Not Responding Works
I’ve invested in Microsoft Office 2007 (thank god for student discounts, cost about €50 online). Of course, as soon as I buy it I hear that MS’s website are doing a beta Office 2010 as of today? I hate technological advancement. I’ve nearly had this laptop a full year and it’s probably already out of date. All the newest models are tiny little netbooks or whatever you call them. Anyways… I hope Office will serve me well. What made me end my long-term relationship with Works is the dissertation.
Smaller essays of 7 or 8 pages, some blocks of text and a few embedded images, Works handles that fine. But if you’ve got a file thats 30+ pages of text, and more with images… Works starts playing games. It likes to forget to keep your footnotes corresponding to the page (footnote four on page four is actually on page seven?). Likes to forget to keep them aligned properly (you can find random footnotes pushed into the centre when they should run from left to right). It’s second favourite game is Not Responding.
It freezes and for those heart-attack-inducing 30 seconds while it says “Not Responding” on your 30+ paged, 10-credit nightmare of a godzilla-sized essay, you really think it’s all going to go down the sinkhole. No USB back up will save you or your sanity at this point. Countless times this Not Responding thing has happened to me in the library reading rooms and I’ve had to literally bite my tongue and shut my eyes from the screen while mentally begging it to unfreeze so I can quickly re-save whatever paragraph I had re-written. Honestly, not fun. I’m hoping Word and I will make a good tagteam from now on.
In other news, since my neighbour got robbed and broken into, I’m still sleeping with my bat by my bed. Dad insists all is fine, thieves don’t (“statistically”) strike the same area twice, and that he only got broken into because he doesn’t stay there at night a lot (spends a lot of time at his girlfriend’s) and if a thief was looking for a place to rob, he would notice that kind of thing. But it just freaks me out to think that a thief WOULD scope out this area and go, “Oh yeah, that house is always empty at night cuz the guy goes off in the evenings. Perhaps to his girlfriend’s house.” and maybe, “Oh, look at that house next to it. Yes. I can’t rob that house because it’s obviously always inhabited, or can I?”
In which case yours truly goes screaming apeshit and inflicts brain damage with a bat. My favourite phrase is “Don’t get scared, get angry.” Although I don’t always abide by it because fear can be stronger than anger. But if you’ve got something to protect, like a house… I mean, a female under threat is a powerful thing. I think most women have such a great sense of ownership and possession… a child for example, you touch a woman’s kid and you’d know about it. Maternal, lionness, this-is-mine, Beyoncé-Oprah feelings. You know? Strong. Like Beyoncé’s songs Ring The Alarm, Crazy in Love, Boyfriend.. she owns. You know Jay-Z is her man. It’s ownership and the protection of that… Hmmmm!
Thief in the night!
Well the day just took an interesting turn. I was about to whine about a recently-experienced poor standard of customer service.. but this is far more juicy. My neighbour’s son, who now owns the house, and who is a nice young guy, late twenties. He came around the house. I answered the door. He looked all shaken up and asked if my dad was around. I got my dad, they had a big conversation. I went up to my room thinking it was nothing. Then I went downstairs to put some music on the CD player and my dad came in all like, “His house got robbed last night.”
I know. Shock. But what makes it more oh jebus is the fact that around 2 a.m. that night (and his house is right next to ours, just over our boundary at the top of the garden) our dogs were barking like crazy last night. It woke me up, and I was like “uggghhgehg” and just fell back asleep. Apparently dad got out of bed, and went outside to see what was up and let one of the dogs off and the dog ran up to the top of the garden still barking and running in circles wanting to get over the boundary… which dad thought was weird. He called her back, she was still restless but dad thought there was nothing in our garden so whatever.
So obviously that’s what was upsetting the dog. They took tv sets… computers… general expensive stuff. He was upset over it. And weird stuff has been happening recently, last night he got robbed… the night before at 2 a.m. the dogs were barking as well, and our other neighbour’s dog Molly was sounding off too. And then yesterday a man in a car (who dad said he recognised as a man who lived around here so it’s not too suspicious, but I’m still not trusting it) came up our driveway and was all “Hey, I’ve lost a cow, I was wondering if you’ve seen it.” to my dad. And my dad’s all, “Do I look like I’m a farmer?” Which is weird because we can’t even SEE cow fields from our house. We’re surrounded by trees and a forest to the back. And what’s MORE weird is that who would see a cow and go “Oh, that belongs to X”. All cows look the same. So a lost cow, who would recognise it from any other you might see? So why come up my goddamn drive asking?
So! The neighbourhood is all on watch, which is rather fun. Our gate is padlocked is staying padlocked for a while, along with the garage and shed. I just think how bad it’d feel to get robbed, so it’s better not to take a chance. So while dad was off spreading the word, I went around the house looking for heavy objects. All I’m saying is I’m keeping my softball bat in my room at night. Along with a frying pan. It’s scary that it happened to the house right next to ours. Which is too close for comfort.
It’s silly, but it’s been weird around here the last few nights and now this has happened. So it’s a good thing to be prepared, just in case the necessary occurs.
France and Lady Gaga
The neighbour’s dog is barking… it’s so annoying.
Anyways! Back from a month in France. It was interesting. For a quick recap, these things happened/came to my notice:
We drove from Roscoff to Toulouse during the first day.
I had 3 McDonalds in the one month I was there. This is surprising because McDonalds at home is a once every six months – if that – kind of thing.
I went to Paris… in Paris I saw the Palace of Versailles, the Louvre, went to go see the Mona Lisa again too, the Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysees, the Pompidou. The Pompidou is crap, there’s only one thing in there of any consequence and that’s the Guerrilla Girls thing, but once you’ve read it and agreed with it, it’s a nod-and-walk-on thingy.
Went to Leonardo da Vinci’s house.
Went to a MoMA in Ceret which is where Picasso was for a while.
Went to the beach. Went swimming in the sea and in the swimming pool.
Went canoeing, nearly died doing it. Was saved by a very nice German.
French tv is crap, but after a month I was starting to follow it, watching their Secret Story (their version of Big Brother, I think) and Un Diner Presque Parfait, which is our Come Dine With Me. And their version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Desperate Housewives with dubbed French.
We rented bikes for a day and went cycling for aaaaaages in the countryside. It was lovely though, for some reason the countryside there has a ton of butterflies and if you go cycle along the hedge rows really fast, they fly out all startled and it is quite beautiful to see. Also that day, I learned how to ride a bike with no hands Then later my dad and I came across someone selling fruit, so we bought apples and cherries and ate them. Then we found a lake with some swans on it.
Went to see Chartres cathedral.
Saw this little place where monks lived, its a fortress thingy thats on built on a hill which is a peninsula out in the ocean and there’s only one road out to it.
Saw a German war base thingy on the coast too.
I’ll put pictures up of it soon.
Last night saw Lady Gaga. This was an interesting concert. Chris Brown was very… hip hop. More bass and DJ and dancing than lights and smoke. Lady Gaga was lights and smoke. I mean last night would have been bad for anyone suffering from epilepsy, I’m surprised there wasn’t a warning. There were lights that just lit the whole place up, big white flood lights that flashed down over the audience so hard that the stage went into shadow. Lady Gaga herself was good… she can sing, dance. Although she’s definitely crazy. And said the fuck/fucking a couple of times on stage, I’ve never heard swearing at a concert before. It started with her shouting “Are you ready to fucking party?” and… I thought, “Jebus… I’ve seen a lot of young girls coming in here with their mothers/parents.” And there were other F words about… but the most memorable thing was her talking about the female clitoris. And she actually said the word. And likened her audience’s applause to orgasms and then asked us to clap more… which I didn’t. But the songs were good, she can sing and it was a good performance.
