Scragged the week off from the inventory work (and, naturally, came down with a bug for half of it in protest) but ne'er mind, the amount of catch up I managed to get done is shocking.

Numbers then...

48 - the number of submissions replied to and mailed out as of this morning (some going as far back as April...yeah, I know, moron. shoot. the.)

29 - the number of submissions awaiting reading

280 - the number of envelopes I need to stuff with BFS Prism, Dark Horizons, & various fliers and haul to the depot sometime this weekend (btw, I'm in the Dark Horizons < grinning like a maniac > )

193 - the amount of emails waiting to be replied to because of...

4 - the amount of viruses that keep fucking up my email system despite..

9 - the amount of patches, fixes and what have yous that I've downloaded to stop the bastards and STILL they get in. Talking of irritations..

57 - spam-mail in 8 hours - the current record. Having to go web-mail to delete the gits before downloading is working on my last nerve. They're getting weirder and weirder too.
(which means anyone emailing proper stuff please put a clear, semi descriptive subject line or it might get accidentally deleted in a fit of arrrgh.)

On a nicer note..

18 - the amount of homeward bound drunks me & Evil Twin freaked out by whistling, humming & yelling over the fence the other night. Sweet sweet revenge.

3 - the amount of 'genius' business ideas the mother (aka Mrs Delboy) has tried to rope me into this week. For her, a slow week. (This is the woman who leaps on every single hobby or vague interest, about 5 seconds in, with the words 'ah, but can we make money from it?')

6,456,989 - the amount of times, in respect to the above, Mrs Delboy has been told quite sternly NO.

20 quid? Bugger that. You can download Red Hat Linux for free from redhat.com. Gobsmacked. (can you tell I'm new to the whole freeware thing!)

Haven't tried it yet as I've edged into my 'must read books about it before jumping' stage, but I do believe it's rather imminent!

Holy fuck. Just checked Amazon and you can get the latest Linux thingy for 20 quid. That's the OS with graphical interface, plus word & excel friendly programs, web browser, email program and various other useful bits. All in one package. And just 20 quid. (as opposed to the squillions of pounds it's cost me to build up my little MS family of working programs.
Sheesh. It's even cheaper than some of the Linux books they've got for sale.

I am *so* there.

Oh joy. The svchost error is back again.

Linux. It's just gotta be done. This MS ridiculousness is driving me bug crazy.

(Cynical me: ah, so the virus-mongers job is done, then.)

Ok, so first it worked.
Then I got messages telling me that Welchia & Blaster were tag teaming it against my poor baby.
Now everything's working again.

Still can't get MS system patches to work, though.

Well that worked then. Finally the bug is well and truly busted - and guess which idiot had forgotten to update her virus definitions. No prizes so no postcards :->

Apparently it was the Welchie worm wot done it. One fixer patch later and it's business as usual. Although the email & web programs were a little... delicate... when I first woke them up this morning. Mumbled a few obscenties at me then rolled over for another half an hours sleep. Lazy buggers.

Le mag
Issue 4 is in mid production. Just got to chase up one of my feature guys, and get some art back. Oh, and tell Allen Ashley that I have to have him! (Honestly, it comes as such a shock when someone's not on email. Means I have to actually put pen to parchment. Sheesh!)

Been catching up on the slushpile at the weekend (..weird worm creatures good for something then..) - loads of great stories and now I've to fight my way through a huge pile of notifications (which I had to put off cos, y'know, the email being wrecked thing). I'm being a lot harder than I have been previously as we're running tight on space for the next couple of issues. Something of a conundrum there - there's some seriously fab stories come in and I just have to publish them. So I figure the next couple of issues will be black/white covers but thick. Well not that thick, just thicker than your average H&N!

Best bit of the job that, getting a continual supply of new stories to read.

Aaaaggggghhhh. Bloody microsoft bastards.
So this svchost error thingy, after copious net research, is either down to the Blaster worm bitch that's going around or it's a MS os quirk.
Fine. Salvageable you'd have thought.
Scoured the tech help boards and apparently installing the latest service pack and downloading a patch by name of windows2000-KB823980-x86-ENU.exe should do the trick.

But can I get anything off the MS site? Can I buggery. So given that patches are proving nigh on impossible to get hold of, I went the virus busting route and no, no virus here ma'm.
So if I don't go online for anything, I can scrape by for a few hours, hoping like hell I can get some work done before the error box pops up. Soon as I engage the joys of IE, however, I get maybe 10 mins of normal working than bam. One teeny dialog box later and suddenly I can't copy, paste, drag or drop, reply to emails, or even look at drop down menu thingys on websites. Freaky. Then I have to reboot before I can get anything done again.

I tell ya, that Linux thing I keep hearing about is looking ever so tempting right now.

Gah. Bloody typical. Just as I finish paying for my lovely little laptop, it all goes buggy on me. Something to with an svchost error. It's driving me totally mental.

Le mag
Got a couple of nice reviews of issue 2 (from the BFS & The Fix) - will try and get them on the main website in a bit. & Issue 3 seems to be going down well (which is v. nice!)

...and it all went very quiet..... :->

Mag stuff
And finally I managed to get the mag mailed out. Subscriber copies went out Saturday, contributor copies went out this morning. (Should have been the other way around but you have never seen a more dis-organised person in your life. Unless you're looking at little sis who's even worse...)

No prizes for spotting the bloopers of the issue...idiot-girl does it again! This time the contents page went weird on me so apologies to Joel Lane for not listing him or his story 'Premium Rate'; and apologies to Steve Dean whose story 'Orcs & Holes' I listed on the contents page as by Stuart Young. Go figure.

BFS stuff

Yeah baby! Got a volunteer to take over the stockholder stuff. Tony Mileman step on up and have a drink on me!

Le mag
Oh yes oh yes oh yes oh yes! Issue 3 is back from the printers and great heavens but it looks gorgeous.
(Although they seem to have added an extra page and printed an extra back page....) but never mind that. It's totally wow!
I'll get everyones copies mailed out next week.

Meanwhile, I've a huge stack of submissions to get through and I'm hoping to get caught up on them soonish. (promises, promises)

BFS
Someone please volunteer to take on the Stockholder job. Please! (I don't sound desperate do I?) All you gotta do is store 3 or 4 boxes of books and do a little order related admin. Dead dead easy. In return you get free BFS membership plus other odd perks and the committee peeps really are a lovely bunch.
I've been trying to chuck it in for months but so far no one's been biting and I'm seriously running out of time do the normal stockholder stuff, plus handle the BFS cyberstore, BFS mailings, mag stuff, run the 2 other businesses I do for actual money cash and get in some fun time. :->