Rude words, and many of them

Today I have been mostly fighting technology, somewhat in the manner of Montgomery fighting Rommel: failure after failure, until just maybe I may have arrived at Alamein.

I've been trying to edit something onscreen here, with changes tracked. For some reason, my current iteration of TextMaker garbles RTF files, if they're heavy on tracked changes and comments inserted; while my current iteration of OpenOffice declines to show comments at all. Le sigh. I did what I usually do, converted the file to yuck-spit doc format - and TextMaker fell over altogether. Which it absolutely never does.

Eek. I have broken my WP, oh noes!

I ended up firing up the previous computer with all its previous iterations, which I know can cope with these complexities: but trying to replicate the work I'd already done (two computers, two keyboards, two mice; one monitor, constantly changing source) was rapidly driving me demented. But I tried saving the file once I'd got it working as a doc and copying it over, and the WP fell over again.

So while I had the old computer booted up, I did the other thing I've been putting off. I need a workable version of my novel Light Errant, which I wrote back in '96. I had found a couple of archive floppies, but my current machine has no floppy drive. The old one does ("how quaint," observed Alex, on first seeing it four years ago, when it was new).

Load first floppy, chugga-dugga, list files. Light Errant, chapters 1 - 13, all present and correct. Except that no software on that machine would read them.

Second floppy, earlier iteration of the novel, same result. Howl.

Dig out third machine, older yet. Find cables, find keyboard and mouse. Remember that its installation of Linux is suspect to the point of collapse; find live CD to run it from. Find old archival zip disks. Stomp up and down stairs a lot, drink heavily.

Supply power.

Eventually? Yay. Readable version found, copied onto new machine in RTF format which WP graciously condescends to read without falling over. Break down in sobs of relief, only amplified when editor sends new doc format of story that WP also - I think, fingers crossed, etc - condescends to read without falling over. Yet.

So, just for fun, have a table of contents for Light Errant, because I'd forgotten most of these and I do love a playful chapter title:

Fair Spanish Ladies
Ill-Lit by Moonlight
Not the Same River
Bike a Hill and Walk a Shore
Liverish Allsorts
Grolsch and Vomit(tm)
Gangsters' Moles
How to Get Ahead
With One Pound They Were Free
Ben Behaving Madly
Kissing Cozens
Transfigured Light
Ben and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Uh-oh

Iz big moff in the baffroom. Baz wants to kill it. He iz committing many leaps. I am running a baff. This may not end well.

What did end magnificently well: my supper tonight. My lamb shank and smoked prawn broad bean paella. It met a fabulous end.