I am determined to get it together this year. (Yeah, just like every other year.) One of the things I need to do is decide what to do with this blog. The last couple of days, while researching stuff for work, I added a whole bunch of posts, and circulation took a nosedive. I choose to believe this is because you all are just not interested in so much technical stuff, rather than believing it's just that you are not interested in what I have to say. (Hey, you're reading this, aren't you?) So while I try and figure out the direction this thing should take, here is a list of 41 ways to market your blog in 2007.
Over at Backstop Media, the four of us are pretty much equal. We reach consensus on decisions, and so on. I like it. We're all motivated to make things a success. Apparently it can work in large organizations as well. Witness How do you run a business without managers.
Here something to think about, from Seth Godin:
It's easy to get the two confused, but if you do, you'll probably regret it.
To be marketable, you must be remarkable. Marketing isn't about getting more than 50% market share, it's about spreading your idea to enough people to be glad you did it... 3% of a market may be more than enough, especially if you have a local business or an expensive service.
The temptation of the marketer is to try to get elected. To be beloved by everyone.
I would like to think that I opt for the door number one, but business is a little slow right now, so I know I am airing on the side of caution.
But I know that's the wrong strategy.
At the end of the year, I always get a little philosophical. I think about where I've been and where I'm going. I especially think about it when I've got a lot of work to do and I'm really tired -- so I'm thinking about it right now. I'm not really thinking of making any radical changes right now, because I already love what I do. But Bob Parsons' When You Love Something makes me think about fine tuning a bit...
Yes, yes, I've been gone all summer. Amazing how things can get away from you! So where have we been? Let's just say it's been really busy. What have we been up to?
Well, aside from personal issues, let's see.
My company, Backstop Media, has been outrageously busy. We do tutorials and articles and such for places like IBM developerWorks, and in addition to writing more pieces than I can possibly remember, I've been working with a lot of great writers on some terrific stuff. In fact, I've just finished a really cool series on building a semantic web mashup. I'm particularly proud of part 3. It's an indepth introduction to the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and (I think, at least) it really makes it understandable. (And it's currently featured on the developerWorks home page, woo hoo!)
The hiatus actually started when, after almost 10 years, I finally decided to change hosting companies. There were lots of reasons, but mostly it was the fact that by switching to GoDaddy.com Hosting, I was able to get almost two years of hosting for what I had been paying for a single QUARTER. The process was pretty painless, actually, especially because I already use GoDaddy for my domain name registration. (It's cool, because you get all kinds of freebies. It doesn't have the advanced capabilities that I need, but they even give you free hosting with registration!)
Also, my parents have decided to take the leap and sell their vitamins online, so in addition to setting up an online order page -- if you take vitamins, it's a darn good deal, actually -- I will be setting up some content pages for them eventually.
I was going to set up a site for Star Wars gifts, but I never really got around to it.
What I did get around to, though, was helping Sarah start selling on EBay, and that's been a real riot! We've been going to auctions, and picking up some cool stuff. Sarah's got an eye for dishes, and I've been enjoying oddities. Here's hoping that continues to do well.
In any case, Chaos Magnet is once again up and running. Here's to a great year for all of us!
Well, it was bound to happen. For years, my mother has been saying that she doesn't understand what I do, and there's no point explaining it to her. When I was a teenager, I had to stick pieces of masking tape with numbers on them to the computer so my parents could figure out how to turn it on. But she always listens patiently as I talk, with the occasional "is that good?" thrown in so I know she's listening.
Occasionally, I think about whether or not to blog something, and I think "would I want my mother to see this?" Then I think, hey, my mother will never be a blogger. She's never gonna read this.
Well, the time has come. My mother's a smart cookie, and this afternoon I spent some time talking her through what a blog is and setting her up with her own, Ramblings by Judy.
So the question is, when your mother starts blogging, does it somehow become less cool, like if she likes your music? Do I have to pretend that I don't like blogging now? Will anybody see it if I roll my eyes and put a safety pin in my keyboard?
Actually, she does seem to have at least some sense of what this is all about. Her first post is about the difference in people's brains before and after morning coffee, and I definitely should not be surprised. Let me tell you, when she says that she's a bear before that morning coffee, she means it. I'm not sure about that hypothesis of hers, though:
I wonder if anyone has done a study on morning personality. When coffee drinkers are grouchy in the morning and they have their coffee they are fine. Non-coffee drinkers that are grouchy in the morning are grouchy all day.
She's just got the basic setup right now, while she gets used to it. Later, I'll introduce her to blogrolls, RSS feeds, and all of that stuff.
But not until she's had her morning coffee.
I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about blogging, and about how to do it better. I've come to the very obvious (in retrospect) conclusion that in order to have a good blog, you have two choices.
You either have to write interesting, deep commentary, or link to items that are interesting in their own right, no matter what you say about them.
So I wonder: which is better, and do you have to choose? Can a blog be effective with entries that are either one or the other, as long as each entry fits into one of these two categories?
I received this on one of the author mailing lists. [NOTE: Please check out the site for the latest instructions. I've seen other messages asking people to have their own book sales and send the money instead.]
===========================
The New Orleans Public Library Needs Books
===========================
New Orleans Public Library is asking for any and all hardcover and paperback books to restock the shelves after Katrina. The library staff will assess which titles will be designated for the shelves. The rest will be distributed to destitute families or sold for library fundraising.
The books can be sent to:
Rica A Trigs, Public Relations
New Orleans Public Library
219 Loyola Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70112
If you tell the post office that the books are for the library in New Orleans, they will give you the library rate that is less than book rate.
Can you please share this information with the education staff and students? It is a great opportunity to help.
Oh sure, everybody TALKS about the week from hell. But this has got to be it. Reality check:
Sunday: The father of the two children my wife and I care for is rushed back to the hospital from the nursing home.
Monday: My son Sean announces that it looks like he's going to Iraq.
Tuesday: Our Yorkie coughs up blood. An emergency trip to the vet confirms that he's fine.
Wednesday: Both children have a fever. After confirming that despite our best efforts to get the Florida social services system moving, they STILL don't have insurance, take them to their old doctor, 50 miles away.
Thursday: Discover that my computer is loaded with viruses, worms, and other malware. Spend the entire day (and most of the next day) trying to get it cleaned up.
Friday: Take the girls down to the hospital to see their dad, who decides it's time to level with them about the seriousness of his illness.
Saturday: Walk out to the barn to discover that the German Shepherd has eaten half a box of rat poison. An emergency trip to the vet confirms that she's also fine.
Could it have been worse? Of course it could.
But I agree with Sarah, who says she doesn't want to get up tomorrow ...
Well, I'm back from South Carolina and Sean's graduation from Basic Combat Training. After all those years of official school papers coming home and talking about "your child" it was a bit jarring, to say the least, to receive a packet of information talking about "your Soldier".
In fact, it seems to me that the two days we spent with Sean -- Thursday on the base, and Friday, after graduation, off the base in the hotel, where all he wanted to do is relax -- seemed almost geared just as much at easing parents into the idea that their children belong to the Army now as anything else.
I'm still not used to it, not really.
I don't write for magazines, but it's not because I don't want to. It'sy mostly because I'm too occupied writing for online publications and doing other corporate writing. But every once in awhile, I think about it, so I found Robert McGarvey's Twenty-Five Writing Secrets very interesting. Perhaps the biggest secret he lets out of the bag is the one hardest for people to accept: this is a job. If you want to make a living, treat it that way.
Despite my antiwar stance, I've always had a great deal of respect for the US Armed Forces. They do very difficult job under less than ideal circumstances that were not of their making.
Recruiters on the other hand, I have no use for. Yes, there are certainly exceptions, recruiters who do have more morals than a cockroach, and I have even met one or two. On the other hand, the recruiter who suckered my son into signing up for the Army before he even graduated from high school was eventually fired because he'd gone too far for even by recruiters' standards. (Of course, that doesn't change the fact that my son is currently in basic training.)
So it was with little surprise and great amusement that I read about Grandmothers arrested at an Iraq War protest. Apparently the grandmothers, members of the Anti-War Grandmothers, a coalition of Grandmothers Against the War, the Gray Panthers, and the New York City Raging Grannies, had gathered outside the recruiting station and claimed to want to enlist. But that's not the best part. The best part, in my view, is the reaction of the recruiters inside the booth:
"We tried to ring the bell at the booth, but no one answered," [Joan Wile, 74,] said. "I saw a head poke up from behind the counter every once in a while and then duck back down. I don't know what they were afraid of. Maybe they don't know how to deal with a bunch of grannies."
Technorati tags: war | antiwar | anti-war | Iraq | grandmothers | antiwar grannies | Antiwar Grandmothers | Anti-war Grandmothers | military | humor | recruiters
My son just called from the old neighborhood. He's leaving for the Army today. We've known this was coming for some time now. We fought, when he first signed up, but not because I didn't want him to go -- though I didn't -- but because I wanted him to wait until he graduated from high school to make his decision. But we've come to terms now.
He took us out to dinner last week. (Or rather, he invited us to dinner and I paid for it.) He waited until we were in a restaurant to tell us that his unit was shipping out to the Middle East next spring. I'm sure he expected some kind of scene. There was, of course, none. My wife and I have resigned ourselves. Before he left -- just before he left, from the sound coming through the phone of the car telling him the keys were in the ignition and the door was open -- I told him that no matter what, I was proud of him. I meant it.
I sit and I think about all of those recruiters who target children. And they are children, whether they've reached the age of majority or not. I remember so clearly what I was like at 19, raising a family, thinking I knew everything, really knowing nothing. I think that recruiters have to do that. Because very few people would take on the very necessary job of becoming a soldier if they knew what it really meant.
Our baby is gone. Please G-d, let him come back in one piece. Physically and mentally. But even if he does -- no, when he does -- he still won't be our baby any more.
Recruiters aren't the only ones who get them young. It's no accident that you have children before you know any better. Because if you knew what that really meant, you wouldn't do that either.
Be safe, Sean. We love you.
Sorry for the delay, I know it's been awhile since I updated over here. My web host wrote to tell me that my Movable Type database user was occupying 60 locked connections and that if I didn't want to be forced to upgrade to a dedicated server, I was going to have to dig through the software and figure out where it wasn't closing database connections.
Yeah, right.
So I disabled the user temporarily instead, and it took me a little while, but I finally have gotten around to upgrading to Movable Type 3. There was that little mishap in which I forgot to on comment the database driver in the configuration file, but that's all taken care of now. I'll let you know how it goes.
On the bright side, the dictation system is working out much better than I expected it to. Recognition has gotten noticeably better, although I've discovered that I do have certain speech patterns that I never suspected. For example, I apparently pronounce "will" and "we'll” exactly the same. And when I'm really tired, I apparently mumble more than I thought I do. I just have to remember to proof carefully, something I didn't generally have to do when I was typing. But overall, it's going very well. I was able to dictate this post without wanting to throw the computer out the window, so that's an improvement.
Which is good, because the arthritis is really getting bad. Hopefully I'll get to a doctor soon.
Anyway, things should be getting back on an even keel now. Or at least as even a keel as a chaos magnet can be on.
My arthritis is getting really really bad. It's not that I'm old. I'm not. In fact, my sister's three years younger than me and she's got worse arthritis than me. (Added later: I'm only in my thirties.) But I really can't type much anymore, and so today, and in fact with this blog post, I am starting to use Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I am in fact dictating this post. This is going to be interesting. Check out what the computer originally thought I said:
My arthritis is getting really really bad. It's not a mauled a knot, in fact, my sisters three years younger than me and she's got worse arthritis than me. But really can't type much anymore, and so today and in fact at this blog post. I am starting to use Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I am in fact dictating this post, this is going to be interesting.
Technorati tags: arthritis
I'm sitting here filling out my resume for a new online job site I've been invited to review -- it's still in beta, so email me if you want details -- and I've frankly forgotten how much it is that I've actually done. But more importantly, I'm sitting here and realizing that dammit, I'm good at what I do. And what I do is take complex nonsense and turn it into intelligible information that anybody can understand.
But it's hard, and I mean really hard to find other people who can do that, or who even want to try. I've been working with a bunch of writers lately, and a few of them are good at this. They bust their butts to really do a good job, and when they hit a roadblock they bust through it or they find a way to go around it but they don't just sit there and say "it can't be done."
The rest of them are making me nuts.
I'm realizing with a great deal of horror that the people who just sit down and quit and say "it's too hard, I can't do that" are the norm, and not the tragic exception.
So this piece from marketing guru Perry Marshall, Escape the Institutional Straightjacket, has infuriated me with a brilliant explanation of just how the hell this is happening. Starting on page five or so he's talking about business and marketing and such, but the first few pages are a must read. Let me give you the beginning. I don't think Perry will mind:
John Taylor Gatto received the New York State Teacher of the Year award in 1990 and was named New York City Teacher of the Year in 1991. When the appointed evening arrived, Mr. Gatto appeared in the hotel ballroom before an audience of well-fed administrators and principals, and delivered his acceptance speech.
It was that night that he publicly turned on them like a mongrel dog.
"The only reason I received this award the only reason I've been a great teacher for my students is because I didn't do a single thing you told me to. I ignored your standards,' I thwarted your bureaucracy and I taught unauthorized material. I filled out those forms that said the students were in their desks, when they were really taking horizon-expanding study trips. I had them read real books instead of those inane, dumbed-down textbooks of yours, I taught them real history instead of the porridge of revisionist pabulum you call 'social studies'.
"Your bureaucracy is a mill that grinds up human beings and turns them into consumer fertilizer for a planned economy. Human potential erodes as hungry minds sit in listless boredom, and teachers operate without the tools they need, just so you guys can fill your administration buildings with cushy jobs and give contracts to your cherished vendors.
That's why most of our students can't read after 12 years of education yes, even though it only takes 3 months to learn how to read. That's why most kids follow the herd into a bleak future instead of thinking for themselves.
I am officially turning in my resignation as of today.
For the record, I wasn't home schooled, but did I work for my parents' business from the time I was 12 until I got my first paying job at 16. (That'll make sense if you read the piece.) I was certified as a high school teacher, but couldn't get a job partly because of economic conditions and partly because I was just too unconventional.
Now I'm a professional trainer and I also teach people through writing you can actually read rather than the unreadable gobbledygook that is unfortunately so common. But why the hell does that seem so hard to find these days?
OK, now this is very, very cool. I'm still working (very hard) on getting the old house totally cleared out, and I've got to have a ton of books to get rid of. Now I've got a great place to send them. Check out Give Books: Redistributing Reading. They're distributing books, magazines, whatever kind of reading material to the troops in the Middle East. And Fedex will ship them for you FREE. No excuse now, people, get packing!
Technorati tags: books
Someday soon (meaning in the next few years) I'm going to go back to school. I never did get that Ph.D. in Physics, after all. :) Anyway, I've found an archive of recent scientific papers on all kinds of branches of physics, mathematics, non-linear science, computer science, biology, all kinds of things. Man, I wish I had more time...
Technorati tags: physics | quantum physics | time travel | mathematics | computer science | biology | science | research
I know, I know, it's been a month since I've said anything signficant here. It's been a month since I've said anything significant anywhere. I have moved. No, not the site, the site's exactly where it's always been. I have physically picked up my family and moved to a new location, and it's been quite an adjustment. To get some idea, we've moved from here to here. I can't even get dial-up faster than 37.2K. That's right, the phone company's not equipped to handle 56K.
It's been quite an adjustment for me, but my wife, farmer girl that she is, is really, really happy in a way that I haven't seen from her in ... well, I don't know that I've ever seen her this happy. Our friends are joking that it's like Green Acres, but with her as Eddie Albert and me as Zsa Zsa Gabor. Eventually, you'll hear way more about it as I finally get around to writing up all of this material I've been gathering about what it's like for a city mouse out in the country, but in the meantime, I thought I'd update you and let you know that I'm just about back into the swing of things, so as soon as I catch up on things, they'll be back to normal.
Technorati tags: moving | personal | Green Acres
I just realized how long it's been since I posted here. My goodness, weeks! Well, I've sold the house, thank goodness, and moved out to a farm in the country. I'll explain more later, when I have time, but in the meantime, take a good look at some relevant advice from Steve Jobs.
It's a weekend for closure after Ray's crossing, and I think I've pretty much settled things in my own head. Let me warn you that this is a long post -- at least for me -- and that unlike most entries, it's very personal. I'm recording it here only because I don't keep a journal; feel free to skip it. I won't be offended.
First let me tell you that we were unbelievably fortunate in that Ray was a veteran, having served in the Phillipines in World War II. For the rest if his life, the VA took care of him, and I want to take a moment to express our undying gratitude. The last ten years or so he's not been in good health, and they have done everything for him, and for us.
One reason is the VA hospital's gratitude of the fact that we didn't simply drop him off and not see him again until the funeral, as far too many people do. No, we have practically been overprotective parents. Sarah, especially, with her medical background, has always rode herd over his doctors, and after a rocky start in which she explained to the doctor that he had lots of patients, but she just had one father, there's been nothing but cooperation.
In fact, I don't know whether it was subliminal based on the fact that we were always there seeing him (when he was an inpatient) or just his personality, but the staff was always as protective of Ray as we were. In fact, one staff member is planning to write a book about her experiences, and says she'll be including a chapter about him. He was always so happy -- especially when he was the president of the patient advocate committee -- that whenever she had a prospective patient that was reluctant to enter the nursing him, she would take him (or her) for a tour and "happen" to run into Ray. He never failed her. The patient always decided that it must be an OK place, if Ray was so happy.
But he was always happy. Even when his Alzheimer's-based dementia became signficant, he never got nasty, or crabby, the way that some people do. He was always happy, always trying to make other people happy.
But he's gone now, and the pain of losing him is lessened somewhat by the understanding that the infection in the bones of his foot couldn't be treated because he was no longer a candidate for surgery; we were coming to the time where the only choices were to allow him to be in agonizing pain or drug him into oblivion. We were spared that choice because he was spared the pain.
And in the end, particularly since he crossed in the VA Medical Center, the veterans took care of virtually everything. We buried him at Florida National Cemetary -- think Arlington, but in Florida -- where the VA provided the plot, opening, closing, the concrete vault, and the headstone. The VA covered the funeral home's costs in getting him from the hospital to the funeral home, and from the funeral home to the cemetary. We just had to take care of the casket , the honor guard, and a relatively small fee from the funeral home. It was, frankly, the difference between having the burial we felt he deserved, and having to cremate him.
Because of scheduling issues -- Sarah's sister Debbie couldn't make it until Thursday night, and had to leave on Monday -- we had to have the viewing at the hospital (we weren't having him embalmed) and the funeral on Friday, because the cemetary doesn't do internments on the weekend, or on Monday because of the Memorial Day holiday. Everyone was able to get everything done, just in time. We had an honor guard, which made all of the difference; we didn't even have to arrange for a priest.
(A side note; honor guards are sadly lacking in membership. If you're a veteran, which is required, please, please, please consider joining a local group. If you'e not a veteral, please, please, please consider finding a way to assist a local group. The WWII generation is dying off at a furious rate; the need for these volunteers is enormous.)
When we went to see him, we brought his artificial leg. Ray had lost his right leg below the knee about 10 years ago, and he was always very ... particular about how it went on. We'd even had problems when he was in the nursing him for his twice-annual respite sessions, in which he stayed over for two weeks so we could get a break. Because the leg was old, the nurses frequently couldn't figure out how to put it on, and Ray's dementia had long past the point where he could do it himself. But he knew how he liked it, and if it wasn't exactly right, he wouldn't go anywhere, even if it was just from the bed to his wheelchair.
So I decided that as my last act, I would go ahead and put his leg on for him. I would even tuck the strap under the way he liked it, even though it drove me crazy when he did it. And so I did.
And I came to a revelation.
I unzipped the body bag, and I saw him there. There wasn't anything I hadn't already seen; I've been changing his diapers for years, and we'd gone to see him just after he passed on Wednesday morning. But as I pulled on the stump sock and adjusted the strap, I realized something.
Some people may be really creeped out right now because they've realized that in the previous paragraph I was "touching a dead body". But I realized that no, I was just doing what we've always done; taking care of someone we loved.
What's more, I realized that really, there is no death. Now, please check your religious preferences at the door; I'm philosophising here.
A short time ago I came to a scientific realization. The universe is really just one "entity" with various parts, all describable via statistical analysis. I won't go into the details here -- that's for my Ph.D. thesis, if I ever find the time to go back to school -- but it comes down to this: everything you see, everything you here, everything you know, near, far, and unimaginably distant, they're all one entity.
If there is a soul, and I believe that there is, it is part of that one entity. When we die, we leave the physical body, but the soul doesn't change. It's just as much with us as it was before. Maybe we don't see it, maybe we don't hear it, but sometimes we don't even do that when the person is alive. Is death really that much different?
A friend of mine pointed out the "Mourn them not, miss them not" Yoda gives in "Revenge of the Sith" and how I'd said at the time that it seems easy until you get to the ones you really love. For example, I can console myself that Ray is no longer in pain, that he's no longer confused, isolated, limited in what he can do.
The thought of losing Sarah, on the other hand, was more than I could bear.
But we talked today, for a long time. We realized that if one of us were to lose the other, we wouldn't be missing them, because spiritually, we'd always be there. Instead, we'd be missing being physically with the other person. Me holding Sarah's hand. Sarah stroking my back.
I realize that the world isn't as random and arbitrary as I thought it was.
And I'm no longer afraid.
Just got home from the theater and I can say with absolute joy that Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith does not suck. In fact, it's wonderful!!!
Gotta get up early -- Wolf has a doctor's appointment for the severed tendon in his hand (long story) so I'm off to bed.
A complete review after I see the digital version tomorrow evening...
Well, I've got my tickets -- went and picked them up at the theater a couple of days ago -- and I'm ready. I've finally managed to get excited, instead of nervous. Keeping my fingers crossed...
Technorati tags: Star Wars | StarWars | ROTS | Revenge of the Sith | Episode III | Darth Tater
I do have a few affiliate links on my site, but I'm not a marketer, and I don't really emphasise them much. So I was really surprised to get an email yesterday evening from the person who runs Write A Book Now, a program that shows you how to write a book in 14 days. I took the free course oh, a year ago, and I found it to be very useful, so I added a link to my page. But the last time I redid the home page, I took it off, but apparently I didn't take it off the individual archive template. So yesterday, Steve Manning writes to let me know that he's got $89 in affilliate fees for me, and where should he send them.
I'm bringing this up because yes, the free email course is really handy, so you ought to go ahead and sign up for it. Even if you don't buy the full course, it's time well spent. Plus, it's nice to see that someone's honest; it would have been really easy for Steve to just hold the money. I'm sure he could see that I hadn't logged into the affilliate system in a while. But he contacted me anyway, and that's just great.
So do yourself a favor and check out this course.
Technorati tags: Writing
You know the old saying, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is"? Unfortunately, it's probably true. I've taken to checking out anybody who wants me to give them money with the Better Business Bureau. You can search by name (with or without location), phone number -- so far the most reliable key, I've found -- and website URL. Amazing how many complaints a company can rack up in a 36 month period.
OK, I took a leap and called the theater where I saw AOTC, and they are showing Revenge of the Sith in digital, but the midnight show is sold out. I bought tickets for the 19th, but now, so I go and see the midnight show locally, in analog, or do I wait and see it for the first time in digital? (Update: I could have saved myself a lot of trouble and checked out TheForce.Net's list of all the digital theaters in the US.)
Yes, I'm obsessing. I know I am. I'll get over it.
Anyway, if you are in the Florida region and you want to see it in digital, you can try AMC Pleasure Island. Supposedly on their website, you can see "DP" or "DLP" after the name of the movie, but I couldn't find it. If you're interested, the following shows on the 19th are in digital, and currently have seats available: 10:30am, 2pm, 5:25pm, and 9:00pm.
I'll be in the 5:25pm audience. If you're going then, drop me a note. Maybe we can meet up!
Technorati tags: StarWars | Star Wars | ROTS | movies | personal
OK, I did it. I bought tickets for the midnight premiere of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Or should I say, I bought my BACKUP tickets. The tickets I bought are for the nearest theater with stadium seating. Nice theater, not too far away.
But it's not digital.
I saw Attack of the Clones in digital that first night. Had to drive 2 hours to Downtown Disney, because it was the closest theater showing it in digital, and afterwards, I found out they were showing it digitally about 45 minutes away, in Pinellas Park. But this time I can't find ANYWHERE that's showing it in digital!
This is more than just me trying to see it in the best possible quality. After AOTC, I found out that because prints have to be produced early, the digital version was actually slightly DIFFERENT from the non-digital version. (Notably, you don't see Anakin's mechanical hand in the analog version. It's there in the DVD, of course.)
So I'll be checking and checking and checking and hopefully, I'll catch them when they go on sale and find a theater SOMEWHERE in Florida that's showing it in digital and catch midnight tickets.
And if I do, somebody can have these. Otherwise... at least I'm covered.
I need to sell my house. I just can't do this any more. I want out. I want to have a nice little farm with horses and ducks and most of all, QUIET. But first I need to sell my house. I'm thinking I need a professional stager, like on those tv shows where they take a house that's not selling, change a few things, and put it back on the market. Yeah, that's what I need.
The onslaught has begun. The Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith merchandise is in stores, which means that if I want to make it to the movie unspoiled, I will have to be very careful in Wal*mart. When The Phantom Menace was pending, I found out that Padme was the queen masquerading as a handmaiden by carelessly reading a plastic cup. When Attack of the Clones was on its way, I knew better than to do that, but was still spoiled by a poster that showed Palpatine and Dooku with the legend "The Order of the Sith". ARG!
But this time it's worse. After averting my eyes at Wal*Mart -- though Sarah did show me Darth Tater, a Darth Vader version of Mr. Potato Head that cracked me up -- I went to a bookstore and discovered that the novelization of Revenge of the Sith is already in the stores!
You know what that means, right? That means that there are, at this moment, just hours after it hit the stores, people who have already read it and know exactly what's going to happen. GAH. I was raving about it as we left the bookstore and the clerk said, "But you already know what's going to happen."
"Sure," I said, "ultimately we all knew what was going to happen in 1977, but still..."
And then he said something that, while seemingly innoccuous, WAS A FREAKIN' SPOILER!!! Not five minutes after I saw the FREAKIN' BOOK!
Yes, I know I'm being irrational. I know I'm being obsessive. But here's the thing: I saw the first movie at the age of eight. My whole life has been a matter of waiting for the next Star Wars movie. Now there will BE no next Star Wars movie.
In some ways, I feel like my life changed in major ways with that first film, and somewhere in my head there's this nagging thought that after I see the final installment, I'm somehow going to have to grow up.
And I don't want to.
Technorati Tags: Star Wars | Revenge Of The Sith | ROTS | movies | Mr. Potato Head |
I said it in a comment, but I just wanted to come out here and thank everybody who's been holding good thoughts for my wife's dad, Ray. He's still got pneumonia, and he's not out of the woods yet, but he's been taken out of isolation and he's doing much better.
Thank you so much!
Sarah's dad has been ill since before Thanksgiving, and we just received word that he's been moved from the nursing home part of the VA to the hospital because he has pneumonia. We're on our way over there now. Please pray for him.
Thank you.
Technorati tag: Personal
I've been thinking for a while -- especially after being reminded by a post of Bruce Sterling's -- that soon, if it hasn't happened already, there will be more Chinese speakers online than English speakers. (Which might explain all the Chinese-language spam I keep getting.) Scott Nance brings up the point again in a commentary on the rising Chinese juggernaught. He also reminds us of all the Chinese slang in Firefly, which as you know I loved. Interesting, I was just re-watching it this weekend, so I wish that I'd had Scott's pointer to the Firefly Chinese Pinyinary beforehand. It translates all of the Chinese in the series, which is pretty cool.
But seriously, I need to find me a good Chinese audio course for the car. I took German in high school and Russian in college, but I don't remember much of either. I've done the audio-tape route for Spanish more recently, and if I go to Mexico I'm probably at the level that I won't think everyone around me is plotting against me, but that's about it.
But if I'm going to stay competitive in this market, I suspect Chinese is the way to go...
My nephew, Jake, is four years old, and he's so smart that the pediatrician can't even measure his intelligence because the scale only goes up to age seven. He lives 1000 miles away from me, but I met him for the first time a couple of years ago during the big Northeast blackout, when I got stranded in New York. He was really sweet, and I could see from his personality a lot of why people said he was just like me at that age. Given his obvious intelligence -- he was spelling multisyllabic words at two -- I took it as a compliment.
Today I had lunch with my mother, who informed me that Jake has been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism.
Jake's fortunate, though. Apparently, the doctor said, he has all of the "good" qualities that come with that diagnosis, and none of the "bad" ones. Unsure of what that meant, I went off in search of information on Asperger's. [Update: what it actually meant is that my mother mis-interpreted what my sister said. Jake was tested for Asperger's, but because he only scored high on the cognitive portion -- he is, as I said, extraordinarily intelligent -- and not on the negative areas, such as interpersonal relationships, he is offically NOT diagnosed with Asperger's. But the rest of this post still stands.]
I'm a little shaken by what I've found.
If you live in Silicon Valley, you probably already know this, but apparently there has been a huge spike in the number of children diagnosed with autism, especially in areas with high concentrations of, well, geeks. Why? Well, an article in Wired, The Geek Syndrome, points to a potential reason.
Let's put it this way. If you're a programmer or an engineer and you work with a large number of other programmers or engineers, you know someone with autism. Period. They may not even know it. It might even be you.
But apparently those "good" qualities the pediatrician was talking about are closely related to the creativity and focus that make us good at what we do. A few of the necessary genes, apparently, is a Good Thing.
Too many, though, is a Bad Thing.
Thing is, where people who are borderline autistic, or who have Asperger's, used to gravitate towards professions (and attitudes) in which they were unlikely to reproduce (such as monks and "strange old aunts"), they are now becoming programmers and engineers and starting to wind up in the same profession, where they meet each other, get married, and ... well ... produce children.
It's been a running joke for some time that autism runs rampant in the tech industry. As the Wired article points out, Bill Gates is regularly rumored to have it. Think I'm overestimating? There's a screening test, the Autism Quotient (AQ) linked from the article. Pass the URL around your office and see what you come up with.
I don't even want to tell you what my score was.
So here's my question: if the genes that give us the ability to succeed and change the world ultimately cause problems when they become too concentrated, could it lead to a breakdown in society? Autism rates are rising around the world. Are we just a generation or two from an intellectual armageddon?
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Technorati tags: autism, intelligence, evolution
I got my first tech job off Usenet. I remember lots of conversations in rec.arts.starwars, back when you could actually HAVE a conversation. Ah, it's sad to see the decline of Usenet. I hope Molly's right, and that the departure of AOL will make it less desireable for spammers so the rest of us can come back and enjoy our little town.
I'm a little bit frustrated to realize that Long Way Round is almost a DVD. That is, Ewan MacGregor and Charlie Boorman's bike trip around the world has been released in Europe, but not here in the states. This series was just absolutely captivating, and I don't even like motorcycles. Please, please, go to the above link and tell Amazon you want to know when the disc will be released. You don't have to buy it, but Amazon will use it to tell the production company approximately how many people are waiting for it. In the meantime, though, if you did see the show, Ewan and Charlie (Like how I use their first names? Sorry, guys, I just feel like I know you after this. Don't worry, I know I really don't. :) ) wrote a book about it, Long Way Round : Chasing Shadows Across the World. Reviews hint that if you didn't see the show, you might not appreciate the book, but if you did, like me, it seems like a great reminder of how life changing that trip must have been for them.
And if you didn't see it, all the more reason to tell Amazon you want the DVD! (And for anybody who's got a PAL TV, you don't have to wait to buy the Long Way Round DVD!)
I majored in Physics in college and not Computer Science, so when I got my first job as a programmer, about 4 years after I graduated, and my boss, a couple of years younger than me, started talking about "design patterns," I was sure that I had missed out on a lot by skipping computers in college. Later, when I started to encounter Unified Modeling Language (UML), I was once again hit with this feeling of inadequacy. Now, I'm on a "find out what I've been missing" kick, because I've discovered that I didn't know about design patterns when I was in college is because they didn't freakin' exist yet! Ditto for UML, but I'm picking them both up pretty quick.
When will people learn that blogs are not private? I mean, when I'm tempted to write something about my personal life, or about work, I think very, very hard about it. I know you think the person you're talking about would never in a million years read your blog. Guess what. You're wrong. If you can't get over the deep seated need to write about your deepest, most private thoughts, save yourself some heartache and get one of those diaries with a lock on it.
I'm thinking about my plans for the next year, and part of it includes what new content I'm going to write. Simon St. Laurent has given me an interesting thought, in Starting Small. He points out that most resources about J2ME and its counterpart, the .NET Compact Framework, focus on what's missing -- what you can do in "regular" Java and .NET, but not on the smaller systems. Why not teach them from scratch, as though they're all there is? Hm.
What a way to start a new year. Check out The Command Post for links to places where you can help victims of the tsunami. Last night the body count reached 150,000. My God.
I'll freely admit that I've been obsessed with Star Wars since I saw the first movie at the age of nine. I can tell you just about anything about it (as long as it involves the movies; unfortunately I haven't had time to keep up with the gazillion books, hard as I've tried). I find the Force a reasonable allegory for religion and faith. And I'm terrified that the last movie is going to suck.
And of course I'm not alone. This is a film that literally transformed not only filmmaking, but also an entire generation of kids who saw it. It made its way into popular culture in a way that has rarely, if ever, been seen.
Even George Lucas will tell you it's not even science fiction, it's space opera. If you look at the plot of that first film as an adult, it's almost embarrassingly simple. In fact, that's why those who didn't like it have such an easy time looking down their nose at it, and at those who love it.
So why was it such effective storytelling?
For my birthday, my wife got me the DVD set of the first Star Wars trilogy, and this week I've finally gotten a chance to sit down and watch it with the commentary. I've always known that Lucas was inspired by Japanese movies such as "The Seven Samurai", and that he had done a lot of research into Joseph Campbell's writings on heroes and such. But what I discovered is that not only had he done WAY more research than I'd thought, but he'd intentionally structured the story around these basic archetypes that have been in storytelling for thousands of years.
So what looks, on the surface, like a simple story is really tied to basic, deep-rooted psychological threads that most of us don't even know are pulling at us. That's why it was so deeply affecting for so many millions of people -- even though most didn't know why.
I'm sure that there are writers who can happen on something so profound without having a conscious understanding of what they're doing. But knowing precisely what you're going for makes it so much easier, and so much more effective.
My head is spinning thinking about it, and what this means for my own writing, both fiction and non-fiction.
Been pretty busy lately, which is, frankly, par for the course, but it's been a little bit worse than usual lately. My father-in-law, Ray, lives with us, and in addition to being a double amputee (half his left foot, right leg below the knee) and diabetes, he's also in the final stages of Alzheimer's disease. We made the mistake of watching a documentary on the disease, so we know that eventually, he'll just get to the point where he's catatonic, and then he'll stop breathing.
But right now, aside from swallowing difficulties -- everything he eats or drinks has to be the consistency of honey -- our big problem is dementia. Dementia can be simple, such as forgetting where he is at that moment, or that we've asked him to do something (or not do something, like take his diaper off) but sometimes it's more serious.
A few weeks ago, I had a big problem because he wouldn't let me change his diaper because of the other five people in the room. No, there was nobody there but me and him. So I asked the "other people" to leave, and that was fine, except for the other two, who were looking down at him through the ceiling. I asked them to stop, and he was satisfied with that, but yesterday we had an even bigger problem.
To keep him from falling out of bed, and to assist him in sitting up (which has become, as of late, a real challenge) we got him a hospital bed. Full rails and everything. Day before yesterday, I came in in the morning and he was once again on the floor. As far as I can tell, he swung himself around so that he was crosswise at the top of the bed, then slid out through the 18 inches or so between the end of the rail and the head of the bed.
After determining that he was not hurt -- he scraped and bruised his backside a little, but nothing serious -- I asked him why.
"Because the other guy was sleeping in the bed, and I didn't think I should have to share."
Later in the day he spiked a fever, and we brought him back to the hospital for the second time in 8 days. We're still waiting for test results to find out why.
Well, I was a little nervous about reactions to the How to Write an Effective Tutorial presentation I gave a couple of weeks ago, but according to the feedback it seems to have gone pretty well. Oh, and it'd have to be a soda; I don't drink beer. Sorry.
I just heard a commercial for "My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss". Twelve ivy-league graduates compete in an "Apprentice"-like competition, but like "My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance" the whole thing is a joke; the "boss" is an actor. Last night I watched "FilmFakers" in which everybody was in on the joke except the three unknown actors cast in what was probably the worst movie never made. Has reality-tv exhausted itself to the point where it has to resort to self-parody already?
I hope so.
I've decided it's time that I tried to make some money online. I've been building the backend systems that allow other people to do it for almost a decade, it's time I started.
So I've started reading up on current trends in Internet Marketing. One interesting piece I've found is a free ebook, 52 Secrets My Mom Never Told Me About Internet Marketing, by James Maduk. I'm still reading through it -- it's 300 pages, with hours of embedded video -- but it seems to provide some pretty valuable information. His new thing is to give away this book, and he's included an affiliate program -- hence this download of mine -- so I've decided to go ahead and post it. I'll also be periodically posting my feedback on what seems to work and what doesn't, so this should be interesting...
(BTW, in the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I have not yet purchased the subscription for the videos that are embedded. I plan to go through the text of the book first before deciding.)
Probably the most popular post chronicles my trouble with the shifter in my Saturn. Lots of people have read it, and specifically, lots of people have commented, leaving their suggestions, and linked to it as they have documented their own problems. My favorite is one I came across today, as a network admin fixes his car. Hehehehe...
Personally, I don't know what's going to happen with my poor little Saturn. Two months ago, I had to have $1000 work done on the transmission, so I had them replace the clutch, which probably only had another 10K miles in it. So of course, last month, the clutch hydraulics system, which has been slowly leaking for 4 years, finally went. (Another $335.)
And I still haven't replaced the radiator fan motor or the catalytic converter. I figure I can watch the temperature and just turn the heat on to cool the engine when it gets too hot. (Which is miserable here in Florida, but that's besides the point.) And the neighbors can live with the noise for a while.
I mean, just those two parts, if I had a professional do it, will bring the three month total to almost $2000.
On the other hand, she's my baby. I've gone more than 185,000 miles in that car, and she's always been good to me.
So right now I'm thinking that I'll keep it and give it to my son when I get a new car. Right now I'm looking at a used van with a tow package and wheelchair lift. With seven people in the house, and two of them in wheelchairs, I can sure use it. (Why used? It's the difference between $3,700 and $37,000.)
We'll see.
I was first introduced to Richard Feynman in college, when our Quantum Dynamics class used his QED as its textbook, along with selections from The Feynman Lectures. Richard Feynman was a genious who, to me, was at his best when he was completely out of his element. Feynman was the one who solved the question of what happened to the Space Shuttle Challenger. After being stonewalled by NASA officials and scientists who wouldn't tell him what would happen to the O-Rings if they got cold, he solved the problem by asking for a sample, and then, at a commission hearing, dipping it ice water and shattering it on the table. He was constantly trying to solve problems that may have had nothing to do with physics (at first glance) from parallel computer processing to getting invited to a remote villiage at the center of Asia without using his reputation for assistance.
That's what I loved about him when I was reading QED, and that's what I love about him now. He can take something tremendously complicated and boil it down to the essentials in a way that anyone can undestand it. I've always strived to be that way. In fact, I've always joked that I make thing simple for a living. This quote from Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine (a fascinating portrait of how he worked) says it best:
Because even when Richard didn't understand, he always seemed to understand better than the rest of us. And whatever he understood, he could make others understand as well. Richard made people feel like a child does, when a grown-up first treats him as an adult. He was never afraid of telling the truth, and however foolish your question was, he never made you feel like a fool.
If people can say that about me, I'll consider myself a success.
So I've got just one more piece to finish, and I'll have officially left my job with Studio B. More on that later, but in case you were thinking that chaos would let that one go by, I just lost about an hour of work time. Why?
A four foot rattlesnake on my front porch.
Nobody was hurt, thankfully, but this was one time I was glad Ferret was here. Apparently he used to raised them for medical purposes, and he has a friend who milks them. So in case you're ever faced with this kind of situation, here's what you do, assuming that you have two people. (Remember, I'm not a professional. Proceed at your own risk.)
Take a long -- in our case, about 8 feet -- PVC pipe. Ours was 1", and it seemed to work well. Thread a rope through it so that you have a loop on one side and you can pull it tight on the other side. Loop the rope around its neck -- hopefully you can do it without getting right up on to it, like Ferret did -- pull it tight with a slow but steady motion, and pick it up in the air. Place it in a pillowcase, head first if necessary, and spin the pillowcase before tying it off in a knot.
Then go sit down and relax until you stop shaking.
I suppose shorter pipes and one-man jobs are just as possible, I just would rather not have the opportunity to try it again.
Hurricane Charley hit my grandparents. Frances hit us, but thankfully had to cross the state before it got here, so I just lost one tree, which blessedly fell away from the house. Now it seems we're in the direct path of Ivan, which has been upgraded to a category five. After what I saw in Punta Gorda, I'm off to board up the remaining windows.
Colorado's looking better every day.
Everybody who knows I live in Florida has been calling or emailing to make sure that we're OK. Actually, I'm north of Tampa, but when it was headed straight for us, I almost made the decision to evacuate to my parent's house -- in Punta Gorda.
My parents are in New Jersey, but my 88 year old grandparents and their caretaker were in the Punta Gorda huse. The house lost its screen porch and a piece of stone tile came through a glass block window, but that was pretty much the worst of the damage, which is a miracle because the eye passed right over them.
But of course, they have no power. I got a frantic call from my mom on Saturday morning so we loaded up a rented van with a generator and some plywood, water, batteries, etc. and we headed on down. I can't begin to describe the devastation down there. You see it on TV, but it's nothing compared to being there. Houses flattened, businesses with missing walls, collapsing buildings everywhere, downed power lines, traffic lights and highway signs missing, freeway lampposts snapped in half with the tops slammed against the ground as though they were made of aluminum foil...
And the people. Watching them trying to put their lives back together. We spent three hours on Sunday trying to find gasoline to keep the generator running. We finally had to go 40 miles up the interstate.
It was really a life-altering experience. It really reminds you how many things you take for granted, and how many of the things that are SOOO important in every day life are just insignificant.
Just arrived in my inbox. It's a "send this to seven people" kind of thing, so I'm sure the author won't mind if I reprint it here. I'm dealing with a shower of bricks right now, so it's pretty appropriate.
THE BRICK
A young and successful executive was traveling down a neighborhood street, going a bit too fast in his new Jaguar. He was watching for kids darting out from between parked cars and slowed down when he thought he saw something. As his car passed, no children appeared. Instead, a brick smashed into the Jag's side door!
He slammed on the brakes and backed the Jag back to the spot where the brick had been thrown. The angry driver then jumped out of the car, grabbed the nearest kid and pushed him up against a parked car shouting, "What was that all about and who are you? Just what the heck are you doing? That's a new car and that brick you threw is going to cost a lot of money. Why did you do it?"
The young boy was apologetic. "Please, mister...please, I'm sorry but I didn't know what else to do," he pleaded. "I threw the brick because no one else would stop.." With tears dripping down his face and off his chin, the youth pointed to a spot just around a parked car. "It's my brother," he said. "He rolled off the curb and fell out of his wheelchair and I can't lift him up."
Now sobbing, the boy asked the stunned executive, "Would you please help me get him back into his wheelchair? He's hurt and he's too heavy for me."
Moved beyond words, the driver tried to swallow the rapidly swelling lump in his throat. He hurriedly lifted the handicapped boy back into the wheelchair, then took out a linen handkerchief and dabbed at the fresh scrapes and cuts. A quick look told him everything was going to be okay.
"Thank you and may God bless you," the grateful child told the stranger. Too shook up for words, the man simply watched the boy push his wheelchair-bound brother down the sidewalk toward their home
It was a long, slow walk back to the Jaguar. The damage was very noticeable, but the driver never bothered to repair the dented side door. He kept the dent there to remind him of this message:
"Don't go through life so fast that someone has to throw a brick at you to get your attention!"
God whispers in our souls and speaks to our hearts. Sometimes when we don't have time to listen, He has to throw a brick at us. It's our choice to listen or not.
I know that I work too much, but what bothers me isn't so much how much I do as what I don't get to do. Like saving tadpoles.
My pool pump hasn't worked for about 2 years, but now I'm resigned to get the pool swimmable. (The fact that's it's been 90 degrees for days may have something to do with it.) Thing is, if you put a large body of water out there and just, well, leave it, the frogs WILL find it. And they'll ... do what frogs do.
So now I have a pool filled with thousands of tadpoles in various states of development, which made me feel really bad when I decided to drain the pool to get it ready.
Fortunately, Cheyenne and Dakota are here, so now that the pool's down to about 4 inches, they're in there gathering up tadpoles. And let me tell you, tearing myself away wasn't easy. It's a simple pleasure, laughing while the tadpoles tickle your feet, gathering them up and putting them into a container. I miss that kind of thing.
That's the answer, really. What do I want to do with my life? I want to have time to gather tadpoles.
People with Chronic Fatigue or Fibromyalgia are often looked at as "faking it" or that it's "all in their head" but these two diseases are apparently related to a verifyable bacteria that can be treated with antibiotics. I personally have never claimed either nor considered myself disabled, but I do have lots of pain most of the time, as well as a bad stomach and other issues. (The fatigue I can easily explain, given my schedule.)
So I was particularly interested in this report that these two diseases (and Gulf War syndrome) have been linked to a particular set of bacteria, and have been successfully treated with antibiotics.
We have been conducting research on mycoplasmal respiratory infections that cause a flu-like illness that results in systemic CFS and/or FMS. Earlier we conducted a pilot study of Desert Storm veterans and their families. This very preliminary study showed that 55/73 GWI patients, including symptomatic family members, responded to an anitibiotic (doxycycline) that is effective against a variety of mycoplasmas, and most of the soldiers and their symptomatic family members eventually recovered from their illness (4). Since this study we have continued to gather evidence that mycoplasmal infections, and probably other chronic infectious agents, are causing the chronic signs and symptoms that are similar to CFS/FMS in approximately one half of GWI cases, and these illnesses can be successfully treated with antibiotics (5,6). As GWI progresses, there are a number of accompanying problems, including MS-like, ALS-like and Arthritis like signs/symptoms, and this is also consistent with mycoplasmal infections that penetrate into nerve cells, synovial cells, etc.
For a while now, I've been thinking about the idea of posting chapters of a book as I write them and inviting comment. I've been particularly thinking about it lately, as I ponder a book that's more ... well ... philosophical than my usual work. (More on that when I've figured out how to express it in words rather than just vague notions and gestures.) Anyway, I must have been thinking too loudly, because today's San Jose Mercury News talks about what happens when authors open texts online for others to edit.
I do think it's going to happen more and more often, as we fully acclimate to "social media".
Ferret's back in the hospital. Yesterday we were on our way to pick them up for the weekend -- well, Sarah and Marilyn were on their way, I'm just too swamped -- and he spiked a fever of 104.3, with a pain in his side. Kathy called an ambulance and Sarah picked up the kids and headed to the hospital. They got the fever down, but they're doing tests to figure out what the pain is. The kids are here with us. Here's hoping they're right about him being out of the hospital in 3-4 days.
My doctor won't prescribe me anything for Adult ADD unless I get tested, but he can't tell me what I need to do to get tested. That's OK, I don't really want to take meds for it anyway, I just want to concentrate better. Especially when I'm trying to get started on a book, like I am now.
Phillip K. Dick was always terrified that he suffered from schizophrenia, which alters your perception. If you're not familiar, it's not the same as Multiple Personality Disorder (or Dissociative Identity Disorder) but rather a medical disorder in which you experience things that aren't there (such as seeing, hearing, or even feeling things) or believing things that aren't real, most commonly of the paranoid variety, such as thinking everyone can hear or see their thoughts, or that there is a vast conspiracy against them. Yesterday someone whose sister was just diagnosed posted to Slashdot asking about Schizophrenia Experiences and Suggestions? and the ensuing discussion is absolutely fascinating. I never read Slashdot comments -- until now. Schizophrenia is exacerbated by isolation and lonliness, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised at how many Slashdot readers -- probably more isolated by choice of profession than the average -- admit to suffering from the disorder.
I'm not saying that nerds in general or Slashdot readers in particular are crazy. Please don't generalize my comments.
But at the risk of sounding like I, myself, need to be evaluated, let me ask a Phillip K. Dick-esque question:
How do you define reality?
Diana Jones is a wonderful person and an aquaintance of mine. Her son, Rick, was shot in the chest by an irate driver last night at about 10:30pm. The bullet bounced off his rib, nicked his liver, and lodged near his diaphragm. He's currently hospitalized in critical condition and could use all the prayers he can get. Here's the details, from First Coast News. (In this case, I hope they'll forgive me for copying and pasting.)
CLAY COUNTY, FL -- Police are looking for the person who shot a man in the chest while his wife and teenage daughter were in the car.
Friday night at 10:00pm, a man was shot at the intersection of Brannen Field Road and Old Jennings Road in Middleburg. The victim was in the passenger side of his pick-up riding with his wife and daughter.
Investigators say the victim got out of the car and exchanged words with the suspect. That's when the suspect pulled out a gun and shot him in the chest.
The victim's wife drove them one mile up the road to a gas station on Blanding Boulevard. He was airlifted to Shands with critical injuries. Investigators tell First Coast News he is awake and giving them information about the suspect.
The suspect is described as a white male with a medium build. He was wearing a baseball hat and white t-shirt at the time of the shooting. He was driving a light colored, possibly beige or off-white, four-door sedan.
Investigators believe the suspect's car has front end damage on the left side, possibly a broken headlight. The suspect hit another car as he tried to flee the scene.
Investigators say two men driving a Dodge Ram Pick-up may have inadvertently seen the shooting. The Sheriff's Office would like to hear from them (904-264-6512).
You can also call our partner, First Coast Crime Stoppers at 1-866-845-TIPS.
It's okay to find yourself out of balance at times. What's not okay is watching a year go by without making the kind of significant life changes that will bring you a greater sense of balance.
Just came across this thought in an excerpt from Walking the Tightrope: Solutions for Achieving Life Balance Without a Net. Anybody who knows me can tell you that I've been out of balance for many years now. (Note I said "out of balance" and not "unbalanced". That's another conversation. :) ) I'm trying very hard to take those life-changing steps, but it's tough. Still don't have the house sold, even though major, major, major deadlines are about to smack me in the face.
I frequently achieve seemingly super-human tasks at work, but getting my life together seems to be a challenge I'm constantly just a hair shy of conquering.
I shouldn't complain, I suppose. Lately I have made some great strides. who knows, I might even figure out how to pull this off.
California's Secretary of State has banned the insecure e-voting machines that Diebold tinkered with after certification for the last election. California now requires that voters have the option to vote on paper, and has required a paper trail for the e-voting machines. A giant step forward! Time to lobby the other 49 Secretaries of State, perhaps?
Two weeks ago, I told you about Lynn Carroll, and how she was killed in an accident on her way to visit her husband in the hospital, leaving behind two small children. Next weekend, the Chambers community will be holding a huge flea market/garage sale on the powwow grounds to raise money to cover her funeral expenses and try to set something up for the girls, Cheyenne, 9, and Dakota, who turns 6 tomorrow.
The funeral home is working with us to keep expenses down, but even so they are just over $3100, and the community has raised $900. There are four ways you can help:
So where are the grounds? They're in Orange Springs, Florida, at 22400 NE Hwy 315, between Fort McCoy and 318. The sale starts at 9am on Saturday, May 1, 2004.
Lynn and Ferret have always been there for everyone. They had nothing, and yet they were always there to help when others were in need. This is our chance to help them and those they care about most: the kids.
My son always thinks it's ridiculous that the last thing I say before I walk out the door to go somewhere is always "I love you."
This past weekend, Sarah and Eric set up at the Chambers Farm Gathering, which is basically a powwow up in northern Florida. On Saturday, our friend Ferret, who's been on the list for a lung transplant for about a year, was hospitalized once more. As we were leaving after packing up on Monday, the last person we ran into was his wife, Lynn. She gave us the lowdown on his condition, and said she didn't expect him to come home from the hospital this time. She also rolled her eyes at how ornery he was being.
Sarah reminded her that it was the medication and the disease talking, and that she couldn't argue with a disease. She reminded Lynn that she needed to watch what she said, because she didn't want the last thing he heard from her to be anger. She also reminded Lynn that she needed to take care of herself, and get some rest so she'd be able to take care of their two young daughters.
Lynn thanked her and hugged us both goodbye.
Last night, on her way to the hospital to visit Ferret, Lynn was killed in a head-on collision.
If I ever get out to the farm, one of the things I want to do is start growing vegetables. My friend Molly just sent me a link to Seeds Trust, a company that preserves and sells heirloom seeds. (These are the seeds that actually germinate from year to year, rather than the sterile hybrid varieties most farmers use.)
From their catalog:
If we are going to sustain a genetically diverse agriculture, we need to redevelop a network of gardeners and farmers, each producing, saving and trading seeds adapted to their own unique conditions. Agriculture was developed and sustained in this manner for 10,000 years.
If we are going to redevelop a network of gardeners and farmers that produce, save and trade seeds, we need a new kind of seed company. We need companies that don't just sell gardeners and farmers all their seeds each year. Instead, the seed company of the future will search the world's remaining agricultural resources constantly to find new supplies of important, adapted, open-pollinated varieties. It will then teach its customers to save their own seeds from individual plants doing best in their own gardens and farms.
Seeds Trust was started for this reason. It is nothing more than a conservative, long-term plan to help support and increase the priceless diversity now being squandered.
I'm getting started selling on eBay, so I've been thinking a lot about physical auctions. Apparently you can get some good deals there to turn around and sell electronically. We'll see. The National Auctioneers Association has a good list of upcoming auctions, and I can't wait until after I move to start going to them.
In the meantime, I've got that Giant Tinkertoys to list. (So far there's only one on eBay and it's going for $76.) Here's hoping...
It's been a week since I posted here, but it's not for lack of trying. Since the last time I posted, I have:
This is a bit hectic even for me.
In response to a followup from David Bridgewater's comment on things I haven't done yet, I was looking up Sealand and discovered Googlism, a site that "will find out what Google.com thinks of you, your friends or anything! " So of course, like any good netizen, I looked up Googlisms for myself and discovered this gem:
nicholas chase is "stable and functioning at the highest possible level"
They obviously don't know me.
I'm working on my blurby-blurb for this week's XML Reference Guide and ran across What is a Death March Project and Why Do They Happen?
Having worked on nothing BUT death march projects during my time at Site Dynamics, I was definitely interested. But I found this interesting note:
Science fiction aficionados will recognize the similarity between Zahniser's advice and the wonderful aphorism from Robert Heinlein in Time Enough for Love: the Lives of Lazarus Long (Ace Books, re-issue edition, 1994): "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
I've never been a big Heinlein fan, but I do love the quote. I figure I've got to work on planning an invasion, butchering a hog (which may happen in the next year or two), conning a ship, designing a building, writing a sonnet (which is probably the least likely to be accomplished), and setting a bone. I'll leave dying gallantly to chance, thank you.
If I can ever get it ready, I'm about to put my house up for sale. If you're (seriously) interested in a decent-sized house on the water in central Florida, contact me. When I finally get my act together, I'll post some photos of the house itself, but here's a couple of pictures of the view of the sunset from the back porch.
My wife is helping a friend with a dog show at the Florida State Fair, and so he sent her an email with instructions.
... So all I need now is some signs showing the type of each breed. They should be small enough to be easily carried in the parade, but with large enough lettering that they can be easily read. Maybe a handle of some sort. And of course the lettering should be bold.
Other than that, I leave the details to you.
I have some pretty significant carpal tunnel problems. Before I got a split keyboard, I looked like I had a half a golf ball under my skin. Six months later, it looks like half a grape, but I'm still in some pretty significant pain most days. So I'm intrigued by the NoHands Mouse. It's a pair of foot pedals, with one used to move the mouse, and the other for clicking. At about $300 bucks, though, it's going to have to wait for a while.
I'd be interested if anybody's used, it, or anything like it, though.
The FBI has issued a warning for police to watch for people carrying almanacs.
The FBI noted that use of almanacs or maps may be innocent, "the product of legitimate recreational or commercial activities." But it warned that when combined with suspicious behavior -- such as apparent surveillance -- a person with an almanac "may point to possible terrorist planning." ... The FBI said information typically found in almanacs that could be useful for terrorists includes profiles of cities and states and information about waterways, bridges, dams, reservoirs, tunnels, buildings and landmarks. It said this information is often accompanied by photographs and maps.
In the meantime, an Air Force pilot asked a clerk at Staples (where she's a regular customer) for information on buying Flight Simulator for her 10-year-old, and got nighttime visit from police.
Tell me something: isn't there a point at which it becomes easier to just stop trying to rule the world?
(For list watchers: these links aren't on the list, but were eventually followed from number 138.)
I'm getting ready to move (one of these years) an my wife just found a box of things that we printed off the web years ago. So far not one of the sites still exists, but in my attempt to find one I came across Cowboy Wisdom. With my pending transition from desk potato to farmer/rancher, I thought I'd take a look. There's some pretty good gems here. I think I'll feature one every day or thereabouts. Here's today's:
If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.
I understand that there are people who read all of the blogs on their blogroll every day, or at least, every few days. And they even find time to comment on them. I want to know who these people are and how they manage to make a living.
I have, in essence, three blogs that I am supposed to be updating on a regular basis. I'm supposed to do at least three blogs a week for the XML Reference Guide, I've got this one, and I've got The Vanguard Science Fiction Report, which has been fallow so long I'm embarrassed to admit that it's mine. So today, now that the weeks of emergency room visits and surgeries in the family have settled down into the normal level of chaos, I sat down and went through my blogroll for potential posting material.
I thought it might be a little educational to document the "flow" of my surfing, and how it eventually gets turned into actual postings, so here is the list of the "first cut". These are postings that may eventually wind up on one of my three blogs:
And some XML tools mentioned on Cafe Con Leche:
Even I can't believe how long the list is.
As you can see, it's a rather eclectic group, but it also shows the pattern of how I surf. (Note that I didn't even touch Op-Ed News today, because I know I have enough material for this blog, which is the only place it belongs, or the W3C because I've adopted a "monthly" schedule for them on InformIT.)
Over the next week or so, you can see what makes the cut and what doesn't, and what leads to other things.
We've decided to open an Amazon shop. For now, I'm using AssociatesShop, and it seems to be working pretty well, at least until I can put something together for myself. The site is The Native Path, and it sells Native American books, videos, and so on. I'm pleased to see that the music listed on the home page right now is Canyon Trilogy, by R. Carlos Nakai. I have a bunch of his stuff, and it's absolutely gorgeous. They were playing this particular set over the PA at the Lowery Park Zoo and they had to put a sign in the gift shop telling people what it was because they kept asking.
Anyway, we'll see how this goes. It's in preparation for another site I'm putting together, but that one's under wraps for now.
Now here's an interesting idea. You create a new literary format -- in this case, the "novable", a novel that is also a parable -- then invite people to "compete" for $1000 by writing their own. You charge them a $35 "processing fee," and if you like it, you pay them $1000 advance against 15% of the royalties from selling it online. The author keeps the copyright.
Interesting. Maybe I'll dust off my fiction brain cells. Not sure about that $35, though. I suppose it will do something to winnow out the serious efforts. And $1000 isn't much of an advance if you're doing this professionally. (Or at least I'd assume so from my non-fiction experience. Maybe my fiction-writing bretheren and sisteren have it even worse off.) Of course, if this is more of a personal thing than a professional thing, that's different.
I'll be interested to see how they do with this.
According to the Boston Globe, Books are back, and their pages are filled with politics, biography, and history. Allegedly, the publishing business is finally starting to rebound from September 11.
Too bad the tech market still looks like sludge.
My wife is a Christmas junkie. Every April it's a battle to get her to take down the tree. I'm afraid to show her Ugly Christmas Lights.com for fear of what she may do next year.
Last night my wife and I were having an argument over whether "Thou shalt not covet" included "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife," or whether that was a separate commandment. Turns out, it depends *Which* Ten Commandments you're looking at. Apparently the Catholics felt it necessary to separate out "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife" from "Thou shalt not covet they neighbor's goods", while collapsing "I am the Lord thy God" and "Thou shalt have no other god before me" into one.
Interestingly, after Moses smashed the tablets in Exodus 20, God supposedly replaced them with a new set with "the words that were on the first" in Exodus 34, but apparently the "new" set are completely different, with commandments such as "The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep in the month when the ear is on the corn," "All the first-born are mine," and "The fat of my feast shall not remain all night until the morning."
Well, my adrenaline is going now. I was all set to go to sleep, but it was too warm in the bedroom so my wife turned on the attic fan. Almost immediately, we smelled smoke. It's pretty cool outside, even for Florida, so it's not unreasonable that some of our neighbors would be burning their fireplaces. Sure, it's 2am, but it's Christmas, after all. Even we'd had a nice cozy evening, and oh yeah, we'd had a fire in the fireplace this evening.
My son had been in charge of it, and apparently hadn't put it out before coming upstairs to while away the evening on the computer. So I dragged myself out of bed to tell him to put it out and when I opened the bedroom door, I was practically overcome with smoke.
I threw on a robe and went running downstairs, along with both my wife and son, to find a roaring fire, but thank heavens it was all in the fireplace.
The smoke, however, was not. Apparently the airflow from the attic fan had reignited embers of the fire and simulated what would have happened if the flue had been closed.
What annoys me, though, is that the embers had been there in the first place. I pointed out to my son that twice in two days he'd had a fire going in the fireplace, and after he'd out it out there had still been embers. (The Christmas Eve embers were still glowing when we got up this morning.)
His response? "You never told me to put the embers out."
I never told him to put the embers out?!? Silly me, I thought that was inherent in "Put the fire out." Now he's trying to tell me that that crackling noise I'm hearing is just because the bricks and the metal grating are hot. Do I have "stupid" written on my forehead?
I should mention that he's seventeen. In other words, he's at the stage where he really believes that he knows everything, and for all practical purposes, he knows virtually nothing.
Oh, I'm not saying that he's stupid, or ignorant, or any of those things. He's not. He's actually a very bright kid. But I remember being seventeen, and there's a very curious thing that a seventeen year old doesn't know.
The world is deeper than it looks.
There are details that lie beneath the surface of most of the events and situations we find ourselves in that we only discover through experience. And we only get experience by trying, and sometimes, by failing.
But that's one place that the seventeen year old has the advantage. He can try and fail and get up and try again and (hopefully) never regret it.
But I, as his father, have the harder job. I have to watch.
OK, I'll bite. Kelly is running a contest to liven up her day. You gotta enter before 4:30pm TODAY, though. My guess is 302.
I'm always promising myself that I will take the time to make my websites more ... well ... useful from a promotion standpoint. BlogSearchEngine for Blog making your blog a better news source.
Someday I'll get around to writing that novel. Writers Digest has a good article on Raising the Stakes for your character. Basically, a good story requires you to make your main character really, really miserable.
I got my first email address and Internet access in 1989, before the web even broke onto the scene, so maybe I'm not a representative example, but apparently many writers hate blogs. Now if I could just get this blog to do something besides giving me an outlet in which I can write what I want, rather than what the client wants...
My wife forwarded this truly appropriate prayer to me. As usual, if this is yours and you want it removed, let me know.
Heavenly Father, Help me remember that that the jerk who cut me off in traffic last night, may be a single mother who worked nine hours that day and is rushing home to cook dinner, help with homework, do the laundry and spend a few precious moments with her children.
Help me to remember Lord, that the pierced, tattooed, disinterested young man who can't make change correctly may be a worried 19-year-old college student, balancing his apprehension over final exams with his fear of not getting his student loans for next semester.
Remind me, Lord, that the scary looking bum, begging for money in the same spot every day (who really ought to get a job)! is probably a slave to addictions that we can only imagine in our worst nightmares.
Help me to remember Lord, that the old couple walking annoyingly slow through the store aisles and blocking our shopping progress may be savoring this moment, knowing that, based on the biopsy report one of them got back last week, this will be the last year that they go shopping together.
Heavenly Father, remind us each day that, of all the gifts you've given us, the greatest gift is love. It is not enough to share that love with those we hold dear. Open our hearts not to just those who are close to us, but to all humanity. Let us be slow to judge and quick to forgive, show patience, empathy and love.
I am pretty darn proud of XML Primer Plus. I knew the subject well, and I worked hard on it. I also feel good about the fact that it covers not only Java, but also C++, VB.NET, Perl, and PHP, thanks to the help of some additional writers. The reviews have all been good, and even the four star review on Amazon says that the only reason he didn't give me five stars is because he feels that that levels should be reserved for "recognized experts in the field," which I clearly am not.
But sales have been, frankly, disappointing. I was feeling really bad about it -- until I found out that The XML Book Business is in the toilet. With very few exceptions (and frankly I can't think of any), nobody's XML books are selling.
So tell me, are you buying XML books? Why or why not?
I don't understand why I'm taking John Ritter's death as hard as I am. I mean, he was an actor. It's not like he was President of the United States, or a relative, or even someone I'd met once on a street corner. I wasn't even a huge, obsessive fan of his. I admit that I never watched 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter until he passed away. Today I watched the one hour show in which the family deals with the death of his character, and it was as though I had lost someone that I knew.
Maybe it's just that he always seemed so ... nice. Just a genuinely nice person. One of those people, I guess, who makes you believe that maybe, just maybe, there are decent people in this world after all.
In case you were wondering, the show handled it very, very well. Some understated comedy that fit in with the normal rythm of the show, but no laugh track, so you could decide for yourself whether it was appropriate to laugh. And somehow, they made a show that made it OK to miss him, and to feel genuine sorrow at his passing.
Goodbye, John.
I've come to realize that the name of this blog can be somewhat misleading. I mean, most of the time I'm talking about politics in some way, so with a name like that, it may seem like I'm an anarchist or something, but I'm really not.
The name, Chaos Magnet, really refers to the progression of my life. Nothing, but nothing, ever goes smoothly. Not that I have a terrible life, of course. Quite the contrary. I have a wonderful wife, a great son, and a nice house. I'm employed, and reasonably healthy. And I'm extraordinarily grateful for all of those things.
But I am a walking example of the Pauli Effect.
The Pauli Effect was named after physicist Wolfgang Pauli. Pauli had an interesting tendency to adversely effect experiments and machinery in the vicinity. Well, maybe "adversely" is the wrong word, but whenever he was around, the results were always strange. Once, a scientist friend wrote to him to say that he was thinking of him that afternoon because an experiment has gone awry for no discernable reason. It turned out that Pauli had been passing by on a train at that exact moment.
That, in a nutshell, is my life.
I have never really felt a "part" of the surrounding culture. Even when I was a teenager, I felt "outside" of it all. Apparently I was right. I'm sitting here watching VH1's I Love the 80s and being amazed how just how much I either missed or completely ignored. Yes, I was the world's biggest Star Wars fan, but I never saw Flashdance, Vacation, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Scarface, or just about any of the other movies that they're holding up as icons of the era. Some of the music they're mentioning, yes. Duran Duran, Flock of Seagulls, and so on. The TV, too. The A-Team, and so on. (But not, I should mention, Dukes of Hazard.)
So how out of touch was I, really?
This is really weird, actually. Because when I was a teenager, I was sure that music was the area in which I was least cool. My parents raised me on swing music, and I never, ever, seemed to be liking what everybody else was liking. And yet just about ever song they're mentioning is one of my favorites.
When I was a kid, I lived in New York City, and every Sunday, my dad would go out and get "appetizing." Now, appetizing, in case this is a word that is either regional or (more likely) peculiar to my family, is a whole range of food, including bagels, cream cheese, and various fish, including sable, creamed pickled herring, and lox heads and wings.
Now, if you've never heard of them, lox heads and wings are not what they sound like. Lox, as you may know, is smoked salmon, and most of the time it's cut into thin slices and put on cream cheese and bagels. That means that when they fillet the salmon, they have to cut off the bony art near the head (the lox head) and the part around the fins (the lox wings).
Lox heads and wings are really hard to eat, and eating them is how I got my reputation for liking food that's a challenge. They've got a lot of bone and cartilage in them, and after I've eaten a few of them, I practically need a shower to get rid of the lox smell.
When I was very little, my dad would go down to the lower east side of Manhattan and get a garbage bag full of heads and wings -- well, it seemed like a garbage bag to a five year old -- for free, since they were going to throw them out anyway. Eventually, they figured out that people actually wanted them, and my dad paid a quarter a piece. Nowadays, if you can even find them, they charge you by the pound -- the full price for lox. Suffice it to say that I don't get them much anymore.
But I did develop a taste for sushi, and when I did, salmon was a natural choice. Of course, I don't get out for sushi much either -- most authors don't make tons of money, no matter what it looks like -- so I have to content myself with the occasional fillet of salmon picked up at the grocery store. It's good, it's heathly -- lots of Omega-3, so it's brain food, which I definitely need -- and with a generous dose of salt, it tastes a lot like lox.
Lately I've had a craving for salmon, so I was thrilled when I walked into Wal-Mart and found an entire freezer case of whole salmon. (Well, beheaded, cleaned whole salmon.) They were frozen, but they were huge -- about two feet long, in fact. And at all of $5.94 each, it was a deal I just couldn't pass up.
Trouble was, I had no idea how to fillet a salmon. I followed the directions and thawed it in the refrigerator like a good boy, but absolutely mangled the thing when I tried to fillet it. Oh, I cut off the one side OK, but in trying to remove the rib bones, I muffed it, but good. So imagine my surprise (and pleasure) to find Salmon University's How to fillet a salmon. Too bad I didn't think to look it up earlier! I've still got the other side of the fish to fillet, so we'll see if I do any better with that one.
But it still won't be the same as having my dad come home with a bag of heads and wings.
My wife practically had to get me in a headlock to make me take a look at this little site, but it was worth the effort. It's a little corny, yes, but if you can get past that and really think about what it's saying, it's a nice break from the ordinary, more cynical view of life.
... fruit flies like a banana. Or so the old saying goes. (Does anybody remember the old Intergalactic Trading Company? Are they even still around?)
Last week was a killer, productivity-wise. A whole day at the doctor's with my father-in-law, a 2 hour trip to the oral surgeon to get fitted for a splint for my TMJ, laundry, financial machinations, and, of course, the debacle with getting my car fixed. (Finally financed the repair.)
I did get to see a fantastic Irish band, Inchicore. They were terrific -- better than their CD suggests, actually -- and the place was also livened up by the presence of a group of drunken Scottish soccer hooligans.
So after working through the weekend (when I wasn't getting the yard ready for a real estate agent to look at the house) I'm still behind one tutorial, one reference guide update, three XML webog entries, and a book proposal.
And so the week begins!
My car is in the shop today, and will likely stay there until at least Monday. It may stay there longer than that. Oh, it's not that the parts aren't available, or that the shop doesn't have time to fix it. The problem is that my beloved 1996 Saturn, which has given me very little trouble in the 150,000 plus miles that I've driven it, has a bad bushing in the shifter. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with cars, or with bushings (as I was when the day began) a bushing is typically a small, round, piece of plastic that goes around a piece metal that rotates, filling some of the same function that ball bearings might.
At first I was relieved to find out that the reason I couldn't shift my car out of third was not the linkage inside the transmission after all, but rather a problem with the shifter itself. After all, it's got to be cheaper to take apart the center console than the transmission, right?
Well, yes, that's true. But apparently Saturn has seen fit to take this small piece of plastic and provide it only attached to the clutch cable. Price for the clutch cable? $375. Oh, and another hour or four to install it, since it's got to be threaded up through the dashboard and over to the transmission.
Total cost to repair the one inch piece of plastic? $750.
I have no light in my radio for the same reason: a $600 job to replace the entire wiring harness. I decided I can live without the light. And it's not just cars, either. I once had to replace an entire laptop motherboard because the power supply jack got loose. (Thankfully, it was a warranty repair, but still...)
Why do companies DO this? And why do we let them?!?
An open request to Saturn: Why, oh, why, would you design something like this so that a simple repair becomes so darn complicated?
[Update: This entry has more comments than any other post on this blog, with lots of great information on how to fix this problem without spending an arm and a leg. Now, if you scroll down, you'll see a description from "HA-Y-N Saturn" of a particularly ingenious fix. He's given me permission to post the photo. (Forgive me for not just adding it to a comment, but MT won't let me, for obvious reasons.)]
In the next two days, we're supposed to get between 10 and 15 inches of rain. That's a lot of water. So naturally, the cuppola has gotten knocked off my roof, leaving a 2x2 hole for the water to pour into my attic (and eventually, my garage). And just to complete my week, I had to have my car towed home because, it seems, the linkage is busted. The one inside the transmission, of course.
Well, at least I was able to throw a tarp over the hole in my roof and staple-gun it up there, so I won't have to worry about ceilings collapsing.
May you never need this: When Your Child Is Missing: A Family Survival Guide
Well, I finally got this thing moved over to Movable Type, but as you
can tell if you look, I can't figure out how to get the individual pages to follow the
Individual Entries archive template. Obviously, I'm doing something wrong. Any comments are appreciated, as I go back to some paying work before tackling it again...
(Update: I had an extra style sheet working on the layout. All is now well, and we are completely moved over!)
Looks like I should have held out for more money on my last couple of books. Writer's Digest has a listing of "typical" rates writers get for various projects.
No, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth, in case anyone noticed. In the midst of moving this questionable tome to Movable Type I got caught in NYC for the blackout and it took me four days, five airports, and no less than seven schedule changes to get home. Two pieces of advice: first, if you're ever in a situation like that and you have the means, just rent a car and start driving. It'll be faster. Really. Second, if you don't have the means (or if you live more than three days drive away) try and get to your airline's hub. You'll have a much better chance of getting there than to your final destination, and once you're there, you'll have lots of choices.
Anyway, I haven't abandoned Chaos Magnet, it's just been a bit more chaotic than usual.
Thanks for your patience!
Today is the day I get myself organized (he said hopefully). I've only got two things to really accomplish this weekend: finish up the new XForms section and the rest of this week's update for the XML Reference Guide, and finish the User Pages tutorial I'm working on for the MetroSphere series. Oh, and I have to go to the ATM. And mow the lawn. And the post office to mail those checks. And now that the RDF section's been added to the Guide, I can finish looking into FOAF and blog Alexander's site on the the XML blog.
Other than that, my weekend's clear.
For reasons that I will never be able to discuss because of non-disclosure agreements, today's Dilbert describes my life right now.
Some notes for myself: I'm trying to get a good strategy together for my main XML website, and Jack Herrington and Dave Taylor have provided some examples.
When I was younger, I thought I wanted to write the Great American Novel. Eventually I realized that my frame of reference was just a little bit too skewed for that. So I settled on the Great American Science Fiction Novel. My first rejection slip put the kibosh on that for a while, but I've got five non-fiction books under my belt now, so one day I'll try again. But if I really, really did what I wanted, I'd be a screenwriter. Maybe one day I'll take $5K and become an apprentice. Too bad they don't do non-fiction. Maybe I could get them to pay me to be a mentor.
When I started putting this thing together, I wondered why anybody would care what I think. I finally decided that I don't care whether anybody cares or not; this thing is for me. George Orwell, on the other hand, was blogging for a newspaper back in World War II, though of course it wasn't called that. But apparently "George Orwell's wartime columns have much in common with today's blogs: They were often trivial and idiosyncratic, but bore within them the seeds of something greater," according to Eric Weinberger at Salon.com, in Homage to Blogalonia.
Weinberger asks the question: Do we really care about the author's rose-buying adventures, even if the author is George Orwell?
My personal feeling is that an interesting person who writes well will usually come up with something that's worth reading, at least some of the time. The best writers touch on the human spirit whether they're blasting their current political target or waxing poetic about their cat. That's why it's more than half a century since Orwell stopped writing his column, "As I Please," and we're even bothering to ask the question.
It's one of those mornings. Here I was about to write a scathing post about how somebody over at mtv.com needed to be slapped for not realizing that one of their sources was a joke, when I realized that the article I was commenting on was a joke. A good joke, but a joke nonetheless. The joke: Metallica sues Canadian band over E, F chords. How do I know it's a joke? Check the URL, folks. That's not really mtv.com.
Just when things were starting to settle in, yesterday was Medical Emergency Day. My father in law, who lives with us, started having chest pains. The problem here is that he's got some pretty significant Alzheimers, so he can't tell the difference between a heart attack and gas. Fortunately it was gas, but he still managed to make me nervous.
Then, the dog. Just when we were getting ready to hit the grocery store -- about 11:30 -- thank goodness for 24 hour grocery stores! -- our Yorkie, Raz, starts to choke. Well, not really. Just kind of a snorty noise, like he's got something in his throat. He wasn't suffocating, or anything, but he's my wife's baby, so off we went to the emergency vet. (A very clever idea, that; it's only open from 6pm to 8am.) One exam, two X-rays and $150 later we find out that it's not something stuck in his throat but rather an allergy of some kind that's caused a little bit of bronchitis. Maybe.
So today my wife will babysit the dog while we wait for the antihisamines to work. Can't blame her, really. This is the same dog who, at the age of 9 weeks, bit the cat's tail so hard that the cat swiped him with his claws and inadvertantly gave him meningitis. A day later the poor little puppy was curled up in a stiff little ball and screamed if you even touched him. Thank goodness for vets.
I wish RSI (Repetitive Stress Injury) were as simple as today's Dilbert. Now that I've finally gotten a working ergonomic keyboard, maybe this cyst the size of half a golf ball will finally start to shrink.
Things have been pretty quiet on the chaos front lately. Well, except for the server that crashed and took a bunch of unbacked-up data with it, and the project where the deadlines change on the client's whim. But you know, the server isn't my responsibility, and while it's brought me to a dead stop on one of my projects -- and I'll be the one who has to explain it to users -- I've decided not to stress over it. Ditto for the other project, where the client hasn't been managed at all, I think. I'm not the project manager, I'm just a hired hand producing material, and it's not my problem. Just tell me what you need from me and when you need it. If I can do it, it's yours.
No stress.
This really is a new attitude for me. I just hope I can maintain it.
Snookered again. And why is it always Star Trek? I've only ever had to retract two items I've posted over at VSFR, and they're both Star Trek-related. This time apparently Dark Horizons inadvertantly published a bogus interview with Jonathan Frakes claiming there won't be any more Next Gen movies. (I happen to think that's probably true, but the interview itself was made up.)
I'm still pissed at Wil Wheaton for an "April Fools prank" he played last year, when he claimed that there had been a write-in campaign to get him onto Enterprise, and that it had succeeded. He apparently thought it was funny. I did not.
Yes, I understand that people should be able to write whatever they want on their blogs. Heck, that's the whole point of this one. But he's got to know that when he says something like that it's going to get picked up, and it's just not fair -- particularly since I went to his site especially to get an authoritative source on the rumor.
Well, I've gone and stuck my neck out on this whole RSS thing for an InformIT posting. Normally I try to stick to the news and not venture and opinion, but I'm trying to change that. Let's hope it garners some comments, whether or not they agree with me.
I've been around for a long time, and I'm perfectly capable of building my own blogging system. I just want to make that clear. But you know what they say: the shoemaker's children never have shoes. So here I am using Blogger. For now. We'll see what happens.
Why am I doing this blog? Because I've got several other blogs already running but none of them are personal stuff; they're all supposed to be "about" something, and that's fine. This one's just for me. Read it, don't read it, it doesn't make a difference to me.
But I write (tech stuff) for a living, and I never have the opportunity to just write whatever I feel like. So this is it. Enjoy the ride.
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