I started before 11 am; it is now 3:01 pm local, and I just now got through registering the copyright on 4 books. I have to give the .gov site kudos for unflappability: it didn’t lose info if you had to backtrack in the maze, and it developed an autofill button from your login, which made things really much easier as far as rote re-typing.
What they didn’t say was you shouldn’t USE the add new buttons to pile all your books into one basket. That took a call to a live human being in Washington DC to confirm. And what to do? Erase all but one, run it through again and see if you get a shopping cart. Now, since setting up ours, I’ve gotten critical, and this cart is the slowest thing—5 minutes, no kidding, to see if your button push got a cart—or not.
Then it choked up with a leftover from the first mistake. Of course all of these have case numbers. So I’m having to void and hope the case survives—or in one case—that I can successfully create a new number.
I can say now, knowing what I know, I could probably do the job in an hour and a half, leaving time for the 5 minute button pushes. But what a process! I mentally tell myself, well, at least I’m not having to stand in line at an office with a brown paper package under my arm.
I wish there was just something that lit up and said, We noticed your button-push, already! Wait 5 minutes! But there isn’t. You have to sit and sip coffee, being aware the system notoriously crashes—often, apparently; and is down every weekend for maintenance, and is scheduled to be offline for maintenence Friday, too, because it’s wheezing, I’ll guess.
Megasystems. But it worked. I have receipts. And thanks to the donations (you know who you are) I used those to pay the copyright fees. Much, much appreciated. We’re now registered, and official. Within 9 months we should get a physical certificate, but maybe sooner, they say. In the meanwhile, we have registered copyrights. 😉
YAY! Well done, pardner! The good fight fought and won. I wondered why it was so quiet in there….all that coffee being sipped….
We’re now on Pot #2 for the day. That’s how it is.
I am so used to interminable waits that I now can
routinely beat the computer at hearts! All inter-
faces with government departments are,for me,the
equivalent of ‘Through the Looking Glass’. You have my profound sympathy. (I really need to get
a smiley or two)
So now you don’t need to worry about getting the “©” to show up in your works. It’s now “®”! LOL
Online. Wow. This is progress. How do they depositing the work? Last time I did this was in the 90s and I had to do it all by mail. Still it was really fun to use the stuff I submitted back then as an example in a cataloging seminar I ran recently.
I write gud English. Sorry for the typos, there.
Yes. The copyright office can take 22 months if you want to ship them a manuscript and fill out a paper form, but gets it down to 9 for the certificate, if you sign up online, fill out their forms (correctly: took me multiple tries and a phone call) and pay the requisite fee: it’s 35 or so dollars per manuscript to register. Then it shifts you over to the upload screen and you ‘browse’ to your computer and upload the correct file. I recommend anyone doing this that you read absolutely EVERYTHING, including reconfiguring your browser before starting this. They send you receipts, and you are counted as fully registered from the instant they receive your payment and your file. Pretty neat.
Yikes! I think somewhere around 1am I would have been very tempted to throw the monitor out the window.
So very glad it’s done! Can’t wait for the site to open!
I failed to mention that I threw Norton out the window after I finished. The software’s CVSSV–something or another file was a known issue on its last incarnation. Well, it still is. It accelerates the hard drive and fan to warp speed and won’t turn loose of them until you reboot the system. I don’t think this is a good thing for the hardware, let alone my patience.
And it did this twice (it updates itself every effin’ fifteen minutes!!!!) while I was online with the copyright office, with all the other problems I was having, including a soggy left mouse button that doesn’t let you feel a distinct click.
When I got off, with everything done, I went to the internet, got a download that purported to be Avast, a software I’ve had recommended. Then I went to Control Panel and killed that program. Drove a stake through its heart.
Next I loaded the new program—which said NOTHING about Avast! but turned out to be Cyber Security, and it immediately accelerated the hard disk and fan just the same as Norton. I had a moment of carefully controlled desire to rip something up—then checked the OTHER download button on the site. It WAS Avast!, but the other button is misdirected. Since I was, at the moment, in the clutches of something that for all I knew could be malware, I immediately downloaded Avast!, pitched Cyber-something off despite its protests it had found 71 pieces of malware and wanted me to push a button and pay them money, and then wanted to know why I was pitching them off (so had Norton, and what I told them was pretty—well, direct.) So, on the edge of a perfect fury, I installed Avast! and found it didn’t have that nasty trick, at least. It didn’t claim 71 pieces of malware, but it ran tamely, nicely, and can be scheduled to come on at 2am and do its thing and shut down again. Whether it can do this with a laptop with a shut lid, I don’t know, but this is freeware up to a point, and offers a very nice trial. I’m a lot happier. It hasn’t seized up my computer since I put it on. That’s better than Norton has done in any 3 hour period.
Then I went up to get the Faery files converted for the two download packages. Done! Jane-person, we are READY—soon’s you get Wesley in gear. Or in the gears, as the case may be.
HEHhehheh. Ahem, um, sorry.
But yeah, Norton is crap. It used to cause all kinds of problems with my art programs.
I finally killed Norton, tried AVG, then switched ESET NOD32 after AVG upgraded to an irritating new version.
However, I have heard only good things about AVAST, and suspect that you’ll be much happier with it. And I … remember to threaten my ESET to good behavior or else the Evil AVAST program will come and eat him.
May AVAST continue to be tame …
We want you happy, and writing more stuffs!
I’ve used Avast! for years and have loved it. It is one of the least obtrusive I’ve used. I’m such a boring internet user (no online gambling, no attachment opening, no pr0n watching…) I’ve rarely run into anything bad anyway. All the same, I’ve never noticed it trying to take over my computer or have been inconvenienced by its scanning. From time to time I’ll run my own Malwarebyte’s Anti-Malware scan (positive reviews by CNET), but otherwise it is all I use.
This time last year my sister ran into that weird Cyber-something that you mentioned. It is an evil program that tells you that it detected all these bad things on your computer and that you need to purchase it/ dl it to get rid of them. In truth it is the thing causing the problems in the first place and is just trying to disrupt your computer enough you’d believe it. When you click it it installs this thing on your computer that self replicates and monopolizes your ram that compounds to the point your computer doesn’t even have the brains to run a real scan to get it off and your best bet is to try to run a fix through an uninfected thumb drive. A ton of people fell for it last year and it caused a lot of problems. Fortunately my sister’s computer problems always flair up when I am about to visit over a holiday and it was able to get it off her computer for her. Never trust unsolicited virus help that happens to pop up out of no where. It looks juuust official enough to throw people off though. It is worrisome that its popped up again. Just in time for the holidays I guess.
Oh, joy! Well, I’m too canny a fish to push any button saying yes any time something is acting weird, but now I’m worried the thing might have made a nest in the registry. I’ll be on the lookout. Thanks! THIS one had co-opted a button for an Avast download, on an Avast download site, and that’s a little worrisome too, on several levels. What just makes me super cheerful is that NORTON’s incoming-file scanner vetted the Cyber-thing as perfectly safe.
CJ, you can download Malwarebytes from download.com (a CNET site) and run it to check for any leftovers. It’s free, works only on demand, and does a great job. Update it before you run a scan (they keep it very up-to-date) and it can catch all the latest crap. It’s a really nice piece of work and doesn’t load down your machine.
TO add insult to injury, it was download.com that installed the Cyber Security malware on my computer. I think CNET may have been hacked. Or Avast was. Neither is happy news. Not only that, when you run a google search on Cyber Security virus, you get, yes, Regcure, which behaves in exactly the same fashion as the Cyber Security thing…which kind of leads you to wonder whether this year it’s mutated into fixes for itself—so watch it out there in computer-land, my friends. The bad guys are now starting to prey on people who hunt for free software, or trial period softwares. If you want to install something of this ilk, I can now say from personal experience that you should get a specific file name before you download, and doublecheck the download link to be sure what you’re actually getting.
That’s an excellent point. If anyone’s interested, Malwarebytes downloads as either mbam.exe or mbam-setup.exe.
If you do notice trouble the fix is easily Googled. Just do a search for “cyber security virus” and there are numerous guides to fix it. It is more of a pain than a real threat, but it can still cripple a computer just through ram abuse. My sister’s problem was that she only had one computer and it was taken out of commission by cyber security. She was unable to Google or dl extra anti-virus stuff because her computer was too slow to even load up firefox. It took a second computer used for internet research and downloading plus a thumb drive to get it sorted out and not every person has that second computer available. And to think, someone sits around plotting how to make other people miserable. If they could only use that energy for good.
You aren’t kidding. The meanness of spirit of the stupidly malevolent speaks more to their inner pain and basic incapacity to fix their lives than to any deeper evil—but I wish they’d get a life.
I’m sorry it’s such a mess – I have pitched McAfee, Norton, and then AVG off my systems. I finally got a Mac instead, and run any Windows stuff in a virtual machine. I keep a copy of the freshly installed VM and simply dump the current one and start from a new copy of the fresh install every few months. Machine runs faster (in both Mac and Windows modes), and I don’t care if anything creeps in the door – it’s not staying. (that said, very little has crept in – count on one hand kind of number) (BTW, Heavy Time scan should be finished this weekend)
Bless you, Spandrel.
I meant to post here awhile ago, but I hit a wrong button and automatically logged off into another cyper uneverse instead of posting. Then I had to run out on an errand and forgot to repost. Sorry.
I just wanted to say that Scot Finney, who writes Scot’s Newsletter (which is now a blog) did a product test plus survey with lots of reader input on firewall programs a year or so ago. It might offer some ideas that could help you long-term, after you’ve had a time to catch your breath from bringing the site up. Finney writer for a lot of technical and consumer publications.
My recent–last decade, including a purchase in early 2008–experiences with Norton haven’t been positive. And my needs, compared with yours, are quite modest. Basically, it would straightjacket my system to the point it wouldn’t work. Anti-malware has to be flexible enough to reasonably protect one while allowing one to accomplish one’s goals. Norton has consistently failed this for me. I suspect there is no perfect solution, however, but maintenance has been much, much simpler after I switched to Mac. The new Windows 7 operating system may be better in this regard, however. Time will tell.