Compare My Docs

I love this website!

CompareMyDocs.com




(That's not a screencapture of my GH entry - this is from the edits of My Christmas Wish, which comes out Dec 1st.)

I've been sending out my GH entry to just about anyone I can beg to read it a few trusted crit partners and beta readers, trying to find errors and weak points and anything that fresher eyes than mine can catch. I don't think I've ever sent the exact same "something" out to so many people before (5 now) at the same time read the exact same thing. Usually I'll send it to one person, or maybe two, but I'll make changes if I think they're needed as they come in. So what person two is reading and commenting on isn't the same thing as what person one read.

The feedback I've gotten has been fantastic, but that left me with several different documents to try to look at simultaneously as I thought about the edits. I've used Microsoft's "Compare Docs" feature before, but sometimes the interface there can seem a bit clunky.

For some reason this looks a lot cleaner to me. I like the way it handles just a single word different, and a whole sentence or paragraph. Comments inserted into the body are clear to read too.

Great software for anyone looking for a compare tool. It's still in beta, so I won't be surprised if there are a few strange things that pop up after I've used it a bit more, but so far it seems to do exactly what I need it to do - and it does it in an easy to read format.

It's time for me to get back to actual writing. Happy Friday!

My kitty pumpkin (because TwitPic decided to go with “trick”)

Anyone Else But You

I've got a few hours of quiet time this morning, so I'm about to unplug and find a few pages shaking around in my head.

But first, I took a few minutes to do a long overdue iPod playlist update. Out with the Summer Pool List (I did say it was long overdue) and in with the Spooky songs. And mock me if you will, but the Christmas Playlist has returned!

Also the Juno Soundtrack, which includes this song (I like this off-key version, because that's what it sounds like if I try to sing it) that always makes me smile.

I hope your weekend is full of happiness and music.

Buckles and belts

If you're a writer, you should check out Nathan Bransford's "The 3rd Sort-of-Annual Stupendously Ultimate First Paragraph Challenge" It's good stuff, some hilarious, some so bad you know it has to be bad on purpose, and all of it a guaranteed good time if you like this sort of challenge. Yeah, my WIP is in there, but good luck finding it in what looks like it will soon be several thousand entries. I guessed 5000 when it opened, and a friend thinks it's going to come closer to 6000/ Both of us are hoping someone bought Nathan a big bottle of bourbon to help him get through it. I'll toast him with my 1792 while I sit here all happy that I'm not the one having to read them all.

I've buckled down the past two weeks to get some serious writing done. "Serious" meaning I have a goal when I get up in the morning, and if I don't make it to goal I don't go to bed. Tough love can be the best love.

I've also had to dig deep into the boxes under my bed and pull out some old belts. My waist is shrinking faster that my hips, leaving me with about 4 extra inches of fabric in my shorts. So, it's belt time. Luckily we're maybe finally possibly going to get cool weather so I can break out the jeans for good. My jeans tend to be much more forgiving of this kind of size mismatch.

So those squirrels that had moved into my attic last summer? They came back for a visit. They're very creative, and seem to get a real kick out of finding new ways into the house. It got over 100 in the attic Sunday, which drove them back outside for the day, and while they were away I shut their latest door and put on new locks. Fingers crossed they don't find a new way in, because if it really does cool down I'll have to call the animal trappers to get them all out.

Happy squirrels are squirrels who aren't getting trapped in my attic.

As I was going along, along

The lane that I went was so long, long, long

Long days, short nights.  Except it’s October and the nights are getting longer, and the days shorter.  Either my calendar is off, or I’m ignoring my clock. 

That’s what I thought too.

So now I’ve gotten nice pretty art for My Christmas Wish, which I have to sit on until I get the all-clear to share.  But it’s shiny!  And FLE’s should be coming soon.  Which excites me, because it means that the book is just one or two little steps (hopefully little steps!) from getting a final coat of wax and being marked Done.  Until it is Done, it stays in the WIP folder on my hard drive.  I like Done, because Done means it gets to go to the Published folder. 

I do like being organized.

In other news, the dog stinks and no one else seems likely to bathe him.  Guess what is on my list for tomorrow.

H1N1

The Princess seems to have bounced back from her weekend of fever / sniffles / cough, and is back to high energy, full speed ahead.

Her father, not so much. Yesterday he started with the sniffles. And aches. Then the fever.

Today, the flu test. It was positive for Influenza A. The clinic we went to doesn't do a strain specific flu test, but since "Ninety-nine percent of all subtyped influenza A viruses being reported to CDC this week were 2009 influenza A (H1N1) viruses" and his symptoms fit the model, that's what they're calling it.

We went to the Walgreens clinic instead of to his usual doctor because we wanted very badly to get him on Tamiflu before he hit the 24 hours of symptoms mark. His doctor could get him in today, but not until the afternoon, and by the time we got out of there and picked up a perscription it would have been closer to 28 hours. Walgreens, we walked in, waited 5 minutes, swabbed, waited 2 minutes (it can take up to 10, but his test showed positive in less than 2 minutes), and the diagnosis was done.

I just became a big fan of the Walgreens clinic.

So, wash your hands. Stop touching your eyes, nose and mouth. And if you start feeling crummy, go get a flu test as soon as you can.

He's quarantined for now, and I'm off to pop a few more vitamins and get back to sanitizing the surfaces. Hopefully we'll get through this without passing it on any further.

Never a Lemon Tree when you need one

Since the sad death of Mary Travers this week, I've had all the Peter, Paul and Mary in my music folder on my Playlist. I thought I'd share one of my favorites with you - Lemon Tree - but after half an hour searching I can't find any on YouTube or Google Video that are actually PP&M, not a cover.

So instead, here are Peter Paul & Mary singing Jesus Met The Woman At The Well. The passion that the three of them brought to the song makes this one really stand out.



Goodbye, Mary. You will be much missed.

Charged up

My old laptop battery finally died it's final death last week, and my new one came last night. This is the first laptop I've owned long enough to kill 2 batteries. *knocks on wood* I'm hoping this battery doesn't live longer than the laptop. I'm glad to have it working again. Things like google reader and and facebook and twitter and chat - I've usually got those open on the laptop, not the desktop.

Batteries are so freaking expensive. In the back of my head I hear this voice saying "for what you spent for the battery, you were a quarter of the way to a Netbook." Hush, voice of extravagance. I don't need a Netbook. But they sure are shiny.



Writing - not enough this week. 2700 words this week so far, plus a synopsis about half finished. I don't know if I'll get much progress this weekend, but I'm going to at least finish the synopsis by tomorrow night.

Princess came down with some sort of cold / fever and came home from school early yesterday. I'm running around behind her with sanitizer, trying to keep the germs away from Sean. He's got a trip coming up in a few days and I'm trying to keep him healthy until then.

Possibility City

Hubs just came out snickering and took me back to the bedroom.

Hush, the kids are home.

"I just saw a commercial for your hometown. At first I thought it was a Saturday Night Live skit."

It really does look a bit like a fake commercial. But it's also pretty cute, and has me giggling still. He saw it on ESPN, so this isn't just a goofy YouTube viral ad, this is something they're putting some real $$ behind. And you know, I'm ok with that. Also, ok with how they found a voice-over actor who can pronounce Louisville correctly.

Enjoy - it's "Possibility City"

Next! And it was good.

Ever found something that you love so much, you wonder how you went without it? What's even worse is when this same something has been there for years, and you never even knew it wast there.

It's "Yay! This rocks. How the hell did I not know about it before now."

So ok, I've been using an RSS reader to follow the several hundred blogs / sites I keep track of for a couple of years now. I was all sorts of happy with myself about how much time it saved me, because I don't have to sit there clicking on all these websites every day just to see if there's something new. When it's new, it pops up on one site and says "Hey, look whats new today".

Using Google Reader it looks something like this :


But for all my love of reader there are two downsides. First, it's way to easy to just read the post and go on to the next one. If I want to comment, I have to click through and reload what I just read at the original site, and gee is what I was going to say really that important anyway? Much easier to just skip commenting and read the next post.

Second, and this is the one that really bothered me more, is that I never even see some of these sites. Because I'm reading the content in the reader window, I miss all the fun stuff - the sidebars, the polls and page layout and fancy work that makes each site special. And the comments - sometimes half the fun is in what other people said. (Just because what I was going to say isn't important, doesn't mean that what someone else had to say isn't!)

But wouldn't you know the people working at Google felt pretty much the same way? And came up with a way to use the beauty of RSS feeds - visit only a site that has new content - and still actually let me read the site at it's source?

Living with Lindsay has already written up a nice little post telling you how to get this working for your own Google Reader (it takes 'bout 4 clicks and 30 seconds and involves nothing more than dragging a bookmark up to your menu bar). And if her post ever disappears, you can just google "google reader goodie next bookmark" and find the simple instructions.

Google, what else don't I know you've already thought of?