I watered 4 sections of the back garden, 20 minutes a section, topped off the pond, cleaned the pond filter, adjusted the tank temp; wrote; did a little genealogy (recreation); and attempted for the 4th or 5th time that incredibly impossible form they want me to fill out for 491 titles (individually) in this confounded Google book settlement. I’ve filled all the form sets once, filled half of them once, filled some 80 of them today and each time the darned thing has glitched, refused to record, and lost my work. I had steam coming from my ears this time. There’s no way I can save it on my machine: it’s theirs that’s got it, and theirs that’s supposed to save it. I now have a phone number that I am going to call when I get my adrenaline back to level, and we will see if the lawyers’ software can be fixed. I have to do this, now that the question is raised, or tacitly consent, and since I never asked to get involved in Google’s scheme in the first place, I really don’t think I should have to spend days and days and days (I have, already) filling out this stupid set of forms, especially since they keep losing it!
Arrrgh.
The weather’s warming up. That always makes me edgy and cranky. Smiles. Smiles. At least nothing’s exploded!
Have you caught Jane’s rendition of the days I was gone, and the fish tank disaster/emergency?
OMG – so frustrating! 🙁 Too bad you can’t have a saved copy elsewhere to copy and paste so that you don’t have to redo everything all over again.
The first thing let’s do, let’s kill all the lawyers
(I have it from an excellent source )….
And moreover, Jane has us on the edge of our seats over there. Can’t wait to hear the next installment……
Ouch! I know how that feels, oh how I do. I had that happen with some tests I had to take for promotion. Although, not all 491 of them. Wait… you have 491 books published?
No, they’re just editions. But each has to be addressed separately, apparently.
Voodoo dolls has a certain appeal in times like this. Not so much that they may work, but there is something intinsically satisfying with stabbing the you-know-what out of a surrogate. Now, which would be more appropriate — something that looks like the Dinner [to resemble the google logo] or something that looks like it’s wearing a black suit?
One feels also that since lawyers charge for phone calls, looking at a piece of paper, and generally doing little else until YOU do something, which also has a fee attached, etc., that one should attach a fee to all of the time you’ve been working on these forms and they have not been saved on their server. Let’s see, the first lawyer in my divorce charged $250 per hour, the second (and more effective) lawyer charged $125 per hour. Since you’re an accomplished, award-winning author who depends on your writing for income, I think you should send them a bill for all of this, or else make it part of your settlement. In your case, $300 per hour is not unreasonable.
Kokipy, wasn’t it “hang all the lawyers”? I know the source. LOL.
I’d love to. It’s maddening. I feel it as an invasion of my life and a thief of books I’d like to be writing instead of filling out this crap: I blame Google for this. Whoever they have in their legal department, and whatever exec signed off on this, they’re on my bad list.
Can you please tell us which option you’re taking, on the Google thing? And also, can you tell us who needs to do so? I’m concerned, because Tanita hasn’t filled anything out yet, and we’re a bit stuck as to how to proceed.
Look up Google Book Settlement and it will guide you to Rust Consulting Co, which is the one running the software in question. Good luck! I’m opting to go with the suit, because I don’t want to give actual permission to the sort of operation Google thinks it can do: encyclopaedic access is one thing, but what they were doing (random samples from a whole-book file) is way over the limit of fair use.
Hi, my name is “words in a line” and I am a book addict. I just registered with wave without a shore and am eagerly awaiting more of your books in digital form. I switched to Kindle reader a few years ago because it was a choice between being accidentally killed by an avalanche of books as I tried to get out of bed in the morning or switching to digital.
I am pretty sure I have read every book you have published and am a big fan. I was wondering if the foreigner series will be released for Kindle or in e-pub format any time soon? pretty please.
It’s likely to be released in some format: DAW is getting into the e-book biz.
And welcome!
I went onto Google’s site: they had Tanita’s Master’s Thesis on there! As if she’d want Google to sell that, or even make it widely available! I mean, OK, it’s one thing to have that electronically at the school’s library … but to sell it? That’s just bonkers!
Thanks for the impetus to get going on managing it.