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How do you speak to a human at Hotmail??

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A couple of days ago my computer got a virus that sent bogus emails out to everyone I knew. It was one of those “click on this blue  link for some amazing photos” things. I was dumb. Trouble is when I clicked on the link, it went through my address book and emailed the same email to everyone in my adress  book. Some of them probably clicked on the link too. I have a few email addresses, but this happened in my main account, which i use for 95 per cent of my stuff.

Hotmail then decided I had “exceeded my daily email limit” on my main account, so it wouldn’t let me send anything out from that account. What was I to do? How was I to warn people not to click on this link?  I needed to let people know what had happened.  I had a cunning plan!

Realising my main account had been hacked, I copied all the addresses I could from there into the  address bar in the main account. (It let me do that, even though it wasn’t going to let me send the email.) Then I  cut and pasted that list  to another (secondary) email accout I have, and used that account to send out a mass email telling people “don’t click on that blue link.”  I also have a 3rd and 4th account. Couldn’t log in to them.

But Hotmail had an even more cunning plan. They decided they would lock my main account because it looked like it was being used for spam. They were right. Trouble was before they unlocked it, they wanted me to prove I was me! This involved filling in a big form with my phone number, my secret question, the email addresses of several people I had recently emailed, the headings in the emails, and the names of the email folders I had created in my main account. Since I haven’t been using those  folders for over a year, I had trouble remembering those folder names. I took some guesses.

I also got on the phone to my friends. “What was the last email I sent you? What was the heading. What’s your email address? (I can’t remember them: that’s why we have address books!)

In the meantime, I asked hotmail to send me a reset link to another account linked to the first one. Guess what. I couldn’t get into that account.  And I asked for several temporary log codes in to be sent to my phone by SMS. The hotmail login page rejected them all.

Now hotmail had blocked my account, and my alternate accounts: I couldn’t  get into any of them, and there seems no way to contact a human at hotmail. (I tried phoning them, but since I wasn’t paying for some service I’d never heard of, I didn’t get to speak to a person. I got redirected around a series of web pages that took me back to the start of the circle and on again.

Eventually one of the telephone reset numbers worked on one account. Then I got them to send a SMS log-in number for  my first account to account number three. I got my account back, apparently none the worse for being hacked.

But here’s two words of warning. If you use hotmail, keep a list of the folders you’ve created for incoming mail. One day you may have to prove that you are you. And if you can’t remember your own folder names, you could be in trouble.

Anybody out there had similar experiences with an email provider?

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How do you deal with bad news?

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Imagine being 38 and having osteoarthritis in the hips. I just returned from hearing Wil Anderson, an Australian comedian at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. Wil is well known in Australia. He’s had hip pains for the last six years, takes pain killers, and just found out why, when he needed to have a hip X-ray. He has  osteoarthritis. .  He was surprisingly up-beat about it. The doctor who told apparently said that since the replacements last 15-20 years, if he could put up with the pain for a few more years, he might only have to have it once. But alternatively, in a couple of years’ time he might not be able to walk.

Wil said he figured everyone in the audience would have some medical condition or other, implying he didn’t feel sorry for himself.

As the show progressed I found him a truly admirable person.

I don’t deal with bad news very well. i always imagine the worst possible outcome.

It got me wondering how do you deal with adversity? What are the attitudes that make some people cope and not others?

What do tell yourself when bad things happen?

How do you deal with bad news? Leave a comment below.

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The Japanese tsunami – what is it with ghost stories?

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The newspapers report this week that the Japanese city of Ishinomaki, which took the brunt of the tsunami in March last year is awash with ghost stories. This one city accounted for a fifth of all the tsunami deaths. One supermarket stands half rebuilt because workers on the project were getting sick and blaming it on ghosts. One taxi driver won’t pick up fares in certain parts of the city for fear the passenger might be a ghost. Anthropologist Takeo Funabiki says people find it hard to accept death, so ghost stories abound.

This makes me stop and ask: why do ghost sties persist in literature, and why do some people believe in ghosts. Famous writer C.S. Lewis (The Narnia Tales) was a Christian lay theologian who said he didn’t believe in ghosts, even though he’d seen one. He was in bed one night (reading, as best I can recall,) when a recently deceased friend appeared at the end of his bed. The ghost said, “It’s not so hard as you think, you know,” apparently referring to death, and then disappeared. (He tells the story in the book A Grief Observed, which is about the death of his wife.) The last ghost book I read was “A Manhattan Ghost Story” by T.M. Wright, about a photographer who turns up to his friends apartment to find his friend gone, and an attractive young woman living there. She turns out to be … you guessed it. And who can forget Haley Joel Osment’s famous line: “I see dead people… Walking around like regular people. They don’t know they’re dead.”

The Japan Today site below has a debate between people who believe in Ghosts and those who don’t with many of the pro camp claiming to have seen ghosts or experienced them. Me? I’m a sceptic. My attitude is “show me the evidence.” But anyone reading this: do any of you believe in ghosts? How do you account for the persistence of ghost stories across time and across so many cultures? Please: fell free to post a comment below. I’d love to hear from you.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/one-year-on-ghosts-stalk-tsunami-hit-ishinomaki

http://www.nodeju.com/19225/japanese-tsunami-town-inhabited-by-ghosts.html

Novel, Novel writing, Uncategorized

Describing setting in novels.

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I’ve been thinking lately about setting: that is, how we describe the place where the action in our novel is happening. Think of the things your character can observe about a place.

 Interiors

What color are the walls? What color is the furniture? Is it old or new, does to belong to  a certain period? Has the place been recently renovated? What are the floor coverings? Are they new, worn, threadbare, or old fashioned? Are there any bench tops? What surface do they have – Formica, wooden, aluminium, granite? Is the place clean, dusty, dirty, disorganized, or neat? What are the light fittings like? Remember, when describing something visual, it’s not just colors; it’s also shiny or dull, rough or smooth.

Are there any smells? Of food? Of cleaning products?

What does your character feel about this place? Does it bring back memories of some pleasant or unpleasant experience? Name three feelings that things in this place might evoke.

Exteriors

If you’re in a back yard or front yard, is it neat or unkempt, are the plants healthy or dehydrated, are there weeds? What season is it and is your description consistent with that? Does the ground slope, and what’s the texture underfoot as your character walks? Smooth, sloping, uneven, sand, concrete, gravel?

In public places, how many people are there? Are there shops you wouldn’t expect there? Have they changed since the last time your character was there? What can our character hear? Is it pleasant or unpleasant? What can they smell? Petrol fumes? Cooking from a food outlet?

What does your character fell about this place? Irritation about the noise or the smells? Do they feel safe here? Name three feelings that things in this place might evoke in your character.

If anyone has more things they include please leave a comment.

A great article on describing watery scenes by Sharla Rae is at http://writersinthestorm.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/place-descriptions-part-two-waterways/#comments

For those new to this Blog, my email is snowinmelbourne@hotmail.com and on twitter I’m @Richard_A_Snow.  Best wishes. Richard Snow

Stage Play, Uncategorized, Yes Minister

I don’t speak to ordinary people unless there’s an election going on, says politician

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Yesterday I went into the city to see the stage play “Yes Minister”, based on the British Political comedy series of the same name. To my surprise I discovered the Greeks were having a street festival in Lonsdale Street. There were stalls selling Greek Yogurt, all the Greek restaurants were doing a brisk trade, and a large stage had been erected with guys playing bouzouki etc. So, a Greek lunch then off to the theater.

The Play involves a British PM, his Principle Private Secretary, his head of Civil Service, a political advisor and the ambassador for Kumranistan, an mythical country which is prepared to loan Britain 10 trillion pounds so it can buy oil from Kumranistan. Unfortunately, the Kumranistan PM wants a school girl to have sex with that night or he won’t sign the deal. The characters twist themselves into knots trying to work out how they could do this without breaking any laws.

The play had brilliant one-liners in it.

“I don’t speak to ordinary people, unless there’s an election going on.” – Jim Hacker, the Prime Minister.

“Memoirs are not the truth, they’re the case for the defence” – Claire Sutton, the PM’s political advisor.

About environmentalism: “The Germans have a big Green Movement. ” Response: “You make it sound like dysentery.” (I didn’t get down which two characters said that.)

About ethics in politics: “You’ve been sliding down a slippery slope since you were elected. It’s the price of power.” – the  Kumranisatan Ambassador.

When the Kumranistan Foreign Minister wants a school girl for the night the actors  discuss how they could make it sound good if it ever leaked to the press.  “We have to make it sound good, like the yanks did with torture. Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.”

It’s got some good lines. I’d give it four out of five stars.

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Article on setting in fiction writing on Melissa Donovan’s blog

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Melissa Donovan has an excellent piece on writing setting in fiction. You need a couple of sentences at the start of each scene to tell the reader  where we are. (I made this mistake numerous times in the first draft of my book. The reviewer kept writing, “Yes, but where are we?”)

Melissa’s blog is called “writingforward” and the article I’m referring to  is at

http://www.writingforward.com/writing_exercises/fiction-writing-exercises/fiction-writing-exercises-for-developing-setting

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Jesus on Mars: what I’m reading this week.

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Jesus on Mars, by Philip Jose Farmer, has an astonishing plot premise. What if humans landed on Mars, and, in a hollowed-out mountain, found a human community who followed orthodox Jewish teaching? The humans were picked by up a space ship in AD 50, which rescued them from some dangerous situation. (We don’t get to learn much about the situation.).  The space ship in which they landed on Mars is just near the hollowed-out mountain. Along with the Jews, they picked up the resurrected Jesus.

Although this book was written in 1979 there is nothing that “jars the reader” because Farmer tried to predict the future and got it wrong.  The four earth crew who land on Mars include one Baptist, a Muslim, a lapsed Jew, and a woman who has been an atheist for many years.

They undergo a lot of internal conflict as they try to come to terms with Jesus’ apparent miraculous powers: making things levitate, having the head cut off a ram and then restoring the head to the animal, after which it walks off quite happily.

The Jesus announces that he will be coming to earth in the space ship that has been lying outside the mountain . This is broadcast directly to earth TV stations. That’s when the fun starts, but I won’t give away any more of the plot.

Science fiction is sometimes divided into ‘hard’ and ‘soft’. Hard scifi gets all the technical and scientific details right, in great detail. ‘Soft’ scifi is mostly about the characters and their relationships, like ‘soapies’,  Star Trek Voyager’ and ‘Star Trek the Next Generation’ were soft scifi. I’d recommend this book to anyone who likes “soft” science fiction. Some copies are available on Amazon.

book reviews, Novel, Novel writing, Uncategorized

Passing as another race – what I’m reading this week

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Passing as another race: what I’m reading this week.

The book-reading group I belong to is going to be talking about Philip Roth’s “The Human Stain” next month. This deals with a topic I’ve only seen mentioned in one other book: people of African American decent “passing” as white. I’ve been vaguely aware that this exists in America, but it’s never been something I’ve had any reason to think about or discuss with any of my American friends. So, first a summary and then a few questions.

Roth’s book revolves around Coleman Silk, a college professor who is incorrectly accused of racism because one day, as he’s marking the attendance roll, he refers to two students who have never shown up for class by saying “Does anyone know these people? Do they exist or are they spooks?” I’ve never heard the word used in this sense, but apparently “spooks” is one term for African Americans. I’ve always thought a spook was either a ghost or a spy. In fact the two students are black, and lodge a complaint against Silk, which ends with him leaving his college. In fact Silk is actually a green-eyed, white-skinned African American who enrolled in the Navy in WWII passing as white. When he left the navy he got a scholarship to university as a white. For 50 years he has pretended to be white, in fact, to be Jewish. It is not until after Silks death that the narrator of the book meets Silk’s sister, at his funeral, and she tells the narrator of Silk’s history. Silk has just been buried as a Jew. He has, intentionally, married a woman with crinkly hair in case any of his children were born with crinkly hair. Silk’s only communication with his family has only been telephone calls between him and the sister, since he could never allow the two worlds to meet.

When he decided, 50 years ago what he was going to do, he told his mother and she said she realised his (future) children would never know her as their grandmother.

The book is set in 1989, during the time of the Monika Lewinsky scandal, i.e., it’s fairly recent in historical terms.

In Australia, the opposite issue to “passing” has arisen recently in a court case involving journalist Andrew Bolt, who suggested in a newspaper article that some fair skinned people of mixed descent identify as aboriginal in order to get art prizes and jobs reserved for aboriginals. But these people acknowledge their Austrian or English ancestry is not a secret – they couldn’t really hide it even if they wanted to) so the issue is not quite the same as in Roth’s book. (There’s a Wikipedia article on Bolt with links to his articles.)

It set me wondering: do light skinned African Americans today feel a need / or see a benefit from “passing” as white? How often on forms do people have to state their race? (I can’t recall any internet forms asking me my race (even just for ‘statistical purposes). Is it regarded as treachery to one’s group? Anybody got any thoughts? Anybody want to enlighten me?