Author: katster

Halfway Point

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I finished my 11k challenge for the weekend, and now have somewhere just north of 35,000 words. I’m shooting to hit 50 next Sunday night, but I’m not entirely sure 15k in 7 days is entirely realistic. So we’ll leave that alone other than to open the betting pool for when I’m going to hit 50,000 words.

In the challenge to write a blog post every day, I’m on track (other than moving the one I posted to LJ over to the blog because my server was down for maintenance). The problem is that my life is boring and I’m stuck for things to write about.

So hey, if you’re reading this, say hey and give me some ideas for what you want to hear me say. I need help here.

But the news is, despite a bit of a rough start, the month’s on task. Now to just see if I can get some focus on my GIS project.

Four quick thoughts.

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It was a pretty good day, but I’m going to eschew blogging for the sake of increasing wordcount.

But today was good because:
* I crossed the 30,000 word mark
* Cal won, which is always good
* I had lots of good times with people who are pretty awesome.

Worrying:
* Stanford curbstomped USC today, to match their curbstomping of Oregon last week. Next up for Cal? Stanford. Yeah, not expecting an Axe for my birthday this year…

Count stands currently at 31,403 — hoping for another thousand before midnight.

detritus

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Random thoughts from ye olde brain of mine:

* The stoplight question from a few days ago? The reason it came up was that I was reading a fascinating book about traffic and automobiles, and in a discussion about relative corruption levels and traffic laws obeyed, he brought up that point — that even at 2 AM, when the roads are deserted and you’d have just about the perfect opportunity to get away with running the red, you still stop. Stopping at red lights is that powerfully engraved in your psyche. Of course, he points out, the same can’t be said about speed limits. ;)

Anyway, fascinating question, and that’s why I thought I’d bring it up. My thanks to ,, and for engaging me with it.

* I crossed the halfway point tonight. I’ll update the graph later, and then open the betting pool for when I’m going to cross the 50k mark. ;) Sadly, there will be no prize other than our happy recognition and cheers for being the closest.

* Had a bit of a meltdown at work; talked with one of my coworkers; she gave me some really good thoughts. Yah, I think the rest of this year is going to be getting myself aligned and ready to hit the ground running in 2010. And yeah, I’ll be looking just about everywhere I can.

* Came across a bumper sticker on the drive home tonight that read, “It’s time for America to bless God!” You know, the funny thing is, I thought it worked the other way around…

* If Paypal will hurry it up, I’ll be going to the Bay Area for the Night of Writing Dangerously, as the last bit I need is coming across that way. My thanks to everybody that helped. There will be a longer post about this in the next few days, once things are confirmed.

* And that’s about it.

Thoughts?

PS: Google Chrome DOES NOT play nice with WordPress. It just kinda ignores it when you hit the publish button…

I have awesome friends.

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So, y’know how I’ve been asking y’all for money? I’m down to needing to come up with ~$20. This is because I have a set of awesome friends.

I’m going to write (by hand, mind you) thank you cards to everybody that’s supported me once things have calmed down a bit and I know who I need to write them for. And yeah, given the ugly mood I started November in, this is just that more awesome.

So yeah, after the rocky start, November’s gotten a lot better, if for no other reason than I’m reminded I ain’t alone out here. Not that they needed to say it, but sometimes my head gets strange. :) And so this is just a shoutout to all my awesome friends. :)

A Retaken Mint Plot

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Yeah, that’s *my* mint farm! (Or it might just be an anagram for my first and last names.)

Anyway, I need eight more donations of ten dollars each to get to The Night of Writing Dangerously, thanks to a few awesome friends. Can you help by donating?

Also, since a picture’s worth a thousand words, here’s my wordcount per day for this year’s NaNoWriMo excitement:

My wordcount!

The blue line is my wordcount per day, the red line is the rolling average. Yeah, it’s very choppy. But I’m writing! I just passed 22k! I keep trucking!

zero day

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First of all, and I know this is becoming annoying, please donate to help send me to The Night of Writing Dangerously. I just need 15 more people to donate $10 each, and the clock is starting to tick down. (I have to make it to the goal by Nov. 18!) This is what I’d like for my birthday, so if you can spare a bit, I’d appreciate it.

That said, I’m taking a zero day today. There’s a strange concept at work these days called work, and so I’ve been doing that. And then there was school. At least it’s the class I like, so there’s a good thing.

I’m feeling a bit better tonight, although I suspect the chronic low-level depression won’t go away until I address some of the structural problems underlying some of it. This is harder than it looks.

And with that said, I’ve got an interesting question for you to chew on. It’s two AM, and you’re driving a lonely highway. As you approach a red light, you can clearly see that there’s nobody around at all.

So why do you stop?

Just a thought.

An Alexander day

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I swear, Mondays account for 53 and three-quarters percent of all my extensional crises. This was another bad Monday.

Anyway, to explain my topic, it comes from the children’s book Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day, in which the main character contemplates several times about moving to Australia. I’ve thought about it too, and so really shaky days are Alexander days. And today was just one of those days.

Part of it was triggered by getting money out of my bank account to pay for gas, and realizing I have ten dollars to get me through a week and a half after the gas was accounted for. That wasn’t happymaking at all. Of course, this is a common lament these days not just for me but for everybody. It means, at least for me, that once NaNoWriMo is over, I need to just start throwing resumes at anything that comes up that might even remotely have anything to do with what I do, even if it means relocating to a far away city. I’ve given up hope that the company I currently work for will offer me a full time job at all, and I’m just barely making it on what they pay me.

Of course, the long term cure for some of my big issues is to move out from my parents’ house, so I don’t have to justify half the stuff I do them. But that’s neither here nor there, and frankly, I’m just barely scraping by with the bills I have, and if I save anything, Social Security will crack down — they already have, which makes a tenuous situation that much worse. (It also makes it impossible for me to take on other part-time work to try and get a bit of spare change — health care. But I’ve been over that rant before.)

And then to top it off, Monday night is the night of my SQL class. Now, generally, computer classes don’t bug me, but this one for some reason does. And I think I figured it out. Not only do I shut down when faced with instructors I can’t stand, this guy’s teaching style and I don’t match well. He provides notes, but the notes aren’t helpful if you have trouble paying attention in lectures. And that’s how I learn — by seeing, and by doing. And well, really, we haven’t done much. So it puts me in a jam about studying for quizzes and tests. I think I’ve studied well enough and I get blown out of the water.

On today’s quiz, I guessed like heck and then spent the rest of the time doodling xkcd-esque stick figures all over my exam. When I handed it in, I offered a strange smile to the prof. Dunno what he’ll make of it.

Anyway, tomorrow’s gonna be a working day, so I’m trying to get some rest.

NaNo count holding steady at a bit over 18.5, but Monday and Tuesday != good writing days.

Meet Joey Breen

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I need to go back and add yesterday’s server-maintenance delayed post, but it will be up. Meanwhile, today, I’m giving you an excerpt from my novel-in-progress.

Help me get to the Night of Writing Dangerously! I only need about 16 more people to throw $10 at the pot!

Anyway, this is told from the point of view of a reporter character who is doing a series on a Congressman and would-be presidential candidate, and in this bit, goes to interview the Congressman’s son.

Read more… “Meet Joey Breen” →

i aren’t dead!

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Just a quick note: My blog provider is down, I’ll be posting a backdated message there when it comes back up. (It’s upgrade night, and I forgot!)

On track with NaNo, crossed the 15k mark, will do a couple other things I really need to do tomorrow.

That’s about it.

[Edit: Obviously, moving this back to the main blog now that everything’s back up and to keep my shiny clean streak going.]

vroom?

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Another post just to have something up. I promise you all that I’ll try to write you a longer one tomorrow — well, after I do some other things I’ve been slacking on.

I’m feeling a little better emotionally, but I’ve got a bit of a cold, so my head hasn’t completely been in the game. I still remain two days ahead of where I need to be in NaNoWriMo land, so that’s good.

Yeah. And I’ll name a character after you if you donate some scratch here. C’mon, please?

[PS: Take a wild guess who forgot to change the timezone on her blog back after the timechange last weekend? Am going through and fixing all my November posts now.]

Haiku at the coffee shop

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Coffee shop closing
Time to put ‘puter away
You cannot stay here.

[I’ll write more later, but I wanted to make sure I got something posted.]

Can’t blog today. I has the sad

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This entry exists merely to meet the letter of the challenge. It probably doesn’t meet the spirit, but since the last three days’ entries have seemed to be on the negative side and nobody wants to read that crap. So, I’m going to spare you all another rendition.

It’s November. It’s supposed to be my best month. And it isn’t. And nobody cares.

Why am I doing this again?

…yeah, shutting up now.

I hate spammers and other flotsam

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I deliberately set the blog to email me when new comments are made. There’s three reasons for this madness:

  1. That’s the way LJ comments are handled, and I’ve liked being able to see them
  2. It allows me a quick response if there’s a comment that needs to be handled in a particular fashion
  3. It allows me to see when I’m getting whacked with a load of spam

In regards to point #3, it did that job well, as looking at my mailspool showed me that last night’s post had been hit by several spammers overnight. I don’t know why Akismet failed so badly, but it leaves me in a bit of a dilemma. I want to leave trackbacks on so that I can see when blogs are linking me, but most of the spam that gets through the defenses is trackback spam. And I really wasn’t overly happy clearing out that mess today.

Anyway, it’s just a point. Spammers are lower than scum and will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

***
If you haven’t guessed, it’s not only NaNoWriMo month, but because I am absolutely totally and completely out of my gourd, I’m also doing Blog Posting Month. So that means one a day of these things every day in November. Of course, I could cheat and give you my cumulative word count every day, but that hardly seems fair.

So I’ll guess I’ll turn this over to those of you that actually read this thing on a regular basis. What would you like me to address? I could use some ideas for days when I can’t come up with my own. Feel free to drop them in comments.

***

As I mentioned before, I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year, like I do every year. And the last couple years, they’ve been doing a fundraising event called the Night of Writing Dangerously over in the Bay Area. This year’s event is the night after my birthday (yep, November kid) and I’d kind of like to go this year. Especially since the other November event in the Bay Area I’d like to attend is at the Breadbox Stanford this year, and tickets will be impossible because Stanford’s capacity has shrunk majorly.

The problem with going to the Night of Writing Dangerously is that I need to come up with $200 as a donation. Now, I’m all for giving money to the folks at NaNo HQ, because they do some marvelous work at encouraging people to write (particularly kids – I love their Young Writers Program). Also, they make my life easier when it comes to organizing the region. But, $200 is out of my range this year.

So this is where I turn to y’all. If any of you wants to (note that you do not have to, these are hard times for everybody and I’m doing this as a longshot), I’d love for you to donate some money to NaNo so that I can go.

So if you want to help, you can donate here. If you do, I appreciate it. If you can’t, well, I understand. These are hard times.

It would be nice to go, though.

Anyway, word count is at 5703; am going to try to get to 6000 before I got to bed tonight. Other than that, nothing exciting is going on.

I hate Mondays.

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Mondays are hard days. Not only are they the start of the work week, but they seem to serve as a reminder of just what kind of failure I am. I mean, I get up, I go to work, and I work. But I know deep inside that I’m only working three days and not five, and that it’ll be another month of struggling to pay my bills, another month of living in my parents house, another month that I’m stuck with what appears to be no way out.

And then after work, I slog my way through the commute traffic to school. Let me get one thing straight. I hate my Monday night class. The only time I was happy tonight in that class was when I thought I might have a chance to slag the instructor in an evaluation. (Turns out, it was an eval for a different prof. When asked if we were doing it, he said something along the lines of ‘I’ve got tenure; I don’t have to do it.’) I’m seriously thinking of taking a withdraw in that class because (a) I don’t think I’m going to pass and (b) I really don’t want to take that class over. The teacher is disorganized and sometimes you’re lucky if you can find a hint to solving some of the labs in the notes. Today’s boiling point moment was when he decided that today we were going to have a quiz — on stuff he was introducing today. Somehow we talked him off that idea, but still. (And yes, for those who have been following my journal, this is my SQL class.)

But this adds into my feelings of inadequacy because I’m mainly taking classes as a way to keep from paying my student loans, because God knows I don’t have the money to cover that bill too. I’d really rather have a full time job where I’m paying down the loans and thus gain the ability to take a semester off. I could have really used it this year — my stress levels have been through the roof this fall. (And now it’s November and I must be completely frakking insane.)

Anyway, yeah, there’s this complete feeling of inadequacy that’s been eating at me and Mondays are just the night when it comes most to the forefront. I just keep slipping deeper and deeper into the hole, and I don’t know how to get out. This is not a happy feeling to deal with.

I mean, objectively, I know I’m not a failure. Emotionally, though, it’s hard to see beyond what appears to be crumbling ruins. There’s a bit of ‘I was supposed to be someone!’ in my head that plays into nights like this; Mondays just bring it a bit closer to the surface.

***

In happier news, the NaNo wordcount stands at 5564, and I wrote this paragraph, which I’m sorta proud of. It comes in the middle of a reporter’s puff-piece on my book’s major villain:

After some pleasantries, we sat down to business. The Congressman was pleasant but undeniably brusque about some parts of his life, such as the much-publicized divorce from his wife of thirty years during his first term in Congress. The mention of her brings an immediate frown to his face. “Rosalie and I had a difference of opinion,” he said. “That and the strains of my freshman year in the House led to an amicable split. There is no story here.” When pressed about comments his wife made about him ‘not being the man I married’, Breen just shrugs and says, “Well, isn’t that what most women say when they want a divorce? He’s not the man I married? What does that mean, anyway?”

fried

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So it’s November. November means it’s NaNoWriMo month, which means that I’m running around like a crazy person. Then I stupidly said, “Ah why not, I’ll update my blog every day this month. It’s not like I don’t have enough to do.” Since I’m sure there’s folks out there that want to keep me honest, guess I’d better get the month started.

Anyway, it was a good day. The kickoff was nicely attended, and I got a good chunk of writing done. I added another six hundred words at the write-in we did for TV. I haven’t watched the clip yet, so I don’t know how much of me made it in, but my highly awesome co-ML, , got interviewed and didn’t do so bad. (Ah, here’s the clip. I’m in the background a lot.)

But the combination of staying up way late for write-in, and then getting up way early for the morning write-in, alongside the timechange, is just making my brain go *splat*. And since that means I’m not coherent, that means it should be bedtime.

But I have nearly four thousand words, and I saw a nice sunset. It was a good day.