The Journal, Monday, November 6

Hey Folks,

I am annoyed to no end when some machine or program thinks it knows better than I what I want. Of course, the machine can’t be held to fault. Nor, these days, can the humans behind the machines because there’s no way to contact or, ahem, engage the humans directly.

Of course, if I were regularly screwing up people’s lives that much just as if it were a pleasurable past time, I wouldn’t want anyone to be able to get hold of me either.

Increasingly, “updates” (ostensibly “improvements”) are foisted upon us whether or not we want them. And this is all strictly because the [Fill in the Blankety Blank] Company wants it that way.

Yeah? Well it’s MY money I’m spending. What about what I want?

Yesterday a message popped up in a small box on the lower right corner of my screen. It read “Updates are available for Office 365. Click this message to begin updates.”

I was busy, so I clicked the X in the corner of the message to close it instead. I’d get back to it when I was at a stopping point.

But the program went ahead with the updates anyway.

I do have Office 365 installed, but I also have Microsoft Word 2007 installed. I did that myself a long time ago (10 years?) in a separate folder, etc. to save the computer becoming confused.

And I did it for a reason, primarily so I could use the Photo Editor that came with that wonderful program. With an earlier round of “improvements” Microsoft “improved” the Office Suite by removing the photo editor.

When Microsoft “improved” Office 365 yesterday, they somehow mananged to access my installation of Office 2007 and reinstall it OVER Ofice 365. This despite my previous installation having been in a separate partition of the hard drive.

They actually sought it out, found it, removed it, then reinstalled it over the newer program.

Then for good measure, they changed all my defaults. So when I opened a spreadsheet, it opened with Excel 2007. When I opened a Word document, it opened with Word 2007.

I finally had to completely uninstall Office 2007. I had no idea whether doing so would maul my entire Office installation since Bill Gates’ minions had mixed and matched them.

In the end, I was able to restore Office 365 as my default program for Excel, Word, etc. But of course, now my photos open with Paint.

I still have Photo Editor on my writing ‘puter. I’ll try later today to re-install it on my business ‘puter.

The typical response to such affronts is “Well, you can always use blah blah blah.”

Yeah, I KNOW I can do use some other program, but I already HAD the program I wanted to use. I bought it, paid for it, and some nameless, faceless corporation summarily removed it. Is there anyone left in America who does anything other than roll over anymore?

The first thing I did after I uninstalled Office 2007 was to disable updates to Office products. Period. And those are the only choices. You can have updates or you can disable them, but you can’t pick and choose which ones to install, when to install them, etc. It’s all or nothing.

And that’s fine. I’d rather have no updates than some I don’t want.

Okay, rant mostly ended. Grates on me that we’re careful not to lose our freedom of choice to politicians, then hand it over lock, stock and rubber duck to the corporations AND pay them for the privelege.

The whole thing puts me in the mood to download Corel WordPerfect and start using it again. Hmm. In case you’re interested, see http://www.wordperfect.com/en/product/office-suite/.
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Dean has moved all his online workshops to Teachable. I mention it because now when you sign up for a workshop with him, you have access to it forever. (Used to he allowed access for about two weeks after the course ended.) This is significant. If you’re interested, see https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/yeah-all-november-workshops-on-teachable/.
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Working with my computers and reading today. No fiction writing. Soon.

Back tomorrow.

Of Interest

See Linda Maye Adams’ “The Search for Discoverability” at https://lindamayeadams.com/2017/11/06/the-search-for-discoverability/.

And remember that the main thing you can do to enhance your discoverability is create more product (write more stories and books). The more you have “out there” the easier it is to find.

Fiction Words: XXXX
Nonfiction Words: 750 (Journal)
So total words for the day: 750

Writing of ()

Day 1…… XXXX words. Total words to date…… XXXXX

Total fiction words for the month……… 1105
Total fiction words for the year………… 450547
Total nonfiction words for the month… 3130
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 171193
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 621740

The Daily Journal blog streak……………………………………… 708 days
Calendar Year 2017 Novels to Date………………………… 9
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)………………………………………… 27
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)……………………………………… 4
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……………………………… 182