January 11, 2010
-
Things I Wish I'd Known 3 Days Ago
Good morning, fellow bloggers.
Last Thursday I emailed my agent and I told her I had a manuscript I thought she might actually be able to sell. I impressed upon her the fact that I really need to sell something, even knowing the economy is tight, the fiction market is brutal, booksales altogether are declining at alarming rates... I expected a gentle pat on the head, but she wrote back that she was very excited and wanted to see the manuscript immediately. I should email it to her.
Irrelevant information to be stored somewhere in your mind: my email address is on Yahoo! which is free. I pay an additiona $9.90 for...something, I've forgotten what by now. Every year around December Yahoo! bills me a penny short of ten bucks and life goes on as usual. Except my credit union changed my debit card and along with it, the number, and the billing from Yahoo! bombed. They alerted me. It was December. I was broke. I ignored the whole situation.So I sat down Friday morning to email my manuscript, which is a tidied and tightened version of my blog and which has pictures.
***insert your favorite bad words here***
1. I did not know you can save a Word file as a .pdf.
2. I did not know that would be advantageous.
3. The last book I wrote transmitted in one file. How was I to know adding 91 photographs to a smaller text file would take all day, 37,942 tries, and requiring breaking the file into tiny bits and pieces, one of which was 5 pages of pure text and still would not transmit?
4. because I forgot that what I paid $9.99 a year for with Yahoo! is their attention, patience, and more space
5. because I did not know that--since Yahoo! is free--it tends to limit the daily volume any one user can transmit
6. and I did not realize that the internet itself seemed to be buggy last Friday.
So I will share the hard-earned information (which I learned from Ranee, several hours after the fact) with all of you, my friends. If you don't send large documents through email, skip on to the last paragraph.
1. Word is a wonderful program to use if your intent is to write and arrange text files. It claims to be much more than that. It claims, for instance, to understand jpegs. When an innocent writer makes a file of a 46KB text file and then adds 3 jpegs, each roughly 1.4MB in size, Word will TELL you that the resulting file is roughly 49KB. It takes 1,000 KBs to make 1 MB. I'm not good at math, but even I can look at the resulting file size and muse to myself, "Ahh..." There are presumably people who know why Word is math-impaired. I don't know those people. What I know is that Word is lying about the file size. Big time. These people however may be distantly related to the people who claim Yahoo! will attach files up to 35MB in size. Don't hold your breath for that to happen.
2. This is not written in stone, it's merely my perception. Take it for what it's worth. There is some kind of cap on the number of/volume included in the emails you can mail on Yahoo! in one day. This cap is not affected by the number of those that the Demon sends back or Yahoo! just never delivers. Section 8 of my 9 sections went directly into the ether three times. She didn't get it, it didn't come back...it's just gone. Since I've never encountered this before, it may in some way be affected by sending Yahoo! $9.99 once a year. And then again, it may not.
3. .pdf files convert both photographs and text into something else entirely. You can send much more information in a .pdf file than you can a Word file. What the person can do with that file, once they receive it, is another question entirely.
Enough.
The dog went to work, the cat planned to sit on shoulder all day until he dug me in his efforts and I dug out the nail trimmers, which shortened his forepaws and seriously tried his patience and he has retired to the Aerie.
He is slowing down.
We are expecting Topi to pay us her final visit perhaps this week. She has lived a long and rarely easy life and she struggles these days with even basic tasks. She and Ranee have been involved in conversations about quality of life which, it would appear, is steadily diminishing. The time is coming for an old dog to rest.
Go, and then come on back, Ranee assures her, because--God knows--I'll find you.
Edit: You'll have to forgive the errors. When I push 'save' the entire post goes to this type in one uninterupted line. Perhaps it's Xanga's way of telling me a lifetime membership isn't really working that well for them.
Comments (10)
The blog looks fine to me. Microsoft Word is the devil, and yahoo mail is in cahoots, with that demon eating your mail. Jerkbags! I hope everything got there finally, perhaps in a PDF.
@Viewtiful_Justin - I got tired of re-formatting, hit the final save and skipped the spellchecker altogether.
It just would have been nice to have known all that stuff before I started. But then, apparently I never needed to know it, before.
Yeah...some people tell you the best way to learn is to screw it up and figure out the real solution for yourself. I think those people are idiots.
@Viewtiful_Justin - *grin*
There are gremlins at work in Xanga and perhaps the entire cyber world. I posted on Xanga on Saturday and was informed by a visitor to my blog that the last paragraph was missing. I went in to edit and it was there. I saved and opened the file and the paragraph was missing again, but I noticed this suspicious black space at the end of my post. I ran my cursor over it and discovered the last paragraph was in black font, the same color as my background. I went back in and edited the last paragraph to change the font color to light blue same as the rest of the post, saved and opened the post still not visible. I tried several variations on this theme with no success. I finally changed the font to white which worked. The errant piece is a quote and I wonder if the quotation marks or identation code was saying something to Xanga about the desired font color.
I also, previously attempted to send a document with pictures imbedded in the text as and e-mail attachtment but noone received the pictures in the document.
I appreciate your posting about Tope, I have been wondering how she is doing.
Bob
@michigay - She's failing. Ranee is going to San Francisco soon and while she could leave Topi with Julie, I don't expect her to do that. Friday evening when we saw her and Cayce she said she would call me this week for an appointment between Murphy and Tope so they could say good-bye and then they would go to the vet's office for the 'fluffy pink shot'.
Here is the website to the Emery Cat Board which is infused with cat nip and allows cats to trim their own tails, I've seen it on tv a few times.
https://www.emerycat.com/flare/next
Drama was neutered today, we're hoping that will decrease his unpleasant urge to mark his territory in the house and to jump the fence in search of bitches in need of a sire.
I am currently working on my weekly "Musings" for my Risk Communication Class where I have to write my reflections over the assigned articles for the week.
I discovered about 2 years ago exactly how to save a word file into PDF format and yes it is very handy, you can download the application to your word program on Microsofts website.
I went to Jimmy John's for lunch and had a Number 15, which is a Tuna Sub with lettuce, tomato, provolone cheese, cucumbers and bean sprouts, was surprisingly good, washed down with diet lemonade and chips.
I'm sad to hear Topi is in her final days its nice to know her last few years she was well cared for and loved. I wonder what her and Murphy will have to say to one another as they part forever?
Shalom,
Jonathan
pdf stand for portable document file...........that says alot.
lpcollins--You are my sister. You should sit me down and tell me things like this.
Excellent items from you, man. I have keep in mind your stuff prior to and you are just extremely magnificent. I really like what you have acquired right here, really like what you are stating and the way in which wherein you assert it. You are making it enjoyable and you continue to take care of to keep it sensible. I cant wait to read much more from you. That is actually a great website.