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After a bit of poking about on the Internet, it seems that while Linux works well on most desktops, it's a bit fussier on laptops. Bummer. I'd wanted a Linux laptop to help stave off the legions of viruses that lurk in cyberspace, but if there are going to be massive hardware compatibility issues, then mayhap it would be best to simply quarantine the laptop from the Internet altogether and just transfer fic written thereon to the desktop via flash drive. Dell supposedly offers Linux-based laptops, but I've heard horror stories about their product quality and poor customer service and am not keen on giving anyone my financial information over a demonstrably vulnerable Windows system. So, the search for safer computing continues.
After much ballyhooing by the local media about a fearsome winter storm that couldkill us all and necessitate the stealing of food and hoarding of gas cause power outages and treacherous road conditions, it...snowed for ten minutes. The power flickered intermittently, but that was it. There was no deluge or monster snow drifts that sealed us inside and threatened us with starvation until we started having Donner party daydreams. I wound up watching TV all night and reading, while Roomie chatted with his gaggle of RPing buddies. That so many newscasters insist on making mountains out of meteorological molehills is ridiculous and irresponsible. When a true emergency presents itself, people are going to ignore it because they've been desensitized by so much gross exaggeration.
I'm reading Ramsey Campbell's The Overnight, a story that borrows liberally in concept from Stephen King's short story, "The Mist." Outside the Fenny Meadows bookstore, there are terrors in the mist. It's a creepy, unsettling yarn, to be sure, but the British syntax is driving me crazy. Campbell is far more reserved in his use of commas than his writerly brethren; maybe he finds it irksome to interrupt his train of thought long enough to tap the appropriate key, or perhaps the British have different rules concerning the proper deployment of commas. In any case, he omits commas between adjectives and dependent and independent clauses, and my American brain often blunders through the string of words in a state of panicky befuddlement as it tries to decide just where it should pause to connect the proper couplings. It's rather frustrating, and so I read no more than a chapter a night, lest my brain overheat.
Do other British writers do this as well, or is Ramsey Campbell simply too fattened by his years of well-deserved accolades to bother with commas any longer?
Dear Nikki Bettancourt,
Die in a fire. You would have done if Colby hadn't pulled you out of that burning wreckage. I'm sick of your incessant macho posturing. You have a clit and resent your lack of a dick and the privileges it confers to its bearer. I get it. But rudely brushing aside Alan Eppes' flowers and concern and ignoring your superior's suggestion to take it easy makes you an ass. If you had fainted or become disoriented during the investigation of the hotel, you would have endangered the lives of your fellow agents. But hey, who cares if they die as long as you get to look like a badass?
La Guera
After much ballyhooing by the local media about a fearsome winter storm that could
I'm reading Ramsey Campbell's The Overnight, a story that borrows liberally in concept from Stephen King's short story, "The Mist." Outside the Fenny Meadows bookstore, there are terrors in the mist. It's a creepy, unsettling yarn, to be sure, but the British syntax is driving me crazy. Campbell is far more reserved in his use of commas than his writerly brethren; maybe he finds it irksome to interrupt his train of thought long enough to tap the appropriate key, or perhaps the British have different rules concerning the proper deployment of commas. In any case, he omits commas between adjectives and dependent and independent clauses, and my American brain often blunders through the string of words in a state of panicky befuddlement as it tries to decide just where it should pause to connect the proper couplings. It's rather frustrating, and so I read no more than a chapter a night, lest my brain overheat.
Do other British writers do this as well, or is Ramsey Campbell simply too fattened by his years of well-deserved accolades to bother with commas any longer?
Dear Nikki Bettancourt,
Die in a fire. You would have done if Colby hadn't pulled you out of that burning wreckage. I'm sick of your incessant macho posturing. You have a clit and resent your lack of a dick and the privileges it confers to its bearer. I get it. But rudely brushing aside Alan Eppes' flowers and concern and ignoring your superior's suggestion to take it easy makes you an ass. If you had fainted or become disoriented during the investigation of the hotel, you would have endangered the lives of your fellow agents. But hey, who cares if they die as long as you get to look like a badass?
La Guera
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