651

(6 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

I saw the wrist surgeon at the base hospital today. He took a look at the MRI's they took, wiggled my bones around, poked a bit, and stretched my palm out flat. He says my age has managed to catch up with me - I have arthritis. That plus two small bone spurs are what's making my wrist hurt. Heat and cold don't really affect it, but I noticed that with the coming of summer, it wasn't hurting as much. So now I have a weather predictor. He says that if it gets too bad he can give me a cortisone shot or two, but cautions that when it wears off, it might hurt even more. I like the status quo, so I'll opt for popping an occasional Tylenol Arthritis.

He had them fix me up with a cast that won't allow my thumb to move at all. he wants me to wear it for a week before going back to typing, mousing, or handwriting, etc. After that, I'll begin to whittle away at my huge backlog of reviews I owe, as well as updating my chapters. I apologize for the delay, but this dang wrist really hurts. Oh, and he ruled out Carpal Tunnel. Says the tunnel is just fine. I told him that's probably because I've been typing in one form or another (typewriter, TTY, keyboard) for over 60 years. I learned to type at the tender age of 11.

Anyhow, as Ahnald would say: "Ah'll be back!"

~Tom

652

(1 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Basic)

I would strongly advise you mess up your email address. There are bots that roam forums looking for email addresses to SPAM.

EDIT: Insert something like "NOSPAM" before the domain, or use the letters "AT" instead of the @.

~Tom

653

(5 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Way to go, Janet! John Grisham, eh? That's stratospheric!

~Tom

654

(8 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Ceridwen wrote:

Perhaps it's a Sol function... HE has super powers. Said with tongue in cheek.

Sol... I have a connection request from someone called Laranice, only to find this person is not listed. How do I get rid of the notification? Thanks.

Laranice has been deleted by Sol as a spammer. I imagine he'll get around to helping clean up accounts soon.

~Tom

655

(20 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Sol is referring to a username, Laranice, that got deleted by him as being spam. I got a request too. In fact, I got three such requests in an hour. I denied all three, so my home page is clean.

~Tom

656

(0 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

This profile "louisphilip91" is an advert for Viagra.

~Tom

657

(10 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Hi, John.

Once you edited the new text into the chapter and increment the revision number, you go to the top of the home page and select Portfolio in the right-hand dropdown., Find your story and in the right-hand drop-down of that row, select "Publish Setup". Review the setup and even if you don't change anything, Click the Update Publish Settings button. That should repost your story, deduct points, and put it at the top of the "new stuff" column.

~Tom

658

(8 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Thanks for the tip, Gacela. I've tried Dragon once before, but it had a hard time keeping up with my speech patterns. I understand that it can be trained, but that it takes a while. Besides, "How to Train your Dragon" is already taken. :-)

~Tom

659

(8 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

II could probably do that, Max, but my desktop keyboard/mouse platform is set up right-handed and it won't lend itself to left-handed use. It has a sunken keyboard pukka and a small platform to the right for the mousepad/mouse.

~Tom

660

(8 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

In an effort to avoid any "whatever happened to old whatsisname?" posts, I'd just like to say that I am slowly recovering. The operative word is "slowly". Six weeks ago, I somehow damaged a ligament in my right wrist. This allowed the connection between wristbone and armbone to jump around in and out of the socket provided for it (apologies for the technical nomenclature). It didn't start out painful, but then developed into a continual pain to even bend it. So, since that time, I have been wearing an extremely uncomfortable Velco-snugged, torture device designed by the Marquis deSade that keeps me from bending it. This, of course, means I cannot mouse very well (no, not pounce on rodents - you're thinking of a cat) and typing is a decidedly one-handed affair fraught with typos, erasures (or backspacers, actually) until I manage to whip whatever I'm doing into shape.

So, if I fail to respond within a reasonable amount of time, I apologize in advance.

~Tom

661

(3 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Happy to hear that, JP. It's a great story.

~Tom

I definitely agree, Dirk. I can find posts I made on my books that I would rather not have out there for all to view because of the spoiler potential. Who wants to read a book that has a huge spoiler visible?

~Tom

663

(15 replies, posted in Romance Inc.)

I agree, Janet. There are quite a few methods of describing what you described - and they don't involve fingers or inches. The detail is unnecessary and more likely to be included in a "skin" book than anything approaching literary. Sounds as if the author was going for a faux-English flavor to the novel and didn't quite make it. If a person doesn't know much about the aetting/era they are writing into, then either research the heck out of it, or try another venue.

~Tom

664

(8 replies, posted in Romance Inc.)

Rebecca Vaughn wrote:

Merry Christmas! Hope everyone ate too much junk food and stayed up too late playing with electronic train sets! Hugs and kisses!

Funnily enough, Rebecca, I did get an upgrade to my Trainz simulator. I am now hard at work on a 14 Km Japanese route, the Kishigawa line.

Happy holidays.

~Tom

665

(8 replies, posted in Romance Inc.)

You and yours have a good holidays time, too, Janet. My house is stuffed to the eaves with family. They're sleeping air mattresses on the floor. Wonderful times with both my kids and their kids.

~Tom

666

(6 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Welcome back, Max. Nice to see you again.

~Tom

667

(342 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

This is not a bug, Sol, just an observation. Following my last round of ophthalmology treatment, I find that trying to read how many points I have on my home page is nearly impossible. The choice of grey background and white font (all the rest is in blue, which contrasts nicely) makes it hard to read the numbers. Could that be changed to blue also?

~Tom

How about "The 13 Clocks". In that one, the Duke killed and gutted his victims and fed them to his geese. Is that what you meant? I read that so long ago, I certainly can't remember an exact quote, though.

~Tom

669

(5 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

I don't know if anyone else has found this gem, but I love it. The amount of names that can be found here is virtually unlimited.

http://fantasynamegenerators.com/

~Tom

670

(6 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

I would like to add my wishes to everyone for a happy holiday filled with NFL and a good meal.
Max, every time I hear someone say they'd like to "make a toast", I flash on me getting buried under pieces of toast at a Rocky Horror Picture Show screening.

Take care everyone.

~Tom

I have the same problem, DIrk, but with Japanese long characters as well as all the Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana characters. My temporary solution is to take a picture of the character, word or phrase and reduce it to the size of my font and insert it into the text as a picture. It will work, but it won't enlarge or reduce if the reader uses the zoom controls for the text.

It is a stopgap, and it is quite labor-intensive, but it does work.

~Tom

672

(342 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

At the moment, Sol has a lot on his plate. He (and others, presumably) are working on changes to the Booksie site. This isn't a pressing thing here - annoying, yes - but not pressing.

~Tom

I'm not convinced that is strictly true. But I do find myself sometimes coming up with less than 5 comments on a short chapter. Then I'm faced with either trying to put them into a standard review or finding other things to highlight that aren't necessary to make the 5. That isn't really fair to the author.

What I would like to see is something like a ratio of necessary comments to length of the post. If it is under, say, 500 words, then only 2 comments, but if over 2500, then perhaps 6 or 7 comments to make the points. That way, you could still get a fixed amount of points for a post, but only have to come up with 2 to N comments.

~Tom

674

(342 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Someone has to take a look at the word-count routines. I just posted a short review (of, it said, 13 words). When it showed up under the post, it reported 9 words.

Something is definitely wrong, Sol.

~Tom

675

(342 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

I just did another regular review. The edit box counted 80 words. When posted, I saw it contained 76 words. Somehow, 4 words are being miscounted (and dropped) when a review is posted. But, I looked for what was missing and could not find anything. I suspect some hidden stuff (like a CR or LF) is being dropped.

~Tom