Well, it seems that I had Friday the 13th for a whole fricking week.  I knew that it was a matter of time before things get back on track, and thankfully it started today.

I finally got the replacement screen for my computer—had to send it back once because stupid me didn’t know that Lenovo 3000 N100s come in two sizes—and with some moderate surgery to put it in place, my laptop is now a laptop again!   And tomorrow, my parents are helping me get a new desktop to get fully back on track.  (Once I get all the software put into the desktop, it’ll be perfect for me.  That’ll take a couple months though.)

Hopefully my projects will speed up now that I got working tools to use.  And speaking of tools, Open Office has updated with a good one for proofreading:

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Take a good look at the right side of this picture.  This is where the Notes and Comments going.  Usually they’re just little icons on the page that you have to hunt and and click.  But Microsoft Word 2010 had the interesting and very eye-appealing concept of presenting these notes on a strip outside of the page with a line leading to where you placed it.  Along with highlighting and color ink.  It was a perfect addition to your proofreading tools.

It was one of the bigger draws for Microsoft Office (the biggest one, of course, being One Note) but now Open Office 3.3 (the latest version) can do it to, which makes Open Office an excellent free alternative, and the perfect beta-reading tool.  You don’t need to buy anything or install any special programs.  I’m sure that everyone I know has some form of Open Office, and now is a perfect time to update that program for all you proofreaders out there.