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  1. Seven Year Oh Sh*t

    January 28, 2012 by Nicki

    I’ve just committed my 2nd major f— up at my job. The first happened about seven years ago. We don’t talk about that.

    So I was getting someone’s computer, iPad and iPhone all hooked up together. The first step, remove all evidence of duplicates, which means plugging in the tech to the PC, going to iTunes, and making sure that iCloud is doing all the synching, and iTunes isn’t doing any.

    Would you believe that right there is where things went wrong?

    I told iTunes not to sync Outlook stuff anymore. The PC updated the iPad. After that I checked the iPad calendar. Things hadn’t moved on up yet, so I checked Outlook.

    All. Gone.

    Contacts, Calendar, all went boom.

    Honestly, I do not know what happened. I don’t think this happened to me when I synced everything, but then I don’t use my calendar as much as this particular person does. And if it had gone boom, my attitude is more “oh well, I’ll rebuild it” rather than “oh sh–, I’m f—ed”. But the person I was trying to help, well, I think they pretty much live off of their Outlook Calendar.

    Oh, oh dear.

    I’m working on something that hopefully will fix the issue, but if not, and you don’t see me posting for several days…

    It would be safe to assume the worst.

    >.<

    Category Whatever | Tags: , | No Comments

  2. When you don’t know what to write…

    January 26, 2012 by Nicki

    Scream

    Throw things

    Think about how miserable you are and how you’ll never amount to anything, because if you can’t write a blog post, how in the hell are you going to write anything worth selling?

    Cry

    Flail

    Bork something (I love that word – apparently it’s some variation of break, screw up, or cause to crash)

    Pray for inspiration

    Buy lottery tickets in hopes of winning The Big One and be able to quit your day job and devote every hour of every day to writing in hopes to bash the (writer’s) block

    Write a list of things you could do instead of sitting there wondering what to do, as an object in motion tends to stay in motion (which is probably why I’m doing a lousy job of coming up with something to write today – I wrote nothing yesterday)

    Write nonsense until something good comes along

    Do some brain dumping at 750Words.com

    Go read someone else’s blog and use it as a writing prompt

    Write about something in the news

    Decide that 187 words is pretty good for not knowing what to write, and call it quits

    Category Writing | Tags: , , , | No Comments

  3. Stepping Down

    January 24, 2012 by Nicki

    Gone are all my lovely posts on my resolutions and goals for the year, but I’m not dwelling on that now. Honest.

    What I am dwelling on is the novel idea that my plan (which is working, by the way) to cut out caffeine will most likely also be the best plan to get my daily wake-up time to be 5 am instead of 6:30 am.

    It’s stepping down, slowly but surely, to change the habit. While others may work best going cold turkey (and I must admit I like that idea much better myself), slowly stepping back from the problem is actually working much better for me.

    As evidence to that fact, I am now in week two of my diet soda phase in my cut out caffeine resolution/goal/thing. I stepped down gradually from serious energy drinks to highly caffeinated soda, to where I am now, and the next steps will be canned green tea and then flavored water and water.

    I don’t feel deprived. I’m not even frustrated that I can’t have the energy drinks I used to down (sometimes) twice daily. I’m not saying it’s going to b easy once I get to the non-caffeinated days, but it will certainly be easier to deal with after already given up so many other forms.

    So why not make this process work with other things?

    Like waking up earlier so I have dedicated time for writing. Currently I wake up after my husband is done in the shower, at 6:30. At this point he has to take off immediately, and while I have more time than I used to have to get ready for work, I don’t have a ton of time. Certainly not quiet time without the kids to actually try to be creative.

    I’ve tried to make the direct switch to 5:00 before, but that alarm goes off and I just hit that snooze, and that’s the end of it. But 15 minutes…I could force myself to get out of bed, or at least be awake, 15 minutes earlier for a week or so. Definitely. And then waking up when DH needs to get in the shower, maybe for another week.

    And so on and so forth.

    I will definitely post notes on my progress, in case anyone is either interested or wants inspiration to tackle this themselves.

    Good luck to us both!

    Category Deep Thoughts | Tags: | No Comments

  4. Just a Little BS

    January 22, 2012 by Nicki

    Fiction Finch

    I’m not sure why, but I decided to add a category on my site for short bits of fiction. You know I like to write, right? I guess my reasoning says that sometimes I just don’t know what to write, but I want to be writing regularly. Why not give myself an out, so to speak?

    When I don’t know what to write, I’ll just make it up!

    I bet everyone wishes they thought of this first. :) Or maybe they have more to talk about and don’t have to struggle for interesting content all the time.

    Regarding the picture – when I was in grade school, they used this bird with glasses and boots to teach us the difference between fiction and non-fiction, and it was one of many tricks I used to keep things straight and gain passing grades throughout the years. Yes, I’m passing them all on to my kids as they resurface.

    Category Fiction | Tags: , , | No Comments

  5. Reboot

    January 20, 2012 by Nicki

    Restart it all over againSo you see…I dabbled where I should have simply stood back and complained, and now I have a brand new WordPress installation and layout!

    Yay!

    Right?

    At any rate, I’m here and since I’m a little bit cranky about this new turn of events, I decided to be a little less formal with things. You might notice. You might not.

    As I choose my new window dressings, I had a hard time finding an adequate layout. Not that I had a hard time picking my favorite from among hundreds – I had a hard time finding one at all! I’m just so hard to please when it comes to my layouts.

    It made me think about how this blog, while it is an attempt to draw in readers and eventually become a platform to publicize whatever books I may decide to publish, it’s really all about me. It’s about how I like it to look, it’s about how I want it to function…I’m not thinking about visitors or SEO or how to integrate Twitter so I can get more followers.

    I’m thinking, how can I get a big footer in my layout? I like big footers.

    That is not at all to say that I don’t care about you, dear reader. I do. I really do. I want more people to read, so I want to create good, regular content (the winning combination for any blog, by the way – just in case you’re curious) that will keep people coming back for more.

    I’m just not worried that you won’t like how it looks.

    I’m off to make more adjustments tonight. Things will start to really take shape over the next few days, and as long as my hosting company keeps things running smoothly and doesn’t slow my site down to the consistency of molasses, I think we’re all good.

    I will see you here in two days! (See? Schedule, good!)

    Category Deep Thoughts | Tags: , , , | No Comments