I am convinced that Hollywood has used up all the original plots, which is why they keep remaking (usually to the film's detriment) classic films. Only a couple of them (Szbrina comes to mind) have made the grade. Otherwise the rest of the remakes are terrible. I don't plan on watching the remake of Ben Hur. The worst failure, in my opinion, was Rollerball. Nothing beats James Caan.
~Tom
Wonderful short story. Funny as the devil and highly informative for a writer with a dilemma in the same vein - as I have.
~Tom
And another one:
dagnee has created new topic 'Washington Post Article part 2' in forum to which you are subscribed.
"Not Authorized".
~Tom
Ah so. In that case, perhaps the message should read "post deleted" instead of "not Authorized". Even a "not Found" would point me in the right direction. I'll keep this in mind next time.
Minor kerfuffle.
~Tom
I just received another email notification that led me to "Not Authorized".
What is the point of emailing notification that I can't see? Can't the mailing daemon be taught to check the membership of a given forum before sending out notifications? Here is what the email contains:
"bimmy has created new topic 'How it feels to be writing a novel. ...' in forum to which you are subscribed."
Note the phrase "...to which you are subscribed." Doesn't that mean I should be authorized to see the forum post?
~Tom
Just got the same one this morning. Definitely a spammer.
~Tom
I thought it was just temporary, but now that you mention it, I am also seeing huge delays when adding a comment. I can highlight the word/phrase and the popup appears right away, but then I fill the edit frame in and click OK, it might take as long as five or six seconds to post properly.
This happens on Windows and Linux (Ubuntu 16.04.01).
Other delays are found when I try to send a PM. I enter the captcha and click Send, but most of the time it will fail after a long pause (around 10 seconds), making me enter a new captcha.
~Tom
Don't cut the word, Bimmy. I see this out of context, but I have a feeling that you've woven this word/sentence into part of a description of a a given scene. If you've described the scene properly, even the reader might see it as absurd.
~Tom
I don't know if I'd even have noticed it. For 3 years I lived in Japan and they get almost a quake/tremor a day there.
~Tom
Sol, do you plan on introducing this new Menu panel to Booksie? I am active on both sites and shifting my mentality from one method to another is confusing. One site had the little house for "Home" and this one has the word "Home". They are in different places on the screen.
~Tom
I would imagine that most modeling agencies would be in the Garment District. That's an area between 34th and 42nd Streets (N/S) and 5th and 10th Avenues (E/W). There are loads of cheap hotels clustered around West Village and Greenwich Village. I've been there a few times, but stayed with friends in the Upper West Side (110th and Riverside).
~Tom
Next Monday, I'm having some minor outpatient surgery performed on my right wrist to correct a malfunctioning tendon duct that runs to my right thumb. The recovery time is around two weeks to become fully functional again. During that time, the doctor doesn't want me to do much typing and especially little or no mousing. But I can do both with my left hand, being mostly ambidextrous.
There is a secondary reason for this post, to wit: Following my last burst of reviewing I realized that the number of points I've been accruing is over 900. Therefore, I am now going to concentrate more on my own works and get them out there for review rather than reviewing others regularly. For stories I've already begun to review, I will continue, but for new stories, I may or may not begin reviewing them. Short stories and poems might have to wait a bit but I will get to them, just not immediately.
I also want to finish stories of mine that I've already started - that's the bottom line. I want to and I should. I isn't fair to have unfinished works in my portfolio that just dangle there with no conclusion. I've about finished my "map" of the Dwee'num ship and will have our intrepid human explorers roaming around the alien ship soon.
Finally, when I changed ISPs last December, the new one managed to glitch my emails for an entire two months or more. Two days ago, I received an email from their admin advising I had over 60 emails they have since tagged as "not spam" and what do I want to do about them. It turned out that a lot of notifications from TNBW got tossed into their spam folder and are now resting on my computer as reclaimed emails. I find that Emily Ridgeway has the most at 54, Felix Urick at 15, Alkemi at 11, jack the Knife at 14, and several others. I apologize for my lack of response, but I simply didn't know they were there. I've saved them off into a directory and will work my way through them, albeit slowly, until I am done. What mystified me the most was that only certain authors were filtered out while others were allowed to be received by me. The admin has no excuse other than "sorry about that". This is a danger of POP emails as opposed to IMAP emails - even though Thunderbird handles my 11 accounts, some still get dropped on the floor.
My apologies for not having responded to your posts.
~Tom
A hearty 'Well done' to all the contestants and especially to the winners.
~Tom
Looks good, Sol. The only suggestion I can make is to remove the Home menu item. I always used the logo at the top left to get back to my home page, so the Home is redundant to me. But, I'm probably in the minority.
~Tom
That is correct, Janet. I have since contacted the author and know what group it was posted in. This person also agrees that sending an email to someone who can't read it is pointless.
~Tom
I am definitely not being blocked by this person. I can read other offerings by the same person, but those also state that the "Internet" was one of the groups (widest coverage). The one I was notified for was in a specific group, BUT it does not tell me which group. MY suggestion is either stop the email from getting to me because I am not in that group, or let me know which group it is in because I might want to join it.
I do agree that a flat statement of "Not Authorized" can cover a multitude of reasons.
~Tom
Outstanding, Randy. Quite an accomplishment for you.
~Tom
Well, that's certainly something to think about, Vern. And I do agree. Then perhaps the favor I should be asking is to not get notification emails for a posting that I cannot read. I have connected to this person, so I am sure that's why I received the email, but if I am not in the group it was posted to, then I shouldn't have gotten it. A rather odd dilemma, I guess.
~Tom
Could a small change be made to the interface that would let us know just WHAT group a person posted to instead of giving us a somewhat rude "Not Authorized"? On the very page that tells us this, we could at least be told what group holds the post.
~Tom
Definitely. Your question falls into the same category as "white as a sheet", "green with envy", "Purple with anger" and "blue with sadness". In actuality, I can feel myself flushing, which is the act of bringing blood to the surface of your skin. That makes it red.
~Tom
Maggie Simpson comes to mind. There are several others, but they belong more to the Manga set.
~Tom
Man bites dog. Chaos ensues.
Ready! Fire! Aim! Dang it!
The timer reached zero. BOOM!
The unicorn bowed. "Hail Queen!"
Sword unsheathed. Strike. A kill.
Hey, this is real fun!
Hold my beer. Watch this.
"Never mind the smell. Dig!"
The huge wave struck. "Mayday!"
"Oh great. Vampires everywhere!"
"Shoot!"
~Tom
As far as backing up goes, Microsoft has a great piece of free software called SyncToy. You can get it from the MS site. The URL is:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-za/downloa … x?id=15155
It will run in Windows 10, but in order to use the task scheduler to automate backups, you have to do a tiny bit of fiddling (instructions are on the MS site also). There are three modes of operation:
Synchronize - which allows additions/revisions/deletions to be exchanged between source and destination
Echo - additions/deletions/revisions are only ECHOed to the destination from the source.
Contribute - additions/revisions are copied to the destination from the source, but deletions are not made.
I have it run every night, making sure that I have backups of my Documents directory on 2 separate USB drives.
Open Office works well for me as I do a lot of editing on my laptop which run only Linux. I've not noticed any problems between OE and Word, but I don't get too creative in the formatting arena anyway. One of the initial problems I had was that OE on Linux didn't have any of the fonts Word used. I installed them using the Ubuntu Software Center. Now I use the same fonts in both word processors.
~Tom
