It's Monday

I have a probable dead printer in Tucson and a probable dead laptop in Flagstaff, at least one due to a power event. And of course, this is the week the tech who usually covers Flagstaff is on vacation.

An office that still uses Quicken for one oddball thing opens Quicken today and has no data. When trying to restore a backup, they get the message that some backup files are missing. As near as I can tell, nobody has ever backed up this data to the network.

A live sample of a worm deflected by the old version of our anti-virus program was tested this morning against our new anti-virus program . . . and not deflected. Off the same .sig file. But a full scan finds it and claims to disinfect it.

And everything hurts. I spent seven hours on Saturday helping friends move. Third-story apartment on one end, six inches of water to wade through on the other end. No amount of time on an exercise machine prepares you for this. Everything hurts.

Yeah, it's officially Monday.

Yes, I read it.

So, yeah, I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. If anybody else has read it already and wants to chatter, shout.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but I'm very impressed. If you're one of those people who got to the end of book six and couldn't believe it, read book seven. If you're one of the people who threw book six across the room and couldn't finish it, please finish it and read book seven. It pans out, I promise.

In short, read it, no matter what kind of shocking spoilers you've heard.

It's a quest story. It's a coming of age story. It's a grand panorama of good and evil . . . and a much smaller view of sacrifice and redemption.

And if you want a spoiler, shoot me an e-mail. I'll give you one that'll make you have to read, without giving away any major plot points. ;)

Quote of the Week

"If all you can see in the rearview mirror is 'MACK', you're fucked."

--William H. Wetmore

The more I look at caterers . . .

. . . the more the whole process of hiring one feels like shopping for a used car.

Quote of the Week

"You should do political comics."
"Why? Have we run out of pompous asses with opinions already?"

--original source (or at least half a source) unknown; snagged from R. K. Milholland

I can't get my work webmail to work, but CNN.com is working fine.

I have no idea why. But I stumbled across this while testing and found it interesting. I think I was just saying to a co-worker the other day that digital photography and camera phones have had a vast impact that I don't think we quite fathom, yet.

I'm not sure there was a good answer to this question, actually, but I like the pic.

Which Firefly character are you?

You are Zoe. While most others see you as a stone-cold bitch and yes.woman to the captain, you can be both a loving wife and quite emotional - though you never let it show.
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I'm gonna get some great titles out of this . . .

I finished a story on the Fourth of July. I'd meant to go into work and do some catching up, but I was in a reading mood, and at some point, it became a writing mood. I sat down with something I'd been working on since 2003 and it was suddenly, instantly clear to me that the sections I'd been writing as character history weren't. They were actually the stories of the dead. As soon as I knew that, I knew what the next scene had to be. It changed the entire slant of the climactic scene, and the whole thing just came together.

So last night, I was re-reading some of my work in progress, looking for other insights that might get me moving on those projects again. I came up against a story--the first about a particular character whom I love--that's complete. I completed it probably four years ago. But despite being complete, it was never right. We didn't care about the main plot. We cared about the two scientists solving the mystery, and the scenes where the main character is being Superman are mostly just dandy.

Then I looked at those scenes again, and had the sudden, profound realization that I'd been coming at this wrong. I explained it as her being Superman, as if this were a comic book disguised as cyberpunk. It's not. The whole thing is a western. All her stories are fundamentally westerns (disguised as cyberpunk). She's not Superman. She's John Wayne.

You'd think I'd have clued in on this earlier. The second or third story in the cycle is entitled "The Nun with the Gun and the Great Playground War." Okay, so that makes it an outrageous western. (Note to self, must find a better title for the first story).

So now I'm mentally going over what makes westerns work. I have a funny feeling that if I come at it from that slant, I'll do a plot shift and suddenly the whole thing will drive. Er, ride?

Quote of the Week

"Well hello there Mr. Groom-to-be. How do you like our title - Groom's Day Planner, you know kinda like a play on words - Doomsday. HAHAHAHAHA. Well okay fine, we thought it was funny."

--from "The Groom's Planner" from the Frugal Bride

wtf?!

Okay, so I'm a bit tardy in discovering it, but . . . wtf?

Webcomic Terrorism. Or would that be terrorizing webcomic writers? Here's the interview, for anybody else whose curiosity or moral outrage or something inbetween got the better of them.

I choose not to live in fear.

What I did on my lunch break.

R.I.P. Mac Hall. I was catching up on it and discovered that the comic has ended. But I poked around a little to see if the author or the artist was doing anything new and I found Three Panel Soul.

I do like Matt Boyd's sense of . . . not exactly humor. The ironic? The absurdities of day to day life? Whatever it is, it often reminds me of kenilyn's.

My mother reports . . .

"Hot dang! Look at this! I'm in an anthology with Steven King. And Orson Scott Card. http://www.tuginternet.com/jja/journal/archives/005813.html. Of course, they're getting paid a lot more than I am. But all the same--the company I keep!"

Of all things, this is a re-print. I think it's her first re-print. But I may buy a copy, anyway--it sounds like an interesting anthology.

He really is a crazy enough son of a bitch to do that.

Kenilyn and I just saw Live Free or Die Hard. (Sorry, RH). I loved it. My dad had mentioned, when he found it it was rated PG, that they must not get to use Detective John McLean's signature line. I pointed out that actually, you could do that, if you just blew something up in the right place. I was 90% right. Go see it, you'll understand.

Best line: "Damn hamster!"

Detective McLean is actually funnier as an old fart. Though that meant there were moments where it was like watching Abbott and Costello battle the terrorists.

Beyond that, I must say, the computer geeks were very good, ranging from the sterotyped ubergeek (played by Kevin Smith, who was probably reveling in it) to some people very much like the ones I know. With that said, some of the technology was a little hazy, but much of it was close enough that I could kind of tuck that away into a black box and ignore it. And I love that we're starting to see computer geeks in movies who know how to do more than eat cheetos and make gaming references. (Not that we don't do that. But who wouldn't like to see their profession carry guns and know martial arts)?

I want to say something about the female bad guy archetype, but I also don't want to give spoilers at this point. So I guess for now I'll just say that she's great.

White hats, black hats, true believers, mercenaries, people forced to grow beyond themselves, and Dad. A certain reality to the mayhem that makes me uncomfortable--let's hope it can't actually be used as a training manual. And some really great, over-the-top FX.

Though I doubt the physics of the truck, a little. Something to do with torque. I saw one on in the middle of the interstate that did that, once. After a certain point, they twist like a can of explodo-biscuits, and with much the same effect.

I think now I have to re-watch the first two (yes, I know there are three, but I only have to see the first two) and then go out with RH and watch this one again.