Violet Wilson

As you've seen, I've been working on the memoir again.  This has meant reading things I wrote in 1994-95, most of which I haven't opened since I wrote them, as I try to remember better what was going on at that point.  These are old Word docs, some from version 6, most saved as version 5.1 so I could print them at the university before I had a printer. That's so old that Word 2011 won't open it just by double-clicking; it's a frickin' blocked file type, so I have to use the open command in Word.  Still, the first 17 opened fine.

The 18th file opened, but it was blank.  The 19th file didn't open at all, just churned until I quit out of Word.  20's fine, 21, all the other ones I've tried.

So I emailed the attachments to myself, since I have a Google email account, which of course has Google Docs.  In the web interface, clicked "view" for number 18.  Sorry, it said, can't view it.  But after that: redirecting to plain html.  Five seconds later, there was the text, in the same frickin' font I used back then.  Copy-paste, voila.

I have my issues with Google, but today I declare them non-evil.  Granted, that's in comparison to Microsoft, so the bar's low, but still.