h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hallooooo Dr Funk,
Just thought I'd drop in and welcome you to H2G2. I'm Shadow, one of the ACE's (The volunteer welcoming committee.) here. If you have any questions or need help with anything, please don't hesitate to ask. You can do so by either clicking on REPLY below or by clicking on my name above and leaving a message at my page. If you're looking for a place to get started, this is always a good spot. http://www.h2g2.com/A5752 Have fun wandering the vast, twisted and myriad halls of this place. There's a LOT here!
Welcome again,
~S

Dear Shadow,

I came across a small error in the entry on the New York City subway system and, seeking to rectify the situation, I posted a response in the "Tell H2G2" section because, well, I figured I had something to tell them. Alas, the section appears to have submitted an entirely new entry for me rather than just a letter to the editor sort of thing. Have I committed a possibly confusing error, or will it all sort itself out?

-Dr. Funk

Okay, what you should do in the future is to post that sort of information by using the Discuss button. That your reply is posted as a new entry is no biggie. You can go back and RE-post it under the discuss or leave it where it is. You're likely to get more responces AND have it added to the New York entry if you do so. BUT, if you leave it where it is, one of the subeditors will more likely than not, get around to finding it and then check it and possibly add it in. Though that's likely to be a much longer process. Does that answer your question? If not, zap me again and I'll give it another shot. Keep up the good work!
~S

Hi there. I am also a New Yorker who became a researcher on Monday. Judging from your username, I expect your musical tastes to run toward Parliament/Funkadelic (or run screaming away from...)

I don't know how much you want to hear about how much I like P.Funk, but let me just say that I can't possibly overstate how much I like the Funk Mob. I think, frankly, that they're collectively one of the greatest musical geniuses of the last 200 years. I've never heard anything where each musician involved is so good, so smart, and at the same time, having so much goddamn fun. At its worst, P.Funk is merely groovier and wilder than most musicians could ever hope to be. At its best, P.Funk is mind-blowing and visionary, and it is impossible not to dance to them, no matter where you are, no matter what you're doing (embarassingly, I speak from experience). I don't want to bore you or scare you away, so I'll stop here before my enthusiasm for P.Funk overwhelms my ability to finish a sentence in under four lines. Yes, I like funk.

I feel the same way. I drove up to Massachusetts (and back the same night) last Veterans' Day just to hear them in concert--it was a revelatory outing. There's nothing like P-Funk to make you realize how good things really are.

Do you know if they're playing anytime soon in the New York area?

Mr. Shadow,

I seem to be having some problems submitting an entry I wrote. Foolishly, I guess, I wrote the thing on Microsoft Word, assuming I could paste the whole thing into the entry window as a text file. I soon learned that IE, for some reason, won't allow this to happen. Netscape does allow me to paste my entry into the entry window, but it fails to submit it--instead, it waits and waits, and then for some reason freezes and requires me to end the task altogether if I want to use my computer. So, the short question: Is there another way for me to submit an entry, like by email? I have the feeling that if I were to post the entry through IE somehow, it would work, but I just can't bring myself to type the whole thing in all over again. Any suggestions?

-Dr. Funk

I'm writing this message in MS Word in order to see if I can post it to your forum, Dr. Funk. It worked fine, no problem. Maybe it's something about a longer entry that is over some arbitrary clipboard size limit.
Off-topic, are you enjoying today's nice weather? I am looking forward to lunch in Central Park.

Yeah, I don't know quite what's going on. I routinely paste things into windows on the Internet from Word documents--longer email, addresses, that sort of thing--and I can't say why this isn't working. Hmph.

The weather is indeed phenomenal today. I'm supposed to go over to Park Slope tonight to play some music with friends (I play Appalachian fiddle music, or "old-time," with a few folks in Brooklyn on a pretty regular basis--we also play occasionally at Sunny's in Red Hook) but I'm thinking of giving them a call and convincing them to play outside instead, such a nice night it promises to be.

Do me a favor and write down step by step what you're doing when you're trying to post it from MSWord and what version you're using. I'll tell you where its gone wrong and give you easy instructions on how to make it work. I've been working in the confuser industry for 9 years now and the only position I haven't held is programmer. Glad to be of help.
~S

Shadow--

You're the best.

My entry is in Word 97, though I've also saved it as a plain text file. My ISP is AOL 5.0 (our interim provier here at work until we get a T1 line and my life changes completely for the better). My version of Netscape is Communicator 4.7.

Now, here's the deal. When I'm at the h2g2 site using AOL's browser (that's IE, right?), I can't paste the text into the window at all. I've tried just copying and pasting directly from Word 97 into AOL, and I've tried opening the file as a text file within AOL, both with the same result--nada.

When I'm at the h2g2 site using Netscape, I am quite able to paste my entry into the entry window directly from Word, but when I try to submit the entry (using the button there), AOL somehow loses consciousness, and I'm obliged to force quit out of AOL altogether to avoid restarting my computer.

That enough detail?

Stop the presses--I figured it out; just me getting used to my new computer here. Sorry, sorry, false alarm, just an idiot who overlooked an obvious point, namely, the left button on his mouse instead of the pull-down menu. Apologies all.

-Dr.

No worries, why do you think I refer to them as confusers and not computers? Happy surfing!
~S

Phew! Looking forward to your discursion!
There were four people hula-hooping in the park while I was eating lunch. You think you've seen everything, and then...