Two items of good news:

First… it looks like I’ve finally isolated the problem that was causing
poor Spenser to freeze up. After three months of despair and false hopes, it looks
like there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
And who is the computer genius that deserves the credit for showing me the way?

Why Mom, of course.

“Honey,” she said the other day, after I subjected her to my latest sad-sack tale
of scouring message boards and downloading random drivers and why-oh-why didn’t
I just buy a Mac, “why don’t you try dealing with the problem systematically?”
Uninstall as much stuff as you can and see if your computer works. If it does,
start adding things back one-at-a-time until the problem re-appears.”

From the mouths of medical writers…

So it’s the sound card. Pull the sound card out, and everything is super. Put the
sound card back in, and there is the freezing (and the moaning and the kvetching
and the tearing-out-of-the-hair and the oy gevalt…) There are a couple of reasons
why this could happen, and a number of things I can do to fix this. But that can
come later. Right now, I’m just basking in the knowledge that I can
write this without the fear that at any second, I’ll have to do a hard reboot.

Second… I’ve signed a lease on a new place. My philosophy is, if I’m living by
myself, I should pick a small, cheap place and try to save money.
As long as the apartment complex doesn’t have a green pool
that’s filled with rotting leaves. I just see that as a Bad Sign for some reason. If
that makes me effete, a yuppie suburban boy, so be it.

Eventually I found a studio and an apartment that were cheap and clean.
I almost went with the studio, until I realized how absolutely flat-out stupid
that would have been. The one thing about the studio was that the name of the
building was “Melrose Place”. I think that was what was clouding my judgment.
Or it could have been the 20% savings in rent. Hard to say.

As for writing: I’m dropping the thud-and-blunder novel for now. I guess I’ll
stick with the short SF fiction to try and stay sharp. The
“Why I Hate Aliens”
theme is pretty fruitful, actually. (Although it’s apparently not as straightforward
as it sounds… M’ris informs me that
about 30% of the submissions don’t have the requisite hatred of extraterrestrials,
and about 12% don’t have any extraterrestrials at all.)
Anyway, I hope to have a couple more drafts in the next few
days — not for the anthology, of course. But for what, then? Well, last Friday
cousin Michael
told me I should submit to Strange Horizons.
Sounds good to me. And if they say no… well, this site needs a Fiction
directory, doesn’t it?

Finally, I have discovered The Dialectizer.
I looove this program. The only problem is that it doesn’t handle stylesheets
very well. No matter. It’s still a work of fiendish genius. Or as The Dialectizer
might say:

Finally, ah have discovahed Th’ Dialeckizer. ah looove this hyar program, dawgone it.
Th’ only problem is thet it don’t han’le stylesheets mighty fine. No matter. It’s still
a wawk of fiendish junius.