The Vent and Rant Thread

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Hitch

They can follow instructions, and push the right button (icon) at the right time, but not the WHY.

I still see this in my current workplace. There are a few people there that use computers day in and day out, but if ANYTHING changes, such as icons moved around on the desktop, or a program is removed from the 'most used' list in the start menu, hell will freeze over.

I really hated Word, originally; I was a dyed-in-the-wool hardcore Wordperfect user

My first real word processor was Word 6.0 since the end of 1994. What I used on the old XT computer I don't remember. I loved it, and used most versions from 6.0 through 2003; but since 2007, I detest it (and the other office programs as well), because of the ribbon, font usage (too many tiny fonts and different font sizes), and general behavior of the programs.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Hey Hitch,
I actually saw on a self-published forum an "author" say "I don't notice errors when I read so readers won't notice mine."
I didn't know whether to laugh, cry or just roll my eyes.
Note at least 6 other "authors" agreed with him.

Yes. It's funny you mention that--there's this thread that's a complete bête noire of mine. (On a certain other forum that shan't be named). It's the "why I prefer using dots (ellipses, cough) to a long-dash (emdash, hack)." I can't take it. It drives me positively bats**t. That's not quite the name of the thead, but...it's the essence. I'm SPEECHLESS about that one, pun fully intended.

My theory is, if you don't know the difference, between what an ellipsis is to indicate (for dialogue, I mean, folks) and what an emdash indicates, you OUGHT NOT BE AUTHORING BOOKS. (n.b.: no, this does not necessarily apply to non-native English speakers, of COURSE.)

To be completely honest and fair, I'd say that 90+% of our clients are NOT like that. They invest fairly heavily in covers, formatting (thank you, Odin, for our meager daily bread) and if they can't afford a traditional edit, they a) buy Brown on Self-Editing, b) do a THOROUGH self-edit, and then c) usually critique-group crowdsource at least a proofread, if not a content edit.

Now on self-publishing, I do know some fantastic authors. They are all consummate professionals and actually know the business. Of course, they are heavily invested in their books.

We are lucky, in that we have a LOT of pros, as well. Most tend to be backlisters, but we've got some real go-getters in the "new to it" group, also. Those folks who've slaved to get 3-5-6 books up there, worked it, promoted them, and are now doing pretty great. Generally, they're all rewarded, financially, for those efforts.

I don't know (chicken-egg) if it's just that better writers tend to "stick," or if the power of three makes their efforts more noticeable, thus more buyable, thus, etc., but...it's true that we have very few clients with 3+ books who aren't at least making EXCELLENT grocery money, if not mortgage payments, etc. Once they get to 5-6 books, they are nearly ready to quit the ubiquitous day job. The one-bookers, though...man, they struggle. No reflection, necessarily, on their quality of writing, it's just hard, hard, hard to find an audience with one book. People sure love the assurance of knowing what they're going to get, either with a proven author or a proven set of characters (series).

If it were me...I think, if I could face it, I'd finish at least TWO books, so that you would have at least both up. I think that would make it a lot easier to be found, to get sales, etc. OTOH, man...doing ONE book is a major job. Two? And having the discipline to wait, to have both ready? Oish.

I'm actually pretty fond of most of our clients. It's just...some of those in the 1-2%, like this instance, that make me nuts. (And, remember, I LIKE this client, I do!). I respect and understand that, if everybody were tecchie, I'd have no biz. No dough. No work. That would sucketh, therefore, yes, I LOVE our not-tecchie clients. But things like this, with Word? Yeah, verily...something that went THAT wrong, that BADLY, for NO reason? Yup, turns me into a total raving psycho. As you all just witnessed.

P.S.: About that file:

Spoiler:

In case anyone is interested, I made a Word file out of the final ePUB we did for that client, and sent it to him. He'd "made" his Word file by copy-pasting out of either Kindle for PC or ADE, I don't know which, and of course, lost all the formatting (Styles, CSS, headings, yadda) that were there. I wrote him and the publisher a long, long email, and explained why it was better, faster, etc., to redo the whole thing from this NEW Word file, than to try to keep working on the existing one. With this new file, they could at least modify the styles, to LOOK as they wished, and have everything done, in, say, 30 minutes, including building a properly-working TOC that would auto-update the field codes. Not the index, but, everything else could be finito in 30 mins. Say, an hour if you're not that experienced.

I explained HOW to build the index properly; I told them that while it's tedious, it's not hard. The issue is, the curation expertise and the technical expertise reside in two different people who can't actually work together in any viable way. That realistically eliminates the "use the existing table of manually-typed indices as a list to build a concordance from which you'd auto-mark index entries" as a realistic option.

I calculated roughly...11,000 unwanted auto-marked indices would be created from the 1500+ listed items (using the concordance-auto-mark/index method). All of those would have to be removed, again, manually, and again, by someone who would know which needed to be removed. That seems absurd. It's faster to mark 1500 index items, by hand--remember, there's a curated list of the text/phrases, that you could use to search--than it would be to create a file, in Word/PDF, give it to the Curator/Indexer, have her mark all the ones she wants REMOVED, and then have some poor slob--in other words, ME--have to go through in code-view and take OUT the 8.5-11K that ought not be listed--one by one, mind you. It's utterly daft to go about it that way, IMHO.

Now, having said all that, I fully expect that what's going to happen is that the author will ABANDON the index. That's my take on it.

Hitch

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Yes. It's funny you mention that--there's this thread that's a complete bête noire of mine. (On a certain other forum that shan't be named). It's the "why I prefer using dots (ellipses, cough) to a long-dash (emdash, hack)." I can't take it. It drives me positively bats**t. That's not quite the name of the thead, but...it's the essence. I'm SPEECHLESS about that one, pun fully intended.

My theory is, if you don't know the difference, between what an ellipsis is to indicate (for dialogue, I mean, folks) and what an emdash indicates, you OUGHT NOT BE AUTHORING BOOKS. (n.b.: no, this does not necessarily apply to non-native English speakers, of COURSE.)

To be completely honest and fair, I'd say that 90+% of our clients are NOT like that. They invest fairly heavily in covers, formatting (thank you, Odin, for our meager daily bread) and if they can't afford a traditional edit, they a) buy Brown on Self-Editing, b) do a THOROUGH self-edit, and then c) usually critique-group crowdsource at least a proofread, if not a content edit.



We are lucky, in that we have a LOT of pros, as well. Most tend to be backlisters, but we've got some real go-getters in the "new to it" group, also. Those folks who've slaved to get 3-5-6 books up there, worked it, promoted them, and are now doing pretty great. Generally, they're all rewarded, financially, for those efforts.

I don't know (chicken-egg) if it's just that better writers tend to "stick," or if the power of three makes their efforts more noticeable, thus more buyable, thus, etc., but...it's true that we have very few clients with 3+ books who aren't at least making EXCELLENT grocery money, if not mortgage payments, etc. Once they get to 5-6 books, they are nearly ready to quit the ubiquitous day job. The one-bookers, though...man, they struggle. No reflection, necessarily, on their quality of writing, it's just hard, hard, hard to find an audience with one book. People sure love the assurance of knowing what they're going to get, either with a proven author or a proven set of characters (series).

If it were me...I think, if I could face it, I'd finish at least TWO books, so that you would have at least both up. I think that would make it a lot easier to be found, to get sales, etc. OTOH, man...doing ONE book is a major job. Two? And having the discipline to wait, to have both ready? Oish.

I'm actually pretty fond of most of our clients. It's just...some of those in the 1-2%, like this instance, that make me nuts. (And, remember, I LIKE this client, I do!). I respect and understand that, if everybody were tecchie, I'd have no biz. No dough. No work. That would sucketh, therefore, yes, I LOVE our not-tecchie clients. But things like this, with Word? Yeah, verily...something that went THAT wrong, that BADLY, for NO reason? Yup, turns me into a total raving psycho. As you all just witnessed.

P.S.: About that file:

Spoiler:

In case anyone is interested, I made a Word file out of the final ePUB we did for that client, and sent it to him. He'd "made" his Word file by copy-pasting out of either Kindle for PC or ADE, I don't know which, and of course, lost all the formatting (Styles, CSS, headings, yadda) that were there. I wrote him and the publisher a long, long email, and explained why it was better, faster, etc., to redo the whole thing from this NEW Word file, than to try to keep working on the existing one. With this new file, they could at least modify the styles, to LOOK as they wished, and have everything done, in, say, 30 minutes, including building a properly-working TOC that would auto-update the field codes. Not the index, but, everything else could be finito in 30 mins. Say, an hour if you're not that experienced.

I explained HOW to build the index properly; I told them that while it's tedious, it's not hard. The issue is, the curation expertise and the technical expertise reside in two different people who can't actually work together in any viable way. That realistically eliminates the "use the existing table of manually-typed indices as a list to build a concordance from which you'd auto-mark index entries" as a realistic option.

I calculated roughly...11,000 unwanted auto-marked indices would be created from the 1500+ listed items (using the concordance-auto-mark/index method). All of those would have to be removed, again, manually, and again, by someone who would know which needed to be removed. That seems absurd. It's faster to mark 1500 index items, by hand--remember, there's a curated list of the text/phrases, that you could use to search--than it would be to create a file, in Word/PDF, give it to the Curator/Indexer, have her mark all the ones she wants REMOVED, and then have some poor slob--in other words, ME--have to go through in code-view and take OUT the 8.5-11K that ought not be listed--one by one, mind you. It's utterly daft to go about it that way, IMHO.

Now, having said all that, I fully expect that what's going to happen is that the author will ABANDON the index. That's my take on it.

Hitch

So now it is ellipses and em-dashes. I remember one about apostrophes. If you don't know the difference between there fathers' house and they're father's house, please get an editor or at least buy Brown. Yes I know those are both errors. It should be their father's house.
Other favorite at the forum that shan't be named was well "insert big name here" does it, so I can do it too.


Now on the good authors, the new ones that are doing great treat their books like a business. Heck one friend was just on the NYT list for at least 3 weeks.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

If you don't know the difference between there fathers' house and they're father's house, please get an editor or at least buy Brown. Yes I know those are both errors. It should be their father's house.

Unless, in this case "house" is synonymous "lineage".

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by wodin

Unless, in this case "house" is synonymous "lineage".

Nope not lineage. Just a plain house.

[WT Sharpe]

An invisible cricket has invaded the house. It kept my better half up all night. It's motor is still going.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

An invisible cricket has invaded the house. It kept my better half up all night. It's motor is still going.

Look under the sink or in your wife's closet.

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

An invisible cricket has invaded the house. It kept my better half up all night. It's motor is still going.

Use the cat to find it!

[CRussel]

Why use a cat? Chickens definitely eat crickets -- just turn those happy little egg machines loose and they'll recycle it.

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Why use a cat? Chickens definitely eat crickets -- just turn those happy little egg machines loose and they'll recycle it.

*chicken packs bags to visit Tom for midnight snack*

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

Use the cat to find it!

As we are desert-dwellers, we have crickets out the patootie. I have to say, in more than 3 decades of desert-dwelling with CATS, I find them to be utterly useless in cricket-hunting. I don't know WHAT it is, but none of mine--and we've had 5, (two pairs, one solo rescue) since the mid-80's--seem to be remotely inspired to hunt crickets.

SCORPIONS, however, oh, yeah, baby, they'll chase those little suckers around all night. I'm hell on wheels against scorpions, as I'm always convinced that they're out to get my sweet patooties. (Note: I've been stung by one. It's bloody awful. Not unsurvivable, generally, but quite painful. I don't like to think about an equivalent amount of venomous serum in their body weights, even though I've had two vets claim that cats "tolerate Scorpion stings quite well." I think that's BS; I think cats are just stoic.)

Hitch

[cromag]

We get camelback crickets in the basement. They don't chirp, but they do tend to jump at random -- meaning, they're just as likely to jump towards you as away from you. And, they're HUGE -- I once found one (bisected) in a mouse trap.

The best way I've found for controlling them is glue board traps with a tiny dab of peanut butter in the center.

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by cromag

We get camelback crickets in the basement. They don't chirp, but they do tend to jump at random -- meaning, they're just as likely to jump towards you as away from you. And, they're HUGE -- I once found one (bisected) in a mouse trap.

The best way I've found for controlling them is glue board traps with a tiny dab of peanut butter in the center.

We got them too - esp. in the crawl space under the house. When I have to work under the house, I've learned to place a halogen work light at the opposite end of where I'm working - they jump towards the light and *sizzle*. I use a regular LCD lamp at my end - cool & dimmer. Otherwise they bounce off your face! And that hurts!

[Katsunami]

And, after you think you saw it all, you encounter... this.

Spoiler:

Have fun

(I'm not easily scared, but I think I would run if I encountered that one...)

[poohbear_nc]

Spoiler tags! Please! For the love of humanity! Spoiler tags!