Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Excellence in Blogging, Handsome Bozzer, and a Spiffy New Computer


First up, this blog has been given an Excellence in Blogging award by Sarah over at Reading the Past, Historical Tapestry, Catherine Delors, and World of Royalty. Thanks, all!

I've been lazy about visiting blogs lately, and many of my favorites have been given awards already. I'd like to add Jules' Lady Despenser's Scribery to the list of Excellent Blogs. It's all about Hugh le Despenser the younger and his times--a subject still near and dear to me, though most of my recent posts have dealt with the fifteenth century. Also, Brian Wainwright's The Yorkist Age has been a great addition to the blogsphere. Fuzzy History, a very new blog, is off to a promising start. Another relative newcomer, Steven Till, has a nice variety of medieval-related posts. I know I'll think of other blogs as soon as I post this, but this is a start, at least.

I've been lax in contributing these days, but a group blog to which I belong, Yesterday Revisited, has welcomed a couple of new members lately, and one, Mirella Patzer, has posted already. Check out her post about Nannerl Mozart, with some lovely illustrations as well.

Monday, a very reluctant Boswell went to the groomer to get his haircut. Is he a handsome guy, or what?



(That chair and pile of stuff you see by Boswell is, sadly, my office.)

As if having the best-looking dog in North Carolina isn't enough, I got a shiny new computer yesterday! I bought a Dell, complete with Vista. Vista hasn't done anything weird yet, to my relief, but I also bought Microsoft Office 2007, which may have been a mistake because the new version of Excel is extremely annoying. When I try to paste data into a cell, it somehow erases the data in the adjoining cell, for reasons I've yet to figure out. I finally gave up and started importing old spreadsheets into Access, which at least let me paste something into a cell without having a hissy fit. On the other hand, I rather like the new version of Microsoft Word--since I started using it yesterday, my characters have been engaging in much more sprightly dialogue. Or maybe it's just the new flat screen that makes it look better to me.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are welcome, Susan! Great blog.

I too have upgraded it to Word 07, but I HATE it. I can't recognize my old functionalities. What is worse if that I have to remember to save everything under the "old" version of Word because none of my correspondents (fellow attorneys, clients, translators, you name it, though I haven't tried my agent and publisher yet) can open Word 07 documents with their older versions.

I suppose this smooth move was designed to make everyone else upgrade, but until then it's just an extra hassle for us the happy few. Thanks, Microsoft, as usual!

Judy said...

We had Microsoft Office 07 forced upon us at the office, and we sadly gaze on the icons for WordPerfect that link to nothing. I find Excel to be hopeless as well.

Boswell is a cutie-cutie!

I totally agree with the attribution of Excellence to your blog,

Gabriele Campbell said...

Congrats on the award. So it's making the rounds again. :)

Vista sucks. It refuses to set up a network with my other computer that runs XP Professional, and trying to have Word 2003 work under it caused as much trouble as the new Word versions causes. So I kicked the mess off my new computer, snatched the old CDs and installed XP and Word 2003 on the new computer. And Microsoft can do what Götz of Berlichingen told the Imperial envoy he could do. It involves a certain body part. :P

Mirella Patzer said...

Hi Susan,

Congratulations on the award. It is definitely one of my favourite historical blogs.

Thank you also for listing my link. However, for some reason, it is broken. It is actually http://historicalnovelreview.blogspot.com. Also, you might be interested in my other blog http://historyandwomen.blogspot.com.

I'm proud to have your blog listed on my own sites.

Thanks very much.

Jules Frusher said...

Thanks for thinking that my blog deserves to be on the 'Excellent Blog List' - it's so nice to get positive feedback. And big congrats on your award too - your site is brilliant, full of great things and you, too, are brilliant for all the help you've given me with Hugh!

Boswell is soooo the business! My doggy needs a haircut too - but every time I go to make an appointment the weather turns colder again! And this is meant to be summer!

So, you have a shiny new thing! Good on you! I sympathise about the software though. I have a Mac upon which nothing much is meant to go wrong and I still have softward probs - like 1Photo and iTunes deciding to wipe their libraries for no reason whatsoever!

Fuzzy History said...

Congratulations on the award! You deserve it.

Anonymous said...

Congrats on the award! You've earned it.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the plug :) I always enjoy following your blog. Cute dog by the way.

Susan Higginbotham said...

Thanks, all! (And a big woof of thanks from Boswell.) Mirella, I've updated accordingly!

Anonymous said...

I hate Word 2007. I keep sending people documents and forgetting that no one else can open them unless I save them in the older format.
Boswell is really cute.

Sarah Johnson said...

Boswell looks very snazzy! I'll be adding more of your suggested links to my blogroll.

I'm glad we haven't upgraded to Word 2007 yet, as dealing with my new PC is keeping me busy enough.

For those people whose correspondents can't open files in the new version, tell them to download the converter from the Microsoft website. I did that and can open Word 2007 docs fine now. (Sorry to get too far off-topic here!)

Anonymous said...

Thanks Sarah. That should help

Carla said...

Congratulations!