Tag: update

Pardon The Dust

Every time I pick a WordPress theme, I tell myself that this time it’s going to be permanent. There’s no way this theme could ever look dated, I think. And then a few years go by and I realize time has moved on and the thing I thought was cool now looks outdated and lame.

So then I have to spend two hours tweaking settings and playing with previews until I find something that feels not lame. And all the while, a little voice whispers in my ear that it’s time to get out of the bush league and buy a professional theme for real money dollars because the lack of professional theme is the only thing that’s keeping me from realizing my dream of being an author. And then I start to think, you know, maybe that’s a good point; 80 or 100 bucks for a theme isn’t an extravagance, it’s an investment. In my FUTURE CAREER.

And then I see a perfectly good free theme that meets my needs and I go with that, because otherwise I have to justify to my wife (and to myself) why I spent 150 bucks on what basically amounts to a different usage of white space and a different font choice.

Yeah. Better stick to the free themes. When I find a good one, I play around with it until I’m happy and then I tell myself that this is the one, this look is timeless and will never, ever look lame.

So anyway, if you’ve been trying to read anything over the past few hours, that’s probably why things keep shifting. It’s not just you. Unless your graphics card is starting to fail, in which case it might be you.

Oh, Right, I Have A Blog

When last we spoke, I informed you of the exciting news that NASA is planning its first voyage to Mars. That’s still true, which is good. I also saw The Martian at the movie theater and liked it very much, which is also good. In fact, I loved the movie whereas I only enjoyed the book. This has everything to do with the fact that I’m an artist rather than an engineer and I tend to favor soft, squishy subjects like the humanities rather than MATH.

Ahem. Sorry. I may have lapsed into the remnants of a heated discussion about The Martian that evidently I’m not entirely over.

In other news, it’s November and November means NaNoWriMo and NaNoWriMo means “oh my God, I have so much writing to do, how can I waste it blogging, what the hell am I thinking, I have to get back to WORK!” So, you know, there’s that.

The new book I’m working on is pretty cool, though. At least, I think it’s cool. My working title is Dinomancer and it’s a book about people who can ride dinosaurs into battle. I’d tell you the elevator pitch about it, but since I haven’t written it all yet, it’d be somewhat insubstantial. I feel good about it, though, and my girlfriend fiancée says that she hasn’t seen me get this excited about a new project in a long time, so who knows. Maybe this will be the book that makes millions of dollars enough dollars to make a small payment on one of my outstanding student loans.

Also, this is my first winter since I moved to Washington state several months ago. My verdict thus far: seasons are beautiful, I really enjoy the cold weather, I look great in my stylish long raincoat, I hate the fact that it gets dark like at 4pm, and related to the previous bullet point, DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME SUCKS. Arizona may not get a lot of things right (politics, 115 degree summer days, the impending fiery apocalypse drought brought on by global climate change), but they’re the only state in the Union that doesn’t have Daylight Savings Time, and that’s pretty damn good in my opinion.

Anyway. Thanks for stopping by. I’m going to get back to writing about dinos.

On The Eve Of The New Year

I meant to write a post reflecting on the year, but obviously that didn’t happen today. But I still wanted to get one final post in for 2014, so here it is. Have a very happy New Year, stay safe, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Odds And Ends

If you could see the state of the room wherein I am composing this post, you would understand my absence from these parts over the past week or two. Sufficient to say that, yes, I have indeed moved. But that seems to imply that moving is the only step to the process.

It turns out moving is just the first step. Unpacking is the second and, in my case, far lengthier step.

I’m not sure whether it was foresight or foolishness that kept me from documenting the process. A week and a half ago, there was no visible floorspace in this room. The living room was “box canyon,” which is the result when a packrat dragon is forced to move his accumulated hoard into a smaller space. I had a lot of stuff that I’ve collected over the years and I had both a full-sized walk-in closet and an outdoor storage shed to house all that stuff.

While cleaning out the stuff, I found $50 dollars in unused gift cards. I found a $25 check that was, sadly, expired. I cashed in my coin bucket for $80 and that’s just the shit I had rolled; the quarters still need to be accounted for.

I’ve pared down the stuff over the past few weeks. I’ve scythed through it. I’ve cut close to the bone. Everything that’s left is either of tremendous sentimental value, such as my very first manuscript or my favorite childhood teddy bear, or is actively valuable and useful, like my camping gear.

At this point, you can see the majority of the floor in my new space. I’ve taken to calling it my study, because I’ve always wanted a study and it sounds much more dignified than my lair or my man-cave.

There’s still a particularly unsightly shelf that will be hauled out once everything has been organized, but the space is usable. My Xbox is hooked up and I spent much of my leisure time playing Borderlands 2 which I was able to purchase with one of my found giftcards. It was ten years old for a company that went out of business, but the company that bought it evidently transferred all the accounts because the card was still redeemable!

The fact that it’s almost November and thus nearly NaNoWriMo 2014 is a thought that fills me with terror and dread. What will I write about this year?

Dusting The Blog Off

Where the hell have you been? It’s only been . . . almost a month since I last wrote anything here. I’m sure that’s not dust. Since this is a digital space, any dust you might be perceiving either exists purely in your mind or your electronic device of choice is really, really dusty. You should probably clean that up.

I’m doing fine, thanks for asking. What have I been up to? Oh, lots! Let’s run through the list:

  • Searching for a new house
  • Giving up on searching for a new house
  • Playing Skyrim again (my lizard man is level 84!)
  • Avoiding writing, blogging, or doing anything creative of any kind

That really sounds like a lot when you write it all out, doesn’t it?

The house search ended up being a bust. There’s nothing in my price range that’s available right now. It got to the point where we were looking at a 900 square foot house (same as what we have currently) with two bedrooms (again, same as our current option), a tinier kitchen, and a $300 increase over our current rent.

I think that was the point when we determined that it really didn’t make sense to move into a new place. So, technically I’m still moving; I’m just moving into the dwelling of my significant other. It’s a really nice place. It’s just not what I’d call a new place, since I’ve been spending a majority of my time there already.

My thinking is that available rentals pop up in six month increments. There seemed to be a surplus of places back in early August but now things are sparse. I’m curious to see how it will go come December, not that we’ll be looking to move at that point.

It might sound insane that people would move out in December, but keep in mind that this is Arizona we’re talking about. For us, the winter months are actually the best time to doing your moving.

House Hunting

I think I’m close. I’ve got a house in my sights. All I need to do . . . is pull the trigger.

BLAM. And then the lease agreement will be signed, and it will all be over . . . except for the moving.

It really is quite remarkable how you can make anything sound ominous with the right metaphorical language. I should work for the news media!

Seriously, though, I’ve ridden by so many houses over the past few days. I wonder how many people have looked our their window only to be startled by a helmet-clad man in a black and green jacket, peering into the window of a neighboring house.

Fortunately, no one has asked about me yet. I might end up living in one of these places and one really wants to put the best foot forward when meeting new neighbors.

Various Thoughts

Are we halfway through May already? How did that happen? The time, where does it go?

I’ve been busy over the past few weeks, as my lack of presence here on the old blog can attest. In no particular order, here are a few of the various and sundry things that I’ve gotten myself up to:

  • I took a backpacking trip through Aravaipa Canyon. This is my third trip to the canyon in the past four years. This is, without a doubt, my favorite place in all of Arizona. The Grand Canyon might be larger, but it’s also busy. Aravaipa is remote; really, really remote. We counted how long it took us to get from the canyon entrance to the first gas station: nearly two hours.
  •  My Challenge mode group finally earned all gold ratings, so now my night elf druid has a bad-ass looking set of armor. This is a World of WarCraft thing, so worry not if you understand what all of these words mean individually, just not in this particular configuration.
  • I completed my first oil change on my Z1000. I would have taken pictures of the event to commemorate baby’s first oil change, but my hands were covered in gross oil that I didn’t want to get all over my smartphone. You’ll just have to imagine how it went.
  • I managed to contract some particularly virulent plague. I had to stay home from work on two separate occasions within the same week, but even so, I managed to infect almost everyone I came into contact with. If I’d written anything during that time, it likely would have infected all who read it, so be glad I stayed away.
  • I’ve been trying to catch up on my reading. I like to set a reading goal for the year, which Goodreads then tracks and helpfully informs you of how far ahead or behind you are on that goal. For most of 2014, I’ve had a comfortable eight book lead but it shrank considerably over the past few weeks as I grappled with some particularly challenging philosophy reading. At last glance, my lead was down to four books. I’m hoping to build that back up with some lighter fiction reading soon.
  • No word from the agent that I queried. It hasn’t been four weeks yet, but I’ve got my list of who to send to next. In the meanwhile, I’ve been thinking about what novel I want to finish writing next. I’ve got a sequel to my current work that’s half-done, but there was also that cyber-punk novel that I started and am actually kind of proud of. Hmm, decisions, decisions.
  • The freelance writing thing is going pretty well! I can’t talk about it too much due to respect for client privacy, but I just finished working on a draft for a technical guide that I’m really proud of. I actually rather enjoy technical writing. I worry what this enjoyment indicates about my level of mental health.

That’s all I can think of at the moment. Usually I check my own Twitter feed for reminders (I look at my Twitter account as a little archive of my life), but I haven’t been tweeting all that much, so there are no helpful reminders. So it goes.

What have you been up to? Anything fun?

Meanwhile, On the Surface

The blog has been quiet for a few weeks. Only my Twitter feed has provided an indication that I haven’t shuffled off this mortal coil and even that’s been pretty sparse. This is typical behavior during a NaNoWriMo; the only way for me to focus is to completely submerge myself in the project. Time spent blogging is time spent not getting to that glimmering 50,000 word count.

My attention was drawn out of my NaNoWriMo-induced haze and back to my blog when my phone pinged me this morning to let me know that I’d had an explosion of new page views; several hundred in the few days. Considering how my usual average is about thirty unique hits a day, this was very noteworthy!

It was also head-scratchingly confusing, since I haven’t written anything new for almost two weeks.

My first thought was that I was getting increased traffic flow from folks searching for reactions and opinions on the news that acclaimed psychic and bestselling author liar and fraud Sylvia Browne had passed away. My condolences go out to her family; the death of a family member is a tragic thing regardless of how that person made her living.

That being said, I’ve made my feelings on Ms. Browne well known in the past and that hasn’t changed. I hate how she preyed on the desperation of many, many grieving people. I’m already kind of a tree-hugger, so I try to adopt a live and let live approach to others, but I have an important distinction when it comes to paranormal and New Age things: is it harmful?

Lighting candles, doing affirmations, meditating, or whatever doesn’t hurt anybody, so if that’s your thing, cool, go for it. Likewise, if you want to try to contact the spirit world with a Ouija board, it’s something that’s usually done for fun at sleepovers and such. Most people aren’t looking for solace. At worst, the person that bought the board is out twenty bucks.

That’s not what Sylvia Browne did. A psychic reading over the phone would cost upwards of $450 dollars, which people desperate for answers are willing to pay. She wrongly told the mother of Amanda Berry, Louwana Miller, that her daughter was dead. Miller died before Berry’s rescue and never learned the truth.

Enough about that.

Interestingly, however, a look at my stats has shown that it isn’t anything to do with the news about Sylvia Browne. Instead, the increased traffic flow has been due to my recent posts about the MBTI. WordPress hasn’t identified where the traffic is coming from exactly, which would be interesting if my post was picked up by a larger site. Regardless, hello to all the new people!

Regular blogging will resume at the end of November. This has been the most grueling NaNoWriMo I’ve ever done (although I think I say that every year). Even though this is my sixth year doing it, it’s still a challenge. More thoughts on that soon(ish).

Blogging In A Time Of NaNo

Just a quick status update to keep the blog from atrophying. I’m currently considering what to do with this blog while I triumphantly plow through my NaNoWriMo project, the future bestselling novel The Snake Detective. I currently don’t really have the time or energy to meet both my NaNoWriMo daily goal of 1667 words and do a 1000 word blog post.

If you’d like to track my progress, you can follow my novel’s update page here. I really enjoy looking at the stats throughout the month as the novel progresses. It’s very personally rewarding to see the bar graph fill up day by day.

I’ve been idly considering posting a few chapters here as I write them, but the idea of showing this rough draft gives me hives. It might completely destroy the ability to move forward if I know I’m going to show it to somebody.

I’ll keep trying to think of something to do with this space so it doesn’t go stagnate for the entire month of November. To those of you who are trying NaNo yourselves this year, I hope it’s going well and you’re meeting your word requirements. If you’re not doing it, I invite you to try. Even if you don’t succeed (and most people don’t, especially your first time), it’s a very rewarding experience that I highly recommend everyone tries at least once.

Why I Haven’t Posted In A Week

It occurred to me that I haven’t written a blog post since last week, since is the longest gap I’ve had in writing with the exception of the week I took in July for my grad school course. I’d love to say that I was really busy with class or that I’d been focusing on work or studying or inventing a new kind of robot-serpent that I will use to bend the world to my will. The truth is, while I was working and studying, neither of those things are reasons why I’d stop writing. The truth is, there’s only one thing that keeps me from banging out even half-hearted posts about whatever is on my mind.

Azeroth.

That’s a word that will either have you nodding in sympathy and understanding or scratching your head in confusion.

Seriously, I’ve got it bad right now. I’m worried, because although my performance at work and my grad school class haven’t slipped, virtually everything else has. I haven’t taken a crack at the manuscript for a few weeks now, even though I’m literally in the 9th inning on my rewrite with less than 50 pages to go.

On the other hand, my druid dinged 90 two nights ago. Yay, I guess.

Even worse, November is right around the corner. November means NaNoWriMo. I’ve  completed NaNoWriMo every year since my first success in 2009. Every year, I tell myself that I don’t need to do it again, that I’ve already done it and I really should focus on the growing pile of unfinished stories collecting on my hard drive. And then every year, November 1 rolls around and I think, if I don’t do it, I’ll break my streak.

The worst part is I already have a character and a title, so I know I’ll probably end up doing it and going a little (more) crazy. Alas. If only I could get my addiction to Azeroth under control before that day comes.