Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Chocolate Overdose and a New Job

Easter was blustery this year - lots of hail, wind, and rain. There were also some lovely, sunny moments, and when the sun did shine its warmth promised us Spring!
The Easter bunny came (Here in France, the bells bring the eggs!) and we had lots and lots of chocolate. And being the hedonists we are, we had to eat it all up - and so it's all gone, except for the bottom half of a chocolate bunny.

I got a new job - filling in a database for cosmetic formulas. I'm not sure if it will work out. I'm dyslexic, and so I have to be VERRRRRY careful about what letters I'm typing. Lysate is not Lytase, even if it looks the same to me. But I'm actually having fun with the formulas, the Latin words, the chemicals, the long, long words - and my husband knows most of the words, having worked in the cosmetic business for ten years, so he can double check my work.
The only dark spot is that my computer takes the powerpoint files for a virus, and after I've happily filled in seven, it suddenly comes on with a loud warning siren and blocks my file so I can't work on it anymore - worse, it completely erased the file I had just finished (each file takes over half an hour...) So you can imagine my Chagrin. (Love that word. It just fits here.)
I don't know if anyone else has that problem - or if I should disable my virus catcher while working on the program - because there is no virus in it - I scanned it and scanned it again - but when I am working on it, the virus catcher goes beserk after a while and closes down Microsoft powerpoint.
If anyone has had that problem or any suggestions, they will be most welcome!


Gabriele C. said...

Hehe, I bought easter eggs for half the price today. :)

Can you try to adapt your firewall? I don't use Powerpoint (my preference is Corel Draw), so I don't know what's the problem, but it sucks.

Btw, thank you for your detailed comment on my snippet. Looks like you got a great book or two there, could you tell me which ones?

Sam said...

Hi Gabriele -
I will see if it's my firewall - good idea. Maybe I can disable that while I work.

& you're welcome about the comments, lol. I had to do Tons of research for my Alexander books, and I was lucky enough to be able to talk to several doctors, (one who was surgeon general of France!) and I picked the brains of several scholars & historians. It helps that my mother is a history teacher, and she pointed me towards the right reference books.
(So all that was for Time for Alexander, Heroes in the Dust, and Children in the Morning...)

Gabriele C. said...

I have some books about the history of medicine (fascinating subject) which devote a chapter or two to the Romans and Greek, but I haven't found a detailed book about methods yet (you know, surgery, herbs used, that sort of stuff). What I do have is one about the medical structures in the army from soldiers trained in battlefield first aid to field surgeons to hospital phyisicians.

Absolute Vanilla (& Atyllah) said...

I was so disgustingly good and avoided the chocolate this year - now I feel the need to rush out and eat piles of the stuff!

I think the suggestion of taking a look at your firewall is a good one.

Oopsy Daisy said...

Congrats on the work! Sounds like fun.

I used to work in the support dept at a software company as well as teaching system admin. Could you write down the exact msg that you get when the virus alert goes off? Email it to me and I'll be glad to help. Just because your virus program isn't detecting something doesn't mean you don't have a virus or a malware going on. There are many types that attach themselves to powerpoint or word documents. That doesn't mean you have one, I'm just saying it is a possibility.

I was good and stayed away from the chocolate at Easter, but the jellybeans were too tempting. LOL

Bernita said...

Being barely post-Luddite, I wouldn't have a clue.

John Nez said...

I'd definitely disable the virus program and see if that helps.

I think 'chagrin' would only just begin to describe how I'd feel losing work like that!

My new book is being done digitally and I keep 5 copies!

Good luck...


Sam said...

Thanks Daisy for offering - what I did - I took a new file and renamed it and then, to really confuse the computer, I moved it to another dossier...and so far my virus catcher hasn't taken notice of it. I've left the two other files in quarentene. I tried to get them out. No way.