Katherine Mankiller

There are times when I love working for a college.

This is one of them. I was last at work on December 21. I'm not expected back until after New Year's.

You may now hate me. ;)

Sadly, this is not ending up being insane amounts of writing and working out. But I had a very busy year, and probably need the rest. I'm doing things like watching Frida for the billionth time instead.

My cats are in stink heaven. They think I've finally come to my senses and realized that working thing is a terrible idea. Now, if I would just forget that writing business and spend less time on my laptop goofing off, all would be well. I should devote myself to them as is their due. In fact, a couple have velcroed themselves to each outer thigh, which is nice because they're furry and warm.

Instead of writing, I'm pondering the impending death of my PDA, and whether or not I need a new cellphone. These are clearly burning issues that must be pondered at length. Clearly.

Right now, however, the burning issue is my bed, and how it's managing without me.

Why, yes, it IS my first thrice-damned quiz...

I got it from Jen; can I blame her for my posting a quiz? ;)

http://www.scifi.com/sfw/column/sfw13339.html

I got an 80. "A score of 66 or higher—You're a E.E. 'Doc' Smith, Larry Niven, Greg Bear, Vernor Vinge, Charles Stross or Nancy Kress. Ideas come first for you, the stranger or more innovative the better. If you are a television series, you are Max Headroom, Star Trek: Voyager or Enterprise. This sort of storytelling, by the way, used to be known as science fiction, or 'hard' science fiction."

I suspect it's all the computer conferences, myself. Although my novel did hit a stalling point recently where I had to make a decision that would pretty much determine whether it was sociological SF or sociological SF with a hard SF spine, and I went for the latter.

*hangs head*

I'm kind of...

...not writing.

I suspect I'm less well prepared for my novel than I thought I was--I've been opening the document file and staring at it and closing it without adding anything new. Perhaps making the outline a bit clearer would help.

Tonight, I'm meeting some other screenwriting people, which may end up in critiques! Cross your fingers!

This is me, working on my script.

No, really! You believe me, don't you?

Yeah, well. Maybe you shouldn't.

I'm tired, and stressed out, and have a headache, and, you know, insert a million more excuses to not write here.

I'm doing better with exercise, but exercise is easier than writing. Programming is easier than writing. I can write fairly difficult programs half-asleep, but I have to be awake and alert to write. Installing linux is easier than writing. It's just so tempting to unwind a bit by doing all these easier things instead of writing. But no, I have a script to write, and as soon as I stop whining I'll go do that. ;)

Okay. Three pages. If I'm really good, maybe I should treat myself after by installing linux on some of the spare hard drive space on my laptop.

I need help.

I was stressed out after work last night, so I decided to unwind by converting my site from XHTML Traditional to XHTML Strict. *facepalm*

The most obnoxious part was going back and finding invalid markup in old entries and changing it. I think I've found it all. I even found a popup window I'd failed to spork--horrors! Die, popups, die!

I'm such a nerd.

And I really should have been working on my script.

Grr, argh!

And, a few paragraphs in, my laptop BSODed and rebooted. Or, more accurately, failed to reboot until the third try. I did backups yesterday; should I write or back up?

I'm current. Write. Back up after writing. Oy.

And I was doing so well...

I wrote some yesterday, but thus far today I've mowed the lawn, trimmed the hedge, grocery shopped... but no writing. No laundry or dishes, either, for that matter, but I'm more vexed about the (lack of) writing.

Also, yesterday there was Harmony. Harmony rocks my world.

Okay, a page per project. Starting now.

Exercise: 1, Writing: 0.

Because I was having trouble convincing myself to work out, I decided to set my alarm clock half an hour earlier and work out in the mornings. This prompted much mirth from the SO, since my usual morning routine has been to hit the snooze button for an hour. Jokes about ejector buttons and dynamite are common.

I had the idea that perhaps if it was at a specific time, I would do it. My "when I get home from work, unless I'm hungry, because then I have to eat and let it settle" schedule wasn't cutting it.

Well, this is the first week's stats, not counting Saturday's scheduled workouts:

Exercise bike: 3.4 hours, 37 virtual miles, average pace: 10.8 mph.
Weights: 4 workouts.
Lunchtime walks: 2, 0.4 hours, approximate distance: 1 mile.

Words written: 0.

I really hate the word "schedule," but I think this suggests that I need a daily writing appointment with myself. Perhaps Friday should be a day off, since I watch all of Sci Friday's lineup. There must be Battlestar Galactica.

I think I'll come up with a plan--time, minimum wordcount (if any), etc.--and start Monday.

Note to self.

Apparently, what one does when one doesn't know what happens next in a story is upgrade Movable Type to version 3.2. (Mmm, yummy new antispam features!)

And, of course, resist the urge to say, "But I don't want that to happen, that's awful!" Sigh. Someday I'll really internalize the enablers that say, "Can you make your story a little more horrific?" It's hard, though. Especially when your father was a psych major. ;)

I don't know what happens next in this story.

Maybe I should tweak the website. Or install more Movable Type plugins. Or make a page on this site to show people how cute my cats are. Or install more Movable Type plugins! Or all of the above!

*heavy sigh* Or not.

How did Thanksgiving get to be next week?

No, really. I want to know!

My mother is coming into town next week. She wants to help me unpack boxes. [Insert imaginary superbeing here] knows that I need the help desperately, but I hope she wants to do fun things, too. Partly because I want to do fun things. Fun things! Give me fun things! Fun things or death!

*ahem*

Also, someday, I will have time again and will finish the stories I have in progress and start new ones. I think they're both very promising, especially "Grandfather Paradox." I think the main thing it's missing right now are specifics and an ending, although I think I know how it's going to end. It could still surprise me, though. (I hope so!)

Change of address

I just changed my address for F&SF and Asimov's via their nifty forms.

I feel like there's something I'm forgetting to do. I wish I knew what it was.

In other exciting news, my Internet connection at home is the suck. Also, I am weary of cleaning spam off my *@(#&!@% guestbook and have therefore abandoned the NMS guestbook in favor of a Movable Type guestbook a la the girlie matters. I'll probably spend some time trying to make it prettier later. It looks like Brad Choate managed to get his MT guestbook to store location and stuff. I may not want to put that much effort into it.

Damn. I know I'm forgetting something.

Alas, alack, and woe!

Should I be deeply saddened that the people most interested in my writing blog are @#@()* spammers?

Listen, spammers. Give it up. Stop wasting my time. Stop wasting your time. I have comment notification turned on. I'm here to promote my writing career, not \/1@G|R@. Deal with it.

Ooh, shiny MT plugin directory. *quickly averts eyes* I could spend way too much time geeking with that stuff...

Site news...

I'm turning off comments on older entries because spammers have found my site. May the fleas of a thousand buffalo infest their crotches! I'll leave comments on for newer entries, but if you feel the need to follow up my ancient post about my television script being rejected, well, sucks to be you. ;)

I'm considering instituting trackback, however.

I also put an author portrait on the bio page, as author portraits are de rigeur. I wouldn't want the author page police to cite me for my site. ;)

And, in other news, no yay today--I received a Blue Form of Death from Carina. Ah well. Sallya has already made her way to the next market.

Like you care...

I rewrote the datediff function in the submission tracker and thought PHP geeks might enjoy it. I find it very sad that PHP does not have a built-in datediff function like ASP or Cold Fusion.

/*The variable $date1 comes from the database, and is converted to unix timestamp format. This is a mySQL date, not a datetime. */
$date1 = strtotime($col_value." GMT");

/*The variable date2 is today converted to unix timestamp format.*/
$date2 = strtotime(date("m/d/y")." GMT");

/*Subtract database date from today to get number of days story has been out in unix timestamp format.*/
$daysdiff = ($date2 - $date1);

/*Convert number of days story has been out in unix timestamp format to seconds since the beginning of the unix epoch and divide by 86400, or the number of seconds in a day. This should be a round number, since we started with dates, not datetimes. */
$datediff = (date("U", $daysdiff)/86400)

I used to instead convert to dayofyear, but that only worked for time periods that were less than a year.

Take that, Netscrape!

PHP browser detection. Only Netscrape 4.x gets TeH Ev0L Netscrape stylesheet. Read it and weep, Netscrape!

*evil laugh*

<Gollum>Nasty, tricksy Netscape 4.x CSS implementation! We hates it, we does!</Gollum>

Feh!

The S.O. says that when he goes to the site in Safari, he gets TeH EV0L Netscape stylesheet, which is TeH SuX0rs with any browser except Netscrape. I have therefore gone back to my previous "Screw Netscape 4.x, for it is an aged piece of crap that must die!" state of the site. Also? Feh.

In other news, I'm re-writing my submissions tracking spreadsheet in PHP. No, you can't see. ;) The whole point is to teach myself PHP, not so much that it's going to be more useful in PHP than it is in Excel. Although I'm starting to suspect that yes, it will be more useful in PHP than Excel. Relational database design and all, you know.

As procrastinations go, this one isn't bad. ;)

I'm a nerd...

I am such a nerd. My stylesheet didn't work in Netscrape 4.x, so I wrote one that did and some javascript browser detection. Well, okay, I modified a javascript from Scriptygoddess.

I wouldn't worry so much about Netscape 4.x, on account of it only representing a fraction of my traffic, but alas, my sister uses Netscape 4.x, and the site looked all pretty but none of the navigation links were clickable. The site must work for my sister! I'd rather it be fugly and clickable. Fortunately, I came up with a good compromise Netscape style. Actually, it looks almost identical. Yay!

I should probably be writing. :)

Zzzzzzzzzz...

So, the story loosely based on a nightmare proceeds slowly, because, well, dream. Not very logically consistent. That, and I feel very lazy. My job just got a lot busier.

No, my laptop isn't back from the shop. They did "final testing" on it this morning at 10am, and it flunked, so they're tearing out all the main boards and replacing them. On the other hand, they did send me a bogus bill I'll have to challenge. Sigh!

But I digress.

So, I have this story that I'm working on, but it's not cooperating, and yesterday I had this really, really wacky silly idea. And it's just getting sillier. If only I could talk myself into, you know, writing. Why don't I wash my hair and then try to scribble down the funnier parts I came up with?

Yeah, that sounds like a plan.

Ooh, ahh.

I have to say that based on this really quick test, Zempt is much nicer than Slug. I may have to switch.

Things to do instead of writing.

Download and install Microsoft.net framework. Install Slug, a client for Movable Type. Play with Naturally Speaking. Read Meet Me at Infinity. Take bath. Pet cats. Drink too much diet Coke. Put feet up.

Maybe I should just take the night off.

Fun with software (not adventures in procrastination!)

Several months ago, I got a cheap copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking, but then my computer died. I installed it today. In fact, I'm using it now. I thought it would be fun to use with Final Draft to write scripts, but it doesn't really recognize my voice very well yet. Which is a shame, because theoretically speaking would be a very natural way to write a script.

On the other hand, it's making it easier to keep one of my New Year's resolutions: trying to write every day. Well, OK, it makes me more likely to try it for fun. I hadn't written in two days, and I did work on my script a little today. Not that the software supports Final Draft, but it seems to work--slowly. I hear it takes awhile to learn your speech patterns. I got frustrated and ended up typing.

It had me read Lewis Carroll and Arthur C. Clark to learn my voice. I probably need to read some more, because right now it can't tell the difference between "some more" and "somewhere."

Anyway, must go forth and work on my science fiction story. I have no idea if I'm going to attempt to use the software or not. Looking back at how it just translated that sentence, probably not.