Puttering Plumb-bobs of Positivity!

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I'm Actively Seeking Work. Have a look at my

I've been published. See my story at The Town Drunk.

I've been wed!  See Pictures.

Those of you who stream may enjoy this.

http://www.demetriusgonzalez.com/tango/bailonga.html

Who knew you could tango to Marilyn Manson?

For the writers in the audience, an interesting exercise in voice: I'm in the Buffy camp, personally.

More for the writers--and artists.  Neal Stephenson's cogent expression of the literary/commercial dichotomy, and why it doesn't matter.  I've heard many writers on both sides say, "There's nothing wrong with doing it that way, it's fine and valid," but the unspoken tag is always, "but my way is the *real* way".  Until now.  Thanks, Neal.

Apropos of a couple of recent developments on my flist: A classic post by The Ferrett on how not to conduct domestic warfare.  Dirty laundry hangs around.  Thanks for letting us learn from your mistakes, Ferrett.

And finally, some stuff about  "Song to the Siren".  The version by This Mortal Coil was the first song on the first tape of a set of two that Graham gave me way back in the dawn of time when I left Edinburgh in 1992.  I recognized the refrain, "Did I dream/you dreamed about me" because it'd been sampled on a song by Sheep On Drugs that was popular in the clubs that summer.  Having never heard the full version, I thought this was pretty cool.  Sometime last year I found this post, on what turned out to be a really neat blog by a very smart linguist, that breaks down the lyrics and history of the song. If Graham hadn't given me that tape, I'd never have heard this song, despite its apparent popularity--once you start looking around, you find it's been done to death. (How on earth did we manage before the Internet?)  And yet it's remarkably obscure.  It's kind of neat to listen to all these different versions and see where the primary influence was--George Michael's, for example, is nearly note-for-note Liz Fraser's version, whereas Robert Plant's (which I checked out of the public library) is much closer to Tim Buckley's original.

Now, I know exactly where I got this link for Nik's crab tank.  Attention, modellers.  Nik, I salute you.  That's beautiful.   

Those of you who were at my wedding will remember the inspired piano soundtrack performed live by Rebecca Oswald.  She composed all that herself, exceptof course for the closing dance, which she arranged in tango form for us.

Rob and I went to hear her latest work last night at the Hult Center. In conjunction with the Oregon Bach Festival, the U of O Humanities Center commissioned a symphony, "Man of Oregon", about the life of Bill Bowerman, legendary track coach and patron of the OBF. 

The last time I went to hear classical music was maybe fifteen years ago.  (Actually, i think i took Rob to hear Edgar Meyer at the Shedd a few years ago, bu that's not THE SYMPHONY, is it?)  Somewhere along the way, I retrained somehow.  Hearing "Man of Oregon" was like listening to a really good soundtrack, by someone like, say, John Barry.  It was terrific.

I also noticed a preponderance of females in the orchestra--nearly the entire violin section was women.  How long has this been going on?   I had the impression that orchestras were still pretty sexist places.  Close your eyes for a few years and the world changes.

-----

Work is work.  I haven't managed to lose all my Mad Call Control Skilz during the two years I was at Pennington, so the job will probably pan out okay.  I'm still trying to prune my wardrobe down to the basics. And FEWER basics. I have a bedroom floor full of basics that don't fit in my closet.

-----

My cat has had a lump on her head for a few months now.  It didn't seem to bother her, so we've left it until after Rob had *his* lump removed.  I suspected it was a sebaceous cyst, and today, I was disgustingly proved right.  I was examining it because it had a scabby thing on it and I was afraid it might be getting infected or she might be worrying it.   The scab came off and unplugged the world's biggest zit. I think I extracted more sebum that what's in the average tin of lip balm, and that's just what the cat sat still for.  The vet said just keep it clean, and we'll remove the rest when you bring her in for her checkup in two weeks.  Thanks, Doc.

-----
We saw Indiana Jones this week, finally, in air-conditioned splendor.  Somewhere on my f-list someone was panning Shia Laboeuf on the grounds that they were trying to position him as a Marlon-Brando type.  I disagree; this is a complete misread on the character.  He's a nice, rebellious kid, and he's played that way.  It was a fun movie but leave your disbelief at home.  I liked all the nods to previous movies and how they let Indy be aging and rickety.

----

I think that's it for today.

You end a sentence with an ellipsis enclosed by parentheses (like this...)

Do you put the "official" period at the end, after the parenthesis?

(My sense is NO, because a a close paren between two dots looks funny, but I always want to anyway because I'm obsessive.  Like this.).

We're taking the train to Portland for JayCon, but getting from the station to the party is going to be challenging.  Is there anybody who'd like to pick us up/drop us off? Looks like we''ll be taking the 9 am train in and the 9 pm train out.

Alternatively, is anyone going in from Eugene who would like to carpool and split gas costs?  It takes a full tank of gas to go one way, and one full tank is about what a train ticket costs, but if someone would like to buy gas one way, we could pool.

Cheers!

From greenlily

Find your 42nd entry ever. Yes, this may require some counting and basic math. Deal with it. Copy that entry in a new entry. This is the meaning of your life.

From May 30, 2007:
In the Newport Aquarium, dead Cthulhu lies dreaming
Memorial Day is our traditional day for going to the Newport Aquarium.  Usually they change their rotating exhibitions about now, and this time it's Giant Squid, courtesy of the Smithsonian.  Unfortunately no live squid, but some cool displays.  I think they should put in some other cephalopods to liven things up--cuttlefish or whatever-they had cuttlefish at our first time there.  As per usual there was the octopus, who is much less lively these days than before. CLAWS was still there and we got some neat stuff about crabs.

I took a picture of Rob at our favorite restaurant, too.

Dear May,

You were doing so well a couple weeks ago.  I understand that peer pressure is a terrible thing to endure.   I get it that you just want to be like your friends.  I'm here to tell you that just  because September, October, November, December, January, February, March, and April are frigid, miserable, unhappy, gray, pissy, wet and unsociable, does not mean that you have to be like them.  If they all jumped off a cliff, would you do the same? 

STOP BEING EMO AND START BEING SUMMER!  Or *I* will jump off a cliff. 

Thank you,

-Ximena

This was not photoshopped. Awesome setup!

Purely for the purposes of research I've been reading Westerns lately. And I've found in many of the newer ones (read: published since after I was a teeenage teenyboppin' teenybopper who only ever read Science Fiction) that wimmin wear jeans. 

My granma, who was of the generation just following many of these ladies, didn't wear trousers until the late 70's. That's the NINETEEN seventies if you please.   I remember distinctly the day Alma Faye put off her hose in favor of truis.  My Auntie Joy put her onto them. Twenty years later the same auntie put me onto Eugene, come to think of it...

So, if ye gotta gramma, that ye can talk to, can you tell me when she wore truis?  I suspect, since it's coming up in all this fiction, that it happened more often than we suspect.  But, given what I know about the people I know about, less often than they'd admit if it weren't fiction. Fred Gipson, my favorite Western author to date, never mentions women in jeans. It seems to be a historical "fact" made much of for the purposes of titillation--it always seems to me a (heroic) married woman, or attached to the hero, or something.  Whores never wear jeans. And the word is "JEANS", not "trousers".

HONEST TO TUCHUS, what did your family wear?

Every month here in Eugene, when it's not winter and not raining, our tango instructor Ev Marcel runs a guerrilla tango event on the footbridge behind Valley River Center.  Every full moon, she brings out the boombox and some classic tango music, and calls out the community to dance--she times it for moonrise.  The full moon is technically tonight, but she scheduled the First full Moon Tango of the year one day early, so we went out last night instead.  What's fun about this is that people walking through on their afternoon constitutional will often stop and join in the dancing for a few turns.  We have to watch for bikes, pedestrians, dogs, skaters...

Anyway, we usually miss this, because we're early-morning working schlubs, but last night we went.  And we got some pictures.

...but it's still disconcerting when it happens to you. A few years ago (maybe around 2001) I was at a party and we were talking about music. Someone mentioned a particular album that was fairly easy to get, but only on vinyl. "But I don't have a vinyl player," I grumbled. We all gazed in disbelief at the word bubble above my head. "Wow, that was really telling," said my friend.

I don't journal. I despise journaling.

I WANNA GO!!!

One silent movie, one wedding, no waiting.  Before & afters will be posted later.

If you were there & took pictures, PLEASE send them to me, post them on Flickr, or SOMETHING, so I can add them to my albums. 

If you were there & didn't take pictures, good for you.  You paid attention and were in the moment.  Enjoy the shots all those photogeeks took.

If you weren't there, SUCKS TO BE YOU.  Loser.  At least you get to see pictures.

Rob and I schlepped up to Portland for the launch of Diet Soap Issue #2.  More words will be forthcoming, but in the meantime, we got a few pictures.  The Diet Soap folks were kind enough to let me read my vampire Tesla story, and say nice things about it afterward.  I dressed up special because I knew MK would like it.

Once again, Jothy Rosenberg hits a mark.

Money shot:  At the metal detector I suggested to the agent he grab my crutches and I hop through. This worked the one other time I traveled without wearing my leg. But the agent refused to allow me to hop through the machine. Why? Because the new rule, he said, requires everyone walk through "normally".

Sheesh.

I've seen a couple people refer to this article and I think it bears reposting.  Cognitive surplus.

Simone? Simone????!!!!

As many of you know, my next professional pursuit is likely to be a certification in prosthetic technology.  Since this will involve packing up and moving somewhere like Minneapolis (if not Flint or Dallas), I've been digging around for information to see if I'm making a good decision.  One of the blogs I've uncovered is Jothy Rosenberg's A Leg Up, and awhile back he posted this article about prosthetic parity in insurance coverage. At the audiology clinic we used to run into these problems on hearing aid prescriptions and it used to drive me nuts.

Enterprise offered me the job, but it won't start until June.


 

Read since Thursday: Globalhead (Bruce Sterling)
                                         Never Cross a Vampire (Stuart Kaminsky)
                                         Farewell, My Lovely (Raymond Chandler)

Accomplished since Thursday: zip.

Job hunt status: phone interview Monday morning for a seasonal call center position.

We spent a "honeymoon" weekend in Portland.  Went to OMSI, and spent all our Powell's gift certificates people gave us, and visited Robin and Dave who are clearing out their  basement with the result that they unloaded several more books onto us, and had lunch at a quintessentially  Portlandish hippie-dippie cafe where I thought I might die of the macrobiotic healthiness, and generally relaxed. 

So this week I'm indulging all my nasty vices, and since Sunday, I've read:

The Omega Cage
Stellar Ranger
The Black Company
StarDoc
Space: Above and Beyond
The Good Husband of Zebra Drive
Alien Taste
and now I'm on Murder Mysteries (which cos gave me).
ETA: Iron Kissed, also on Sunday.

Yes, my normal uninterrupted reading speed is 2 novels a day.  Yes, this is what I do for fun.  Yes, I remember the plots.  Yes, I am a terrible tourist--my brother and I once spent 2 weeks in Cochabamba lying in hammocks reading Alastair Gray, Iain Banks, and Neil Gaiman.  This drove our relatives nuts.  No, I haven't found a job.  Yes, my brain is probably getting fat.

Jerry Oltion came over and we got the train up and running.  Pictures soon. Wedding pictures too.

A Google search for "Barf Bags" renders 259,000 hits.

...looms THE WEDDING.

A couple notes:  if you haven't RSVP'd, please do so, so we know HOW MUCH CAKE to provide.   Really, we wouldn't have invited you if we really didn't want you here.  And we want everyone to have cake.  It's REALLY GOOD CAKE.  Trust me. 

Also, if you are one-half of a couple and your obverse can't make it, PLEASE don't assume you're not welcome!  We will be overjoyed for any representative to show up.  If you really must, I'm sure Frank Wu (frankwu) will help you arrange for your head, at least, to attend.  (Ask Frank for details.)  Likewise, if we addressed the invitation just to you and you're not single, it's because we weren't aware you had an "other", please go ahead and bring them--all of them--but just let us know how many heads!

On the topic of Frank Wu--he is organizing activities for out-of-towners to gather and amuse themselves whilst we starch our pantyhose, feed our legs, wax our cats, lose our minds cufflinks, fend off our enemies parents and otherwise prepare for the floor show.  Details at Frank's LJ here.

Dress Code:  Rob will be wearing a tux, a fedora, and a smitten expression.  I will wearing silver, and a smitten expression.  What you wear is up to you--we don't care about you, this is OUR SPECIAL DAAAAAAAY, it's all about US-- but this is a Silent Movie, Tango, Genre Pulp wedding, so have some fun.  Fedoras and feather boas are encouraged.  Caveat: regardless of your gender, please don't wear slides, flip-flops, Berkenstocks, or other shoes your feet are apt to slip out of if you're walking backward.  A basic tango lesson will be given for those who wish to  participate, and we hope you all will.

Carpool from Seattle is available from beardedone but since I don't know his travel schedule you'll have to contact him.

Any questions?

Title says it all. Photo here.

Request for a book title/author from a buddy:

> In the late 80s or early 90s, there was a series of books about two brothers
> separated at birth. One evolved into a dark lord, and one evolved into a
> lord of light. They were both princes, but neither brother knew that. They
> both rose to power, and they were on a collision course. There were at least
> three books in the series, and apparently there was a fourth that was
> supposed to be the final book.
> 
> I'm looking for the titles and the author. I'm especially looking for the
> fourth book.

Request for info from me and Rob:

If you gave me your address to send a wedding invitation to, and have not by 
now received one, PLEASE sing out.  We've just found out that at least one 
invitation didn't get to its destination (unless, like my dad's, it got buried 
under the tax forms because it's in a plain brown wrapper).

In keeping with Jess' movie mob, Rob and I went to see Sweeney Todd this afternoon at an actual first-run theater. 

The Sock Story, "Left Behind", is  now LIVE at THE TOWN DRUNK!!!  And I got paid and everything to boot!

GO LOOK!!

By now, about a hundred people have received invitations to our wedding.  More are in the mail.  Again, if you want one, please say so!  So far, reviews have been rave.   I'd like to take this moment to publicly credit two people on this creative endeavor.  Ev Marcel, and Julian Cearley.

The photo was taken by our tango instructor, Ev Marcel, available for dance lessons, math tutorials, photography sessions (she also does author photos) and god knows what else, you'll have to ask her, but her standard rate for "whatever " is $25/hour.  She gives you a CD with ALL your takes on it to do with as you like.  She's totally awesome, and she'd from TEXAS!!!

We submitted our favorite photo to my Dear Baby Brother, Julian Edgar Guaman Cearley Cespedes etc, (who has a degree in art directorness--directorship?  directorhood? being an art director anyway--  from UNT) with instructions to "make it look like old-timey sheet music" and a squiggly caricature of a general impression of a vague idea done in two minutes on Paint.  He blew our doors off.  Then...long distance, over the phone, we developed the concept, and with only a text email containing ad content, he created the document on the back side.   (He wrote the article too.)  And the inserts.

So There.

NaNo word count: 446.

Oh well, at least it's a start.

Jess, you're going to want to read this when it's done:  it's a VAMPIRE WESTERN.  And I need your address!

Wedding news:  invitations are going out THIS WEEK!  Yippee!!  I need more addresses! This is so much fun!

Writing news: robvagle   (that's the guy I'm engaged to) has a story in the current Heliotrope!  Yippeee!  Go read it, it's good!

The wedding date is April 10, 2008.   My wedding coordinator tells me it's her job to be nervous for me.  I tell her, if that's the case I won't be able to afford her...

If you are on this list or know someone who is, please let me know.  We need snail addresses for invitations and announcements and I've shamefully lost track of a lot of people.  If you are on my flist you're invited and I need your information too.  Please email me at my lj name at att period net.  Thank you. 

THIS LIST IS NOT EXHAUSTIVE.  If you're not on it, I either (a) already have your info, (b) don't realize you're reading my LJ, or (c) might like to make contact--send me a message!  If you know someone who ought to be here let me know.

Scott Buchanan
Jeff Hitchin
Jess Raine
Erica Schultz
Ofer Inbar
Ian Osmond
Lis Riba
Sara Ravid
Graham Clark
Rachael Quereau
Jesse whatsisname
Victoria Garcia
Johnzo Aegard
MK Hobson
Harold Gross
Eve Gordon
Patrick Swenson
Honna Swenson
Robin Catesby
Frank Wu
Sue & Mark
Nik Jardine
Mo Wilson
Neal Fordham
Chris Revie
Andrew Wilson
Gavin Inglis
Simon Hovell
James Pengelly
Jason Roth

First socks, then closets, now vampires.

About 5 years ago I wrote a story about the things you leave in closets, called "Pandora's Closet".  It was a nice little story, nothing really wrong with it, but an early effort (I think it was actually the second story I ever wrote).  It's been going around markets for awhile, resting, going out again...and now Amazon recommends this.  A Greenberg antho, no less, entitled Pandora's Closet.  Some real names in this one.  About the stuff you find in the closet.  Now what do I do with my little story??

About 3 weeks ago our friend Eric Witchey had a birthday party for Nicola Tesla.  Since practically all our friends are writers, there was an option to bring a 1000-word short story to read aloud at the party.  It had to include either Tesla or one of his inventions.  As an exercise in the world of my novel (this is the year of the novel) I delivered 1700 words titled "Blood and Thunder", aka "why vampires are the real reason Tesla could never reproduce his Colorado Springs results".  (I'm currently in the process of fleshing it out a bit more to start sending it out.)  Now Amazon recommends this.  A Darrell Schweitzer antho, if you please, called The Secret History of Vampires.  About why vampires are the real reason for...well, a bunch of historical events.  

I suppose it's nice that I'm so clearly in tune with the zeitgeist.  <sigh> 

Incidentally, I'm seeking information on the Republic of the Rio Grande for a story.  Anyone with resources gimme a shout.

Fanfic geeks, Star Trek Geeks, and followers of my romantic adventures:  Strange New Worlds is out.  This is important because my beloved Poopsie, Rob Vagle, has a story in this anthology.   "The Fate Of Captain Ransom" didn't win a place in the contest but it got into the antho without breaking a sweat, according to my sources.  I personally am pleased for having introduced to the author a couple things he included as minor details in the story-- Shiraz (or Syrah) wine, and the Great Pyrenees breed of dogs.  (Remember Belle and Sebastian?)  Professionally, this is a benchmark in that this is The Story That Paid The Rent.  The per-word rate on this sale meant that the check cut for publication actually exceeded our total monthly rent.  (We live in a cheap apartment but still.)  Go buy the fucking book, and if we see you sometime, he'll sign it for you.  You have to ask, though, because he's too circumspect.

Rob and I also made it to the current issue of Minions at Work.  Steve York, the creator of the Minions and all-around fabu tie-in and genre author, had his half-century birthday celebratory roasting of the flesh and consuming of the Sangria.  I am the live-in lover of a wonderful man with many friends, so I got to go and cuddle some Minions.  A good picture of Rob is up at their site.  (It's a pretty good picture of me too, but since it's always all about me, I figure I didn't need to mention it.)  Go read it.  Buy stuff.  Support the cause.  Send penguins.  It's true what Steve says about Drywall Day.  We still have the little trucks.

At the same par-tay, I spoke with Dean Wesley Smith (Editor of SNW and author of a metric cubic buttload of stuff you should read).  What I said was, "Rob and I got an 8x4 whiteboard for $13!"   Dean is a great proponent of the whiteboard as a tool for writers, and he perked up immediately.   He said, "Where?"  I said, "Home Depot!" His eyes got big and round as I told him what you are looking for is shower tileboard, or Melamine.  Yeah, the stuff that was in the cat food.  Folks, whiteboards do not have to cost an arm and a leg.  An 8x4 sheet costs $12-and-change at Home Depot.  A Google search for "DIY whiteboard" turns up a number of alternatives.  What Rob and I did was buy a sheet of the stuff and have Home Depot cut it up into thirds (our apartment doesn't have wall space for a whole sheet, alas)  and glued the panels up to the sliding closet doors in the office with some heavy-duty double-sided stickytape.  Worked Good.  I think we left Dean with visions of lining all his walls with it...

.Tango proceeds apace.

You can renew your PO box online in South Africa, the Emirates, and NZ.  But not in the USofA.

Go forth and see Guidolon. 

In other news, my brother-the-art-director has finally submitted some preliminary designs for our wedding invitations (Rob&Me).  Despite his laisses-faire attitude toward deadlines, the guy's a frigin' GENIUS.  Unlike myself, of course.

get the deadlines thing down, and you'll be ...

a guy who hits deadlines,  and that ain't no small thing. 

WOW.  just WOW.   Dude.  wow.  

dude.

OMG.

Wow.

dude.

[I've been in Eugene too long.  All my modifiers appear to have hired temps for an excessively low wage.]

I need to find out the relative acidity/alkalinity of the following:

Garlic
Roses
Mesquite
Prickly Pear
Hawthorn
Live oak
Pecan
Lemons
Vinegar
Wine
Briar

and other substances as needed.  Google is not helping.

The difference is that in Sci-Fi, the rockets are real--their primary purpose is as a means of transportation , and only secondarily as a metaphor for the greatness achieveble by the human spirit (or what-have-you).  In Litrachah, these priorities are reversed. 

Memorial Day is our traditional day for going to the Newport Aquarium.  Usually they change their rotating exhibitions about now, and this time it's Giant Squid, courtesy of the Smithsonian.  Unfortunately no live squid, but some cool displays.  I think they should put in some other cephalopods to liven things up--cuttlefish or whatever-they had cuttlefish at our first time there.  As per usual there was the octopus, who is much less lively these days than before. CLAWS was still there and we got some neat stuff about crabs.

I took a picture of Rob at our favorite restaurant, too.

To the Unutterable Yammerheaded Dingleberry who stole my left work boot out of my locker:

You are a jerk.  No one thinks you are funny.  You owe me $70 for that boot (Those Danners cost $140 new when I bought them for plumbing 18 months ago) plus $29.95 for the new pair I had to buy this weekend, plus $150 for the hour and a half I had to spend shopping for new work boots, you complete ass clown.  (It would normally be $300, but I'm giving you a 50% discount for the fact that my darling Poopsie came along and held my hand through the ordeal.  He'll be billing you separately, and his time is much more valuable than mine.)  Plus $4.99 for a lock for my locker.  If you are one of my coworkers, never let me discover this fact.  I will not only get you fired but I will arrange for you to wish for death until you are fired.  

Death will not avail you, as I have cursed you to be reborn month after month as Roseann Barr's tampon. 

A few items.

1) I got in a fender-bender with an uninsured driver the other day.  I can't afford to fix my car, so it's going up on Craigslist.  AFAIK it's still driveable, but the fender is shot, the headlight is confetti, and most likely the alignment is kaput.  It's full of gas, though.  Counting blessings: everyone was wearing seat-belts, nobody was hurt, the other guy wasn't driving an SUV, my car's been paid for for ten years, and I have a really good bike and a job I can bike to.  No, I'm not going to pursue this further.

2) Rob got the DVD of NIGHTMARES AND DREAMSCAPES from my dad for his birthday.  He says, "Oh WOW! COOL! THANKS!  OH BOY!" <bounce bounce>  We've been watching it.  I think the miniseries as an art form is due for a rennaissance.  I like stories that end eventually.  I also have found that I like watching TV episodes, if I can watch them on DVD with no commercials--I'm 8 weeks behind on LOST just because I can't stand the commercials.  I remember when a commercial break was too short to go to the bathroom in.  Product placement is probably the wave of the future, what with Tivo and everything.  I'm fascinated by the fact that filmmaking has finally advanced to the point that a good film can be made of a Stephen King story.  Back in the dark ages when I was growing up, after disco but before Mozilla, it was a commonly held fact that a Stephen King book was always going to be better than the movie.  Advances in scriptwriting, casting, special effects, and camerawork have changed this, to the extent that, for example, the episode "Battleground" is, in my opinion, better than the original short story.  (King didn't write the screenplay for the story, BTW.)  I'm convinced that the toy soldiers all got tiny, posthumous, scale-model Silver Stars for valor in combat.

3) My writer friends are all remarking on the Virginia Tech shooter's creepy fiction, and how the media is making such a big deal out of it, and how many of us (from Steve King on down) are going to be hauled off and given therapy for writing about serial child killers and stuff.  I work in a mill, though, and lunch with the salt of the earth, the common clay of the new west... you know, morons.*  And I find the reaction of the salt of the earth to be extremely reassuring.  They say things like, "Next thing you know they're going to be blaming it on DOOM.  I play DOOM and I don't run around doing dumb shit like this."  And, "Yeah he wrote creepy stuff, but look here, it says he was actually a creep, too--look at all the other sick stuff he got up to."  The salt of the earth understands the difference between fiction and reality.  And the difference between healthy and unhealthy obsessions.  They really do.

4) In response to the flap about whether blogging is good or bad for writers, and what's it for, anyway: it's a gradient, and you have to decide for yourself whether it's for you and what it's for.  Blogging, like deep-woods hiking, is not for everyone.  It might help or hinder you in your art, or in your marketing, on in your LIFE.  If you are a writer, you decide this for yourself.  Holly Lisle, a highly technophilic and successful novelist, quit blogging because it was interfering with her novel writing in a way that running her Forward Motion online writing community did not.  Think about whether it's going to help your image, or whether, like so many of us, you're going to end up metaphorically wandering around the apartment in your underwear, picking your nose with the curtains wide open.  If you are a marketing professional assisting a writer in designing their website, consider their true needs before pushing them to "add a blog".   Would your client be better served by an email list, a Yahoo group, a "Contact Me" button?  Will the blog duplicate or hide information better presented on a regularly renewed "News and Appearances" page?  Tim Powers doesn't even have his own website, never mind a blog.  He just checks in to the news group if he wants to talk about cat puke (or signings).

My $1.50 (inflation)

*Mel Brooks, BLAZING SADDLES

I get on the internet and up pops Microsoft Critical Updates.  I obediently click on the link, and get this message:


Thank you for your interest in obtaining updates from our site.

This website is designed to work with Microsoft Windows operating systems only.

To find updates for Microsoft products that are designed for Macintosh operating systems, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/mac/. 


I don't have a Mac OS.  I'm using the same computer I've had since 2001.  It runs Windows 98.  But it's starting to wear out, and we're saving up for a new one, and hey, if MS wants me to be a Mac customer that badly, well...

Herbal Energy Coffee.

Herbal energy coffee.  

Herbal energy coffee.

What's next?  Albuterol cigarettes?  Diet Coke?

So, after a year at the mill, I get a merit raise.  (They call it a "bump", because it's just a quarter an hour, but I say anything equivalent to a credit card payment is a raise, and I'm happy.)  Then yesterday my direct supervisor (really a "team lead", not the people who are in charge of giving me the raise) starts in on me--again.  I don't care anymore what her problem is, I've put up with her crap for a year, and I've had it, and I quit, I quit, I QUIT!  Somewhere in the flurry of requesting my paycheck and making damp nasty confetti out of the HR person's kleenex box, HR managed to get me to agree to talk with management.  Somewhere in the throes of my decimating management's kleenex box, management managed to get me to agree not to make any rash decisions and to come in this morning for a talk.   I spent yesterday putting out applications and thinking over my options.  They don't want to lose me, and they've spent some serious time training me for this job, but I'm going nuts, nuts, nuts, and I won't work with that witch ever again.  I figured in the worst case I'd offer a month's notice and to train my replacement.

Well, I went in this morning and came out not fired, not quit, and transferred effective tomorrow to start learning the job I always wanted to be trained for in the first place, which not incidentally gets me out from under that harridan.  I'll have to learn it and get good at it in a certain amount of time in order to justify my paycheck, but that's only to be expected.  I was actually willing to give back the damn quarter if they'd shift me somewhere else, but fortunately, I didn't have to bring up that option.

Whee... I think.

The MINIONS AT WORK link is now correct.

Check it out, easily the best single-panel cartoon since PLUGGERS.

I would like to draw everyone's attention to Minions at Work.

They have t-shirts and whatnot at Cafe Press.  I'm bucking for a silk tie myself... 

I'm going to buy a damn lottery ticket.  

In the 10 months I've been on payroll at Pennington, I've been tapped for a "random" pee test no fewer than 4 times.  In a row.  Not counting the one I had to take when I was hired.  Out of about 50 employees, 5 a month are tagged for a random.  Out of the five at each of my UA sessions, two others have also been there every time.  My understanding is that one of these guys has been picked a lot prior to this, the joke used to be "any four people and [this guy]".  Then it was "any three people and [guy A] and [guy B]".  Now there are 3 of us.  There are people who've worked at this company who haven't been tagged four times in six YEARS.  At this point, nobody on the factory floor believes it's really random.

How do they select the targets?  For the randoms, it's apparently "a California company" who sends HR the lucky numbers.  I personally believe Pennington could save a boodle of money, and get a better result, if they just pulled names out of a hat.  I don't believe management is persecuting anybody--if they think you're using drugs, they can just give you the pee test without bothering to justify it as "random", so I think these are really the names that are coming from the "California company".  (On occasion, there have been more that 5 people selected, and the opinion on the floor is invariably "they're trying to catch someone".)  What I think is going on is that this "California company" is using a fancy computer program to choose the names, and the program is senescing.  

I am not a math whiz and I am the merest of end-users, but I remember learning in school that random numbers, especially computer-generated ones, aren't really random, they just seem that way.  I'm very foggy on the rest of this.  IIRC, the program runs a method to select a seed number, then that seed number is run through an algorithm that returns the answer.  Or something like that.  So the "random" numbers are actually predictable if you know the seed and the algorithm.  But there are so many numbers in the world, that they might as well be really random as far as normal human beings are concerned. 

The problem here is twofold.  (1) the seed numbers aren't random enough, and the algorithm is broken, so it continues to return a repetitive result, which means Pennington keeps "randomly" testing the same people over and over, which is a bullshit waste of company resources; (2) public perception of the randomness of the random tests is declining, which will lead to morale problems if they keep this up.  It may very well be truly random, (the draw is five out of fifty every time, so the odds of being picked are always the same) but it doesn't LOOK random to the naked eye.  

Not being a coding junkie, why do I think the program is the problem?  Because not too long ago in my checkered past, I spent time as a DJ/production tech/traffic manager/receptionist/dogsbody at a commercial radio station.  This will break a lot of hearts, I know, but the truth is, the voices you hear hollering "Up next, a golden oldie from Britney Spears!" are not jockeying any discs.  They are merely announcing the next title flashing on the playlist, which is run by a computer program.  The computer contains sound files including the music, commercial spots, and station IDs.  The spots and IDs are scheduled according to the traffic manager's whim commercial contract obligations and music is just something to fill in the spaces between commercials.  The music files are played--you guessed it--randomly.  (There's a bit more to it than that, you can rank the rotation so as to encourage the machine to play some stuff more often, but anyway.)  With the program that we were using, if we let it run for longer than about ten days, it would start playing Madonna songs all the time.  Basically it kept "randomly" picking the same set of songs because its little coded brains were scraping the bottom of its random-number barrel.  It was necessary for us to "refresh" the playlist, meaning that we hit the REFRESH PLAYLIST button blew out and reloaded the data.  I suspect something similar is happening at the "California company" that sells us the lucky numbers.

What do you think?

(NB I don't care about the pee tests per se, I get a break from work to hang around the air-conditioned office and don't use drugs anyway so it's all fine by me.  I just think it's a waste.)

(Oh yeah, one more thing:  one of the guys tested pulled a muscle yesterday and had to be taken in by MedExpress.  If you get an on-the-job injury they pee test you right away.  So he'd already had a UA less than 24 hours previously, and they made him do a random anyway.  Go figure.)

This week I've been mulling my career path.  Anyone who has followed my adventures so far knows that in my case it's been more of a careen.  A year ago my primary professional goal was to work for one full calendar year at a job.  ANY job.  I like to phrase it as "Going to the same company party two years in a row".  Well, I've done that.  I've been at Pennington since January 19, 2006.  They didn't put me on their payroll until March 31 (until then I was a temp), so I've got another anniversary coming up, plus an annual review.  But for resume purposes, I've been at the same position for over a year now, and pretty happy with the company.  The actual job is maybe not the ideal thing for me, but it doesn't suck too bad most days.  It's okay.  I do my best and I do well, and it involves an actual learned skill set.  

But the fact is I don't want to grade lumber my whole life.  This is not why I went to college. ("So why did you go to college?"  "Shut up.")  And I need more money.  I've got a novelist at home I want to maintain in the style to which he deserves to become accustomed.  So I spent the weekend perusing the want ads in search of possibility.  I was hoping for a part-time office job I could pick up on the weekends, so that my office skills won't get rusty.  The longer I go working a mill job, the better off I am from the perspective of appearing to be dependable and not a jobhopper, but the worse off from the perspective of "recent experience in [fill-in-the-blank]"  

So I saw a few openings that I thought were good and updated my resume and printed out a couple copies, intending to go to my Fabulous Temp Agent and explain my predicament, ie, I don't want to leave this company but I don't want to languish either, and so in a few weeks after my annual review I'll be in to talk about potential opportunities but in the meantime here's my resume in case something outstanding falls into your lap.  My intention was that during my review I'd give my boss my resume and say, look, I know I'm fabulous where I am and it's a hard position to fill, but I have all these skills and qualifications that have cost me quite a bit to develop and it seems a shame to waste them if there's somewhere else I might be doing the company some good, especially since I like this company so much and don't wish to leave.  I was going to angle for a job (or even an unofficial internship) in traffic and logistics.  

So it was that Monday morning I had 3 copies of my resume in a folder in the front seat of my car, destined for various...destinations. On my way in to the molder room I accosted my boss and asked him about a performance review.  (This in itself is a big deal for me, as I usually avoid performance reviews. I get plenty of on-site feedback, why do I need a meeting?  Either gimme a raise or fire me.)  I told him I do have career goals (a fib) and would like to discuss them (true).  Later that same day, Larry (my stacker and one of the most interesting people I know) points out a job posting in the lunchroom.  SHIPPING AND RECEIVING CLERK/RECEPTIONIST.  I'll be damned.  

So after work I run one of the copies of my resume up to the office.  And Judy (the HR goddess) says, "Oh good. You were my first pick for this job."  (!!!!!!!!!!!)  I say, "Should I tell Zane I'm applying, because I do have an annual review coming up and I don't want him to cry?"  She says, "I already talked to Zane about you."  (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) 

I have competition, obviously.  There are people applying who have years of lumber experience and a longer track record within Pennington.  But even if, ultimately, I don't win this position, MY GOD, they THOUGHT about me!   The hierarchy thinks well of me!  This is a suckage failure of extreme proportions!  

THIS IS KEWL!!

and the interview went well too.

I'm officially looking for a secondary source of income.  Anyone out there need a Loyal Assistant?