Not Quite the World's Oldest Profession

It turns out that the providing tech support is an older profession than I thought. Check out this YouTube clip to see what I mean:

Last Potter Book Goes on Pre-Order

Get your copy of the new Harry Potter book pre-ordered now!

PvP Gets motion

One of my favorite web based comic strips, PvPOnline has launched an animated cartoon series. Check out the sample that creator Scott Kurtz posted on YouTube.

Wizard for Hire

Sunday starts a whole new season for many of my favorite shows; Heros, BSG more. But it also marks the debut of a new show on Sci-Fi called The Dresdin Files. Harry Dresdin is the only acutal wizard listed in the Chicago phonebook. He doesn't wear a pointy hat; he doesn't do kids' parties and he doesn't have a long white beard. What he does do is solve the mysteries that have slipped in to our world from the Neverland. Jim Butcher, the author of the book series that the show is based on has said in several interviews that he is very pleased with the way the show came out. So much so that he actually pictures the actor playing Harry while he is writing new books for the series. Check out the show on Sunday the 21st at 9:00 PM before the return of Battlestar Galatica. And if you've not read the books be sure to give them a read too. I have made the first book in the series as my Pick Of The Week in the sidebar.

This Is An Ex-Parrot!

I have decided to join a growing group on the nouveau chic on the web of ex-bloggers. I just don't have enough discipline to update on a regular basis so I've decided to revert to just having a web presence and not call it a blog per se.

In marketing I think they call it "rebranding".

The goal here is to take the self imposed stress of not updating often enough off of me.
So what is going to change? Well for one I am going to merge Life On A Pacific Island and Speak Like A Geek in to one site. I'm not sure yet what that is going to look like. I do know that both domain names will point to the same place, wherever that may be. I also know that I will use it as a central location for linking to anything else I am doing on the web (like my Flickr photo feeds).

Keep checking in from time to time over the next few weeks for the changes. Who knows? I might even get them made in a timely manner.

Oh, and if you were looking for my other blog, Speak Like A Geek, I have closed that all together and pointed the domain name here until further notice.

Cheers!

-tds

NaNoWriMo Finished!

51,140 words. That is the final count for my attempt at this year's National Novel Writing Month. That counts as a win. It's not a finished novel and it will probably go sit in the bottom of a desk drawer, never to see the light of day every again. However there are a few good bits that I plan to pull out and hope to buff up in to some passable short stories for submission to publication.

I'll post an excerpt from the novel here in the near future. Time to take a short break and then get back to editing another piece I was working on before I started this year's project.

NaNoWriMo Update #2

It's now two thirds of the way through National Novel Writing Month and I'm happy to report that my word count is just shy of 45K. Validation at the website begins on the 25th and I hope to use our holiday road trip to Portland to round out the word count if not the actual word count.

Half Way There

National Novel Writing Month is hours away from the half way point and I just finished word #29,299. That means 20,701 words to go. The writing is a little easier this year, having do it once before, but it's still an effort.

King Holding Court

One of the perks of my current job is that Starbucks is on the book, music and speaker promo tour circuit. When an author, band or some other notable's publicist is booking their talent on various television shows, morning radio programs and other speaking engagements the corporate office for Starbucks is on the list. I'm sure that there are also forces at work within the company that place calls and send emails to make sure that the right people make a stop at our 9th floor commons.

Thanks to this little perk I've had the opportunity to meet the likes of Alton Brown. Ridley Pierson and (I swear I'm not making this up) Dave Berry. I also recently saw Carbon Leaf as the performed a CD release concert for us and U2's Bono is good friends with Howard Shultz so he is seen wandering the building from time to time. We also have had political figures like Tavis Smiley and Dino Rossi. But yesterday was one of the most exciting. Stephen King was in the house.

Mr. King was there to promote his new book, Lisey's Tale. I invited an acquaintance to come up and be my guest at the event knowing John was a big King fan and I'm glad to report that he was not disappointed. The arrangement of the venue is such that we were able to stand only 10 feet from Mr. King and all those people in front of us were sitting down so it was an unobstructed view.

As I'm sure that most of you are aware, King was hit by a van several years ago and it really messed up his body. He was broken in more places than I can count and spent lots of time in the hospital learning to breath again. To this day he still shows signs of the aches, pains and metal pins throughout his body. He walks like a man 30 years his senior and can only sit or stand for so long before he needs to change positions. But his mind is sharp. Perhaps sharper than it ever had been before based on his personal history from before the accident.

He was very witty, well spoken and warm with the crowd of about 500 people. He talked about where the idea for his latest book came from and offered a reading. I always find it interesting to hear an author read a bit of their own work. It usually lacks the flare and style that a professional voice talent will use like when recording an audio book but it has a certain extra bit of authenticity that comes through when the words read are their own.

After the reading he took several "I'm you're #1 fan" type questions from my fellow cube dwellers but was on a schedule and I was unable to get my own question on how he makes the sausage answered. Also due to his physical limitations he was only able to sign the first 100 books so I didn't get my come of On Writing signed this time; but who's to say there won't be another opportunity.

Micro Epics

While getting as many words on the page will be my goal for next month, I came across this link to a Wired story about epics written in six words or less.

Here a few of my favorites:

Dinosaurs return. Want their oil back. - David Brin

He read his obituary with confusion. - Steven Meretzky

Automobile warranty expires. So does engine. - Stan Lee

Not Lance Armstrong

I am not Lance Armstrong. In fact I can't begin to count the ways that I'm not Lance Armstrong. However, I might have got a glimpse in to his life recently.

As I've noted below we are coming up on NaNoWriMo 2007 This will be my second time for this writing marathon. And like any marathon I've been training for the event; upping my daily word count and tossing around characters ideas to work with. In general working up a literary sweat.

But I've been working with a small handicap over the last several months; a growth on the end of my index finger on my left (dominant) hand. As you might imagine having some thing slightly odd on the end of a finger can be at the very least problematic when it comes to typing a lot. So for someone who not only writes nearly every day but is also on the computer for a large part of their career it had become a real issue. Last Saturday I decided to do something about it.

I'm fortunate that my doctor keeps some weekend hours and I went in last weekend to have him remove the growth. It wasn't big (maybe 4-mm across) but being in such a sensitive spot it sure felt like he was extracting a grapefruit from the end of my finger. He bandaged it up and told me it should heal up in about 10 days and develop a nice little pink scar, but to "stay off it" for about 10 days and then to take it easy for a bit after that.

That's when I joked about having bad timing and told him about my upcoming novel attempt and about having to just play through the pain. He told me it should be all right but to watch myself and to remember that Lance Armstrong went on to win several Tour De France races after beating cancer.

Guess I need to go find a yellow bracelet.

NaNoWriMo 2006 - Writers Sharpen Your Pencils!

Fall is here indeed. The leaves are turning colors, the kids are getting their Halloween costumes together and plans are being made for just how many pumpkin pies need to be made for Thanksgiving.

And around our house it means one more thing; National Novel Writing Month is almost upon us. For those who don't recall my NaNoWriMo adventure from last year or who are unfamiliar with this event on the whole let me explain. NaNoWriMo is a month long writing frenzy by mostly amateur writers to try and write a novel in just 30 days. A novel is defined in this case as 50,000 words. This 2000 word per day pace is achieved by locking away one's inner critic and just dumping as many words on the page as possible. For more details about the event itself visit their website.

I participated in NaNoWriMo last year and won; that is to say I passed the 50K mark before the end of the month. So when October 1 rolled around this year I signed up to do a second tour of duty in November and this time I've dragged a fellow writer along with me.

I don't want to call them out just yet since I don't know that they've told anyone but me that they're going to participate. Once I see a public admission on their website to signing up for this year's 50,000 word death march I'll give them a mention here.

Since this will be my second pass at trying to write a novel in a month I've had the opportunity to ponder some on lessons learned from last year's experience. I've spent the intervening year doing a lot more writing than I have in the past and while I didn't reach my goal of getting at least one story out for submission I did do plenty to hone my craft some. Namely I've learned to house break my internal editor. Now he mostly sits on his hands in the corner when I write until I release him to clean up the messes I've made on the page. Oh sure, he fidgets, squirms and whimpers while I'm writing; wanting to kibitz but I'll toss him a powerpoint presentation from my day job (no shortage of those) to work on for a while and that usually quiets him down.

I'm still working on what this year's novel is going to be about. Last year I took a short cut and did a retelling of the Book of Ruth (from The Bible). It afforded me with a plot, characters and motive. All I had to do was put it in a new setting, give it some color and throw in some dialog. It's not a bad way to write a book and many authors have made entire careers on doing that. But this year I think I'm going to take a different approach.

I've had a few story ideas I've been chewing on for a while. One it just not neatly enough to last for 50,000 words; it's short story material for sure. Another plot idea I have I've been thinking about too much. That is to say I'm too wed to the story to toss it to the wolves of wild writing in November. I know that in the ned the only way that story is going to make it to the page is for me to just let it go and see what happens what I start typing, but not yet.

One other plot came to me a few weeks ago and I think this is the one I'm gong to use. I've put just enough thought in to it so as to not feel unprepared to turn it in to a novel but not so much that I couldn't stand to see it fail.

More NaNoWriMo updates as they become available.

Comfortably Numb

I'm learning that a big part of being a parent is about discovering who your children are. The other day I learned something new about my youngest. It turns out she likes the music of Pink Floyd.

I was working from home one day this week. Taleena and the two older kids were up in town for a few hours and the baby was asleep in her room, thus allowing me to get a some uninterrupted work done. For a little background music I put on a Pink Floyd concert the TiVo had captured and then got down in to my pile of spreadsheets and project schedules.

About 90 minutes later I heard the telltale babbling from the girl's room that told me Hope was awake from her nap. I went in and got her out of bed, letting her toddle out to the front room. The TV was still playing the concert and she stopped dead in her tracks. The stage lights flickered across the screen and mellow guitars filled the room with sound.

Hope promptly sat down in front of the screen (not something she is want to do) and watched the show for a full 10 minutes, looking away long enough to check over her shoulder and make sure I was still in the room. The magic moment was over when they broke away from the music to show more of the "beggar TV" (a.k.a. pledge week on PBS). She got up and asked me for a banana then ran off to find new ways to keep herself entertained.

Maybe I'll get her a little Dark Side Of The Moon t-shirt for her birthday.

Back To School Night

Harris had his first Back To School Night recently. It was proceeded by an ice cream social that Taleena and her mom took the kids to. I got back on the island and up to town just in time to miss the social but make the rest of the proceedings.

When I walked in Harris wanted to show me everything. The Choice Time board, the science station, puppet theater, food toys, et al. While that was going on his sister Helen was busy playing with all the cool toys and chatting up the other kids (older and younger) and just taking in the classroom, surely dreaming about the time when she gets to go to school every day too.

Harris showed me the various projects at his desk that he'd worked on then it was off to see the art room. A quick family craft was waiting for us and then we dashed over to the library. He was showing me how the library system worked with placeholders between the books while you looked for the book you wanted when the librarian came over to comment that she was impressed that Harris had remembered how to do that after only being shown once so far. Next he showed me a little amphitheater in the corner of the library where the kids could sit and someone could read to the students. Over the back of the chair is a small camera that displays the book up on a large flat screen display above the teacher's head.

Connected to the library is the computer lab full of Macs. We didn't spend any time in there as he has not started his computer units yet but I understand that it's not far off. We also made a brief pass by the music lab and the it was off to home and bedtime.

Long time, No post

Well, true to the aperiodic nature of this blog, it's been a while since I've put up a new post here and figured it was high time to fix that.

The summer has come and gone and during that time my job search has continued with a few more tasty nibbles but no real bites just yet. It's also brought a couple of visits from my parents and seen the rise of my new interest in cheese making. But the crowning event of the summer had to be the first day of school for my eldest child.

I plan to write more on all of these topics and others in the near future and here is why: November is only 6 weeks away and while to most Americans that means turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie for me it has come to mean NaNoWriMo. Thats' right it's nearly time for National Novel Writing Month.

When I made that discovery this morning while looking at the calendar I was forced to admit that I have not been very good about keeping up on my daily word count goal while writing. To help fix that and begin my training for the 50,000 word marathon I'm going to make a more concerted effort to update this and my other blog (www.speaklikeageek.com) on a more regular basis.

Right now I am only putting in about 500 to 800 words a day and I need to ramp up to the 1800 to 2000 words per day level if I have any hope of hitting the NaNoWriMo goal again this year. More on that effort and my second NaNoWriMo experience over the coming days and weeks.

Until then, thanks for checking back and keep watch the web!

A Mid Life Crisis turns Eco Friendly

If there comes a day (in my increasingly less distant future) that I decide to buy a sports car as a way to salve a mid-life crisis this car just might fill the bill

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Can You Be More Specific?

I've been doing some research on how to make cheese. I saw an episode of Good Eats on the topic and think I'd like to try my hand at it.

Like any other new skill I turned to my local library's catalog to see what books and videos I could find on the topic. I guess I needed to be more specific when doing my search.

The top two hits for DVDs on the topic of cheese making returned a link to a Wallace and Gromit movie (not hard to understand given their proper British love of cheese) and concert film of Britney Spears live from Las Vegas. While not what I was looking for I find it hard to fault this being classified under making cheese.

I guess that's just the whey it goes.

(sorry for the bad cheese pun. I'm sure there will be more of the to come.)

Three New Inventions

From the "Why didn't I think of that?" category:

Geek Wallets

Clear Canoe

Self Timing Eggs

Boomers Making Death Cool Again

A new social networking site a la My Space and Friendster has cropped up on the webscape. It's targeted towards the west of 50 crowd and touts such features like sending you an email when one of your online friends dies and helping with pre-planned funeral arrangements.

More info can be found here. And here is a direct link to Eons.com.

The Politically Incorrect Alphabet

My news reader caught this.

It's a series of A-B-C flash cards that depict topics that are mostly politically incorrect topics. There is a list in the text section of the site of what each card represents but I think part of the fun is trying to figure each one out.

That being done I have to say that I must not run with a PC enough crowd. I only found about a third of them to represent topics I would consider off the table when having polite dinner conversation.

Take a look and let me know what you think.