I have to Jerry Bruckheimer up my first book

In case you weren't aware that to Jerry Bruckheimer something is actually a verb, allow me to explain: to Jerry Bruckheimer something is to fill it with action, explosions, etc. I came up with this verb after watching National Treasure, a fun not good movie with lots of action and unnecessary explosions Knowing that, we can move on.

I went to my favorite bookstore today, got a few books, and spoke with my editor about what he thinks I might want to do with my books (he's mostly done editing the second one). The first thing he told me was that the second book was better (so far) than the first and that I should consider merging the two books into one. A little discussion and we decided that maybe that book would be too long. The second book, you see, is better paced and more action packed than the first one. It's definitely the superior book so far and FBO thinks that I won't get much of a readership with the first book for the second book to shine.

So in talking about it, I asked FBO if he thought that action was missing from the first book. He said yes, so I suggested a couple of scenes that could turn from short and somewhat boring (if funny by my standards) chapters into more interesting chapters. Mostly they become more interesting by adding explosions or fight scenes. When I suggested to FBO that I should Jerry Bruckheimer up the first book he laughed and said that was a great idea. Now I have to look through the first book and find places to make things blow up more, help foreshadow things, have characters try to kill each other more often, that sort of thing.

Honestly, I've always known that my first book was weak compared to the two I wrote after it. I've made so many changes to that first book that it's kind of annoying to do it again, but this is what happens when you cut your teeth on a book that has potential that you can't do well enough on immediately. Irritating, yes, that I have to go change my stupid book yet again, but on the plus side, I've already thought of two somewhat interesting scenes that could become FAR more violent and therefore fascinating. :) Jerry Bruckheimering up my book shouldn't be too hard, and it could be a great deal of fun. I certainly hope so.

Dragon Dancing

About a month ago I started working on that short story that I intended to submit to my hopeful publisher. Well, I have finished the first draft and sent it out to some suckers... I mean good friends who are kind enough to look at my first draft and tell me how much it sucks. Not really. So far so good on the responses on the short story, which is frankly surprising since I suck so much at writing short stories. My strength in writing, I like to think, is my characters and their dialogue. Short stories don't have nearly enough time to really let anyone get to know the main character in any meaningful way and too much dialogue cuts into the space I am able to write so there's not enough of that.

Still, if the feedback so far has been "you don't suck" then I guess all that time spent writing novels came in handy somewhere. I've heard from some places that a good way to get your name known in the writing world is to write a bunch of short stories before trying to do any novels. That, obviously, won't exactly work for me having already done the novels, but I think that if I've cut my teeth on novels, perhaps coming back to short stories will make them easier for me.

I'm not letting my ego get out of control here and make me think I'm going to be some kind of short story genius now, but I think that planning a ten or twenty page story is slightly easier to me since I've planned books up to nearly 350 pages written and planned one book far longer than that. Ten or twenty pages is a chapter really, so considering how much experience I have in chapters, like fifty or more, then perhaps that is what is giving me the ability to do short stories a tid bit easier.

Anyway, my plan is to try to come up with some short stories and start submitting them to magazines and such (for money if at all possible). There are some short story contests I have been examining as well. I will, of course, pass all this past my favorite bookstore owner ever to make sure I'm not doing something silly, but I imagine he'll tell me, "yes, do that", so I'm not too worried that I'm wasting my time looking around.

I vaugely wonder if my chances for getting shit published isn't somehow weakened by the fact that I am in no way an English major, minor, or even, you know, really something I'm all that good at. Computer Scientists aren't normally known for thier English skills. Then again, most CS people haven't written three books for fun, so I might just be weird. Who knows?

Back to work.

The perils of DrivingUniversity.com

As I desperately miss my damn Defensive Driving discount and I really hate going to the def driver courses that basically involve me sitting around bored out of my mind for three or four hours while vaguely paying attention the stupid class, I emailed my insurance agent to see if any of these fancy schmancy new online classes were an acceptable replacement to the stupid class. My agent sent me a list of several choices and I went with one that looked the best designed and started the course.

As you can probably tell from the title of this little rant I picked DrivingUniversity.com, a very blue website, but one that at least looks somewhat technologically reasonable. The little tag line "Made by drivers for drivers" probably should have thrown up warning signs for me, but I plowed ahead.

One of the major reasons I wanted to take this course online was because I hate how long and boring the in class classes are. I thought that taking the course online should let me work at my own pace, that being fast, and according to the website "You can take the course at your own pace. The course is broken up into sessions and the time to take the course will vary from one person to another." As soon as I've finished the first page and ready to roar on, I notice a little timer at the bottom of the page. "That's odd," I thought, "I wouldn't think people would have to finish the page before the timer ran out. Good thing I read fast." Onwards! I click forward.

When the page reloaded, I noted quickly that it was the same fucking page, there was a lovely warning box at the top of the page telling me that the website required that I spend another 45 seconds on the page. That's right, there is a minimum amount of time I'm supposed to spend on each page because that's how long it's supposed to take me to read the page. By trying to speed up the irritating process of these stupid def driver classes, I've actually slowed back down. My hopes that this ridiculous limit of speed on this page would only be bad on the first few pages was totally dashed. I spent a minimum and a maximum of 20 seconds and well over a minute respectively of wasted time on each page.

But that's not the only punishment I receive for wanting to go fast. I'd really like to just, you know, get this stupid class over with since it's like the fifth or sixth time I've taken one of these annoying classes and I KNOW THE GODDAMN ANSWERS BY HEART. Clearly I've gotten the concept of driving defensively by now. But no! No no no. Aside from being punished for reading quickly, part of the online test is paying close enough attention to pick out details that have nothing to do with driving, such as the odd fact that honey is used in the production of golf balls and anti-freeze. Yeah, that's right, I have to pay attention to these little details, write them down, and use them to answer random quizzes that have absolutely nothing to do with driving. The best part? Sometimes the answers appear AFTER the quizzes. Oh goody.

The other details of the class layout are: read a bunch of shit, take some bullshit tests, read some ridiculous stories and answer questions about them, then play a puzzle game, repeat ad nauseum. We're up to the stories. The stories were clearly written by people who think that the people who are taking def driver courses are six years old. If the Wheel of Morality appeared in one of those stories it would not have surprised me. Reading these condescending stories made me want to punch people, and the propagandist nature of the stories was so blatant it almost made me want to become a communist. And were the final questions on these stories actually about driving? No, just stupid little details in the story that are easily forgotten. Fortunately I was wise enough to copy/paste the entire story into wordpad so I could check my answers. And, yes, if you finished their little quiz too quickly, you had to sit and wait for the website to decide you'd been done their test long enough.

Lastly, the puzzles. These were crossword puzzles in a manner of speaking, excepting that most of your time spent was waiting for their timer to run down before you input your answer. God forbid you spell an answer wrong, or you are forced to wait out the ENTIRE timer AGAIN while you spelled your answer correctly. No points for getting 95% of the letters of your answer correct.

In the end this course that I could supposedly take at my own pace, ended up taking me nearly four hours to complete, and I'd guess that nearly half that time was me waiting for timers to finish counting down. Maybe more. But no matter, the test was over, all I wanted was my stupid certificate which the website said I could print right there.

Except that, no, no I couldn't actually have the certificate. The link to the certificate is broken. My only way to get the fucking certificate is to have it faxed to me. Were any of the locations they suggested even remotely convenient to me? Of course not. Having wasted hours being punished for being able to read quickly, I sent a surprisingly polite message requesting that my certificate be faxed to my agent's office. I figured that since this company already alerts my agent upon completion of the online class, faxing the certificate to them as well wouldn't be asking much. Once again, I was wrong. Due to a mandate by the DE DMV, faxing a certificate to the very company they will be alerting so that I can have the discount is illegal. To get my certificate I have to show my ID, which certainly isn't possible at my agent's office WHERE THEY FUCKING KNOW WHO I AM.

All in all, I have to say that the online defensive driving course I took was almost as frustrating if not more so than taking the goddamn classes in person. The idea that I might not have to go anywhere was, of course, completely dashed when I had to find a place for them to fax me my goddamn certificate so I could go pick it up. When it comes time to take the course again, I may have to go take the fucking class in person because there at least I can totally ignore the class and play my DS. Should you take an online defensive driving course? I suppose that really depends on how much of a masochist you are. Or if you happen to read very slowly and live right next to a Fedex/Kinko's or UPS Store location. Otherwise I'd suggest suffering through the stupid class in person.

Hahahahaha!

Wizards that could kick Harry Potter's ass.

Though Harry Dresden didn't make the list, I think the wizards that did are worth the comedy value.

An unexpected shift in reality

As many people do, I have my resume online at Dice.com. This has resulted in almost no useful job offers, but up until today they've always been similar. The people sending me offers obviously never actually even so much as glanced at my resume or online information on Dice, and sent me jobs that asked for things like "senior software engineer", "ten years experience in SQLServer2k", and often times asked for years of experience in thing I hadn't even heard of. I've been used to getting these offers that there was no way I could possibly fill their expectations for some time now.

Today, however, marks the first day that I was sent an offer that I was actually considerably overqualified for. Where they wanted 2 years experience I have like four or five, and the knowledge bits that would be a "plus" I had experience in most of them. I don't know if this sudden change actually means something, but maybe it won't be as hard to find a job next time I'm looking. Hopefully that won't be soon, but if it is, I feel slightly more confident now that I know there are jobs that I am actually overqualified for.

meetings

Today I had a nearly 2 hour meeting that I needed to be in about five minutes of. It was the kind of meeting that, had it actually meant anything to me, I might have somehow vaguely not wanted to kill myself, but since it meant less than nothing to me, I really seriously was considering how many papercuts it would take to reach my jugular or carotid so I could fucking die instead of sit in the meeting anymore. The real turning point was when I realized that my boss has just walked out of the meeting at some point and then I just wanted to kill other people too.

I've had kind of a frustrating week in many ways, so my urge to kill isn't exactly hard to get off the ground right now anyway. EVENTUALLY, though, I will actually finish my stupid short story and start getting people to read it and tell me how horrible I am at writing short stories. Then I'll probably start feeling better. Why? I have no idea. That's just kind of how I work.

Bwahaha!

This is the greatest Digg link I've seen in a while: Tell Girls to Shut Up Its Good for Them

Christian Bale = Badass

Why Christian Bale is a complete badass. An eloquent article that exemplifies everything badass about the man. Rock.

Best "your mom" joke ever

http://www.xkcd.com/c116.html

Workplace sensitivity training

Yeah, that's right, I got to spend two hours yesterday learning some things about being more sensitive to others in the workplace and how I am a lout. Some group of professional actors does skits to get their points across with an obvious realization that what they do is annoying, so if they're gonna do it, they damn well better make it funny. Though it was surprisingly amusing, here are some of my notes from yesterday:

• Actors in "real life" situations = Choose your own adventure: office harassment.
  
• Manager George meets secretary Marie. Should George
  
  
  
  • A. Smile and nod.
    
  • B. Shake hands.
    
  • C. Compliment Marie's ass.
    
  • D. Suggest that a trip to the closet might result in a promotion.
    
  
  
• Stereotype vs. Reality: Rumble in the Manger's head.
  
• If Marie wants to be listened to in a male centric world, she should bring a megaphone.
  
• To be a man one must have a penis.
  
• In answer to the question of what to do when the VP of Sales "suggests" that you consider the nephew of the VP of Marketing over a qualified candidate, one should quietly murder the VP of Sales to avoid the problem. This has the added bonus of a potential promotion.
  
• People who curse a lot at work are considered to be louts. I'm fucking screwed.
  

Though I hate to admit it, I did almost enjoy the training. It didn't hurt that both of the actresses were kinda hot. And it did kill two hours I'd have had to have killed on my own anyway, so there were plusses. Gotta find that silver lining!

My vacation plus geek

For those of you who don't know, I am recently returned from my vacation to MD for my father and sister's birthday week thing. They were both children of 7/7, so I was supposed to take some of the week off and ended up taking almost the entire week off. As the old knight said at the end of Last Crusade, I chose wisely. As I do have some odd streaks of sunburn here and there, I didn't necessarily pick the right sunscreen every day, but taking that time was nicely relaxing, so it was well worth some vacation days.

Sailing, of course, I managed to get in for a day. Floating around in the water generally doing nothing was accompilshed. Tossing my brother in law off a pier and attempting the same with his brother, also got done. There was enough beer pong to fill a standard kitchen trashcan. I played my new DS games, both of which were engaging and fun (FFIII and Puzzle Quest if you must know). I practiced Kung Fu and Taiji every single day. I got to eat a small fortune worth of crabs, which was delicious and smash happy as well. We watched movies new and old of which the only one really worth mentioning was Pixar's Cars and I have to admit that for all my resistance to wanting to go see the movie (my whole racing aversion of late) the movie was quite good. Got lots done. Not much writing, but that's ok.

Mostly, though, I got ping pong done. I am back on my game. I started out shaky, losing every game to anyone, mom, brother in law, father, who I might play, and by the end I was winning more than losing. I love ping pong. The problem is finding a way to play it without the drive to MD. We do have a table here at work, oddly enough, but it is constantly in use and there doesn't appear to be any way to schedule time on the table.

If not for that whole "may not have a job come December" thing dangling precariously over my head a la the Sword of Damocles, I would just buy a damn table and find a nice place to put it. Outdoor tables appear to be 2-3X the cost of an indoor table, so either cramming it in my basement or in my parents house would seem to be my only option. I suppose I could always replace my kitchen table with the pong table, but my kitchen is ill sized for ping pong. Guh. Someday...

Now the geek. If you don't like Dungeons and Dragons, I suggest you stop reading now.

I got myself into the GM's chair for the first time in a long time at my game on Sunday. I ran an encounter that, in my opinion, went quite well save for the combat. The basic idea was that my fellow pirates were approached by some well geared other pirates who stole one of our crew. Then they had to go get little Billy the squid (seriously) back. All in all I wanted to have some entertaining traps, annoying special skills, and naval combat, and I think I succeeded on those counts. Not so much on the on ship combat, since I really wasn't ready for half the crew to immediately storm into the area where they were supposed to be sneak attacked and SEE their damn attackers before the sneak attacks could come. Or for half the crew to just hop down into the ship instead of walking across the trap laden decks. That could have been done better. Aside from that, I was entertained and I hope I entertained everyone.

Ok, I'm done geeking out. I'm going to publish this before the über storm hits and wipes out our power and our backup generators. Whee!

This needs a bigger audience:

http://skippyslist.com/?page_id=3

Hilarity. READ!