My Cromebook WiFi Works Again

Posted on February 19, 2012 by Michel McDonald

I believe it was in mid January when I started having connection issues with my Cromebook (CR48) and couldn’t fix it. I’m still not sure what happened but I was very frustrated that I couldn’t use it anymore. It became a paper weight on my desk. The 3G worked, but the WiFi kept disconnecting.

This is what happened. I would be typing (as I am doing now) and suddenly lost my connection. I noticed that my words weren’t coming out right, instead other words were being selected and deleted with every key I hit. I would look over at the WiFi icon next to the clock and it showed that it was trying to connect, then I’d see an X. The only way I was able to continue with my blog post, tweet, Facebook update or IM conversation was to turn 3G on. I’d have to save my work or put the person I was talking to on hold and reboot. At first rebooting helped, but it would disconnect again. I got to the point that I just stopped turning it on.

What happened today was I went to play with my PSP and wondered if there was an update available. I tried to log in to my network and it wouldn’t let me. I noticed that it said my network was not compatible. That didn’t make sense since Chips iPhone and my Nook haven’t had any issue logging into the network. I loaded the Linksys EasyLink Advisor program and went into the security settings and it gave me an error. I starting thinking that maybe that was the reason I was having issues, so I reinstalled the WPA security and viola, my Chromebook is online with no issues.

I have typed this entire post on my Chromebook without one disconnect. Before that would have been impossible since as soon as I started typing the WiFi would disconnect. The problem has been solved and I hope someone who is also having issues might see this and check their own network security settings. Good luck!

It’s Totally Tuesday at Rainbow eBooks

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Michel McDonald

I love Tuesdays because that means that Rainbow eBooks has a sale on all of their new releases, which mine happens to be, new that is and on sale at 15% off. It’s regularly $6.99, but you can buy it today for only $5.94.

Diary of a Gay Nerd by Michel McDonald – Totally Tuesdays at Rainbow eBooks

If you have a Nook just download the epub file, if you have a Kindle, download the mobi file. If you don’t have an ebook reader then you can download any file, mobi, epub or pdf. They all work with PC if you have a PC ebook reader.

Reading My Book On An iPhone/iPod

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Michel McDonald

works w iphone logo Reading My Book On An iPhone/iPod Want to read my new book “Diary of a Gay Nerd: Life After Child Abuse, It Gets Better!” but don’t have a Nook or a Kindle but have an iPhone or an iPod? Not to worry, that is why I published my book with RainboweBooks.com.

You actually don’t have to have a Kindle to be able to buy Amazon ebooks, or a Nook to buy Barnes & Noble ebooks. You can download the app for your phone and create an account and start buying ebooks. That way if you decide later that you want to buy a Nook or a Kindle, you already have an account and books in your library. But if that is not what you want then you can also use iBooks from the app store.

What you do is simply download iBooks from the app store and install it. Now go to RainboweBooks.com on your computer and buy my book. Now download it in .epub format. Open iTunes and drag the file from your computer into iTunes and a new item will show up called Books. Plug your iPhone or iPod into your computer via the USB cable. When iTunes finds your device, simply drag the book file to the device and it will upload it. Disconnect from the USB and open the iBooks app and viola it’s in your bookshelf. Open, read and enjoy.

You may notice that the book is going to be well over 1000 pages, but that is because it only shows one or two paragraphs. The book is actually only 296 pages in e-book format but the iPhone/iPod cannot show the full page and if it did you would need a microscope to read it.

So there are your simple instructions. I hope you enjoy my book on your Apple product.

100 Frogs by Alice Badler

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Michel McDonald

I met Alice Badler on Twitter through her sister Jane and Project Alice to save the show “V” from being canceled. I absolutely adore her and her sister. When I found out that Alice had written a couple of books, I couldn’t wait to read them. They weren’t available for the Nook until recently and this month I bought 100 Frogs.

I absolutely loved it. It has taken me awhile to read it only because my eyes get sore from reading after an hour or three, so I am constantly taking breaks. When I was able to read it, I couldn’t put it down.

Here is the description on the Barnes & Noble site:

“100 Frogs” is the real-life journal of a woman dating online 1/2 year after the death of her fiance. It is almost impossible to describe the true essence of this story as Alice unveils herself to us with absolute abandon.

As a writer, Alice wanted to take on a project that would get her back into the world and also have value to the reader. She believed by dating exclusively online for six months and writing about her experiences she would accomplish both goals.

We feel like we are sitting in Alice’s living room while she relates the tales of the day. Her writing style is contagious and the reader lives every emotion with her. We laugh, we cry, we feel her discomfort and her pleasure. Her book is a face-paced read and has the feel of a novel. We cannot wait to turn the next page.

Not only does Alice take us into the life of online dating, but her honesty is raw and real about all aspects of her life. It is a book about dating, lessons learned, growth and healing. It is quite a ride, definitely a ride worth taking.”

I could feel the pain she was feeling from losing her Billy every time she would miss him. There were even a few times when I actually started crying with her. I don’t know why I get so emotional when I read books.

Seeing (or reading) Alice go on dates really showed me what people go through when they use dating sites like Match.com and the others that she used. It must have been an emotional roller coaster for her. There were good dates, then there were bad dates and there were men who only wanted to play games. I personally think this would make a great weekly TV series.

100 Frogs by Alice Badler was an amazing read and I encourage everyone to read this book. You can find it on the Barnes & Noble website for the Nook and on Amazon for the Kindle both for only $8.95.

My book is almost ready to publish, only one tiny issue left…

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Michel McDonald

My book files came back to me a couple of days ago (two beta readers as I like to call them) with highlights of things for me to fix. I have read my book at least 30 times and I was just getting so sick of reading it and they wanted to read it so I figured they could read it early, but I’d love to have bug reports.

So I went through the highlights which weren’t all that major. I missed a few capitalizations and punctuation issues. There were also a few words where I forgot to add a letter, like instead of writing the word “from” I wrote “for”, don’t ask why lol.

As I was getting the paper book put together with all of my corrections made, I noticed a little issue which turned out to be a major issue. There were grey boxes where spaces were supposed to go. It wasn’t everywhere, but it was annoying that there were so many. I was able to delete them as I went, but that didn’t help because it was still messed up.

The paper book got put together and turned in to check for errors, which I’m happy to report weren’t any. I converted the .odt file to epub and was going to publish to Amazon for the Kindle and Barnes & Noble for the Nook. It looked great on the Nook, but the Kindle wasn’t doing so good. Here is what I was seeing…

You see the top paragraph? It’s not exactly a paragraph is it? That was what happened because of the square boxes. Also look at the other paragraphs, they weren’t indented, except for the last one. I went into Sigil to look at the html code of the chapters and this is what I saw.

That is supposed to be a little paragraph. Those <.span.> things were out of control. That is what was causing the text to move down. So the only way for this to work is to cut all that crap out. I tried to do find and replace, but unfortunately each one of those lines has its own number so it’s not like I can replace all of them throughout the entire document, they have to be deleted one at a time. ANNOYING!

I worked for 8 hours to get rid of them and then discovered that if I converted the file to .html, it got rid of all that. So that was a waste of time, but it was a learning experience.

I fixed all of the capitalization and punctuation issues, but I have a feeling I am still missing something so I’m going to have to read the whole thing again. It sucks but I don’t want to publish a book that isn’t right.

I said I would get it published by January 1st and here we are nearing February and it still isn’t ready to publish. I don’t know how long it will take but I will get it out there eventually.

Book Cover

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Michel McDonald

I have been going crazy making all of these book covers for the paper book, the Nook and the Kindle. I made a banner for my blog, iPhone icon, even a few iPhone/iPod wallpaper images lol. I am even thinking about making a sticker to offer people when they check in to my book on the GetGlue website.

My bubble has burst though and I may have to rethink the whole texture part of the rainbow colors because the spine of the book won’t be textured, it will be a solid color. Although that doesn’t really matter to me, it is a bit upsetting that I won’t have that one thing to make it match. But do I really need it to be textured? Hell yes I do! It’s what makes it unique. Whatever, I’m probably going to redesign it again before I publish it, I mean it is going to be forever and I don’t want to make something that I may regret forever just because the spine isn’t the same as the book. I’m mostly designing it for ebooks, not paper books, but since I am offering that option, it has to look right everywhere else.

Tomorrow is another day so I will focus on trying to make it work then.

Final Edit Of My Book

Posted on December 18, 2011 by Michel McDonald

My book is nearly completed. I have finally finished editing it but I have to read it one last time to make absolutely sure that it is right before I publish it. While I was editing chapter 40, it occurred to me that I may have left something out of chapter 20. I went back and as I was reading a few paragraphs to find where I needed to add, I found 4 errors. That means that I am not completely finished.

It only took me 2 months to write it, but it has taken me 4 more months to edit it. I never knew that writing a book was so difficult. It really makes me appreciate the hard work that writers and editors do. I am constantly remembering things that I want to add, discovering discrepancies, spelling, grammar errors and redundancy. Writing is hard ya’ll! LOL.

I had a good laugh today because when I finished editing the book, I had lost 15 pages from the ODT (OpenOffice) file. It was originally 182 pages and now it’s 167. The epub file on my Book had 289 pages, but edited it has 302. It doesn’t make any sense to me that I lost 15 pages in the ODT file, but gained 13 in the epub file.

What happened to all of those page numbers is that I had too many paragraphs because I split too many thoughts up. I combined the paragraphs which made me lose pages. I also deleted a ton of things, but then I also added some things which gave me 5000 more words. I think that was why I gained 13 pages in the epub file.

My cover is finished and I have shared it with a few people to get some opinions. So far I haven’t had too many complaints. It was my 4th or 5th cover design job. I liked the first couple of covers, but none of them really stood out as much as the final cover does. I am really happy with it and that is all that matters.

I uploaded the epub file so that I could read it one last time on my Nook. I hope I don’t find any errors, but if I do, I can jump on the computer and find where they are and fix them. I have never read one book so many times on a white screen until now and it’s killing my eyes.

I have spent a lot of time on this book and have started feeling bad for my family because of how I talk about them. But then I look at a picture of my step-dad and realize, I’m writing this because of him. He never cared enough about me to stop beating me, or enough to not hurt my feelings with his words every day my whole life, so why should I give a rats ass about his feelings? The arrogant nasty look on his face in all of his pictures is all the motivation I need to keep going.

I didn’t just write this because of him, I wrote it because I want to show what life was/is like for gay people. What bullying does to gay children, whether it’s the parents doing the bullying, or the children in school or both at the same time. I want to share my first hand experiences and give a message to the gay teens that it gets better. I hope that it opens eyes and helps someone who may need advice on how to cope with it.

Anyway, the book will be published after Christmas this year so stay tuned for the blog post announcing it.

Thank you for reading.

Xanapus` Lair

Diary of a Gay Nerd

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