Let not eBay's left hand know what eBay's right hand is doing

So I try to sign into my eBay account, but apparently my password - the same password I've been using quite a lot lately, bidding on baby stuff - is incorrect. So I try to reset.
I get an email with a link. I click the link. It wants my username. I enter it.
It tells me that is an invalid username.
I check it. I check the username in the eBay email, just to be sure. It's definitely the right username.
I copy/paste the username from that email.
Still invalid.
I click on "Get help". It is not helpful.
I enter eBay as a guest so I can look for more help. I click "contact us".
It bumps me back to the login page. I guess only eBay members are allowed to contact eBay.
I am an eBay member. I am currently bidding on a number of items, in fact. I know perfectly well what my username is, and I'm pretty sure of my password too, but eBay doesn't believe me. Even though its own emails use that name.

Conundrum.

Arg.

My PC seems to be on a mission to convince me to buy a Mac. Yes yes, I'm sure there will be lots of enthusiastic support for that idea, but really I wasn't planning on buying a new computer less than three years after this one. Especially not in my present position as a pregnant freelancer. Is annoying. I could probably sort out most of the problems, with a lot of research and effort and purging and reinstalling and such, but man, I don't have time for this crap. The screen is slowly but surely flaking out. Excel is flaking out. (Sharing violations. Anyone know anything about these? Google delivers lots of results, none of which are terribly helpful.) iTunes has totally flaked out. (Thank gods for last.fm, because I can NOT work without Choons.) It's all just very annoying.

Also, it's cold and dark and miserable and my head hurts.

Also, I have to do the big Ally Pally show this week, which is a frankly terrifying prospect.

Mind you, I did get to go to Andrew&Iza's very good housewarming last night, and they had laid on ginger ale *and* Appletiser for me, which I thought was extremely cool. Thanks chaps! The desserts were also particularly fine. Mmmm lemon meringue...

Technojinx humour

Tonight we launch our very so special, widely anticipated, enormously exciting and potentialistic* Yarn Department.

Tonight our server appears to be down.

Hm.


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* Now is NOT the time to wonder aloud whether I know that's not a real word, mmmkay?

Somehow I made it through

Two and a half weeks of visit later, matricide has been averted. Always a good thing. Of course it's always possible she'll be murdered by one of the airline crew on the way back home, but for that I cannot possibly be held responsible.

Still to be determined is whether - as it appeared this morning - she has in fact resurrected the previously slain technojinx. The one that started all the rebooting and loss of data and bollocks that led to the inauguration of a certain whiny blog (which I'm pleased to say I've not felt driven to use since). This morning, it showed up again. She claims to have put it back in its grave at some point in the past 9 hours... but I'm not yet convinced. Note to self: do not let notoriously unreliable and creatively destructive* mothers touch your computer. Ever. *Especially* if she wants to "help".

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* Definitely not an oxymoron.

My un-favourite things

Screw all this fluffy cosy positivity. I'm not in the mood. Can I just talk for a minute about the things that do NOT make me happy?

Things like, say, the technojinx?

Yes yes fine, I've caught up (more or less) on six months of accounts, and mostly everything seems to still be there, and maybe I can get Photoshop back (although I don't have it *now*, and that's making me (more) grouchy), and I do appear to have sound so hooray for that. Rah technology. whatEV.

A weekend of catching up on accounts when I could/should have been doing all the many other, more interesting things I need and want to be catching up on... that makes me cross.
A computer that has (almost) everything basically there, but just a bit *wonky*, and needing yet more time investment... that makes me cross.
Being supposedly on diet, so that I can't even console myself with a large bag of cookies... that makes me cross.
Failing utterly to stick my diet (yet without sinning to the point where it gets fun), so that I don't even have anything to show for my supposed self-denial... that makes me cross.
Actually everything about diets, in practice and principle, makes me extremely cross; but knowing that I do in fact need and want to lose weight, and exercise alone just doesn't do it - that makes me GRRRRRRR.

Bollocks to it all, I say.

(You know, you should all count yourselves very lucky I haven't blogged about my previous battles with the technojinx. Normally I hold off - not so much out of wanting to spare you, as just out of embarrassment and a deeply ingrained sense that it must surely be my fault for imagining I know how to use a computer. But this is not the first encounter. Oh no.

Maybe I really shouldn't be allowed to use a computer.)

Update: Oh, now I appear to be missing most of my fonts. How did that happen, exactly? I never went about downloading lots of fonts. I had them. I was just using the fonts I already had. The ones that came with whatever programs I had. All of which I have reinstalled. So they should be there. And they're not. And you cannot conceive of how many problems this causes for me.

GRRRRRRRR.

Update 2: I am deeply unhappy.

No reason that isn't included in the above. I just don't have anyone here to complain to right now, and I'm not done complaining.

Unhappy. Booooooo. This is *so* not how my time off was supposed to go.

I KNEW it.

Yeah, I know, you thought I was a big fat baby for whining about the technojinx when I got off so lightly.

Only I DIDN'T. The story was not OVER.

The bloody accounts that were totally there last time I checked have been totally LOST in some weird Quickbooks updating perversion. The BASTARDS. Six whole MONTHS gone.

'Snot FAIR. Just when I was making such PROGRESS.

[Exits stage left, stamping feet and throwing toys.]

In which the Scrivener succumbs to the technojinx

Extemporanea appears to have lent me her technojinx. While I can certainly appreciate the desire to have the problem go bother somebody else for once, I did not volunteer for jinxsitting duties, and rather wish someone stronger and braver had come along to do the job.

To solve a relatively minor, but annoying problem,* I was told I had to reinstall Windows. (And who am I to argue with the support desk?) So. I was bold and brave. I copied my essential files and folders** to an external hard disk. I reinstalled Windows. I copied the damn folders back. I'm still in the process of excavating and seeing what is and isn't working, but the tally so far:

Points won
All my emails in place, OH DEAR LORD THANK YOU, I still haven't recovered from the trauma of last time.***
Documents apparently present and correct.

Points lost
For reasons far too embarrassing**** to elucidate, I have lost my totally legal and paid for and much needed copy of Photoshop Elements. Now, am I facing a £60+VAT idiot tax, or is there a way of convincing the good folk at Adobe to give me another one, I'll look after it for sure this time, I promise?

Even more distressingly - but totally mysteriously - it looks very much like my Quickbooks file has passed over to the vale of shadow. I can't for the life of me figure out how and why (considering almost everything else came through fine), but so far, no accounts. BUGGER BUGGER BUGGER. And also: SHIT.

Even this would be a little more manageable were it not for the minor - and even more mysterious - point that good ole MSN Money is unaccountably***** unable to open my perfectly good, perfectly present, perfectly up-to-date back-up file. Yes. I actually maintain two separate accounting packages. (One is better for t'business, one for personal stuff. Sometimes it's useful to have them to compare against, also. And plus, yes, I'm just that anal.) And now - very weirdly - they've both flunked out on me. BASTARDS.

*sigh*

Okay. So my accountant only actually asks for all my documents (bank statements, invoices) and those I can cough up. Bank statements are roughly enough for me to get an idea of how sales and expenses have been stacking up, so, whatever. I've got some spreadsheets that may or may not help. Okay. It's not the end of the world. And it's close enough to the beginning of the tax year that I can reconstruct the past three weeks and have a good record for this year. But, you know.

BASTARDS.

Update: OH THANK FUCK. Mysteries remain unsolved, but I have successfully located backups, so most of my Vital Financial Data is recovered. Which makes the above post mostly pointless, as well as ranty, foul-mouthed and boring. Um. Let's focus on the real issue here. Photoshop? Thoughts?

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* Roughly 50% of the time, on boot-up, my laptop failed to find its voice. 'Sokay, I don't need sound for my job or anything... except that trying to do some of my more brain-numbing tasks without benefit of iTunes was pretty painful. Anyway, the most recent telephone support person had managed to upgrade the problem from 50% of the time to all the time.
** I know that some of you are going to be squeaking things like "you only need to copy one folder! Why did you do it bit by bit!" etc. Trust me, I had to do what I had to do. Let's not go into it, it is Boring.
*** Remember I run a business from this machine. An online business. Pause for a second to appreciate the email implications.
**** Viz: I'm an idiot.
***** As it were.