Peeking into the rock

I don't know why it wouldn't before, but now kingsoft opens the doc files again, and most specifically it opens the files that I have downloaded from dropbox on to the tablet, which means I can work on the plane. And I can edit them, and my snazzy little usb keyboard works fine too.

I have a formatting issue, which is slightly annoying and means I'll have to do another proofing pass later, but I thought I'd have to do that anyway. I have indented paragraphs in my original, but kingsoft apparently can only do carriage return/line feed paragraphs, and while I guess either is okay in these days, having both in one mauscript is just sloppy. But I can do a perfecty fine search and replace in word perfect to make that consistent later.

Oh yes, and another good thing is that these readable doc files were created in word perfect: I had gotten the impression that my rather old version of word perfect only did primitive old versions of doc files and indeed I had updated open office to deal with them, but these are MS Word 97/2000/2002 for windows doc files, which is I believe the last true iteration before the odious docx.

Everybody has their preferences, and open office is refreshingly clean and simple, notably lacking the offensive ribbon, but word perfect has reveal codes. It is so nice to know I will be able to use reveal codes even on the doc files.

Thank you everybody who gave me suggestions. I'm thinking about them now, though I have solved the proximal problem.

I never slved the question of what I had been doing wrong, but at least the problem was solved, so . . .

I've been offline more than on since Friday. There are multiple issues. My ISP had its own troubles: they were doing one of those maintenance things for a while on Friday, and on Saturday they had a crash for a while. There also seems to be something wrong with my router, so that sitting absolutely next to it with the tablet I can't get a strong enough signal to finish authenticating. In addition, we had a short at the box that just got fixed, so that meant no phone and no internet at all for most of yesterday and today. Since I'm trying to get files on to the tablet so I can use it to write while I'm on the plane and thus not allowed to connect to the cloud storage, I'm very frustrated.

I've started packing. Phase 1 is identify everything I could possibly want to take and put it in and around the suitcase and carryons. Phase 2 is saying "that's too much crap" and taking it all out again and sifting through it for what I really want. Phase 3 is "wait, I can't last that long with only that," and sifting through the rejects for more stuff. Et cetera. Later, when it is closer to departure time, I get to the phases involving realizing I have forgotten exteremely important things I need to live. I hope to execute those phases before takeoff.

Part of Phase 1 is mending things and hemming things I have never bothered to hem before (almost everything I own that could be too long is). Today I did an eccentric job of shortening pants that could not be hemmed because of the stratewgic placement of zippers and snaps at the bottom. I attempted to replace buttons but apparely Emma has all the buttons? I need to talk to her about multiple things.

I am now in possession of my knee xrays. Each knee has a particular place where bone touches bone: the rest of the knee is normal looking. Also, the doctor's notes say the right knee is worse but the right knee doesn't hurt at all these days.