Anyone uses Yahoo mail?

We interrupted this regularly *cough* scheduled *cough* blog for a rant on not being able to compose messages on yahoo for the last couple of days... since their new and improved, faster and better version, to be exact...

If you're using yahoo as a mail provider, you've probably noticed that it's gotten everything that's wrong with gmail, and made it worse!

Some people are saying it started off that way and now it works... Hasn't worked for me and about countless other users since friday, though, and yahoo stopped answering their customer service thinguie as far as I'm concerned ... maybe they don't know what's wrong, either??

So, here's a few of my personal conspiracy theories on that:

- Conspiracy theory # 1:

    Yahoo got word that skynet is coming and is waging a private war against all computers - and consequently, all computer users....


- Cospiracy theory #2:
    
     You may have noticed that you're still able to send out messages from your phones, but not from your computers, so that would indicate that some major phone making company is bribing the folks over at yahoo to make it so we can't use our emails from our computers and we have to use it from our phones, consequently, we need the modern phones that have all those cool apps and whatnot... Thus: sales increase. ;)


- Conspiracy theory #3:

     Maybe yahoo is in cahoots with some specific browser design people, and thus their email only works with that specific browser... All I can say is it's not firefox and it's not the latest google chrome, bc I tried both and the email still won't work. :) Maybe it's supposed to send us back to iexplorer? That would be a plot to take over the world right there, I guess...


- Conspiracy theory # 4:

   Someone from a rival email service took over yahoo mail on friday and started a hate yahoo campaign by making it so incredibly difficult and frustrating to use our emails... Next step: they'll "accidentally" lose all our saved emails. You have been warned.

-Conspiracy theory # 5:

     They're selectively cutting off some of us users by some sort of standard... Maybe those of us who never accessed their emails on their phones?? I don't know... Whatever it is, I'm on the out group... Maybe they're cutting off anyone who's used it since the last century. :)


... You know, I love conspiracy theories. Like a lot of the stuff I love, like dragons and magic, doesn't mean I believe them, but I still love 'em, hahaha.
 Have you got any conspiracy theories?

Which do you think would be the best one?

A short story for Christmas

Hey, guys.
 How's the xmas shopping going? Lots of crowded streets and racing people? Hehe, hope not.

Anyways, Mysti Parker is having a Christmas Flash Fiction Contest over at her blog: Unwritten.

There are various cool stories, with different themes.

Here's my entry:

A not-so-ghastly ghostly Christmas

 Hope you enjoy!

Also, take a look at the other entries, there are some really great ones.

Hugs!

Is my humor not humorous?

Can I make people laugh, I found myself wondering today. Sometimes I can, other times people just stare at me like I'm crazy... Maybe I am, a little bit, I know I'm not "normal". And by normal, I mean, like everybody else... Yes, I know everyone is different in their own way, yadda yadda...

Anyways, that was a confusing start to what I was going to say, so I'm gonna figure that means I should stop writing and go to sleep.

But before I do, a quote from the upcoming "Shattered Dreams":

Robyn forged a smile, dismissing Sarah’s concern. "There’s nothing to worry about. We're just gonna get some boxes…" And maybe a bomb, she added to herself. Or maybe the toxic gas, she wasn’t sure.

Easily entertained, that's me...

Just give me a pen and paper or maybe an ice cream cone, and I'm happy... Also, I love learning new things, even if it's silly. It's just part of me, I guess...

I wanted a little progress bar ever since I saw one on a page somewhere (day before last), marking the progress of how many books someone had read... And I thought, well, why can't I have a progress bar that has how many pages I've written or read? And that's when I started obsessing with it, and after a few dead ends that involved having to download stuff, I finally found a place that explained how to get my very own progress bar!!

So that's part of what made me happy. That and the fact that I pulled it apart and changed it so it was what I wanted...The only bad thing is I have to keep calculating percentages every time I have to update it, but at least that's gonna distract me. That's maybe what I was missing about the goodreads counter - yep, still mourning the fact that it died. The numbers were always changing, so it was always a fluid thing...

See? I'm very easily entertained.  Might be the reason I get along so well with children between 4 and 6. Something of a similar mentality, haha.

I also found the quote I had to find about which part of the subarachnoid space was wider... But if there's a why behind it, it still eludes me... And it's really bugging me, probably more than it should.

I'm not sure if I'm mentioned this, but I'm gonna be staying another four years where I currently live... And that's a mixed feelings type of situation. ;)

Hm, did I just ramble? I'm not entirely sure, which probably means I did.

* * *

   Well, let me try and see if I can get Pegasus through his doctor's appointment without him and Bella strangling each other... I swear I didn't set out to make him annoy her so much, but I just can't seem to help it. Anyone have similar problems?

   And Robyn should probably get some sleep... which is advice I should also take for myself, hehe.

Good night and until next time, by which time I will have hopefully discovered how a small airplane crashes without killing everyone aboard. :) Pleasant dreams.

C'era una volta...

hehe, learned that this weekend... who says TV can't teach you anything?

* * *

So, once upon a time (aka 14 days ago - wow, 14 already?), five Graces set out to travel around the world... Hm, but not real people named Grace, though I'm sure there are a lot of people named Grace traveling around the world right now...

But anyway, I'm talking about the books given away with the goodreads giveaway (and I'll miss seeing that little counter there on the right on my blog page every day). The fact that the leftover would-be counter is still there is a testament of either my aversion to change or my laziness... or maybe just the fact that I think it looks pretty...

Thanks to tracking services, I can see that at least three of them went the right way... It was less confusing than following the tracking info for the ones that were supposed to be delivered to me. Those took a detour to the southeast of Brazil before coming back up... 

Have a nice travel little books - if you're still traveling, and I hope you all get welcomed by good readers. ;)
(Yes, that was my attempt at a pun with the name of the site where they were offered. I know, I should not try comedy...)

Oh, and I hadn't noticed until now that I was supposed to click on the "I have sent these books" button over at goodreads... sorry to whoever that would've been meant to be seen by... ???

 * * *

In other non-related, not-really-news type of news:
    Decided to skip Stargazer and started polishing up the first book in the In Dreams series... Why? Less things that need to occupy my mind simultaneously when compared to Stargazer... Let's face it, right now, with all my real life deadlines, I'm lucky if I know which day of the week it is...
    I am almost halfway through re-reading the proof for Cameras Tell No Lies. If halfway is page 60 of 211. ;) I'm hoping I can get it done before the end of the year just because I don't wanna change the year that I wrote down at the bottom of the copyright page... And we're back to the aversion to change vs. laziness bit... Don't ask my parents, they'll probably say it's the latter...

   So excuse me while I go get Sarah's interrogation started, and smack Jilly on the side of the head because she's being hysterical again... ;)

    And can someone please tell me why the ventral subarachnoid space is larger than the dorsal one? Is there even a reason for that? Geez... :P

Farewell, goodreads giveaway counter...

Results are in!

The giveaway ended this morning (well, five in the morning at GMT -3 from what I could gather, I'm not sure what clock they go by)...

The counter is still sitting there - though now it just says the giveaway is ended... It's not counting anymore, and I'm gonna miss checking in every day and looking at the little numbers, hehe...

At least until the next book comes out and the next giveaway.

I've just finished arranging for the books to be sent to the respective winners. They're supposed to be arriving between Nov 29 and Jan 2, depending on the country...

I know arrival dates don't matter to a lot of people, but in my house, since we're never home, we always have stuff shipped to another address and then we kinda have to know when the package is coming in so we remember to go check if it arrived... And that explains why the proof for Cameras Tell No Lies sat on a desk somewhere for a couple of weeks before I even knew it was in the country. :)

(pseduo-P.S.: If you are one of the people waiting to receive the book and would like to know where it is, you can message me and I can give you the tracking number for the order if it exists - sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, depending on the shipping company).

* * *

 
So, when I first signed up Grace for the giveaway at goodreads, I wasn't really thinking along the lines of: I hope a lot of people see it. Sure, that's part of it, but what I thought was the coolest aspect of the giveaway was getting to send your book to all these different places... I clicked all the countries they let me click, and kept my fingers crossed that the little brick-wannabies (my books - vulgo/aka: tijolinho) would get to go to places I'd never been to.

So, can I do a happy dance, now?

I'm not sure if there's some rule about not telling anyone where the books are going, country-wise, but I checked the terms and conditions and saw nothing against it.
Two are going to the US (southeast and northwest). One of them is actually gonna land pretty close to where a friend of mine lives. :)
 One is going to Bulgaria... One to Lithuania... And one all the way to Indonesia... and that's farther than I've ever been. Also, I went to look up the regions in a map and actually learned a thing or two today
See? How cool is that?

I'm probably more excited about having the books shipped than the people who are getting them... But that's okay... And that's totally awesome. Now I'm just being silly, I know, quoting stuff that people my age shouldn't be quoting, but I really am very happy...

As for what happens when the books arrive at their destination, I hope whoever gets them enjoys reading them at least half as much as I enjoyed writing the story.
 
Bon voyage, tijolinhos! Boldly going where no tijolinho has gone before... 

Wait a minute! Where did October go?

So, it's really November? Really?

Well, I'm still chasing my November 1st deadline, so his is my own private Grace period, lol, and thankfully, it lasted more than 24 hours. :)
Anyways, since it's November, I'll soon be finding out where the copies of Grace are gonna be shipped to (see Goodreads.com giveaway in case you have no idea what I'm talking about). I'm really excited about that, and I hope whoever gets a book likes it. I also hope I get to send it to faraway places... It would be fun having it go places I've never been in a weird sort of way.

My new semi-official proof-reader finished reading Cameras Tell No Lies last week, which is the first book in the Smoke and Mirrors trilogy. Unfortunately, he said he got carried away with the story and forgot to mark the things he thought warranted a second look... I'll take that as a compliment. ;)
Unfortunately, real life is having an issue with letting go back to my secondary worlds right now, so everybody's still pretty much where I left them, except I managed to get everyone to the hospital, hahah. It was just two pages away, anyways...

Okay, so I basically wanted to say that I miss October, I still want a Halloween party (hehe - I've been promised one when I get back from the congress I'm at), and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna suffer on the plane tomorrow because I have a cold... Oh, well, there goes what's left of my timpanic membranes, I guess...


So, see you all in a few days when the deadline ends! (obviously you can't see me, but I have my extremely happy face on).

Hugs,
            Marília