Diary of a Network Geek

Okay, so I’ll do it.

Only four of my regular visitors cared enough to vote, and frankly, I suspect at least one of you of voting more than once, but all four votes were in favor, so I’ll do it. Of course, I don’t see how I can possibly write 50,000 words in November with my work schedule and a friend who’s freaking out about getting married and, for some reason, dying. I honestly have never connected those two events, but, I guess I’m funny like that.

Still, you can track my sad progress on the sidebar.
I think I’m going to write the worst modern fantasy/horror/gangster/high-tech thriller ever. On purpose, of course. I may post excerpts of the worst of it. I plan to use three fictional and comic countries as described in the JetLag travel books: Molvania, Phaic Tan, and San Sombrero. Of course, I’ll be adding secret, hidden information that these travel guides wouldn’t cover and that the average traveller wouldn’t want to know about. It’s not going to be “It was a dark and stormy night…” bad, but, I’m afraid, pretty close.

But, if it gets me writing more regularly, then, it’ll be worth it.
Oh, and don’t worry, I’ll still do my regular Friday Fun links. Though, I cannot guarantee how lame they may or may not be.

Hey, it’s for charity.

A “blog friend” of mine, Jessica, aka Sassy Suspect, is running for charity.
In fact, she got her sister to run, too. Or, maybe it’s the other way around. In any case, the charity is the MAGIC Foundation, which is meant to help the families of children with Panhypopituitarism. More importantly, it’s a foundation that’s helped Jessica’s niece, Karenna Grace, aka “Ruby”. And, really, that’s all that matters to me. So, if you can afford to support them financially, go to the site they set up Run For Ruby, and make a donation.

If Jessica supports it and it’s helped her family, it must be a worthwhile place to donate your money this holiday season.

Hey’s it’s Friday and I have no theme to my crazy links.

Look I paid all my important bills last night and I’m too tired to come up with any real theme here, but these all are perfect links for a Friday.
First, in honor of Daylight Savings Time ending this weekend, and me getting an extra hour of badly needed sleep, here’s a link to How To Sleep Better on Boing Boing.
And, since I’m sure you’re probably reading this at work, I thought it was high time I helped you sneak around on the web without getting caught. It’s a site called Work Friendly and it will open browser windows that are camoflaged as Micro$oft Office files. Pretty clever, huh?
Well, you can use that to browse these links…
I started off at Boing Boing looking for the link to the Ben and Jerry’s Waffle Cone Room Fragrance, but, alas, it was no more. But, that led me to a site called CribCandy, which led to me finding wall tattoos, instructions for making a bean bag sofa bed, a DIY guide to painting a mural in your home, a “Falling Water” platform bed, instructions for “growing” your own furnature, a reclining bike/geek desk, and, finally, for Halloween, horror furnature props. (Yes, that all was mostly a shout-out to those of you who voted for Dwell magazine on my last poll.)

So, if I do this NaNoWriMo thing, I’ll have to queue up a bunch of Friday Fun Posts this weekend, since I won’t have time otherwise. Well, in any case, this Friday, you can enjoy these crazy links.

Ah, that is the question.

So, those of you who are regular readers may have noticed that the only two “Upcoming Events” on my sidebar are “NaNoWriMo Begins” and “NaNoWriMo Ends”.  Now, this might lead you to suppose that I’ve been thinking about trying that whole National Novel Writing Month deal this year.  Well, you’d be mostly right, except I’ve had such struggles with this one short story I’ve been working on that I didn’t see how it was possible to generate 50,000 words in a month.  I’m lucky to generate 50 words in a week!

But, then I read Jill’s entry on NaNoWriMo over at her blog, Jill Writes. First, I just got depressed that I had gone to all the trouble to sign up and then not be able to do it, again, this year.  Then, I embraced the fact that I knew it would be impossible with my current work schedule, and my friend’s current “freak out” schedule, to produce 50,000 words in a single month.  So, having accepted my inevitable failure, I started questioning it again.
“Maybe,” I thought.  “Maybe it would get me writing on a regular basis, even if I produce crap and fail the challenge.  Maybe something good could come of it, even knowing that I’d fail.”

See, sometimes, I’m a bit of a fatalist like that.  I get very attached to what I “know” and ignore the fact that I am often capable of much more than I give myself credit for being.  I could come at it as a month long writing exercise who’s outcome was irrelevant to the process.  Somehow, accepting defeat makes it more sublime to attempt anyway, like a noble samurai marching off to certain death because it is what he does, who he is.  Also, I could do the world’s crappiest comedic fantasy horror novel, because no one will see it anyway.
It might be fun…

So, vote over at the side there.  Should I go for it or not?

Oh. My. God.

I have no idea who came up with this idea for their kid’s costume, but, according to BoingBoing, you can get your kid a Toilet Costume.  But, wait, there’s yet another way to scar your kid for life, the Whopee Cushion Costume!
And, if you don’t have kids, you can torture your poor dog with a costume, instead.

Really, I think those links speak for themselves.
Happy Friday!

Saves Nine.” Though, nine what, I have no idea.

I’ve been thinking about buying a sewing machine.
Okay, go ahead. Just get it all out of your system. When you’re done laughing, you can come back and read my reasoning on this.

Done? Great.
The other day, I was cleaning… No, no, it’s okay. You just go ahead and laugh it all right out of your system. I pretty well expected it.
Anyway, as I was cleaning, I found a great, big bundle of really nice, soft grey fabric that had been intended to make me a robe. Well, that was what I intended to be done with it. I was asked what I wanted for Christmas one year, when money was tight, but several hundred dollars of “birthday money” had been spent on a high-end sewing machine. Thinking of the sewing machine, and the owner’s penchant for wasting money on projects that never were completed, I asked for a home-made bath robe. We picked out the pattern and the fabric and, almost five years later, I still have the untouched fabric, but no sewing machine or pattern. And, that got me thinking.

There are a lot of things I could do around the house and yard that would be really cool, if I had a decent sewing machine. I don’t need some high-end, computerized, multi-stitch number with a built-in serger or anything like that. Just something good enough to sew, say medium-weight canvas. With that, not only could I make that robe, but I could recover the sofa cushions. Or make a cover for the entire couch. I could make canvas covers for the porch to replace the now quite aged and brittle translucent, corrugated, fiberglass roofing on it now. I could make privacy shades for the porch. I could make either a canvas roof or privacy shades or both for the semi-mythical teahouse/pavilion I have dreamed of putting up in place of the nasty, old shed in my backyard. Really, the possibilities are endless. And, yes, I would follow through on that. And, I figure, in the long run, it would save me money.

So, how hard is it to teach yourself to sew?

No, not the actual party.

So, a good friend of mine, J., has finally proposed to his girlfriend of about a year, L., with whom he is very happy. In fact, I was starting to wonder if they were going to get around to it or if someone was going to have to actually suggest it to the poor boy. It will be the first marriage for both of them, and I cannot be happier for them. Truly, they seem almost perfectly matched to each other. And, as I told him, if they can survive the experience of planning a good-sized wedding, instead of running away to Las Vegas like I did, they’ll be just fine.

So, last night, he asks me if I’d like to be in the wedding party.

You know, I wasn’t in the wedding party for either of my sister’s weddings, or my brother’s wedding. Honestly, I was a little suprised and a bit intimidated. Funerals I can handle without too much trouble, but, ah, weddings and I haven’t always done well together. Still, it’s not until March, so, I might even have time to find a date.
But, don’t hold your breath!

I’ve lost count of how many posts I’ve started but not finished.

Just now, I was writing about the ridiculous situation of being more or less trapped in an office Friday while two utterly clueless guys extoled the virtues of mail order brides and prostitution under the guise of “advice about women”.  The sheer stupidity of their argument and the surreality of the entire, one-sided conversation struck me as so bizarre that it was almost funny, at the time, but when I tried to write it, the whole thing just seemed, well, sad.

I’m not sure what’s going on with me this week, but everything seems to feel that way.  Maybe it’s just the severe lack of cash-flow that’s got me down, or the gray weather, but everything seems sort of bland today.  No food seems to sound appealing to my tastebuds, nothing on television seems interesting enough to really watch, none of the books I have in my queue are all that compelling, and nothing that comes to mind to write seems worth the effort.  Even this almost seems like a waste of time.

I have dozens of posts that are either half-done or done, but never seem right to post, in my blog queue.  I have some that are old and, though they were half-decent writing at the time, are so far detached from where I am today, that they don’t seem right to post without heavy editing.  But, that editing never seems quite right, either.  I suppose, I should just delete them all, but, for some reason, that’s hard to do.

I don’t know what’s up, but if I post a little less frequently this week, or month, that’s what’s going on, and why.

And, yes, by that I mean, Friday the Thirteenth.

I always thought it was because Judas was the Thirteenth Apostle or something like that. No, according to this article on GlobalPsychics.com, it has to do with the plot to suppress the Knights Templar. Hey, stop laughing! That’s what it says!! And, I quote:

The modern basis for the Friday the 13th superstition stems from Friday October the 13th, 1307. On this date, the Pope of the church in Rome in Conjunction with the King of France, carried out a secret death warrant against “the Knights Templar”. The Templars were terminated as heretics, never again to hold the power that they had held for so long. There Grand Master, Jacques DeMolay, was arrested and before he was killed, was tortured and crucified. A Black Friday indeed!

So, there you have it, Friday the Thirteenth is a global conspiracy! Personally, I usually have better luck on Friday the Thirteenth, but, then, I always have been a little out of step with the world. Oh, and here’s a link to some alternate ideas why everyone else is afraid of Friday the Thirteenth.
Enjoy it.

I’m still not sure…

It felt like she was trying to take one last shot at me.  Like she was trying to engage me in some sort of communication one last time, for some reason, when I got this last e-mail:

“Wow, OK.  Good luck to you.  Sorry that I fell asleep last night but thanks for being patient about it nonetheless.”

Hmm, yeah…  I mean, is it just me or does that sound, well, rather facetious at this point?  And, shouldn’t it say something that she was able to stay up until 3:20am to send this e-mail, according to the time stamp, but couldn’t manage 9:05pm for a pre-arranged phone call?  Or that the first time I’m getting an explanation or apology for what happened was after I called off the date?

Yeah, dodged a bullet on this one.