All Things From My Brain » humor

Conversations with my cat

Patrick Hester — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:00:15 +0000

Shadow: “I’m telling you – we have to do something!”

Me: “About?”

“THE MONSTER IN THE HOUSE? Where the hell have you been?”

“I don’t think he’s the monster you think he is. Have you tried talking to him?”

“You don’t talk to monsters. You slay them.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Those shows you watch with the girl who goes around killing monsters. DUH!”

“Right. Listen, you two need to get along so-” *picks him up*

“Hey! HEY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! PUT ME DOWN, FUCKER!*

“Calm down! This is for your own good!” *tosses him down on the comfy chair next to Dakota*

Dakota: “Bwohaha. Han, ma bookie, keel-ee calleya ku kah.”

Shadow: “AIIIIIGGGHHHHH!”

Dakota: “Bwohahaha.”

Sigh.

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Random thoughts for July 21, 2010

Patrick Hester — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 18:22:56 +0000

/begin random thoughts

Ack!

* * *

I should totally get pie today…

* * *

That can’t be good… Look at the way it’s just hanging there… I should tell someone…

* * *

Notgonnasaysomethingstupid, notgonnasaysomethingstupid, notgonnasaysomethingstu- Ah, shit.

* * *

Wheeeeeeee….

* * *

44, 45, 46, huh. weird. How’d that get in there? *tosses it aside* 4-… uh… 4-… uh. 1, 2, 3, 4-

* * *

*radio announcer* Are you a woman entering menopause?

No.

*radio announcer* How many hot flashes do you have each day?

None.

*radio announcer* Do you feel fatigued in the late afternoon?

…well, yeah. Sometimes.

*radio announcer* Do you wish you had more energy and a stronger sex drive?

…sure, who doesn’t?

*radio announcer* Would you like to lose weight too?

…okay, okay – I’m listening!

*radio announcer* Try our new drug for menopausal women!

Wait -what? No. You tricked me.

*radio announcer* We didn’t trick you!

. . .

*radio announcer* it’s the new drug that solves all of your menopausal problems! Some side effects may occur.

Of course.

*radio announcer* But don’t worry about those – that’s why we say them really quickly at the end of the commercial.

I knew it! Lying sack of shit…

*radio announcer* So, order our new drug that cures all you menopausal symptoms AND gives you a better SEX LIFE AND more energy AND feeds starving children in Africa-

Why is it always Africa? Are there no starving children anywhere else?

*radio announcer* -and helps Angels to get their wings. *crowd goes awwwwww*

Right. Uh-huh.

*radio announcer* DoesNOTfeedstarvingchildreninAfrica, maynotgrantAngelstheirwings, maycausebleeding, eyeirritation, jointpain, lossofsexdrive-

WAIT! You just said-

*radio announcer* -headaches, drymouth, itching-

I am so turning the channel.

*new radio announcer* Do you have cats? Do they keep you from sleeping the night through?

*ears perk up*

/end random thoughts

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The Written Word (or not)

Patrick Hester — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 22:27:46 +0000

Today, I took the laptop to lunch to do some writing and didn’t realize that the battery was close to dead, so I wasn’t able to work on the project I’d planned to work on. When I mentioned this on Twitter, someone pointed out that I could’ve just written it by hand and transcribed it later. This actually doesn’t work well for me. Let me explain.

I kinda got screwed in the handwriting department.

Right when everyone was first learning how to draw the alphabet on that brown paper with the lines on it? I had a broken hand. That was the first set back for me.

We were living in Berwyn (suburb of Chicago) at the time, and my mom and aunt were sitting on the porch of our brownstone in the early evening (or at least, that’s how I remember it). I was sitting in a comfy chair just inside one of the storm windows over looking the porch. I was playing around, leaning into the window to talk to them, resting my arm on the sill, and I managed to kick loose the stick holding the storm window open.

Down it crashed. I remember seeing my hand swelling up and thinking that it just shouldn’t do that, your hand should not even be able to swell that way, and yet – there it was. Swelling up. Essentially, a mountain was forming on the back of my hand, growing and expanding.

My mom and aunt freaked out, of course. I was screaming my head off. They rushed me to the bathroom, filled the sink with water and ice and plunged my hand in. We ended up having to go to the doctor, I got a cast and, for a while there I was unable to hold a pencil or write in my right hand.

So I switched to my left. Smart, right? My dad didn’t think so. He forbid it – actually forbid it. He even went to the school and told the nuns they were not to let me even think about writing with my left hand. This meant that I was instantly behind everyone else when it came to writing.

Fast forward to cursive. Didn’t do so well there. Never really caught up, started doing weird things that had my teachers scratching their heads and calling my mom in for conferences. (“Um, Mrs. Hester – did YOU teach Patrick to make a capital H this way?” “No. This is how I do it. *puts a capital H on the paper*” “Strange. We didn’t teach him this either. So where did he learn it?” *all eyes turn to me* “Um… Magic?” Interesting side note – there aren’t a lot of nuns who appreciate my sense of humor…)

This resulted in my handwriting becoming a thing of legend amongst the adults. Aunts & Grandmothers would whisper in awe that I would most definitely be a doctor when I grew up because, well, look at the handwriting!

(I didn’t become a doctor. I let Blake Charlton have that. I’m cool that way.)

So, the idea of hand writing out stuff (which I admit that I have done in the past. I once turned in a massive paper to my sophomore year college prep English teacher that had been hand written, not in cursive, and at what would amount to about a 3 point font size today so it fit on just 1 page, double sided) and then transcribing it (something else I have ATTEMPTED to do and have come to HATE WITH A FIERY PASSION THAT BURNS DEEP WITHIN MY CHEST) – not particularly appealing to me.

Here – I offer you a page from my work notebook (the keeper of all things, that which is never out of my sight and contains all things I am to do on a day to day basis):

Click for a larger view

As you can see – pretty bad handwriting.

So, when you suggest that I could’ve handwritten stuff at lunch, you are correct. I could’ve. But I wouldn’t have enjoyed it and it never would’ve been transcribed so I might as well put it off til I have something electronic to type it on.

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Random Thoughts for July 19th 2010

Patrick Hester — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 19:46:18 +0000

/begin random thoughts

I’m number 2!

As you can see in the photo, I am number 2. It’s taken me quite a long time to get here, I might add. Not all of it has been fun. But hey, what matters is that I’m here now, right? Number 2. That’s just one spot away from being the best!

…aw crap! Some girl in a black shirt just came and traded my Number 2 for a bowl of white chicken, rice, veggies and teriyaki sauce.

DAMMIT!

* * *

Spent the weekend mostly immobile. I still don’t know what I did to my back this time, but it was a doozy. I started to feel a little better Sunday and almost started doing my house chores like mowing the lawn and whatnotall, but then I thought about the possibility of reinjuring myself and decided to just stick it out on the couch.

Was actually fine most of this morning until I left for lunch. Felt a couple of twinges. Will continue to take it easy til this passes, me thinks.

* * *

Last week’s episode of the Functional Nerds has been really well received, which makes me smile. Mike Resnick & John DeNardo were on. Mike is such a force; so warm, engaging – I want to say larger than life. He could have a show of his own with a voice like his.

Actually, he does – he has those ‘When movies were movies’ over on mevio.com. Short reviews of movies pre 1970ish. Good stuff – you should check it out.

I’m not surprised that people are enjoying that particular episode. We were on our game, we had great guests and stuff to talk about – a combination for success.

* * *

The original ‘Ballroom Blitz’ is currently playing throughout Tokyo Joe’s.

* * *

I managed a whopping 1300 words on the short story this weekend. My back just would not let me sit up long enough to accomplish anything. I tried writing on the laptop but it was awkward what with the cats going “OMG YOU’RE ON THE COUCH CAN WE SIT THERE ON YOU?! I’LL TAKE THE HEAD YOU TAKE THE FEET!!”

* * *

…I really need to mow the lawn soon. I saw the beginnings of a civilization forming among the weeds the other night.

* * *

Someone told me that they’d heard that the word ‘gals’ was offensive to women. Really? Since when? Does that mean ‘guys’ is now offensive to men?

Is there anything offensive to men? I mean, we’re the half of the species who will fart just to get a reaction. We can be in bed with a woman, the possibility of sexual contact impressively high, and we will absolutely sabotage that just to play dutch oven.

Offensive? Really?

/end random thoughts

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Random Thoughts for July 15th 2010

Patrick Hester — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 19:55:47 +0000

/begin random thoughts

My mom accidentally locked the cats in the basement for a few hours. She went down there to look for something, didn’t realized she’d been followed, walked up the stairs, shut the door and then headed up to the second floor to clean her bathroom and bedroom. She kept hearing them meowing and called to them, telling them she was upstairs, trying to encourage them to come up there. When they kept crying, she finally decided to go see why there were being lazy and found that they were in the basement.

This resulted in two things: 1) Mom felt horrible; I told her they’re cats and they will survive the ‘trauma’ of being locked in the basement for a couple of hours. 2) The cats were very clingy and well behaved last night; essentially they were all, “First you take us to that man in the white coat who cut our Talons & poured goop in our ears, then you lock us in the basement!? WE’LL BE GOOD FROM NOW ON – WE SWEARS!!!”

* * *

The channel formerly known as SciFi used to have a web extension of itself known as SciFi Wire; this was the news service for SciFi and had, sprinkled in-between ads for Ghost Hunters and Warehouse 13, bits of news about the SciFi community. But, alas, they have chosen to give it a new, stupid name (Blastr) because they really don’t care one iota about the fan base that built them. So from now on, that site (if it ever gets mentioned again around here) shall be known as: the website formerly known as SciFi Wire.

* * *

I am no longer receiving email notifications when someone leaves a comment on the blog. I don’t know why. I’m supposed to get one. I’ve checked my spam / junk folder and they’re not ending up there, so it’s a real mystery as to why they aren’t showing up.

If you leave a comment and don’t see it after a few hours, shoot me an email so I can approve it. After you’ve been approved once, you’re all good. Still, I wish WP would tell me there’s a new comment (approved or otherwise) to be read.

* * *

I mentioned before that I’d written a short story; it came out of nowhere last Saturday. I don’t know what my muse had for dinner Friday night, but by Saturday, she wanted me to write a space Western, which I did. Well, half of one anyway. I’ve been itching to get back to it but other things have come up.

Monday at lunch, I went through and edited what I’d already written, fixing some stuff, adding stuff, deleting – that sort of thing. On paper. Then I took that home and Monday night, made all the changes in Scrivener.

Tuesday was podcast recording night. Wednesday was the first half of podcast editing and the morning when I woke up in pain in my right shoulder and back. No freaking clue what I did, but it persists today (Thursday) and kept me up late last night trying to fall asleep while not moving. Normally, it only takes Wednesday to edit the podcast, but I skipped a step when I exported it from the software I use to record Skype and had to do it again, which takes forever and set me way back. Tonight will be the second half of podcast editing because of that little step skip I did, and my weekly glance at Evermist to make sure I haven’t screwed anything up there.

That means it’ll be tomorrow night before I get back to my Space Western. Sigh.

/end random thoughts

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Random Thoughts for July 14th 2010

Patrick Hester — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:36:31 +0000

/begin random thoughts

I pitched an idea to someone and they liked it so I’ll probably start something new here shortly.

More on that later…

* * *

Networking is important no matter what you do for a living. Meeting new people, making connections – it can be the difference between something happening or not.

You are more likely to say yes to someone you’ve met face to face versus someone you’ve never even heard of before.

I was once offered a job simply beause I knew someone working for the company who said to The Boss, “Hey – you know who we need here? Patrick. He’d be a great fit.”

* * *

Skype really doesn’t like wireless connections. Learned that last night. We had Mike Resnick scheduled to be on the Functional Nerds podcast and I really didn’t want another evening full of Skype dropping calls – seriously, you one of the folks who complain about AT&T? Skype on wifi is 100 times worse.

I sent them an email a while ago about the issues I was having. Let me dig that out for you…

Ok – here’s what I sent to Skype Customer Support:

“Well, I went through your troubleshooting scenarios and it lead me here, where none of the choices for Topic or problem have anything to do with my problem, which is frustrating.

Once a week, I make a skype to skype call. Sometimes I have 3 people on and we do a conference call. The call lasts between one hour and an hour and a half max.

I either have: silence from call participants every five minutes for about 30 seconds – like clockwork-

or

At exactly 55 minutes into the call, whoever initiated the call has their sound distorted and cannot be understood – we call this ‘cyloning’ because the person starts to sound like an old Cylon from BSG. Sometimes, this causes the call to drop completely and the person initiating the call has to close Skype completely and restart it before they can be part of the call again.

I’ve started the calls and had this happen to me – I’m running a dual core iMac with Leopard. I’ve also had someone running Windows Vista initiate the call and have the exact same thing happen to her, so it doesn’t seem to be platform specific.

It’s very frustrating. I’ve been considering purchasing an online number and going on a month to month plan, but as near as I can tell – these issues we’re having are related to your service and not to our hardware or connections – not if we can predict it down to the second when the problems are going to occur.

Do you have any solutions for this?”

Here is the response I got back from Skype:

“We are sorry to hear that you are experiencing difficulties with Skype.

The primary reason for robotic sound, dropouts in sentences and sound delay is poor network performance. In the context of Skype this means networks that have a high rate of packet-loss and long packet round-trip-delay.

Below is a list of suggestions which should address the problem that you are experiencing.

These steps can be carried out separately and in any order, so if you are unable to complete any one of them, just move on to the next one.

1.First, please make sure that you are running the latest version of Skype. The latest version of Skype can be found here: http://www.skype.com/download/”

(Note: I am running the latest version for Mac.)

“2. Next, ensure that the following are up-to-date:
- Windows with the latest Service Packs and updates, available from http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/
- DirectX – the main multimedia part of Windows. The newest version can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/default.aspx”

(Note: I am running a MAC, not Windows.)

“3. Please follow the simple suggestions here that resolve many call quality issues: http://www.skype.com/help/guides/callquality/”

(Note: I ALREADY DID THAT – IT’S WHY I FREAKING SENT YOU AN EMAIL!)

“4. Please follow our visual sound setup guide to make sure your audio settings are correct: http://www.skype.com/help/guides/soundsetup.html”

(Note: What part of I’VE BEEN THROUGH YOUR TROUBLESHOOTING STEPS AND THEY LEAD ME TO EMAIL YOU do you have trouble understanding?)

“5. Now, check that your firewall is not interfering with Skype. You can find our firewall guides at http://www.skype.com/help/guides/firewalls/ Even if it can connect and you are able to use chat it is possible that your firewall is still blocking some connections that Skype needs for a reliable voice or video call. Please refer to your firewall manual if you are not able to find the required information on our website.”

(Note: Already done did it.)

“6. In the Skype top menu go to Tools > Options > Advanced > Connection please tick the option to ‘Use port 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connections’. In the ‘Incoming Connections’ box you can chose any port between 1024 and 65535. It is not necessary to change the port number though.”

(Note: That’s how you get there from Windows. I’m on a Mac, remember? Did you even read my email?)

“7. The problem that you are experiencing might also be related to the connection type that you are using or the connection speed availability. Please ensure that when making a call there are no additional programs running that can be taking a lot of bandwidth and also that the internet connection speed is fast enough to support a call. We cannot guarantee that Skype will be working at 100% when there are other programs running which might be interfering with Skype. Sometimes you might also experience this type of problem during a Skype2Skype call when calling a destination where there are known network problems or the connection speed on the other end is insufficient.”

(Note: Tried that. Closed every other internet accessing program on the machine – no difference.)

“8. If the above does not help, please try a clean installation of Skype. Please completely remove Skype via Add/Remove programs and then install again.”

(Note: That’s Friggin WINDOWS! Sigh. You are stupid, aren’t you? please don’t breed…)

“9. For this step showing hidden folders and files has to be turned on. Please navigate to My Computer > Tools > Folder Options > View. Once there, please make sure that the option ‘Show Hidden Files and Folders ‘ is enabled.”

(Note: See the note under #6 – same applies here and I’m tired of retyping it over and over…)

“* Close Skype with a right click on the systray icon (next to the Windows clock) and selecting ‘Quit’
* Locate the shared.xml file found in C:\Documents and Settings\your_windows_username\ApplicationData\Skype\
* Delete shared.xml
* Start Skype (shared.xml will be recreated)”

(Note: Mac! I’m on a Mac! I told you – hey, I’m on a Mac - and you didn’t friggin listen, did you?! No! because you’re stupid and you don’t have any trouble shooting guides for Mac, do you? Please, for the love of God and the good of the gene pool, tell me that you have been fixed! That you can never spread your seed on an unsuspecting world!!!)

“Last, if you are using a wireless connection, please try connecting your computer to your modem or router using a standard cable.”

(Note: Huh. Okay, might as well give that a shot.)

Which I did. I ran a 50ft cat 5 cable from the corner of my living room where Comcast installed the freaking thing, along the wall, passed the front door, up the stairs, around the corner and into my bedroom where my computer and desk are currently setup. I taped the wire down along the way so it wasn’t a trip hazard.

And we had the best Skype call in the history of the Functional Nerds podcast.

Sigh.

Guess I’m gonna have to make that a permanent thing.

/end random thoughts

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Random Thoughts for July 9, 2010

Patrick Hester — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 23:00:09 +0000

/begin random thoughts

I wish I could better streamline my day and time. Aren’t we all about that? Getting more done, having more time, etc and so on?

I find there are times when I wish my body wouldn’t betray my brain; I want to write, to work on this or that, but my body is all, ‘No! Too tired! Must sleep now!’ and my brain is still going. They need to make a pill for that.

“Cyzquarhoshilopozine! The new drug that makes it possible for you to work, without sleep! May cause drowsiness, mild depression, suicidal tendencies, rage, serial killer-ism, psychotic outbreaks, chicken pocks, muscle spasms, erectile dysfunction or loss of sex drive, bleeding from your eyes, demonic possession, delusions of grandeur, political aspirations, asthma, hearing loss, appendicitis, brain tumors, cancer of the uvula, swelling of the ears, tongue, fingers or toes, hair loss, rectal bleeding, death, zombie-ism and pimples.”

Also, I’d like to be better at using the time I do have to get stuff done. I keep looking at my lunch hour and thinking, ‘How can I squeeze some more productivity out of that bad boy?’ I already try to write these little blog posts during that time, what more can I manage, I wonder?

* * *

The other night, I went to B&N. I told myself that I was just going to go, hang out, have a piece of cheesecake and not spend a ton of money.

A ton of money later…

* * *

I’m getting a desk from a guy to go in my basement office / man cave / TARDIS area and he keeps putting off when he’ll be able to deliver it. I don’t have a vehicle that can haul the damned thing. I suppose I could borrow one but part of me doesn’t mind the wait because it allows me to procrastinate. See, when the desk arrives, I’ve committed myself to the whole ‘bookshelf, setup the office environment’ project, so putting that off is okay cuz it’s a daunting task for a non carpentry computer guy.

* * *

I bought a new dishwasher to replace the old dishwasher. The old dishwasher SOUNDED LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME – CAN YOU HEAR ME? I CAN’T HEAR YOU – LET’S GO OUTSIDE WHERE IT’S QUIET AND WE CAN CHAT, OK? The new dishwasher sounds no louder than a really quiet cat purring. The difference is absolutely astounding.

The dishwasher marks a milestone, or maybe just an as yet unprecedented incredible moment in my life wherein I didn’t have to get ‘what I could afford’ but rather ‘what I wanted’. I’ve always saved up for big purchases, which I think we all do. A lot of times, we set our targets on something and then save until we can afford it. I tend to compromise even on that – I’ll see what’s out there, see what I could save for and then talk myself out of the more expensive stuff and settle for something ‘I can afford’ sooner. Have done that for most of my adult life.

With this dishwasher, I had my tax credit from the purchase of my house fresh in the bank. There were lots of different dishwashers that I could afford, but I went for a couple bells & whistles that I wouldn’t normally have gone for (like I really, really wanted a quieter one) and I didn’t sweat the extra $100 or whatever to get it.

Of course, after that purchase, I am back on being miserly with my money on big purchases (and some little ones too). Still, it was fun to do once…

* * *

Tonight, Eureka! returns to the channel formerly known as SciFi. I’m excited! That is one very fun little show. My TiVo is set just in case something comes up and I can’t watch it live. Also setup to record Haven because I want to see what that’s all about.

/end random thoughts

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The Traveling Wilburys

Patrick Hester — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 18:00:21 +0000

I cleaned out my iPhone last night, purging all music from it and starting over. I felt like I’d been in a rut musically lately and needed to change things up. It was almost a traumatic experience to hit that delete button. Part of me wishes they made an MP3 player that could hold my entire music library so I would never have to choose what to carry with me. Part of me. The other part is kinda glad that I have to choose because it means that I explore my music more than I would otherwise, picking and choosing the things I want to listen to, finding gems I may have forgotten about or that I haven’t listened to in a long while instead of listening to the same twenty songs over and over again.

A while ago, The Traveling Wilburys Collection was finally released on iTunes and reissued on CD after a very long absence. Here’s a trip for you – I had them on cassette tape! I never owned the CD’s and, consequently, didn’t have them in my iTunes except for a couple of the hits that came from somewhere. So when they came up, at long last, as something I could purchase on iTunes, I was really excited.

Then I promptly forgot about it and didn’t buy the collection.

I kept thinking, every once in a while, ‘Oh, hey – need to buy The Traveling Wilburys!’ but then I’d get distracted and it would get pushed to the back of my mind again.

Until last night.

I bought the whole collection and promptly added it to my iPhone playlist. I’m listening to it today at work.

I remember the first time I listened to these songs. My mom was working at an Italian Restaurant called Luigi’s in Fresno California. It was on Blackstone Ave in the same strip mall area as K-Mart and this hobby store whose name escapes me but where I bought my first Dungeons & Dragons books. Anyway, I would go to Luigi’s after school (taking the bus) and hang out with mom playing Mrs. Pacman in the bar or doing my homework in one of the empty booths until she got off work at six and we’d head home for dinner.

One day, I’d heard this song ‘handle me with care’ by the strangest group; The Traveling Wilburys. The group was made up of some really famous people including: George Harrison, Jeff Lynn, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan & Roy Orbison. I really liked and wanted the song. I asked my mom and she gave me some money and sent me down the strip mall to Tower Records where I bought the cassette. I then headed behind the K-Mart to the little apartment complex where my older brother was living so I could play it on his stereo.

I remember him staring at me as I played the songs. “You like this?” he asked. “Yep,” I replied. He was surprised. “I didn’t think you liked good music.”

Of course, it made me suspicious that he would make such a comment. He and I did not like the same music. His tastes tended towards AC/DC, Metallica, Led Zeppelin. Boston, Deep Purple and Yngwie Malmsteen – none of which appealed to me at all (they did later, as I grew older and my own musical horizon was expanding – but not Yngwie…). For him to like what I was listening to was unusual and unsettling.

I sat there on the floor of his apartment and listened to the cassette through twice before I had to leave and walk back to Luigi’s. That was just the first of many, many times I would play that cassette through front to back. My friends were into the Wilburys as well and when we’d go out, it was often in the mix of stuff we’d pop into the car stereo and listen to or played in the background as we hung out and played D&D, so that little cassette tape got a lot of play.

It’s nice to have this music back into the mix again. I don’t know what confluence of events brought these guys together for a short time to make music together, but I’m glad that they did come together to produce some of my favorite songs of all time.

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Random Thoughts for July 7th, 2010

Patrick Hester — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:00:01 +0000

/begin random thoughts

Do you remember when vans were cool?

Scooby Doo rode around in one, so did the A-Team. Heck, my aunt and uncle came to town one year and had one that was really tricked out. You had the shag carpet (floor AND walls, of course), the swivel chair (very Bond.), the booth in the back with the table (“…and the kids can sit back here and play games when we’re on long trips!”). Vans were ~cool~.

Now, vans are creepy.

I mean, you see a van going down your street and what’s the first thing that pops into your head? I know what pops into mine. “CREEPY VAN! HEY EVERYONE – LOOK! CREEPY VAN! CREEPY SERIAL KILLER VAN GOING DOWN THE STREET! RIGHT THERE – DO YOU SEE IT? OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD!”

* * *

Passion overrules reason with the majority of people (my own, humble opinon, of course).

When someone is passionate about something, anything, they tend to not like anyone who disagrees with them or contradicts what they believe. This leads to attacks; attacking the person verbally, dismissing them, undermining them, attempting to lower their value and worth which raises your own (right?). In the extreme, this can lead to violence.

Politics is a perfect example of passion overruling reason. My mom will tell you how much she hates people on the opposite side of the aisle. She will spout what is really just political rhetoric; that sort of grandiose, all encompassing statements meant to fuel peoples passions and dull the reason centers of their brains (all sides do this, btw). She’ll bandy about words and prhases like: evil, nazi, hate, uncaring, despicable, they don’t care about people, they only care about themselves, they don’t listen, they only want to hear themselves talking, talk, talk, talk. But she can’t point to specific or rational examples of these points and gets flustered and angry when anyone points that out or tries to draw more out of her. it’s not just my mom, though. I think everyone reacts in a similar fashion, regardless of subject, when their passion is enflamed and people around them don’t immediately agree and bolster them.

Passion isn’t necessarily about things making sense in a rational, logical way. Passion is about emotion. We can ignore a lot when engulfed in passion, and that’s when we get into trouble.

* * *

I installed Scrivener on my Macs a little bit ago. Scrivener is this program for writers that is intended to help you write by taking away the burden of all the other stuff that comes with writing.

Let me esplain. One could spend hours playing with Word. I, for one, have dug through all the little settings in Word and stripped out things like ‘convert single quotes to curly quotes’ because that breaks web browsers and I do a lot of web stuff. You can also setup things like: margins, indents, text size, headers, footers, fonts, blah, blah, blah and when you’re all done and it’s time to submit your piece to someone for consideration, you have to go through and redo everything to match the submission guidelines.

One of the features of Scrivener is that it takes all that out of your hands. You can setup your writing environment however you like, but when you export, it’s always gonna export it according to submission guidelines, which it keeps separate from your gui settings. That’s #1.

The second cool thing that it does is organization. When I first started using Word to write, I would do one chapter per doc, save each chapter in a folder for the project, then move on. Jumping from chapter to chapter involved opening multiple docs. Later, I started keeping a ‘running file’ where I would copy/paste each chapter so I had the piece I was working on, and a reference piece in a single doc. The more complicated the project, the more complicated and messy this system got. Plus, I never figured out how to do notes and stuff like that, so I also would have a little notepad going or another doc with my notes in it running, so at least 3 Word docs going at any one time.

Moving to Mac when I dumped Windows, my methods didn’t change much.

Enter Scrivener. It organizes things really well. You can have chapters broken down by scenes, each scene its own piece but still part of the whole. You can have scenes nested with other scenes or in folders. You can edit all the scenes of your chapter at once (a slight color change from scene to scene tells you where the breaks are), or one at a time, or two at a time with a split screen or you can even have the same scene open at different parts – very, very slick.

You can have notes and synopsis without having to dig around for it, flag things, mark the stage in revisions where a particular piece is at (draft,revised draft, final draft) or create your own, custom stage names (crap, utter crap, volcanic neon crapola). You can attach photos and articles and pdf’s and a slew of other things to your manuscript in a handy research area. Best of all, you can switch between different views of your manuscript including outlines or storyboard / cork-board.

I want to say that it has already made me more productive because I feel more productive. I dumped my WIP in and immediately starting playing around and learning how things worked and what worked for me. Soon, I found myself taking full advantage of the features I didn’t think I’d ever use (like the outline piece and notes). In the middle of a scene and need to remember something you’ve written ten chapters ago? No problem – it’s all right there in the doc and there’s a couple ways to find it.

I think I’m in love…

/end random thoughts

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Random thoughts for July 2nd, 2010

Patrick Hester — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 18:00:50 +0000

/begin random thoughts

Every time I type ‘functional nerds’, I leave out the ‘c’ and have to fix it.

Every time I type @johnanealio, I add an extra ‘n’ and have to fix it as well.

Sometimes, I don’t catch either mistake as I’m in a hurry…

* * *

The other night, both cats were asleep on the couch. Dakota woke up and turned to Shadow, who promptly started grooming him. This would’ve been a really cool thing if they hadn’t got into a massive duster not ten minutes later that I had to break up because I was afraid they’d kill each other.

There’s a definite power struggle going on between them and I know that it has to resolve itself (or that it might never resolve itself). I really, really want them to get to a point where it’s just a couple cats playing and not a battle royale for supreme control over the house.

Sigh.

* * *

I’m all for doing what we can for the environment, but I am not an environmentalist. One of the things that I know has a huge impact is the new trend towards cloth grocery bags instead of plastic. Problem is, it bugs the living shit out of me.

I am not a shopper. I don’t shop. I don’t like to browse the aisles of the local grocery store looking for deals. I plan my trips like a precise military incursion; Enter through the main doors snagging a small basket (also known as a ‘Single Guy Indicator Badge’) and immediately veer right into produce to avoid crowds. Cut through and up the far side until you hit the bakery and place one loaf in basket, immediately cut across to milk and gather one gallon and then shoot to pasta asile for one package spahetti and one jar sauce. If funds are available, a side trip to ‘meats’ is acceptable for ground beef and or sausage. Once all items on list have been placed in basket, head directly to check out – DO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT! DO NOT ENGAGE EMPLOYEE OFFERING FREE SAMPLES OF STOUFFERS PIZZA BITES BECAUSE IT IS A TRAP AND YOU WILL DIE YOU WILL DIE YOU WILL FUCKING DIE! (of heart disease in 30 years or so…)

Once I get to the checkout, my entire trip having used up only seven and a half minutes thus far, I must now wait in line for twenty-three minutes while the people in front of me insist on using their cloth grocery bags to carry their three flats of plastic water bottles (yay environment!), causing a bottle neck (pun…).

Grocery checkout is an assembly line. A well oiled machine, as it were, and the whole thing comes crashing down on your head when you throw a wrench into the machinery and, unfortunately, cloth bags are the wrench.

A clever store might, just might, do an exchange program. Replace all plastic bags with cloth bags so there’s nothing to change up or cause problems on the line. Then, when you come in to get groceries, you take your old bags and toss em in a bin to be cleaned and reused while taking fresh bags from the line. (how about a barcode on each bag attached to your account – scan em out, scan em in, get charged a nominal fee like 10cents a bag, credited back when you return em or some such?)

A clever store might do that. Most stores aren’t clever.

My mom works at WalMart as a cashier. She says nothing causes them more trouble than when someone brings in a cloth bag. They are pressured, massively pressured, to be fast, fast, fast – faster than their peers, faster than the Flash when scanning and bagging. They DREAD seeing the cloth bags coming down the line because they worry about how it’s going to impact their score for the day.

Does that sound right to you? Me either.

The other thing she says they dread is what they might find when they open the bags people bring in. One day, the lady across from mom opened such a bag and screamed her head off, quickly dropping it and backing away from it like it were on fire. Apparently, when she opened it, spiders spewed forth…

* * *

I don’t know that I like the new Doctor Who. There’s just something off about it. Hard to put my finger on it.

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