I am right now on the other end of Typo's rant: caught between a difficult author (not that you are, Typo, but this guy can't follow instructions) and the layout team who keeps screwing up. The author is understandably annoyed that it's taking so long, I'm annoyed that he keeps sending me unusable files and that the layout guys keep screwing up, and the layout guys are annoyed that I'm not satisfied yet.

I'm annoyed that he keeps sending me unusable files

We had an author once who sent in his manuscript as a Word file -- with a hard return typed at the end of every line. We asked the author to re-do it without the hard returns, and he replied with "What is a hard return?"

So, okay, we explained it as a paragraph return. He replied with "I don't know what that is." We finally said, "When you typed your paper and came to the end of a line, you pressed the Return key to start a new line. Please do not do that."

He replied with, "I cannot make the changes you request because I do not understand what you are asking."

I still believe we were being punked, but OTOH, putting a hard return at the end of every line is a LOT of effort to go to just to piss off the people who are publishing you.

How can Shir's parents be my sister?

There's a term in Hebrew called Marit Ayin/Marris Ayin. It literally translates as "the appearance of the eye" and - refraining from a permitted action because Jews might see you and think you're really doing some other (forbidden) action - something you won't do/do if only for the sake of appearance.

Ha! I know this one. It's summed up by the joke "Why don't Church of Christ members have sex standing up? "Because someone might think they're dancing."

At my last job, so many people sent me files with hard returns that I wrote a macro strip them out. One reason you can't make them understand is that they don't have formatting marks on, the way god intended.

People in Rochester act like that about the first snowstorm of the year. Every year. And all of the sudden they are unable to drive. Or use caution in any way.

When those people move south, they spend winters loudly complaining about how Southerners can't drive in snow.

This Christmas I bought two laptops and two routers to bring back home for my family. Because they are who they are, both laptops needed to be fired up and fully configured before they got to their owners. Both routers had to be wiped, reinstalled with a new OS, and configured in place to extend their network both over the wire and wirelessly.

Why did my father keep checking up on my progress with his laptop before I even got there? Why did he keep chasing me down to see if the full-house coverage wireless network was up once I arrived?

Does this not look like a favour to anyone else? Doesn't he know that normal people turn on their laptops themselves?

You have both earned the Family Tech Support merit badge: [link]

My sister tried to convince me to set up a tablet for a friend of hers. The fuck? Seriously? Have I implied that I sit around wishing for opportunities to do this? Also, why would I want her gmail password? Don't tell me that shit.

"But she gave blood for your mother."

I don't fucking care. If she did it as an investment in tech support from a stranger, she didn't make a contract with me.

Aargh.

My cousin had her surgery and it went better than anyone thought it would.

Previously they'd been told her heart valve would have to be replaced and this would mean 1) additional surgeries and 2) being on blood thinners for the rest of her life.

BUT when they did the echo the other day the doctor saw that the valve could be repaired. So they repaired the heart valve. She won't need to replace and no need for blood thinners.

At least for now.

JZ, no apologies necessary...I find computer problems devastating. ita, if you could straighten things like that out for me, your mother could drain me like a sapling(see above) Tep, I thought y'all got more snow than that.

Tep, I thought y'all got more snow than that.

We do! Every year we get substantial snow. (Not, like, Buffalo amounts of snow, but we get a lot of snow.) That's what makes it so frustrating -- every year the same thing happens, where the first snowfall results in people completely forgetting how to drive in the stuff and panicking like it really is going to be a 3-day whiteout blizzard, so they pack the Wal-Marts for bread, milk, and TP.

My theory is that the summer humidity is so high, it shorts out whatever part of the brain is responsible for remembering how to drive in and respond to snow.

Water cooler weather talk: It is sunny but cold here today. I have the fire going (the SO stoked it this morning before he left, bless him) but that means that the heater doesn't kick on. This is good for economy, but means that all rooms not containing the woodstove are colder. Like the bedroom. Or, more importantly at the moment, my office. Honestly, it's not many rooms because of the open design of our house. But my office is a closed room, at the farthest end away.

So I keep working and then deciding I'm too cold and going in to hang out by the fire. I could just carry my laptop in there. But when I'm in there, I get all sleepy and comfy and want to take a nap. Except if I were to nap, the bedroom would be cold and I would wake up and decide I needed to work. And then I would still be cold and go hang out by the fire. And fall asleep. This is not a productive cycle.