fixes )

This list was made in response to this request for long Jack/Ianto or general team stories on twgenrefinders. For the purpose of the list I arbitrarily defined "long" in Tardis Big Bang terms--20,000 words or longer. This list is tagged on Delicious under storyfinder:longjack/ianto.

( Long Jack/Ianto Stories )

What with my vacation, and catching up from my vacation, I've fallen a bit behind on posting my finder lists here. I'm going to try to make it a point to get that done soon, but I'm not sure it will happen before DragonCon. If you're interested in the latest lists, you can check the storyfinder tag, which covers all the storyfinder lists.

( Links to some of the recent lists )

So. We have met Boo's new Head of School...

...and she is Yvonne Hartman.

My husband and I went to a Meet the Head of School and Have Coffee thing this morning, and as I listened to her talk and answer questions I really, really had to work hard not to roll my eyes. Okay, I understand that management jargon is probably the way Things are Done now, but I felt like I was listening to a politician dodge the press rather than a Head of School talk to parents.

I do understand that it's not an easy gig. (In fact, I was amused that the questions were evenly divided between "why aren't the kids running around more?" and "why aren't the kids studying math/science more?", neatly displaying the never-ending conflict of parent expectations in microcosm.) I don't, though, like to come away from a meeting feeling that the person in charge hasn't really said anything. I also feel like that a meeting with her would be more like a battlefield than a conversation.

It's entirely possible that this first impression will be proved wrong, and it's also possible that, even if it isn't wrong, these will be qualities that will make her a good Head of School.

That doesn't mean I won't still think of her saying, "If it's alien, it's ours," every time I see her.

Spent the weekend at my mother's, doing iPod maintenance and continuing iPod education. My mom, as I may have mentioned, has two iPods in order to keep up with her audiobook habit. While we were on vacation, iPod number one--which had already shown signs of wear and tear--began to really screw up. I brought it home, downloaded the files from it (confirming, by the way, that it was Seriously Screwed Up), and put them all on a new iPod. So far, so good.

( This just in: WAV files are Really Big )

If you don't care about the color of the yolks of your boiled eggs, move along.

If, on the other hand, you're curious about the things that are topics of earnest debate in our family while on vacation, proceed to the cut for two amazing photographs of...boiled eggs.

( No, seriously, it's pictures of boiled eggs and a summary of different ways to boil eggs so the yolks don't turn dark. Don't say I didn't warn you. )

After laboriously updating two separate index posts, with two sets of links, and then editing two separate journal entries, I had an amazing revelation. Why not, I thought (two days later, but who's counting?) make one post with both sets of links? Genius!

So, um, yeah. I consolidated my Dreamwidth fiction index and my Livejournal fiction index, making the Dreamwidth posts the primary links (since Dreamwidth's generous posting limit allowed me to load all my stories as single files), and adding the Livejournal links to that list. Now, instead of keeping track of two separate posts that are identical except for the URLs, I only have to fiddle with one post (that I can, in fact, crosspost from Dreamwidth).

Seriously, I'm surprised sometimes that I manage to leave the house with my shoes on the right feet...

When Boo was around a year old, I was diagnosed with arthritis on the left side of my lower back. My doctor told me it's not uncommon for new mommies to develop back problems, because we spend a lot of time picking up and carrying twenty-pound babies, and tend to do it consistently on one arm/hip. I took an anti-inflammatory for a couple of months and changed how I lifted and picked up things and how I sat, focusing on making non-spine-twisting moves and on balancing my baby-lifting. That took care of the pain, and I hadn't had any problems for the last five years.

( You can probably guess where this is going )

I'm just hoping this is the last side-effect of my fall. :)

I've realized that I haven't actually, formally updated anything about my wrist lately. As it happens, no news is good news, but since I've been blithering about it for months I might as well offer closure, too. :)

( I am healed! )

All in all, I feel pretty darn lucky. It was a hellish winter, but I came out of it with all the important things (for instance, knitting) still possible, and I'm not in pain anymore. This is all good. :)

In other news, I'm done rescuing files from my Mom's malfunctioning iPod, and am about three-quarters done transferring the files back into iTunes so I can load them onto her new iPod. This has taken some time, both because I want to make sure that everything's being transferred, and also because I'm converting a bunch of WAV files to MP3. She has a machine that converts cassettes into digital audio, but it saves the files as WAV and we've never really coordinated that "How to convert files to MP3" tutorial I've been promising to do for her. So far, I've saved about 50GB (!?) of space.

I've also plowed through the backlog of Torchwood stories that were posted on LJ during my vacation. Without going into brutal statistics, I estimate that I had to read roughly twice as many stories, and tagged about the same net number as I would have pre-Children of Earth. I would despair, except that I sort of suspected that this would be the case. I also saved a bunch of stories that I didn't tag, some of which may end up working their way into the rec list. We'll have to see.

All in all, it's good to be back.

It's 2:30am, and I've reached skip=600 on LJ. Unbelievable as it seems, that actually took me all the way back to the point where I left.

The beach was completely wonderful. I managed to keep both Boo and myself from getting sunburned, despite the fact that she did nothing but run around in the mercilessly hot sun for six solid days. There were four adults to one six-year-old, and between all of us we managed to mostly keep up with her. Mostly.

There was no internet at the condo where we stayed, and I didn't manage to get to anywhere with wireless, so even with the backwards scan through LJ I still have some catching up to do. Starting with the huge pile of Torchwood stories posted in the last ten days. :)

Okay, I'm cheating, because this isn't an actual story list. Or rather, it's kind of an on-going story list.

What with the recent airing of "Children of Earth," the Torchwood fanfiction community has been--understandably--a bit overwhelmed with stories about the mini-series. In an effort to aid those readers who a) might not have seen "Children of Earth" yet or b) want to take a break from reading about "Children of Earth," I have (inspired by zortified) added a "nochildrenofearth" tag to my Delicious bookmarks.

http://delicious.com/dorothymarley/nochildrenofearth

These are stories which contain no spoilers about "Children of Earth," and do not take place during that time period of the series.

I've only tagged back as far as July 6th, the day "Children of Earth" began to air. If you want to read non-"Children of Earth" stories I bookmarked before then, just go to the main bookmark page and scroll/page until you get to July 5th. You're safe from there on back. :)

ETA: Playing the part of my brain, adina_atl has reminded me how easily the Bulk Edit function works (we won't mention that I used it to add the new tag to all the recent stories and then failed to think about the fact that it would work on all my tags at once, no really), and I've gone ahead and tagged all my bookmarks with "nochildrenofearth" as appropriate. That means that if you begin by using that tag and keep adding other tags to it (there's a list of + tags to the right when you get to the bookmark page), you will not encounter "Children of Earth" stories. Yes, it means that a huge majority of my bookmarks are tagged that way, but that's not really a problem and it does mean that readers can surf un-spoiled. I hope. :)

For those who do want to read more stories about "Children of Earth," I've tagged everything having to do with it with "spoilers:childrenofearth." I've also tagged most of the stories "torchwood:series3" and, where applicable, "torchwood:post-series3."

Also be aware that the "torchwood:post-series" tag--which covers stories that take place in the far-enough future to be unlikely to ever be covered by canon--may include "Children of Earth" spoilers even if there's not a specific Series 3 tag. In that case, there will be a "spoilers:childrenofearth" tag in place. As a final warning, be aware that some of the tags on "Children of Earth" stories may in themselves be spoilers.

(ETA September 6, 2009: It's been two months now since "Children of Earth" aired, and most communities have eased up on spoiler protection. I've thought about whether or not to stop using the spoiler tags, and have decided that, for now, I'll continue to use both the "nochildrenofearth" tag and the "spoilers:childrenofearth" tag for at least another month. It's very likely that I will eventually drop the "spoilers:childrenofearth" tag, but I may continue to use the "nochildrenofearth" one, simply because I can see where readers might want to filter those stories.)

I am slowly plowing through stories from the TARDIS Big Bang. As I read, I'm tagging the stories I liked on Delicious, under the "tardisbigbang" tag. (This tag does cover stories from both rounds, although I haven't got around to wholesale tagging of Round 1.)

( Recommendations so far )

I've also finally cleared out the 300+ stories from the folder where I dump newly saved stories, and as a result there are quite a few new Torchwood recs up. While they're skewed towards newer stories, there's a mix of older stuff in there as well.

Another list from a couple of weeks ago. This request was for stories about Ianto and Tosh, either as friends or in a relationship. These will be tagged on Delicious as "storyfinder:ianto&tosh" for friendship stories, and "storyfinder:ianto/tosh" for stories about them having a sexual or romantic relationship.

( Ianto&Tosh (Friendship) )

( Ianto/Tosh (Sex/Romance) )

Request number one was for stories featuring pheromones, and request number two, made shortly thereafter, was for "aliens/sex pollen/alien tech made them do it." Since the two requests more or less overlapped, I've smushed them together in one post. All the stories carry the usual dub-con implications that go with the AMTDI trope, but I've also noted the stories that go well beyond that base assumption and into non-con.

I've also been working on my Delicious tags this week, and have a) caught up with my "totag" tag and b) starting adding tags for storyfinder request lists. This set, for instance, will (hopefully soon) be tagged with "storyfinder:pheromones" and "storyfinder:aliensmadethemdoit." I have also laboriously divorced my personal bookmarks from this Delicious account, since it was just too unwieldly to have the tags for my 1000+ personal bookmarks cluttering up the tags I really use.

( Stories featuring pheromones )

( Aliens, etc., made them do it )

Happy Birthday, ladypredator!

Off to surgery, wish me luck! :)

I had my final cast removed yesterday, and am sporting a highly fashionable black Velcro splint. All I have to do is refrain from breaking my pins until Monday.

( Surgery details )

In other cat news, I took Greebo in for his checkup on Tuesday. While I had Tom there, I realized that I might as well get Greebo his (overdue) shots and have him looked at. Greebo is nine years old, so I wasn't surprised that he needed his teeth cleaned. Apparently they have a nifty anesthetic that the cats can breathe that doesn't stay in their systems, so they can put older cats under for non-critical procedures like teeth cleaning. This was something we were never able to do with Sylvester. As seems to happen, he didn't need his teeth cleaned until he was too old to have his teeth cleaned. But Greebo is going to have his done in three weeks.

I also found out why, despite the fact that he was obviously huge, my other vet never mentioned Greebo's weight.

( Pictures of my big-boned cat )