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Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Monday, May 23, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Writing the current chapter
Writing is a complex and delicate art, which for me, requires the appropriate background noise. In this case, the appropriate background noise is Disc 1 of 18 of a wonderful Christmas present from the Babe: the 100% Complete Bullwinkle. It's all 163 episodes of the Rocky and Bullwinkle show. This is something that will do wonders for my writing. It's always good to have the perfect environment.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Maybe my words are sacred, after all!
My dear friend Bonni had a problem a few days ago: her house burned down. The whole thing didn't actually burn to ground, but I won't be surprised if it's going to need to be rebuilt completely because of smoke and water damage. This is really common for houses with even 40%-50% fire damage: the smoke just pours through the rest of the house and there's no good way to get it out of the walls and ceilings. It's tough stuff and we are all looking for ways in which we can help her.
But the funny thing about this that she told me today was that she was in the master bedroom looking for whatever might be salvaged and there were only two books that weren't damaged by fire, smoke, or water: the two copies of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Disaster Preparedness" I'd sent her. In other words, the book I'd co-authored with Dr. Maurice Ramirez on how to survive disaster seems to be reasonably fireproof.
I guess my personal mana extends a thousand miles away even to my books. Hey, am I fuckin' cool or what?
But the funny thing about this that she told me today was that she was in the master bedroom looking for whatever might be salvaged and there were only two books that weren't damaged by fire, smoke, or water: the two copies of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Disaster Preparedness" I'd sent her. In other words, the book I'd co-authored with Dr. Maurice Ramirez on how to survive disaster seems to be reasonably fireproof.
I guess my personal mana extends a thousand miles away even to my books. Hey, am I fuckin' cool or what?
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Who I write like
There's a lovely site called I Write Like that lets you see who you write like.
I fed it a big chunk of blog writing (my essay on Reagan, which seemed like a long enough sample) and let it happily chew on it and it turns out that my political writing analyzes like George Orwell.
But that's for non-fiction writing. I fed it a chunk of my second novel and I got this:
I could do worse than writing fiction like Salinger. My plotting isn't a patch on his, though. Better stick to the non-fiction for now....
I fed it a big chunk of blog writing (my essay on Reagan, which seemed like a long enough sample) and let it happily chew on it and it turns out that my political writing analyzes like George Orwell.
But that's for non-fiction writing. I fed it a chunk of my second novel and I got this:
I could do worse than writing fiction like Salinger. My plotting isn't a patch on his, though. Better stick to the non-fiction for now....
Thursday, July 01, 2010
Better than English
Better than English is a fun site that collects non-English words that are of great use for describing a concept.
My favorite in what's out there so far is the first: Drachenfutter, a German word that translates literally as "dragon’s food." The website says "Drachenfutter are gifts that a husband brings to his wife after pissing her off. It is usually an attempt to avoid her wrath by giving her chocolate, flowers or other small gifts."
If you have an example of a non-English word that sums up a concept, feel free to submit it.
My favorite in what's out there so far is the first: Drachenfutter, a German word that translates literally as "dragon’s food." The website says "Drachenfutter are gifts that a husband brings to his wife after pissing her off. It is usually an attempt to avoid her wrath by giving her chocolate, flowers or other small gifts."
If you have an example of a non-English word that sums up a concept, feel free to submit it.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Quote du jour
"I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me." --Hunter S. Thompson
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Being a hack
Donna Barr posted a few things on Facebook recently about being a hack, which she says is a good thing. I tend to agree. Work is work, after all, and 99% of what we all do is not Great Art or Great Literature, as the case may be.
Decades ago, Harlan Ellison wrote the introduction to a short story in a collection of short stories. He said that he'd hated the character, hated the story, hated the resolution, and sold it to a magazine he didn't normally do business with... but he made 3x as much money for this as he would've otherwise. His final paragraph of this brief exposition was "Moral of the story: I may prostitute my art, but at least I'm not a cheap whore."
John Ciardi once wrote:
"Dear Virginia:
See the poet.
The poet is fat.
The poet is fifty.
The poet is making a living."
There is no sin in hackwork. It pays the bills. Sometimes, rather handsomely.
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
A Heinlein quote worth repeating
Everyone's heard Heinlein quotes. When we were younger, we may have even quoted them with a straight face. Frankly, they're a little embarrassing because you tend to sound like a teenage boy when you say them.
However, I read today a really first-rate Heinlein quote that I'm happy to repeat:
However, I read today a really first-rate Heinlein quote that I'm happy to repeat:
The best sentence in the English language starts
"Pay to the order of...."
Thursday, July 09, 2009
The Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation
Baseline Briefing had an article today on 7 ways to ruin a PowerPoint presentation. There was nothing much new in it, but they did have a link to the Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation, a good demonstration of how not to do PowerPoints.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Two websites you should try out
I wanted to take a moment amidst my suddenly hurly-burly schedule and let you know about two really cool websites.
The first is SpaceWeather.com. SpaceWeather is a website that tells you all sorts of interesting things about what's going on in the sky. The neatest part may be their satellite tracker: you enter your zip code, postal code, or country, then it shows you where and when to look in the sky for interesting manmade objects that are visible to the naked eye: the International Space Station, the Space Shuttle Discovery, several large satellites, and things like that. Very cool stuff! The whole site is worth romping around for all sorts of interesting astronomical happenings.
The second site is Wordle.com, a juicy little nugget for the literarily inclined. Wordle generates word clouds from text that you provide it by analyzing the frequency of words in the text and then assigning a greater prominence to the words that appear more frequently. You can then change the cloud by changing the colors, fonts, and layouts. It's really quite fun! Feed Wordle the text of your latest article, or a manual draft, or that novel you've been working on. Or go to, say, Project Gutenberg, and grab something and try that out. It's a great time-waster, as if I had time to waste these days. (One of the joys of working on database engines is that you've always got something interesting to work on at any hour of the day or night.)
Try both of them out sometime. They're a lot of fun!
The first is SpaceWeather.com. SpaceWeather is a website that tells you all sorts of interesting things about what's going on in the sky. The neatest part may be their satellite tracker: you enter your zip code, postal code, or country, then it shows you where and when to look in the sky for interesting manmade objects that are visible to the naked eye: the International Space Station, the Space Shuttle Discovery, several large satellites, and things like that. Very cool stuff! The whole site is worth romping around for all sorts of interesting astronomical happenings.
The second site is Wordle.com, a juicy little nugget for the literarily inclined. Wordle generates word clouds from text that you provide it by analyzing the frequency of words in the text and then assigning a greater prominence to the words that appear more frequently. You can then change the cloud by changing the colors, fonts, and layouts. It's really quite fun! Feed Wordle the text of your latest article, or a manual draft, or that novel you've been working on. Or go to, say, Project Gutenberg, and grab something and try that out. It's a great time-waster, as if I had time to waste these days. (One of the joys of working on database engines is that you've always got something interesting to work on at any hour of the day or night.)
Try both of them out sometime. They're a lot of fun!
Friday, February 13, 2009
Roget in Love
A great Friday-ish article by Hart Seely in Slate.
Roget in Love
When there are too many ways to say "I love you"
by Hart Seely
Roget in Love
When there are too many ways to say "I love you"
by Hart Seely
It was a mistake, a gaffe, an error, plummeting in on Merriam that day. When she looked at me with those big brown organs of vision, I felt myself omit a cardio pulsation.
"Well, well, if it isn't Mr. Thesaurus, Peter Roget," she said. "Look what the Felis silvestris catus just imported."
Merriam had a way with units of language.
"I've come to talk, speak, communicate, converse, correspond," I said.
"Peter," she interrupted, "I don't have time to masti! cate the obesity. Excrete, or remove yourself from the cookery."
<>"Very well. I won't thrash around the foliage. I apologize if I urinated you off. "Peter," she interrupted, "I don't have time to masti! cate the obesity. Excrete, or remove yourself from the cookery."
I've come to request your unclenched fist in holy matrimony."
Her mandible plunged and her occuli hydrated.
"Peter, I'm sorry," she said. "But you're a global cycle late and a Federal Reserve note short. We're through."
"Through? Do you mean, as in, done, completed, and defunct? Or through as in via or by means of?"
"Peter, we're ceased. I'm tired of beating my head against a permanent partition of oven-baked blocks. For a long time now, we've been like two floating vessels passing in the regular period of darkness between sunset and sunrise."
That's when it hit me.
"Webster?" I said. "You're seeing Webster!"
She toggled her head vertically and released air from her lungs.
"Webster loves me," she said.
"Webster doesn't know what love is!" I cried. "Merri, I adore you, ! worship you, I'm your admirer, your follower, your aficionado, your enthusiast, your fan, your devotee, your adherent, your buff! Webster can't be those things. What can he give you that I cannot?"
"Meaning," she whispered. "He gives me meaning."
"Wait a minute. I thought Funk and Wagnall gave you meaning! Remember them? I guess their meanings weren't so definitive, eh?"
"I don't do three-ways," she said.
"Well, you sure get around. Whatever happened to that 'May I quote you' creep? Remember how 'familiar' you were with him?"
"Leave Bartlett out of this," she said.
"Merri," I said. "Listen to me. Webster will dump you, ditch you, scrap you, chuck you, abandon you, discard you. Right now, he's probably out with Collier or Compton or some tramp from Oxford. You're just another plume in his visor headpiece.
"He'll abridge you!" I continued. "He'll file you under M for merriment or merry maker, or messy. That'! s what Webster does. He draws you the size of a postage stamp, then he turns the page!"
"You're too late, Peter," she said, raising a ringed metacarpal. "We've recited nuptials."
"You'll come back!" I shouted. "You'll crawl back on your grasping forelimbs and kneeling leg joints! You two have as much chance together as a compacted sphere of frozen water in hell!"
She closed the door. That was the last time I saw Merri.
Of course, these days, she's the last word on everything, the famous Merriam Webster. Me? I'm lost, misplaced, missing, alone …
I loved her.
I just couldn't find the words.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Balancing your life when you're an author
The following comments are something I just posted on the Author's forum of SpeakerSite.com, and I think they deserve to be posted here, too.
I just got asked a very good question, about how one balances life and writing a book. We have businesses, families, spouses, and kids to deal with, so how does writing a book fit all of that? I wanted to mention this here both to spark discussion and because this may be helpful for people.
Writing books is a pest and it rarely pays off really for the time you spend. Compared to what I make doing independent consulting, contract writing, or writing magazine articles, books don't pay nearly as well for the time it takes to write them. Nevertheless, we do it because there's always that chance that that particular book will pay off handsomely and also because it's just one of those Things We Should Do. I also recommend it to everyone because your writing and planning skills improve enormously after doing even a book or two.
I haven't come up with a great balance to the process, myself. I wrote my first 15 books from 1987 to 1995, when I was in a marriage I didn't enjoy, so part of it was my way of keeping myself away from my then-wife. I was younger, too, so I had more energy and was able to skimp on sleep and survive in the short-term. (I ended up a Type II diabetic as a result of years and years of sleep deprivation, so don't do this yourself.)
In terms of finding balance in your own lives--assuming you do a lot of this--you might want to view writing a book as that extra 10-15 hours/week that we all need to do in self-marketing to keep the pumps primed. I would also strongly recommend not doing books (a) back to back or (b) simultaneously. Back to back will exhaust you and I've never done well writing two books simultaneously because I keep having to jerk myself out of one creative reverie and into another. I didn't like it and I ended up spending too much time in the transition and my writing speed went down.
The bottom line, though, is that this will take a lot of time and you need to be ready for it. I was talking to my current editor at Wiley the other day, who was saying the the Editorial Committee has this image of authors lounging around all the time. (He doesn't believe that himself, but the EC does, apparently.) "Ha!" I said, "I always tell my writing students that as an author you can work any 12 hours a day you like." He liked that one a lot. It's true, too.
BTW, I recently posted an article about those last few weeks when you're finishing a book. It equates being in prison with the writing process, but not in any way you'd expect from the sound of it.
I just got asked a very good question, about how one balances life and writing a book. We have businesses, families, spouses, and kids to deal with, so how does writing a book fit all of that? I wanted to mention this here both to spark discussion and because this may be helpful for people.
Writing books is a pest and it rarely pays off really for the time you spend. Compared to what I make doing independent consulting, contract writing, or writing magazine articles, books don't pay nearly as well for the time it takes to write them. Nevertheless, we do it because there's always that chance that that particular book will pay off handsomely and also because it's just one of those Things We Should Do. I also recommend it to everyone because your writing and planning skills improve enormously after doing even a book or two.
I haven't come up with a great balance to the process, myself. I wrote my first 15 books from 1987 to 1995, when I was in a marriage I didn't enjoy, so part of it was my way of keeping myself away from my then-wife. I was younger, too, so I had more energy and was able to skimp on sleep and survive in the short-term. (I ended up a Type II diabetic as a result of years and years of sleep deprivation, so don't do this yourself.)
In terms of finding balance in your own lives--assuming you do a lot of this--you might want to view writing a book as that extra 10-15 hours/week that we all need to do in self-marketing to keep the pumps primed. I would also strongly recommend not doing books (a) back to back or (b) simultaneously. Back to back will exhaust you and I've never done well writing two books simultaneously because I keep having to jerk myself out of one creative reverie and into another. I didn't like it and I ended up spending too much time in the transition and my writing speed went down.
The bottom line, though, is that this will take a lot of time and you need to be ready for it. I was talking to my current editor at Wiley the other day, who was saying the the Editorial Committee has this image of authors lounging around all the time. (He doesn't believe that himself, but the EC does, apparently.) "Ha!" I said, "I always tell my writing students that as an author you can work any 12 hours a day you like." He liked that one a lot. It's true, too.
BTW, I recently posted an article about those last few weeks when you're finishing a book. It equates being in prison with the writing process, but not in any way you'd expect from the sound of it.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Prison and writing
There are many connections between being in prison and writing for a living. A few of them are good, most of them are not so good, but none of them are the things I'm going to talk about.
Some years ago, I was talking to my stepmother on the phone. I was near the end of a book at that time and I asked her if, as I suspected, she had noticed a stage in the writing of any book that I just became really grumpy with the project and had a hard time working on it, regardless of how much fun the book was and how much money I expected to make from it. She said, "Oh, yes!" and told me a story that I think will be interesting and educational for all of us in this silly business.
(Background: my stepmother was on the police force for 20 years. She was the first woman to graduate first in the class at the Tucson Police Academy and she worked her way up through the ranks to become one of the very few woman police chiefs for a major metro area in this country. I'm enormously proud of her.)
Elaine said that the worst point for escapes and attempted escapes is right before prisoners are due to be released. This has been recognized in incarceration for decades. This is because you've been incarcerated for however long and you can see the end in sight but it's not there yet and it really pisses you off.
What they generally do for prisoners as they get to be short-timers is put them in solitary and lock them up tight so they can't get out. This isn't really done out of any sense of charity for the prisoners, who don't appreciate being put in lockdown at all for some odd reasons. No, the jailers' idea is to prevent escapes because it looks bad on their records. But it's still the best thing you can do for the prisoners, too, who don't need to try to escape and get time added to their sentences.
Elaine said that this can and does happen as close as 2 weeks before release: The prisoners just hit the wall and they say to themselves "I'm due to get out of here and I can't take it any more!" She says that you can see that the end is in sight and you really resent the last effing bit!
Elaine went on to say that this is much the same with any major project. She went through much the same thing, she says, when she retired from the force a few years ago. As she was getting down to the last couple months of her 20, she was having more and more motivational problems with heading to work. However, she had structured it so she had enough vacation time to give her an escape hatch if she just couldn't deal with it, so she could phone in on vacation for her final 5-6 weeks if she needed to. :)
What can we learn from this?
1. Writers will always feel cranky right near the end of a project.
2. Possibly the best kindness an editor or publisher or manager can do for a writer is to tighten the thumbscrews and make sure they don't leave their desks as the deadline approaches.
Some years ago, I was talking to my stepmother on the phone. I was near the end of a book at that time and I asked her if, as I suspected, she had noticed a stage in the writing of any book that I just became really grumpy with the project and had a hard time working on it, regardless of how much fun the book was and how much money I expected to make from it. She said, "Oh, yes!" and told me a story that I think will be interesting and educational for all of us in this silly business.
(Background: my stepmother was on the police force for 20 years. She was the first woman to graduate first in the class at the Tucson Police Academy and she worked her way up through the ranks to become one of the very few woman police chiefs for a major metro area in this country. I'm enormously proud of her.)
Elaine said that the worst point for escapes and attempted escapes is right before prisoners are due to be released. This has been recognized in incarceration for decades. This is because you've been incarcerated for however long and you can see the end in sight but it's not there yet and it really pisses you off.
What they generally do for prisoners as they get to be short-timers is put them in solitary and lock them up tight so they can't get out. This isn't really done out of any sense of charity for the prisoners, who don't appreciate being put in lockdown at all for some odd reasons. No, the jailers' idea is to prevent escapes because it looks bad on their records. But it's still the best thing you can do for the prisoners, too, who don't need to try to escape and get time added to their sentences.
Elaine said that this can and does happen as close as 2 weeks before release: The prisoners just hit the wall and they say to themselves "I'm due to get out of here and I can't take it any more!" She says that you can see that the end is in sight and you really resent the last effing bit!
Elaine went on to say that this is much the same with any major project. She went through much the same thing, she says, when she retired from the force a few years ago. As she was getting down to the last couple months of her 20, she was having more and more motivational problems with heading to work. However, she had structured it so she had enough vacation time to give her an escape hatch if she just couldn't deal with it, so she could phone in on vacation for her final 5-6 weeks if she needed to. :)
What can we learn from this?
1. Writers will always feel cranky right near the end of a project.
2. Possibly the best kindness an editor or publisher or manager can do for a writer is to tighten the thumbscrews and make sure they don't leave their desks as the deadline approaches.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Microsoft memories
I was reminded of something from my very first manual for Microsoft back in 1986. I was updating the Multiplan 2.0 manual to Multiplan 3.0. My 3.0 manual was the first Microsoft manual ever to receive an "Excellent" rating from InfoWorld. I can still quote parts of the review--"documentation compares favorably with any first-rate manual we've seen" and "Because the manual is top-drawer work and has no flaws, we rate it 'excellent'." Happy times.
But I digress here. So, in the previous version of the manual, there was a standard Welcome section in the front that affirmed your wise choice in having purchased such a fine product, and that discussed the features that it had and how they would make your life easier, longer, richer, and healthier. There was a lot of marketing drivel in it, but it ended after 2-1/2 pages with the classic line "You'll soon have a firm grip on a powerful tool."
Naw, it weren't just me.
I ultimately checked with the author and he said that yes, he'd snuck that one in there to see if anyone would notice. They hadn't.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Klingon technical writers
The following lovely little nugget is from Documentia, a tech writing firm in Ontario. #2, 6, 12, and 16 are my personal faves.
Klingon Technical Writers
The top 16 things likely to be overheard if you had Klingon technical writers working on your documentation team:
Klingon Technical Writers
The top 16 things likely to be overheard if you had Klingon technical writers working on your documentation team:
- Klingons do not sit in meetings, we take what we want and kill anyone who opposes us!
- Certification?! Taking your head and putting it on a pike in my office is all the certification I need!
- I will return to the homeworld and my documentation will arise triumphant in the STC Documentation Gauntlet, leaving all others drowning in their own dangling modifiers. It will be glorious!!
- Not returning my review copies by the agreed deadline is a declaration of war. Indeed, it is a good day to die.
- These software specifications are for the weak and timid!!
- This version of Word is a piece of GAGH! I need the latest version of Framemaker if I am to do battle with this manual.
- You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the original Klingon.
- Indentation?! I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!
- What is this talk of "drafts"? Klingons do not make document "drafts". Our documents escape, leaving a bloody trail of SMEs in its wake!
- Passive voice is a sign of weakness. Its elimination will be quick.
- Proofreading? Klingons do not proofread. Our documents are purified with pain-sticks which cleanses the documents of impurities.
- I have challenged the entire Marketing and R&D team to a Bat-Leh contest! They will not concern us again.
- A TRUE Klingon warrior riddles his document with bullets, leaving it to beg for mercy.
- By changing the layout of my manual, you have challenged the honor of my family. Prepare to die!
- You question the worthiness of my grammar? I should kill you where you stand!
- Our users will know fear and cower before our suite of manuals and online help! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Obstacles
It's been a day of mostly small, annoying things.
I've been trying to get work done all day and the universe has been conspiring to keep me from it. I've been chasing mortgage paperwork from 9 to 4:45 (about 15 minutes ago). The mortgage company--actually, the lender, specifically; the mortgage company's been great--the lender has been asking for stranger and stranger paperwork, including something that wouldn't be available for about 3 weeks from now: a pay stub from my new job.
Oh, wait, did I not tell you about that? Ummm, yeah. I'm starting a fulltime, captive, permanent employee-type JOB on Monday.
It's my first in a decade. And I'm seriously pumped about it. The company makes factory automation management software, pretty cool stuff, and they're the industry leader. But that's not what made me want to go captive.
It's my boss. My boss is great. She does things pretty much the way I'd do them (always a plus, of course) and she's equitable, direct, and honest. The rest of the company is like that, too, and that was the next reason I wanted to sign up: there aren't ducal fiefdoms there. It's not your typical software/high-tech company: people are nice! They are people you'd actually want to know, to talk to, and definitely to work with! There's a strong sense of "If you don't win, none of us win" in everything they do. And people tend to be pretty supportive of each other. Management knows what it's doing, too: the company makes a good profit and sets strong-but-achievable goals and they don't work people to death and then shoot 'em to get there. The offices are attractive and comfortable, they have great kitchens with lots of soda and nibbly food, and they feed people in the evening whenever there's a development push. The company is very profitable (I approve of this). Employees tend to stay there for years and their turnover rate is really low. Pay's good. There's a lot of vacation. Very good bennies.
This is the only company I've ever gone to work for where I felt that I needed to be a better person just to measure up to the quality of the people I'm working with. It's a terrific honor to get hired here and I'm very pleased and not a little flattered.
Here's the best part: I get to work at home. So I have all the advantages of freelancing (no commute, flexibility of dress code, and it's easy to solve the "What's for lunch?" problem) and all the advantages of captivity. I'm in love. :)
So, anyway, as I was saying.... the lender wants a paystub from the new job, a thing I won't have until sometime in early October. Oy. So we got it worked out that I can send them a letter from the company on Monday that says I've started the job and I'm there and so on.
And with that in hand, the final piece of paper would appear to be in place (even as I type that, I don't believe it--there's always something at the last minute, as today's scurrying around to find more bank statements, tax info, and so on), and our mortgage goes through with a small *poof*!
Next week's going to be long, but things will get done.
And now it's after 5, and it's unlikely that the mortgage company will be phoning for Yet Another Thing, so I may be able to get productive work done at last.
And now it's after 5, and it's unlikely that the mortgage company will be phoning for Yet Another Thing, so I may be able to get productive work done at last.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Three weeks—my goodness!
The last few posts I made were three weeks ago. Sonomabitsu!
It has been a completely busy three weeks. Here's what I've been up to:
First and foremost, there've been taxes. Getting the taxes done is always a chore as a self-employed person, but they got done. It was later than I'd promised the Babe and I'm sorry about that. I'll try harder next year and we'll get them in earlier.
Next, the new house is zipping forward. The construction crews started framing near the end of March and have most of the frame completed at this point. It's the style of the home builder to build the outside of the house first and they then do the interior. It's a little unusual, I grant you, but they explained that they can work enclosed under a roof that way, which is no small thing here in the Pacific Northwest. We've made our final choices on all the options we get to choose--cherry floors and cabinets, brushed plumbing features, ivory berber carpet, among other things--and the inside is going to be painted in a light gold color (Benjamin Moore's "Popcorn Kernel") and a dark, rich blue ("Chicago Blues," ibid.) for the front hall and stair, you'll see a rich blue-and-gold contrast with lots of white trim. In fact, there'll be white wainscoting, molding, and trim, and the ceilings will be white.
We weren't able to get much change on the choices in tiling in the master bath: we could have light travertine or dark travertine. We don't care for travertine in most any form and it's on its way out architecturally ("Oh, that house is so 2006!") but the light travertine is truly the most neutral and it doesn't suck rocks completely. Oddly, the upstairs bathroom (which has a skylight) can be done in any of a dozen different tile colors and we were able to choose a nice mottled dirty-tan-and-gold color that will go nicely with Susan the Wonder Child's bamboo plants and the like.
Now, you gotta understand that just because we're having the house painted in these two colors (with the white ceilings, of course) by the builder, it doesn't mean that we're going to have these as the only two colors… or that our bedroom will be light yellow. It's just that we only get two colors for free; more would cost and our builder, great guy that he is, is very clear that he's doing tract homes rather than custom work, so we don't want to stress him out too much. We'll be doing some additional painting in a few places before we move in (light yellow is an easy color to paint over). The upstairs bathroom, for example, will probably be a green to complement the tile work. My office, while we've not decided, may well have a wall done in apricot and the others in some other color (shucks, or leave them light yellow; apricot and a light yellow and a rich wood floor could be very attractive).
To go along with the new house looking like it'll be done on schedule, we've been spending money on packing up large numbers of boxes into a storage pod, the first of which is now off in its storage unit with all the contents safely stowed away. In the course of things, we've been doing some sifting of things and coming up with HUGE ENORMOUS PILES of stuff to give to St. Vincent's or something. Susan the Wonder Child had four or five bags of miscellaneous clothes that she sloughed from her closet. We've found a lot of books that don't need to continue their journeys with us. I've been finding some reference books that can get dumped. The Babe dug into our rather unsightly stacks of sheets and towels and eliminated perhaps half a dozen sheet sets that were cotton/poly (most of which were mine, I admit it--I didn't know about the wonders of 100% cotton for a couple years and so I bought sheet sets that I liked for the prints without being aware that blended sheets feel rougher).
Some of this is really the house-merging that the Babe and I have never really had a chance to do. When we moved to Indiana, I packed up her house and my house, rather on a dead run, and we didn't see what our stuff looked like together and what we could eliminate. A lot of things never got unpacked in Indiana because we were never settled there and the Babe moved out to Eugene first and I got to pack up the house again. I was able to dump a lot of baseball cards that weren't worth what it would cost to move them from stash left by the Babe's late husband Larry (it's still the better part of a ton of baseball cards and some basketball cards and football cards and Star Trek cards and things like that; we'll be glad to sell them), but there was a lot of stuff that got moved simply because it was there. This move, however, I've been clear that I will not be the only person to be packing things up and toting. I've done that twice with the Babe and once years ago with Patricia and I think I've done my bit.
We have, however, found a wonderful person named Chris, who runs a company called HandyMa'am. She does housecleaning, organizing packing, and the like. We like her and she's been a gods-send to us. She's also reasonably inexpensive for the services she's giving us, so we're able to get everything done for not nearly so much money.
Part of cleaning the house to sell is arranging to sell it. We've talked to our realtor and we're going to list it in mid-May so she can show it Memorial Day weekend for the anticipated crowds of buyers and all... but there may be something fun before that. As I was packing up the storage pod (which arrived in a trailer), one of the neighbors across the street stopped by and asked about our moving plans. They know we're building a house and are moving, but it looked fairly imminent. Her parents are keen to move to Eugene and have in fact been driving up periodically from Lodi, CA, to look at houses and drop off another trailer load of stuff in storage. They even looked at the house we own when it was originally on the market. They're going to be up in Eugene on Sunday and they'll come look at the house. The idea of living across the street from their daughter, son-in-law, grandson, and soon to be granddaughter is enormously appealing to them. The advantage to us is that we could save a ton of realtor fees if this happens. If we'd solicited this, I'd feel sleazy not listing it, but they approached us. If this goes through, I'm sure we'll give our realtor a payment of some kind just because she's been great and her time's worth something.
One of the most pleasing pieces of news is that I've got a couple of contracts now, a small one and a big one. The small one is with Symantec, where I'll be putting together some training for a writing group on writing basics, information architecture basics, and some specifics on how they can write better, more effective knowledge base articles. Nice stuff and there could well be follow-on work for all I know. The BIG contract is with a company in Southern California that makes factory automation software. They need a lot of manuals worked on (I'm guessing 1500 pages for the first project) and they keep saying that they want a "long-term" relationship with me... where a one-year contract is not a "long-term" relationship. I'm working for a really great person and I'm going through the agency of one of my all-time favorite STC people, so I have high hopes for this. I'll be traveling to SoCal regularly for this, which is slightly pestiferous, but, heavens, I'll bear up somehow.
In fact, I'm drafting all of this blog entry in the John Wayne (Orange County) and San Francisco airports because I've been down in SoCal all this week doing training and finding out about the project I'll be working on. I did pretty well on the packing for the trip, although I think I can refine this some on the next trip down here: I forgot to bring sunglasses, for example, and I brought a couple computer accessories I just didn't need.
I'm using my brand new laptop to write this on. It's an HP Pavilion dv8000. I needed some kind of laptop for this trip because I just couldn't expect to borrow the Babe's for a week and leave her without a computer. I'm not entirely happy buying HP computers as a rule because they have such incredibly sucky service and you'd probably just as soon as hit yourself in the head with a rock rather than deal with their typical customer support folks.
(Just so everyone knows, I returned an HP desktop last year completely unopened because my experience trying to reach a customer support person to find out if they had a hardware manual for this computer was so obnoxious. As it ultimately turned out--and it took me the better part of an hour to get to someone who knew--they don't supply a hardware manual because they want me to phone them to find out how to do something. If they're willing to tell me, they'll step me through it. If they don't think I should be doing this, however, then they won't tell me and I must supposedly take my computer to an HP authorized service center. No, no, I replied, I bought this computer to own it, not to lease it. I returned it with a nasty letter and went out and bought a computer with the parts I specified from a local grey-market assembler. It's a much better box for about the same cost and, oddly enough, I have all the hardware manuals so I know how to fix it if something goes wrong. Or I can take it to the repair person of my choice.)
Suffice it to say, the idea of having to phone HP support for anything might be sufficient cause for me to avoid buying an HP computer every again. Nevertheless, this laptop actually looked good enough to risk it. It's got a 17" widescreen display that's incredibly crisp. I'm running at 1440x900 bits at 32-bit color, so that aquarium program you see on the computers in Office Despot (where I bought this one) is very realistic. The wide format also means that I have a real number pad on the keyboard, not to mention a keyboard that's real size and fairly easy to use. The display lights are also really pretty: the thing just looks pretty cool. So I'm happy with it. I bought the extended warranty on it from the folks at the Eugene Office Despot (who were incredibly helpful and knowledgeable, by the way) and they said that with the warranty, if anything goes wrong, then I can phone their service department and then they will put up with HP's crappy customer service. Hey, I'm willing to pay for that!
I'm going to put this down for the time being and go do something else on the computer. I'm really tired (being on the road for a week always does that to me). I'm really glad that I'll be home with the Babe, Susan the Wonder Child, and the cats this evening and I'll get to sleep in my own bed again at last.
(Addendum: it's Sunday morning, I got home without incident, and even got to bed at a vaguely civilized hour. My files are synchronized from the laptop and we're off to church to sing for both services this morning.)
It has been a completely busy three weeks. Here's what I've been up to:
First and foremost, there've been taxes. Getting the taxes done is always a chore as a self-employed person, but they got done. It was later than I'd promised the Babe and I'm sorry about that. I'll try harder next year and we'll get them in earlier.
Next, the new house is zipping forward. The construction crews started framing near the end of March and have most of the frame completed at this point. It's the style of the home builder to build the outside of the house first and they then do the interior. It's a little unusual, I grant you, but they explained that they can work enclosed under a roof that way, which is no small thing here in the Pacific Northwest. We've made our final choices on all the options we get to choose--cherry floors and cabinets, brushed plumbing features, ivory berber carpet, among other things--and the inside is going to be painted in a light gold color (Benjamin Moore's "Popcorn Kernel") and a dark, rich blue ("Chicago Blues," ibid.) for the front hall and stair, you'll see a rich blue-and-gold contrast with lots of white trim. In fact, there'll be white wainscoting, molding, and trim, and the ceilings will be white.
We weren't able to get much change on the choices in tiling in the master bath: we could have light travertine or dark travertine. We don't care for travertine in most any form and it's on its way out architecturally ("Oh, that house is so 2006!") but the light travertine is truly the most neutral and it doesn't suck rocks completely. Oddly, the upstairs bathroom (which has a skylight) can be done in any of a dozen different tile colors and we were able to choose a nice mottled dirty-tan-and-gold color that will go nicely with Susan the Wonder Child's bamboo plants and the like.
Now, you gotta understand that just because we're having the house painted in these two colors (with the white ceilings, of course) by the builder, it doesn't mean that we're going to have these as the only two colors… or that our bedroom will be light yellow. It's just that we only get two colors for free; more would cost and our builder, great guy that he is, is very clear that he's doing tract homes rather than custom work, so we don't want to stress him out too much. We'll be doing some additional painting in a few places before we move in (light yellow is an easy color to paint over). The upstairs bathroom, for example, will probably be a green to complement the tile work. My office, while we've not decided, may well have a wall done in apricot and the others in some other color (shucks, or leave them light yellow; apricot and a light yellow and a rich wood floor could be very attractive).
To go along with the new house looking like it'll be done on schedule, we've been spending money on packing up large numbers of boxes into a storage pod, the first of which is now off in its storage unit with all the contents safely stowed away. In the course of things, we've been doing some sifting of things and coming up with HUGE ENORMOUS PILES of stuff to give to St. Vincent's or something. Susan the Wonder Child had four or five bags of miscellaneous clothes that she sloughed from her closet. We've found a lot of books that don't need to continue their journeys with us. I've been finding some reference books that can get dumped. The Babe dug into our rather unsightly stacks of sheets and towels and eliminated perhaps half a dozen sheet sets that were cotton/poly (most of which were mine, I admit it--I didn't know about the wonders of 100% cotton for a couple years and so I bought sheet sets that I liked for the prints without being aware that blended sheets feel rougher).
Some of this is really the house-merging that the Babe and I have never really had a chance to do. When we moved to Indiana, I packed up her house and my house, rather on a dead run, and we didn't see what our stuff looked like together and what we could eliminate. A lot of things never got unpacked in Indiana because we were never settled there and the Babe moved out to Eugene first and I got to pack up the house again. I was able to dump a lot of baseball cards that weren't worth what it would cost to move them from stash left by the Babe's late husband Larry (it's still the better part of a ton of baseball cards and some basketball cards and football cards and Star Trek cards and things like that; we'll be glad to sell them), but there was a lot of stuff that got moved simply because it was there. This move, however, I've been clear that I will not be the only person to be packing things up and toting. I've done that twice with the Babe and once years ago with Patricia and I think I've done my bit.
We have, however, found a wonderful person named Chris, who runs a company called HandyMa'am. She does housecleaning, organizing packing, and the like. We like her and she's been a gods-send to us. She's also reasonably inexpensive for the services she's giving us, so we're able to get everything done for not nearly so much money.
Part of cleaning the house to sell is arranging to sell it. We've talked to our realtor and we're going to list it in mid-May so she can show it Memorial Day weekend for the anticipated crowds of buyers and all... but there may be something fun before that. As I was packing up the storage pod (which arrived in a trailer), one of the neighbors across the street stopped by and asked about our moving plans. They know we're building a house and are moving, but it looked fairly imminent. Her parents are keen to move to Eugene and have in fact been driving up periodically from Lodi, CA, to look at houses and drop off another trailer load of stuff in storage. They even looked at the house we own when it was originally on the market. They're going to be up in Eugene on Sunday and they'll come look at the house. The idea of living across the street from their daughter, son-in-law, grandson, and soon to be granddaughter is enormously appealing to them. The advantage to us is that we could save a ton of realtor fees if this happens. If we'd solicited this, I'd feel sleazy not listing it, but they approached us. If this goes through, I'm sure we'll give our realtor a payment of some kind just because she's been great and her time's worth something.
One of the most pleasing pieces of news is that I've got a couple of contracts now, a small one and a big one. The small one is with Symantec, where I'll be putting together some training for a writing group on writing basics, information architecture basics, and some specifics on how they can write better, more effective knowledge base articles. Nice stuff and there could well be follow-on work for all I know. The BIG contract is with a company in Southern California that makes factory automation software. They need a lot of manuals worked on (I'm guessing 1500 pages for the first project) and they keep saying that they want a "long-term" relationship with me... where a one-year contract is not a "long-term" relationship. I'm working for a really great person and I'm going through the agency of one of my all-time favorite STC people, so I have high hopes for this. I'll be traveling to SoCal regularly for this, which is slightly pestiferous, but, heavens, I'll bear up somehow.
In fact, I'm drafting all of this blog entry in the John Wayne (Orange County) and San Francisco airports because I've been down in SoCal all this week doing training and finding out about the project I'll be working on. I did pretty well on the packing for the trip, although I think I can refine this some on the next trip down here: I forgot to bring sunglasses, for example, and I brought a couple computer accessories I just didn't need.
I'm using my brand new laptop to write this on. It's an HP Pavilion dv8000. I needed some kind of laptop for this trip because I just couldn't expect to borrow the Babe's for a week and leave her without a computer. I'm not entirely happy buying HP computers as a rule because they have such incredibly sucky service and you'd probably just as soon as hit yourself in the head with a rock rather than deal with their typical customer support folks.
(Just so everyone knows, I returned an HP desktop last year completely unopened because my experience trying to reach a customer support person to find out if they had a hardware manual for this computer was so obnoxious. As it ultimately turned out--and it took me the better part of an hour to get to someone who knew--they don't supply a hardware manual because they want me to phone them to find out how to do something. If they're willing to tell me, they'll step me through it. If they don't think I should be doing this, however, then they won't tell me and I must supposedly take my computer to an HP authorized service center. No, no, I replied, I bought this computer to own it, not to lease it. I returned it with a nasty letter and went out and bought a computer with the parts I specified from a local grey-market assembler. It's a much better box for about the same cost and, oddly enough, I have all the hardware manuals so I know how to fix it if something goes wrong. Or I can take it to the repair person of my choice.)
Suffice it to say, the idea of having to phone HP support for anything might be sufficient cause for me to avoid buying an HP computer every again. Nevertheless, this laptop actually looked good enough to risk it. It's got a 17" widescreen display that's incredibly crisp. I'm running at 1440x900 bits at 32-bit color, so that aquarium program you see on the computers in Office Despot (where I bought this one) is very realistic. The wide format also means that I have a real number pad on the keyboard, not to mention a keyboard that's real size and fairly easy to use. The display lights are also really pretty: the thing just looks pretty cool. So I'm happy with it. I bought the extended warranty on it from the folks at the Eugene Office Despot (who were incredibly helpful and knowledgeable, by the way) and they said that with the warranty, if anything goes wrong, then I can phone their service department and then they will put up with HP's crappy customer service. Hey, I'm willing to pay for that!
I'm going to put this down for the time being and go do something else on the computer. I'm really tired (being on the road for a week always does that to me). I'm really glad that I'll be home with the Babe, Susan the Wonder Child, and the cats this evening and I'll get to sleep in my own bed again at last.
(Addendum: it's Sunday morning, I got home without incident, and even got to bed at a vaguely civilized hour. My files are synchronized from the laptop and we're off to church to sing for both services this morning.)
Friday, March 31, 2006
An illustration of the writing process
I found a gif this afternoon that illustrates the writing process better than anything I've ever seen. Here it is:
We're getting the house boxed up so we can make it pretty and sell it.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
![Bad Grammar Makes Me [sic] t-shirt](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_urZVx1I_Zxv1T65iRVngSj_ScsuiwMMJSP9nWuuKV9tUlPdpNHoBmaZTpqK7Gy8uohNFhRY_ZSgEJBTkNUw6zpb7MSTCL4zrzNAS2UP3GjPeMPoEXL=s0-d)
Monday, March 06, 2006
For all you Shakespeare fans...
...which is probably most of y'all, here's something from a LiveJournal blog entry entitled THE THINGS I WILL NOT DO WHEN I DIRECT A SHAKESPEARE PRODUCTION, ON STAGE OR FILM that's still going strong. (The post hit the character limit, so they've gone to a second location for entries.)
A few of the selections I particularly enjoyed:
10. I will not treat A Midsummer Night's Dream as though it were Un Chien Andalou.
22. Ariel should, ideally, wear more than Gollum.
30. As much as I enjoy his films, I will not steal from Kenneth Branagh. It's not like people won't notice.
92. I will not project a PowerPoint slideshow onto a large screen above and behind the actors, ever, for any reason, no matter what.
147. I will have a contingency plan for outdoor plays in case of disasters other than weather. For instance: search helicopters looking for fugitives in the area. The actors are accomplished clog-dancers, but it's not fair to ask them to do that for the interim.
180. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern will not enter on a miniature train.
235. I will never allow the unnecessary pause between "to be" and "or not to be" to last more than ten seconds, no matter how much the actor playing Hamlet believes it will transform him into Olivier. If he draws it out for more than twenty seconds during any rehearsal, I will recast the part. However, for the good of the production, should an actor decide he must surprise me with this behaviour in front of an audience, I will wait a full minute for him to continue before giving in to the urge to humiliate him by feeding him his line in a loud stage whisper.
308. If Shakespeare had intended for any character to say "YEEEEEEEEHAW!", it would have appeared in the text.
There are any number of replies to this particular blog posting with additional caveats, such as: "At no time will Hamlet be allowed to impale Claudius with a chandelier," "I will not show the little princes in the tower in the background as Richard plots their murder... Most of all, I will not show them playing Nintendo," and "I will not dress the mob in Julius Caesar with beer-can helmets."
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