How I Mine For Words?

I think Minion and CinnTeak have quite accidentally made it more difficult for me to write. Minion is involved only in the sense of his namesake, as an accomplice if you will, enabling Miss CinnTeak to perpetrate the crime, though honestly she does not have the malicious heart of a criminal. It's more an accidental crime, but one that I think I've identified as a major obstacle to getting writing accomplished in the volume I'm used to.

Desky, God rest his soulless silicon body, had a lovely display. It was like 17", I think, with good calibration and held up well under direct sunlight. It's probably still perfectly useable, if I could figure out a way to somehow safely amputate it from its brainless body and graft it into Minion, but therein lays the critical flaw of designing a monitor and a computer as a single unit-- when one goes, the other is dragged down too. ...Though I may do research on parasitizing the monitor somehow, that sounds almost possible.

But now I am working primarily with Miss CinnTeak, who has a 12" display. It's a lovely display as well, but in a different, digitably drawable sense. She doesn't do well in bright natural light, and so it's been harder during the day with my headquarters set up in a sunroom to see what I'm doing, and by extension get some work done. On the upside, this is a practical way to keep me from playing World of Warcraft, since I can't see what I'm doing in the daytime. However, I do notice there are ill-lit areas of the game that I have trouble viewing on CinnTeak, areas that I checked on a friend's monitor and have verified it's CinnTeak's problem, not mine.

The heat's becoming a problem too. It's a sunroom, which means it's warmer than the rest of the house, even in the winter. There are about 10 days out of the year where it seems colder, but every other day all that natural sunlight I love heats it up to several degrees higher than the rest of the house, and it's even worse when I close the door for peace and quiet. It's rather frustrating to have to dress warmly to face winter weather everywhere else in the world but dress for summer in my headquarters. Even with the fan going, it's barely tolerable by the middle of the day, and warm computer equipment only adds to the problem.

I've been toying with the idea of moving my headquarters, but this begs the question 'To where?'. We have a loft set up for a computer hub, but it is an open sort of place, with no door to close when I don't want to hear the football game going on or else not bother those sleeping on the same floor (Raiding in WoW will bother those sleeping. I know this from being a bothered person when my younger bro played.). This makes me sad since otherwise it's a nice solution with good natural light but in carefully dosed quantities, so I won't feel like I'm in a cave. That feeling is very important to me, Faithful Readers. I do not like feeling like I am in a cave. I got enough of that during College, both in dorm rooms and then working in school labs (*cough* Monty *cough*).

My room is also set up to receive a computer command center, but this violates my rule of keeping the bedroom and the workroom separate. As soon as I got out of single-room dorms, I made it my goal to keep all non-sleep-related activities occurring in other rooms; psychologically, to work and sleep in the same room confuses the body. It takes some time even after the environment is conformed to this rule for its benefits to take effect, but I do think there is substance to the claim that the body takes subconscious cues from its surroundings based on past experiences. If all one does in a bedroom is sleep, the body will naturally tend toward that state when entering the bedroom; if work and sleep are done there, the body likely will gear up for work upon entering instead of sleep. ...Also, we tend to use my room as the guest room when folks come and stay with us, and not having access to my computer during stays would irk me to no end.

So that leaves the basement, the final possible hub. The problem with that, of course, is that it's a cave. Secluded corner, sure... but not closed off, so if someone's down there gaming it would be annoying. ...My bro's room is down in the basement too, which would probably be the most ideal of solutions since he has a secluded room with a door (and a bathroom attached to it!) and a window allowing light in, but he's not quite at the point where he's 'moved out' in the sense that all his stuff is down there.

So I'm in a quandary right now with my computer and my workspace, and my indecision (or rather, lack of any better solution) has only prolonged the difficulties writing. For some reason it's been increasingly uncomfortable sitting in my office writing-- this is another thing about me, I just don't sit well. I am not sure why this is, but I really dislike sitting properly in a chair. It makes me very restless, and the only comfortable position for me, one leg over the other, makes both legs fall asleep. Otherwise I am switching about every few minutes, constantly uncomfortable. I adjust and re-adjust the chair, sometimes I use a footrest and sometimes not, I cycle through everything several times a day.

So take problems sitting and add to that too much heat, too much light, small cluttered screen, a stationary computer, and occasional gaming, and this will all equal no writing getting done.

In utter, complete frustration, I started handwriting scenes while sitting in the family room. I initially attempted it just to get the words flowing again, to try and get started instead of staring at my too-small light-shy screen in a too hot room while sitting uncomfortably. I wrote one page on Wednesday, one on Thursday, and then four on Friday like this. Mosaic, my li'l iPod shuffle (incidentally, this is my third iPod I've owned; I keep getting rid of my iPods after I get them. Mostly because I don't like having music blasted in my ears every possible minute.) sits out there with me for music, and I have about ten colored pens I cycle through as I handwrite things out. I sit on the couch, there is good sunlight, and during the week no one is there in the room trying to watch movies or football games. There is no facebook to check, no constantly switching positions, no problems with overheating or overlighting. Then at the end of the day, sometimes while I'm playing WoW, I transcribe everything into Minion and see where I'm at. My point is, I am having no trouble writing while doing this.

Not that there aren't a few drawbacks. My hand undergoes more stress, for one thing; at the end of the day it sort of throbs in a darkly ominous sort of way, as if to herald more serious problems developing the older I get. (Part of the solution to this is to train myself to write without death-gripping the pen. I am too tense, and I've noticed it translates to most activities in my life.) It's an open room too, which means people can bug me while I'm there... though honestly, a closed door has never kept anyone from bugging me before. But when I'm in plain sight, people seem to think I can answer questions more readily or be interrupted more frequently, which is not the case. Yet on the other hand, I am much more in command of the house while in the family room since I can observe the comings and goings of everyone.

...And then, there's the reality that the writing I'm doing is more like drafting, in that it is rougher than I'm used to it being. If we were to compare this to the process of mining and jewelcrafting (this has nothing to do with WoW professions, I'm serious), I am more used to mining one small area, and as each gem is found I cut and polish it right there, before moving on to the next rock. Now, I feel I am mining large amounts of precious metals and stones, but they all go into this pile to be cut and cleaned later. Yes, this is the classic school-taught model I'm reverting to, and I'm not precisely pleased with it. But it's getting the job done so far, in that I'm producing material again (and the material is all good; nothing annoys me more than spending time mining and cutting and polishing only to find I wasted my time on an ordinary rock that must then be thrown away). Granted, all I have is my pile of mined material, and nothing has really been polished up yet, so I will withhold my favorable opinion of this new strategy until I see how I finish out the process. ...I'm not really sure how polishing will go, honestly. Perhaps to preserve the new environment I'll be printing out copies of the typed material and working on them... or else somehow managing it all in my office chair. Compy is still around, even if he is in bad shape, and he can travel to the family room. ...Though I may need to get him a little heatsink lap-thing, Compy gets hot when he's working.

And, sadly (for me), with the holidays fast approaching, there is much cleaning and organizing to do to get ready for them and in turn take away from my writing time. I am more than a little dissatisfied with this upcoming state of affairs. We'll see if handwriting in the family room will be able to preserve some amount of productivity within it all.

Current Tea: Blackberry Green

Plot Defragmentation

Writing problems? No, not me, never!!

I expect you'd all like an update as to how things are going, but I doubt you want to read a lengthy play-by-play account of the past two weeks of writing attempts, so let's just say I've been 'experiencing technical difficulties' and leave it at that. There was a whole lot of staring at open word documents for lengthy periods of time, but this activity did not necessarily include the adding of words to said documents. A frustrating time was had by all though, I assure you.

Not like I wasn't trying throughout this whole thing. Granted, I was more often distracted by Warcraft (it's such an immense game I doubt I'll tire of it for awhile, which on one hand is good since I have to pay for it monthly), and for some reason it seems like I had more going on about the house errand-wise, but none of this can hide the fact that I just untangled the worst plotline knot to date. I suppose, if anyone is keeping track, the story is proceeding normally on an acceptable scale of escalation (that is, the further I go in the writing, I am presented with increasingly difficult problems to attempt to solve), so that should reassure someone.

Today instead of sitting down for more word document staring, I instead worked out some very pretty color-coded charts, chronological and then chapter divisions. I do not know why I haven't implemented this process earlier. When in doubt, make a color-coded chart. REALLY. I save all of mine, so at the end of all things I'll have a lovely collection to show you. I really can't get too very much accomplished in a particular arc until it's been color-chartified. I know this, and yet how long has it taken me to finally get this current one down on paper in chromatic ink?

The conclusions I have come to are thus: the two arcs I was planning on executing simultaneously will not integrate well no matter how I twist and bend things. It will, ultimately, be better if they are separate arcs, one after the other. Which comes first and how they will align with the rest of the book's material (the first two chapters) remains to be seen. Also, the main arc I am struggling with is uniquely difficult because it happens over a long period of time (five days in book time), and all of my arcs up to this point (as well as the next three subsequent ones) usually have most of their action focused on a single day or even just part of a day. Spreading out is never a problem, it is transitions that cause the headaches. ...But they do that whether we are jumping five minutes ahead or five days, transitions are jerks like that.

It is likely I shall change part, some, or all of my best laid plans, but there is something relieving about having a concrete record of how many scenes are needed, where they slot into the plotline, and what's going on in them. More than that, all the scenes have been carefully poked and prodded to make sure they contribute positively to the book's thematics and forward direction; I have actually cut some material, which is a fairly big deal for me. I've not so much compressed as optimized my plotline, moving all my data into adjacent blocks instead of having them spread out all over the hard drive metaphor I am currently constructing. Most of all I feel like I finally have an authoritative grip on this arc, whereas before it was wriggly and often slipping away from me in the general mass chaos I call writing.

The next step, of course, is to get the actual writing of all these ordered scenes done. I don't know if anything will occur today, but I sort of have tomorrow set aside for some writing. I may get some writing done on Sunday for all I know, and I try very hard (with at best mixed results) to set aside Mondays exclusively for writing. I can say right now though that I am definitively on Chapter 5, with 93 pages plus 30 (a total of 123. I denote it this way to indicate how much has been chronologically written and then mention the rest of what can count toward the total even though that last 30 pages are bits and pieces here and there later in the plotline.).

Current Tea: Tung Ting Jade Oolong Superior

Some Strange Metaphor This Way Comes

This is going to be an entirely writing-related post. Just warnin' ya.

O-kay. Page 107 of Book 2. I'm spread out between chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 right now, if you want my position (which is less a coordinate and more a range). I think I wrote over 3 pages today, but less than 4. I did, however, shift all these chapters around heavily, and finish out chapter 3 for good (I think). I thought I was going to have to wait until the end of both arcs I'm writing right now to integrate them, but I should have known better than to believe I could have the restraint to wait. Now here I am hard at work interweaving. I think though, that if I were to wait, I would be otherwise sacrificing some pretty good opportunities to make the writing flow optimally.

I've been pretty regular about playing World of Warcraft in the evenings, but tonight I deliberately stepped away from it all. I played until late last night, oh so late-- from 9pm until after 2am. The volume of hours is not so big a deal to me (so long as it doesn't happen all the time), but the timing was sort of bad. I had to get up around 9am with mom, and then slept until about noon. That's like, half the day gone (when I could be writing). I am thankful for the 3.5 pages (or so) that got written today in spite of it all plus the serious reorganization I worked through, and I know a lot of it came from not playing games this evening. I don't think the novelty of WoW has precisely worn off on me yet, especially because the higher the level I go the more I am able to do (and why would the system be like anything else? They want to keep you coming back, right?), but the pressure I'm exerting on myself to write is beginning to outweigh the desire to game. I need to make some serious progress here quickly, or else I fear losing grip on this story entirely.

The problem is that my days are stuffed to the gills (days have gills? What?) with things I need to be doing. Appointments and errands and cleaning and so on. I am certainly thankful for the increased opportunities to socialize with others, but I need to start being careful not to overcommit. I keep hoping the winter will keep me snowed in and hard at work on my writing, as it did last year, though that's no excuse to put the writing off. I'm already behind my self-imposed schedule (the great thing about being the one to impose your own deadlines is that if you miss them there aren't really any serious repercussions except for perhaps some guilt), and doubt I'll get book two done by January... though I suppose we can always dream. February seems a more accurate guess at this point. Though I would very much like to make up the time along the way and still have everything done and ready for submission around April 2011. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway, as for the writing itself, I think I've hammered out all the directions I'm headed in (We hammer directions? What?), which is one of the biggest things that can keep me from getting too much written otherwise. I like knowing where I'm going. I can pull off spontaneity when the time calls for it, but such things seem to thrive better for me within a larger, planned framework. Now that I've connected some more dots, so to speak, I hazard a guess that more will tangibly get done here in the next few weeks. I have a little time before the massive holiday gear-up.

Current Tea: It's late, and I'm not drinking tea, but I had Tung Ting Jade Oolong Superior earlier.

Replacement Therapy

Still getting used to the whole convenience of RSS feeds translating into almost zero time spent on the internet these days. My morning ritual used to include a twenty minute internet surf while slowly shaking off the effects of sleep (good or ill). Now that I can get all my internet checks done in the space of about two minutes, I sort of sit quietly for a minute or so, not used to jumping so quickly into the day's minimum requirements from me. Case in point: today I must away to the market for groceries, and take mom to physical therapy. Also, it's Pizza Night, so I've got to get some dough made and then laterz make dinnerz.

I went to the Renaissance Festival (the Ohio one) this past weekend, and supremely enjoyed it (I wish we could have gone when you were here, Laura! You'd've loved it!). I bought some tea (no surprises here) and a pair of earrings, which I'm happy to say will finally replace the silver knotwork earrings I got in Scotland so many years ago. I also found a lovely shirt, but the wearer of said shirt actually got it in Yellow Springs, Ohio. It's an artsy sort of community; I'd never heard of it, but it's maybe an hour away? The girl gave me a store name and everything, which I looked up online (bringing that particular online session's time tally up to a whole 2.5 minutes) and located pretty easily. I am thinking about driving out sometime to investigate. It was a really lovely shirt.

As for my writing, I've been enforcing a more serious schedule since the arrival of Minion. I was at difficult point in the story ever since way back when Desky was still alive but I was thinking of upgrading him (wait, when am I ever NOT at a difficult point?? Well actually, right now it's not so bad), and then with the death in the computer family all the writing got put on hold. ...But even when things got straightened out, I feel like I've spent far too many days this past month staring at a screen and not able to think of what to add. This past week has finally seen a breakthrough, and we're moving again: I'm ready to tag my first 100 pages of book two here any day now.

I think a large part of writing though is the discipline of continuous focus. I wholeheartedly agree that there's a time and a place to take time off and away, but too much seems to break down a necessary level of long-term concentration. I remember when first really getting into the swing of writing at the beginning of the year, it took me a good two weeks to really get ramped up, and even then I wasn't reliably producing 4+ pages a day for another month. Right before I took time off for my commission, I was pushing 5 pages a day on average; now all of a sudden, I'm back down to 2.5 pages a day. ...Which I mustn't complain about, because that's better than 0 pages a day, my approximate average for July and August. The important thing I have observed is that the feeling of writing has gradually changed this past week, from haphazard and frustrated to deliberate and focused. I've realigned my attention to the book as primary activity, and reliable output is on the rise again.

This being said, there is a rumor that my older-younger bro (younger than I, oldest boy) might be coming back from Korea for Christmas... and bringing his girlfriend. Dad and I both had the same thought: this house needs some serious cleaning if this is going to happen. I don't know when that will get done, really, especially since I'm trying to keep the writing going! Perhaps though, if I am careful about redirecting time when I would otherwise be sitting under writer's block, I might be able to make some headway on the house.

On to-do lists with more immediate deadlines, I have yardwork to do soon, to prepare our tracts of land for the winter. Today and tomorrow are supposed to be beautiful warm days, but my schedule doesn't much accommodate outdoor work amid the rest of activities planned. Still, if I don't do something soon, I'll be out there in freezing temperatures trying to get work done while my ears fall off. But see, my schedule. I am loathe to give up some degree of spontaneous decision freedom in how I run things.

Because see, I think I get the most done the most happily when I am able to be spontaneous about choosing the events of the day. Planning out every minute of the next month is certainly a fun exercise, but I often find it gives me anxiety-- how much have I truly accomplished in comparison to my projected plan, for example, and what do I do when the weather causes problems or I just don't feel like doing something? Aside from my writing, which I press into whatever time I can as many days as possible, things like yardwork or the basement organization tend to see more of my efforts when I am given the freedom to start them when I feel like doing them.

Not like I don't see a potential problem with all this: there is much in life that must be done at the proper time, and even more that requires more discipline than I am applying. This is one reason the yardwork and I don't get along well: the plants are on a different sort of timetable than my nebulous plans. They want fed, watered, and trimmed regularly, and inspected for problems almost as much. The weeds need constant attention, and I am not one to give them that amount of my time. I've got too many other things to do, really. Yet if I do not learn to submit to schedules of discipline, how will things that need doing get done?

I do take solace in things like getting dinner on the table every night, and of course the writing. I can do it when I put my mind to it. There are things that I can enjoy the discipline of. And I think a great deal of all this is my serious exploration and undoing of my strange actions done to garner others' approval. I have made myself do so many things simply because I might get approval from others, it is liberating to choose not to clean the basement for fear of people thinking we are messy and disorganized. I will clean the basement when that is what I want to do, when the activity's source flows from a desire to impose order over chaos and make things look nice... not so I can impress others.

...Which is a thought process that can at times be at odds with events like guests coming for Christmas.

Current Tea: Blackberry Green, puchased at the Renaissance Festival
Current Project: Planning and Writing in Book 2

I Hear Cold People

It is so cold my ears hurt. The inside of my ears.

I am not usually one to comment to much extent on the weather, or extreme temperatures, or how they are affecting me. I have the attitude that the Weather is there, and It will not go away, so I might as well live with all its quirks and annoyances. To complain about the weather seems like the most pointless of pastimes. Sure, it's something we can all relate to; somewhere we can start a conversation on the same footing. But really, what does the complaining accomplish? The Weather will not change for you, or anyone else. Weather is like that.

I have more trouble usually with indoor temperature extremes. Some would call me cold-blooded, but I prefer the term 'Energy Conductor'-- I don't have a lot of insulating layers (at this stage in my life) to slow the transfer of heat into and out of me, so I tend to get very cold and very hot very quickly. For some reason, this sort of thing doesn't seem to be nearly as noticeable outside as it is when I'm indoors. Perhaps because inside, there is the illusion of control over it all, and my complaints may stimulate a change in the overall atmosphere: if I say I'm cold, the thermostat could get cranked up, and if I say I'm hot, a fan could get turned on. Yet somehow, it gets to me far more when I'm sitting in church for two hours freezing at the low temperatures than it does when I'm out shoveling snow for two hours. Perhaps it is a movement-related thing. It's easier to not be so cold when one is sweating from hauling snow around, I suppose.

But that's what I was intending to do today, is get me some exercise. I've got my skates on and I was all set for a couple rounds about the 'hood, but for the coldness. The Weather claims it is still 44 degrees out, which seems to me some sort of malicious lie. I took the dog out for his long lap, and 'bout froze. My inner ear canals in particular. I am a bit put out over the whole thing.

So I really ought to go out and get my own skating done, but the cold has quailed me in more ways than I am used to. I've got two-and-a-half layers on (the racerback top isn't quite a full layer), to little avail. I'm going to need to break out my gloves, and I don't know if I've got some kind of earmuffy piece of equipment around I could use to protect the ears. I don't know if it's worth it. Maybe I should walk on the treadmill downstairs instead. Except I hate that thing, almost more than the cold.

But I really ought to get more skating in while I still can. The winter, with its snow and sub-zero temperatures, prevents it, and the skates are forced into hibernation until spring. I can't help but feel it's still a little early to have to hole them up and in for the winter.

Salutations!

I'd like to introduce some new faces about the Computer Colony (and elsewhere).



Minion, a Mac Mini by trade, arrived on Wednesday to take the place of Desky (and Compy, really), and seemed rather unaffected by the state of affairs here. He seems a helpful sort right out of the box, something used to looking beyond outer appearances to see the core issue underneath (and why not? Just about everyone who meets him mistakes him for a simple external hard drive, not an entire computer). I put him through a day-long intensive training program, and we're still getting used to each other, but I think things will work out well. Miss CinnTeak is enthusiastic about him, as he is DVI-based (Desky was VGA, which is classic and old-fashioned, and she was always very sweet to him, but she really prefers the more modern DVI format), though they have had a few minor quarrels about who turns off what when (Minion kept turning her off and refused to let her turn on until he gets rebooted; I had to firmly change some settings). The Printer hasn't exactly been cooperative, but I think that's The Printer's fault. We will need to have an aligning talk, him and I soon.

Off there to the side next to Minion in the picture, that little blip of blue is Mosaic, my refurbished iPod shuffle (very cheap at $39). I got her so that I wouldn't need to have Compy sitting around in the kitchen collecting flour in between his keys (which usually happens while I'm baking and trying to listen to music at the same time). She's cool so far! I think we'll enjoy our time together. She will be of enormous help when I work on the fall yardwork next week. I am still getting used to not being able to hear as much of what's going on around me (Ninjas don't like it when their senses are compromised), but it's so nice to be able to have a portable MP3 player that clips to me and follows me around, instead of having to physically move Compy every time I change cleaning locations in the house. (The name 'Mosaic' I actually wielded twice on Wednesday, also naming a female dwarf Paladin character with it in my second foray into World of Warcraft-- we'll talk about WoW another day.)

And though Hauly is not a computer, I figure that while we're doing introductions, I might as well throw him in. He's the bag I purchased in Switzerland, so named because his job is to haul my stuff ((grin)). He is not a purse, he is a bag, thank-you. He is full of pockets, and I've already spilled tea in him (there are worse things to smell like than tea, you know!). He is also the first true purse-like object I've ever owned-- that is, a bag used daily that stays at my side constantly, something I really resisted (Ninjas like their hands and arms free at all times). But Hauly's sheer usefulness has forcefully changed my heart on the matter; any other bag and I doubt I would have been so easily swayed. He is relentless in his charms and helpfulness, so much so I cannot help but love him.

...Corsair and Broken Red are there in the front, too. They were hanging around, and saw that pictures were being taken, so they jumped in. Corsair is the sleek-looking one with pirate ship sails on him; Broken Red is the ugly one next to him. That's right, Broken Red. You heard me. Ugly.

Current Tea: Imperial Silver Needles

Mini-ature Idea

Well, Compy's track pad has failed, which is another little blow to the whole computer situation. We don't really have the Moneys right now to purchase any sort of computer, let alone my tripped out dream laptop, but when I mentioned the situation to Dad yesterday he seemed rather insistent that I look into a solution, and promised to (somehow) finance it, though the (admittedly minor) caveat is that it must be something cheaper than aforementioned dream laptop.

I've been going back and forth on things like getting a very small net book (PC), for use in traveling and running old PC games. I think it would be very nice to pop into my bag Hauly (who is still going to get his own post someday) and take anywhere-- my bro has a 7" netbook, and that's TINY. The only problem with the netbooks is that the power that can be placed in one is pretty limited. I've been thinking I'm going to start playing World of Warcraft, and I need a certain level of power in order to support that stuff, and not just the minimum system requirements, either. Ideally I'll be going on raids with some friends of mine, so I would need a computer that can handle that kind of processing demand. I researched the netbooks, but the most powerful one seems to be barely scraping the bottom of the minimum. Also, this would mean the 'book would no longer be 7", but more like 10 or so.

But I looked up and priced out a Mac mini yesterday, which was a surprising venture. These little tiny computers have got some power under the hood, power I wasn't expecting at all. And they start at $599 (actually, let's say they start at $750 for the sake of the somewhat gouging but absolutely necessary AppleCare warranty). The one I priced out was at $1,111, which somehow seems like an auspicious number. It meets all my requirements except mobility... but then again, mobility with me also means dropped computers and dead hard drives, so maybe this is a good thing. With the extended warranty, I'm more or less guaranteed 3 years with this computer, and if I'm lucky I'll be able to push it to 4 or 5. That's like paying $250-some a year or less for it. How can it be so cheap?? Well, a mac mini comes only with the computer, not the monitor, keyboard, mouse, or speakers. It would cost more to buy these things, right? Unless one were to HAVE them already, scavenged off of Desky (he IS an organ donor, so everything's legal :P). 'But isn't Desky a sunflower mac?' one might ask. 'Doesn't that mean its monitor is connected to the base?' Yes, but have you forgotten about Miss CinnTeak? She is a tablet first, but she is also a display! I have all the parts needed for a mac mini, so I would incur no extra costs. I am Seriously Considering this option. I may even be able to chip away at some of this cost myself by selling things. Remember, I have $700 I can count on in my account, so if I get my act together and manage to make $411 dollars selling things... That sounds downright Reasonable!!

In other computer-related news, the latest upgrades with OS 10.5 on Compy have been nice, though I have noticed they have severely cut down on my internet time (which is not really a bad thing). I know RSS feeds are old news by now, but now that I have a fancy-recent version of Safari (my favorite browser! Oh, SO THANKFUL I don't have to use Firefox anymore!), I set up an RSS feed folder to notify me concerning the things I check daily. Also, the updated mail program has got these smart mail folders, so I threw together a folder of all the emails I'm actually interested in reading, and sorted the rest into folders, just in case I might need them (coupons, etc). So I'm all nice and organized, but it means the oft-repeated ritual of 'checking the internet' is no longer valid; all I check is Facebook and that's about it. I am sure the time I am saving is good, I just need to get over the sitting down, realizing I have nothing to check, and sitting awkwardly for a minute or two before going to find something else to do.