I had uploaded the wrong front and back covers. I only discovered the error when I went to send out covers of my new book, Voices Of Creation: The Blogcritics Inteviews 2005-2006 to those people who had participated in it. I couldn't find them anywhere in the images file on my computer

It was only when I noticed that I still had images files named “NaNoWriMo front and back cover” that I wondered what were the files named with an ISBN that I had uploaded to Google. A quick email to the Google support desk confirmed that as long as I uploaded two more image files of the same name they would be replaced just like the text file had been in the last go round.

Fine and dandy I said. So I proceeded to rename the files appropriately and went to upload the correct image files. By now I guess Google had decided it had enough out of me and refused to recognise my files as being in the proper format. I tried everything I could think of, but after five times of getting the "this is not a accepted format" error notice, I wrote the people at support again. I tried everything they suggested and continued to get the same message and wrote them back again. They just told me to email them the files as attachments and they would upload them for me.

I know I made the initial mistake and have no problem accepting responsibility for that, but what the hell could have happened to make Google decide that a file format that was acceptable one day was no longer acceptable the next day. I even double-checked with the help desk that the format I was using was okay. They said it was fine.

It was when they started talking about downloading a new Internet browser and trying with that instead of Internet Explorer that I surrendered to the inevitable and had them do the upload for me. This was beginning to sound like way too much like work and more than just the simple point-click-upload I'd been promised.

Our concept of work has changed because of computers, and we have heightened expectations about how things should come easily without any fuss and muss. If I were to remind myself what it was like to use a manual or electric typewriter, when no spell check existed and making a correction involved using something that should have been called lumpy paper instead of liquid paper, I'm certain I'd be eternally grateful for all the technology that I have today.

You could go back even further to the days when you had to carve your own quills, grind your own ink, and paper was made from linen or hyde scraped very thin. But I'm sure you'd hear people back then complaining about the consistency of the ink or the poorness of the quality of the feathers and linen. Some things just don't change.