Drew Lackovic's newly titled blog

Scale Smithing End of Week 1

2011-08-25T23:00:00.000-04:00

So our first week of scaling has come to a close. Sue finished enough to throw her armor on the dress form, mainly so she could agonize over how to do the contractions so that it'll fit right. Contractions still escape my logic, but after some forum post questions, I think Sue knows what she needs to do. My armor is now almost perfectly sized for Jack's chest. We ran out of cleaned scales on Tuesday, so we spent Wednesday night cleaning scales and watching the new Sherlock on Netflix. Not bad. Here are some pics:

Sue Day 6

Drew Day 6

Sue Day 7

Drew Day 7

Scale smithing Week 1 Days 4 and 5

2011-08-22T21:36:00.003-04:00

Aah the weekend. Now that we finally hit our first weekend of scaling, we were excited. Except of course we have kids, so our time scaling was pretty much the exact same 9ish to midnightish it was during the week. Oh well. At least we're both becoming a little more proficient at weaving things together.

By the end of Day 4, I had a nice big happy 'Y.' I also, sadly, learned that my 5x5 diamonds were a crap idea because they make for cock-eyed assembly. Sue had explored the minor hells of weaving the bottom half of a diamond--hell because it doesn't really hold a good shape while you're trying to weave things that way. And minor for two reasons 1) Once she figured it out it wasn't hard to do 2) part of figuring out was that she grabbed a chopstick and used it to enforce shape while weaving. Brilliant.

Day 4 Drew

Day 4 Sue

I was real excited for Saturday night because Sunday is the only day of the week that we don't have alarms (aside from the Maaamy alarm). I started out by fixing the cock-eyed ness of the 5x5 diamonds. Then I tried making a 6x6 diamond and realized that it was a bit too large and cumbersome to really build all that well. I've decided to go down to the 4x4s that Sue's been using all along. What's that saying, "If at first you don't succeed, do it the way your wife told you in the first time." After the 6x6, I went about filling in the gap between the amended 5x5 and the new 6x6.

Sue finished wiring up the other shoulder and started adding down over her breast.

Drew Day 5

Sue Day 5

We're still really digging the process, and I'm real sad thinking that all next week I'll be away on business and not able to scale (If I didn't already decide that I need to write like a banshee while away, I'd totally smuggle some scales along with me.)

Armor Smithing Week 1, Days 2 and 3

2011-08-19T23:48:00.003-04:00

As we continue on our way making our scale armor, things are getting easier. By the end of day 2, I'd finished two 5 across diamonds, and Sue had started knitting together her 4 across diamonds into the neckline for her armor.

Day 2 Status Drew

Day 2 Status Sue

Day 3 went even better. I finished four 5-across diamonds and knitted three of them together--I would have gotten the fourth knitted as well but I knitted it backwards and had to take it out. Sue completed knitting together nine 4-across diamonds and is now beginning to worry where/when she's going to have to do contractions to handle the boob issues.

Day 3 Status Sue

Day 3 Status Drew

We're both really enjoying this project, and spent a little time talking about how exciting it will be when the kids demand some armor of their own. I've already been told that if Molly wants purple, that I'll be weaving that lest Sue get the purple poisoning.

More soon.

Armor Smith, The Blog

2011-08-18T20:54:00.001-04:00

Week 1, Day 1

Recently, Sue and I were talking, and considering how much we both enjoy the medieval faire (Went twice this year already and planning a third trip to the Pittsburgh faire in September), she suggested that as a winter project, we make Scale armor. I immediately said that I was too inept at doing things with my hands to be able to pull something like this off, but after a couple of days of encouragement, we went out to TheRingLord.com and ordered 5,000 stainless steel scales as our mutual Christmas present/winter project. The scales came yesterday, and we could hardly wait to start.

Weaving scale armor is a lot like making chainmail--in fact, the standard scale weave is very close to the standard chainmail 4-in-1 weave. The only major difference being that there's a scale in there too. Instead of standard chainmail kinds of rings where the ring is split needing a rivet or weld closure, we got splitrings--much like keyrings. They're more durable in the longrun, because you won't have to worry about scales popping off as easy, but there's a considerable learning curve attached to getting the rings to work, as we found out last night. Below are the results of our first night as armorsmiths.

(my scales are on the left and Sue's are on the right). As you can see, I'm a bit more retarded about scaling than my wife--she ended up spending a good half hour trying to help me fix the mess I made of my first pass. I got a little ring happy and started adding and tying scales to too many other scales, making my pattern go all wonky off center. Towards the end of the night though I was starting to understand it better, so hopefully tonight I'll be able to catch up to Sue's progress while she's at class. Overall, we worked for about 2.5 hours last night; and I managed to link 19 scales correctly. I think sue is somewhere around 24 or 32, I can't remember which. TheRingLord.com's scale calculator estimated I'd need something in the neighborhood of 3,260 some odd scales to finish my armor--for Sue, she'll need about half that because she's planning on making hers backless and connected with leather straps instead.

All that being said, the first night went well and I'm looking forward to day two. I'll try to keep regular updates on our progress here.

Ontologica 3.1 Now Available!

2011-08-04T21:30:00.000-04:00

I'm happy to announce that Ontologica 3.1 Summer 2011 is now live! The issue contains works from these fine authors:

Non-Fiction

Jessica Erica Hahn
Maureen Foley
William Pomeroy
Kilean Kennedy (Book Review)

Fiction

A. Lucia Cravens
S.V. Meyers

Poetry

Carolyn Moore
Karen L. George
Tasha Cotter
Ruth Foley
Gary Lehmann
Chris Compson
Bruce Majors

Eleanor Bennett
Fabio Sassi

Please take a moment and check out the new issue: Ontologica Issue 3.1

The next Issue will come out some time in the Winter. We will announce the open reading period for the Winter issue probably some time early in the fall.

The First Post in Two Seasons Presented by The MollyJacks

2011-06-25T19:47:00.001-04:00

Once, I taught this class where I assigned all my students a weekly blog post. And just to ensure that I was still in-touch with reality, I did the same thing—posted at least one post a week every week…for I think 13 out of 15 weeks. Jack was born towards the end of the semester, so Priorities got in the way, but, well, that’s a far cry from the current state of things. Seeing that the last post was mentioning the possibility of the Summer reading session for Ontologica, and now not only is the reading period over, but the Issue is now well on the way to getting its little feet out in the great green deep of teh Intarnets (probably by month’s end). Notwithstanding, a whole heck of a lot of things has been going on since Jan 29th or thereabouts since I last blogged about.

Likely the most interesting thing to cover would be the latest –isms from Molly, and now Jack as well. So, without further ado, the MollyJacks present the next chapter in the dictionary that only their little minds can build.

Part the First Mollyisms

Lasterday -- n. abst. 1. Yesterday 2. Sometime earlier today. 3. Some other time, possibly never. This term always appears at the beginning of the sentence: Lasterday, I went to Regular Gramma’s House.
Regular Gramma – Not to be confused with Nanny. Regular Gramma is Sue’s mom.
Regular Papa –Not to be confused with Grampa From the Woods. Regular Papa is Sue’s Dad
Nanny -- Nanny is my mom.
Grampa from the Woods – this is my dad.
Nuffin – 1. coll. Nothing 2. Retort. Used like this: “Molly Why aren’t you listening?” Molly: “Nuffin.” Often paired with a loud snarky “Unnnh.”
Black Cat – Black Cat is one of Molly’s most cherished friends. She has two stuffed black cats (identical actually, because when the first one turned up missing, we had to “rescue” a new one from the toy store, only to have the original to surface a few days later). But neither of these are the true black cat (though sometimes they are the avatars for black cat). Black cat in essence is her best kitty friend. Black cat knows magic, and is a lava kitty (she can traverse through lava with her lava paws.)
White Cat – White cat is Molly’s other kitty friend, though this friendship seems strained and nebulous at times. White cat is always mad and yelling at black cat, and sometimes so much so that Molly gets sad. White cat also has magic and when White cat and Black cat are both present, they usually take residence on Molly’s shoulders.
Lava Feet -- You need lava feet to make it across the lava when the floor turns to lava. Otherwise you need to stay on the pillows.
Donut Boy, Hot Dog Boy – Terms of endearment for Jack. ex: “Jack is a donut boy.”
Him, Her -- Molly hasn’t quite nailed her pronouns yet, and I find it endearing to hear: “Him is a good kitty, him is my faborite.”
Oh Nonono – Ask Molly a question and sometimes you’ll get this gem of a response. It makes me cackle.
Kitty Black Cat, Kitty Super Hero – These are Molly’s super hero names. Often paired with the super hero song—do do do dodododo do do do dum dum. When she’s at the super bungee jump at the mall, she always does some superhero kicks and sings the song.
Holy Crap! Look at Kon – This came out Lasterday (this morning). I don’t know actually what Kon was doing because I was laughing so hard that she said holy crap.
Those guys are bad guys, daddy? – Thursday we hit gridlock in Pittsburgh in an area where 279 and 376 and some other roads came together and there wasn’t any sort of traffic signals to make people, I dunno, merge intelligently. And of course it was one of those things where everyone on the left needed to get all the way right and everyone on the right needed to get all the way left. It was a clusterfuck that took about 30 minutes for 0.4 miles of driving. And during that, Molly looked at all the jerks cutting people off and driving awful and said, “Those are bad guys, daddy? Them jerks?” “Yes honey, they sure are.”
Not quite – This is another phrase that she uses slightly wrong, but always in a humorous way. “Molly are you going to finish your lunch?” “MM Not quite.”
I have 2 Poops/Pees – When going to the bathroom, she usually has either two poops or pees in her. At least she’s consistent
Soup Poop -- An undesirable poop experience where thing are not a hard poop
Pop Poop – A poop that goes pop because it comes out with three farts (always three farts too)
I have to wait for my fart to come out – When she’s taking a long time on the potty, this is almost always the reason.
Far Far Away – Lots of things can be far far away. Usually this is anything outside the house.
Check it Out – She says this like Princess Bubblegum says it in Adventure Time – Very well enunciated
Guys – She recently learned to refer to groups of people as “guys.” So now she’ll say, “Hey guys, check it out.”
Let me show ya – Little miss know-it-all will be delighted to show you all kinds of stuff. And she’ll explain how it works too.

Part the Second – Jackisms

Tankuuu – Said when receiving food or drink. Thank you. And damn it’s genuine too.
Dipppeeee – Coll. For Dippy Coll. for Sippy cup
Oh Boy -- Dude gets excited
Woow – Jack is uncannily apt with the Wows.
Weee Weee – Whenever he’s going fast or flipping around, he’s lovins it. Dude’s going to be my rollercoaster buddy in about seven years.
Hiiii – All Jack’s words have a long drawl at the end. Like he wants to keep that word working for him to fill in for all the others he hasn’t quite grabbed yet
Guda Guda Guda Ga – Jack’s Filler words. Molly did Dukka Dukka Dukka if you recall. Jack’s are a little slower, but just as cute.
Buyyyyy--- He’s super cute at saying bye to people. He’ll even lavish some kisses. But half the time he waves and looks in the wrong direction. Maybe he thinks he’s leaving too.
Yoooooo! (matched with fist pump) – Jack always joins in on the last “Yooo!” of the Yo Gabba Gabba! theme song; it’s his favorite show. Favorite to the point of poo brain
Poo Brain – Not really a word he uses, but it’s the state that he falls in when transfixed with something. As a male, he becomes single-mindedly focused and nothing short of shaking or loud (and I mean loud) noises will sway him away from his object of affection. Molly finds Poo brain to be hilarious and will actively fuck with Jack to see how far she can go without distracting him.
The Headshake – Jack’s got the No Headshake down pat. It’s good too because, unlike Molly, Jack means no when he uses it (Molly had a long stint where no meant both no and yes – maybe it’s a universal girl thing)
Acrobatics – Jack is a climber. He’s at least 6-8 months ahead of Molly’s development at the same age in respect to climbing on things. Stairs aren’t an issue going up- and even coming down, he’s starting to learn to bend his legs instead of just plop falling each step. He can get up on the couch and run amok like the best little monkeys. I’m afraid for the day when he figures out how to climb out of the crib—because then I don’t know how we’ll contain him.

So that’s some of the cooler highlights of the kids’ collective linguistic growth. Until next time….

Ontologica 3 Stirrs and wants YOU

2011-01-29T00:36:00.000-05:00

We're gearing up to getting the new Issue of Ontologica off the ground, and this year we're planning on not only starting bi-annual publications, but also open reading periods. If you've been itching to submit something, we'll have an open reading period from March 1 to April 30. Take a look at our Submissions page and send us something already!

The November NaNoWriMo Wrapup and Other Writerly Junk

2010-12-03T23:58:00.001-05:00

Now that November's over and NaNoWriMo is complete, I finally have the time to talk about last month's reckless abandon in writing, and all the crazy things I found and learned during the course of the month.

Overall Stats

I ended up finishing NaNoWriMo with just shy over 53,000 words. And a couple days later, I more or less finished the manuscript, which in total is 127,459 words. Not bad for only three months of writing. Easily the most creative production I've ever done in my life. And man it feels good. Also During this year's NaNoWriMo, I set a New daily Wordcount record for myself: 8,146 words on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. That massive push by my count should have netted me the 50k month win, but NaNoWriMo's official wordcount api differed from Word's by 350 words so, I officially finished up the next day.

This year I also did a lot more work in tracking just exactly how I write, and how it stacked up against the posted suggestion from the folks over at the Office of Letters and Light. If you know me, I love graphs and charts, so this was a great motivational tool for me.

I ended up starting a daily new wordcount spreadsheet back in late August, and ended up modifying it a bit to give me more granular information for November. From there I broke out weekly Word Count V. Target charts and daily Word count v. Daily Target (1,667 words) Charts. I also Made a daily Word count vs. 50k chart to see my progress grow with each day. Week one was by far one of the most productive weeks of the whole month; I was really fired up, but it meant that I fell prey to the doldrums of Week two a bit, struggling a lot with exhaustion. As I rolled towards week three I tried to ensure that my weekends were spent away from writing, taking two nights off, and I tried to ensure that I was a little better at getting sleep.

Another practice that helped keep wordcount anxiety down was that I spent my lunch hours typing instead of reading or walking; that way on good days I'd killed already 700-1200 of the daily word count requirement. Also on nights that Sue is at school, that made me really try to push hard since Sue is always happy when she has to read stuff, and considering that school tends to make her tired and stressed, having a couple thousand new words always improved her mood.

So from there I ended up with what I have now. Now that we're in December, I started using this program called yWriter to help me organize, tag and manage the novel's content. It's amazing. For example, last night after I loaded in all 76 of my chapters, I realized that the timeframe for the whole novel is only 12 days. I also saw that almost every night, Nigel has a bad dream and/or interaction with Layil. This is an unconscious construction on my behalf, but considering the novel's theme, it works really well.

Speaking of Writing programs, during the month of November I started having my Google Reader account follow the Lifehacker bundle of blogs. And Lifehacker did a huge and wonderful series on Writing Tools To make your life easier. From all of these posts I downloaded a number of writing tools from Distraction free drafting clients to yWriter, to learning about 750Words. Some of this stuff wasn't for me, but other things, namely yWriter and 750words are slam-a-cow awesome and will comprise the remainder of this blog post.

750words

The idea of this site is that every day you write three pages (250 words/page is the generally accepted standard) of stuff. The site doesn't care what those three pages are, nor does it care how or when you do it, only that you do it. By default this 350 words is private to only you, and you have to do some stuff to allow others to see it--which in this Dr. Strange-O world of disappearing privacy is a godsend. I started 11/16 and in the last month have only missed two days. One of the most sexy things about it for me is the fact that it puts together all kinds of really cool metadata metrics based on what you write. Things like calculating your emotional state, recording the weather, most commonly used words, perception of time (Past present future), usage of the senses, etc. You also get Xbox 360 like Achievements called Badges in the shape of an animal when you complete certain streaks or configurations. I like rewards. I also like the pressure of keeping a cumulative streak going. I find myself using the site as a cross between a brain dump, and a cheat to get myself to write something (like this blog entry) very quickly. Did I mention it tracks how fast you type and how fast you reach your 750? My personal best is 11 minutes. The brain dump aspect of it has really become a sort of look-forward-to therapeutic thing that at one time, in college, I did all the time, but sort of lost the initiative to do it at some point or another. Either way, I’m totally engrossed in the site, and I’ve currently signed up for the December Challenge—750 a day for 31 days without missing a day. So far So good.

yWriter

The idea behind yWriter is to organize, plan and help you write your novel. It’s very similar in some respects to the popular Mac program, Scrivener, but from my limited experience using the Windows Beta of Scrivener, yWriter offers a lot more granular control to what you’re doing. The primary modus of this is the notion that yWriter divides your novel into Scenes instead of chapters. Chapters are still around, but rather than having the chapter as the smallest unit of the novel, yWriter goes down to the scene level. And since everything’s a scene, and scenes belong to chapters, you can really get crazy with moving things around. Also, yWriter has some serious metatag components built into it. Each unit, Chapter, Scene, Character, Location, and Item comes with a tags field allowing you to specify metatags on everything. Also, by allowing you to keep a running definition of Characters, Locations, and Items, you can further build consistency and, in my case, keep everything straight in my head. yWriter also comes complete with tools to help you plan, manage, and assess your current writing progress by allowing you to set deadlines for various drafts as well as wordcounts, words/hour and all that kind of good stuff.

Since I’ve been considering turning this project into something that is both web based and non-linear in design, yWriter will help me get there. I can tag and crosstag all of the elements in each manuscript, which form there can be sucked into a database of sorts and disseminated in a choose-your-own-adventure kind of way. Also, with all the character, location, and item tag data, I can make mini-blog posts on the Ae’rinus blog to help build the flavor of the world, and enhance things that are going on in the background but not readily available in the current arc of the story.

11/25/10 -- I Win

2010-11-26T23:59:00.000-05:00

Depending on your word count API, I crossed 50k on 11/24. NaNoWriMo didn't agree, so I hit the official 50k yesterday. Let's see how much farther I can go. Stats and other goodies to ensue sometime in early December. It's been a great month of writing though that's for sure.

NaNoWriMo 2010 Here I come

2010-10-25T23:17:00.000-04:00

It's that time of year again. NaNoWriMo is upon us. I'm pumped. This will be my third year of stabbing away at the keyboard. But really, consider it more my second. Year one really amounted to very little because I didn't take it seriously enough. I've been doing a lot of stretching of the writing fingers this year: September I logged 40k words, averaging almost 10k a week. This month I've kind of slacked off, but I keep telling myself that I'm just pacing myself so that I don't get burned out in mid November.

This years NaNoWriMo project will be a continuation of last year's--the Shadowman Project (for lack of a better name).

More later.

30/5 Birth-iversary, or, The Weekend We Spent in Toronto Celebrating our Fifth Anniversary and Sue’s 30th Birthday

2010-10-12T21:46:00.001-04:00

Part1: Inception

Way back in July, I hatched a plan. I wanted our fifth anniversary to be something special, and on top of that, since generally our birthdays are usually overshadowed by some other event that ensures we don’t get to enjoy our birthdays, I wanted to also make sure that Sue’s 30th was one to remember. So after a little thinking cap work, I figured we’d go to Toronto. But I wanted all of this to be a surprise. And so between July and Now, I secretly planned our trip to Toronto while a number of things happened to derail said surprise. Including but not limited to:

AAA, the first travel agency I signed up for called the house, and divulged a bunch of travel information to Sue when I was at work. Sue was very upset and they really didn’t care that they screwed up a secret. Fortunately they didn’t mention the destination. But I canceled the trip from them immediately and booked through Expedia like I should have in the first place.
Then in August I remembered that Sue’s passport was still in her maiden name. I spent a week scanning the web to figure out if the boarder control would give her hell. The short answer: no if you don’t have kids. But if you do have kids, the passport better show the married name, and the kids better all have the same last name, or the Canadians will assume you’re trafficking children and feed you to a Moose.

So I had to say to her, “I need you to get a passport photo, but don’t ask why.”
Four weeks after I sent out the passport renewal for her, the Passport office called and told her that she was lying on her form, that she couldn’t possibly be married under the license we supplied. He claimed that the type of license we had was outlawed fully two years before we got married. And he was being a jerk about it. And he also was very adamant that the passport would not be completed by 10/8, and that Sue would have to jump through several dozen flaming hoops to prove that she did get a legal name change.

So we called the court house; they said the passport office was full of shit. AND they said if the passport office continued to be full of shit, they’d sue the shit out of them for us for infringing on our rights.
We got a fancier version of the same marriage license and mailed it off.
The passport guy, when he received the fancy version of the same marriage license, said, “Oh well since you didn’t send me the fancy version in the first place, I just assumed you were lying. I will process your request in time.”

In September an out of state lady driving a rental (which she declined insurance on) hit Sue and the kids up at the mall. And because the lovely lady didn’t want to take responsibility for her actions, we had to play the insurance runaround game, which offset the repair time until dangerously close to the time in which we were planning on leaving.
Sue tried very hard to pump everyone she thought might know about what was going on for information. I had to have her boss lie, making her think that she still had to work on her birthday. I guess Pam went so far as to keep a hidden layout of her schedule that way so Sue would actually think she had to work.
Almost to Canada, and I found out that Sue’s dad’s Garmin we were borrowing didn’t include Canadian maps. And since I didn’t want her thinking we were going to Canada until we were in the line for the boarder, I had to cheat the GPS a bit to get us the last leg.

Part 2: Getting There

To appropriately whip my wife into a fervor of excitement, I was purposefully vague about how many hours I’d be working on Friday the 8th (half day). I also left her with a letter explaining that she needed to pack, and that she did indeed have the weekend off. But that’s about all it said beyond basic here’s what you need stuff. To help tide her over, I had a little edible arrangements thing delivered to the house.

So then we packed up and left. And as we drove, I used several devices of misdirection to keep her guessing where we were going. Molly kept telling her we were going to see horsies. And much of the trip, Sue figured it would be Belhurst Castle, but she was wrong there. I also hinted at one point that we were heading to NYC; however the drive to Toronto was perilous enough—I can’t imagine 7 hours of under 4 backseat insanity.

On the way up through Buffalo, traffic wasn’t too bad (though Eastbound I-90 was an insanity construction traffic jam for miles and miles—needless to say we took the backroads home once we came back into the states).

We stopped at Red Robin In Buffalo to eat, because Erie is one of those places with the IHOP/Red Robin Commercials, yet neither restaurant. So for the rest of the world that has these standard chains, they’re strangely fantastic to us. And our late lunch at Red Robin was indeed strangely fantastic. At this point I also took advantage of poisoning Molly by telling her we were going to a castle. Then once Molly started talking about going to the castle and seeing the horsies, Sue really started to get excited.

As mentioned above in Part 1, the GPS promptly failed as I tried to program in our destination in Toronto, so I did a Niagara Falls cheat, and stayed on the bridge to Cana-da. At which point Sue put it all together and correctly guessed Toronto, thinking that we might be going to Medieval Times.

Now, I forgot to mention, that in the letter that she read Friday morning, it specifically said she didn’t need her passport. Well, that’s because I had it stashed in the car. In fact, I had several envelopes stashed in the car, each containing more information about what we were doing. The first envelope had our passports and birth certificates in it. The second had an anniversary letter and some spending cash (in Looneys of course). The third had a pile of google maps to various locations I thought might be interesting.

So we rolled through the boarder and promptly joined about a hundred million other people all on the road to Toronto. I didn’t realize that we happened to book our trip to Toronto during Canada’s Thanksgiving weekend. And whiile the speed limit for most of the trip between the border and Toronto was 100kph, we were lucky to stay at 50. It was slow going. Oh and Jack, good well-behaved child as he is, decided not too long after we entered Canada that he was done with being in the car. Much to our good fortune, Molly decided to be actually really good, and she did everything she could to help calm Jack down. She gave him toys, tried to hold his hand, and then started singing songs. Molly loves to sing, and while many of her songs have interesting verses like:

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells

All far away

Oh what fun to ride far away hey

Old mcdonald had a farm

So we got to singing The Wheels on the Bus, and Sue and I couldn’t remember more verses than Wheels, Wipers, and People, so we started to ad lib, much to Molly’s delight (and to some degree Jack too—he calmed down a bit when Molly started cackling).

Here are some additional Verses to the song:

The Grammas on the bus go have some snacks

The Papas on the bus go Where’s my Train

The Yams (Aunt Yam) go Where’s my Ant

The Daddy’s on the bus go <fart noise> <fart noise> <fart noise> / I hate traffic

The Mommy’s on the bus go I need snacks

The Jacks on the bus go Daa daa daa

The Chus on the bus go Yuck Yuck Yuck

The Kon’s on the bus go Where’s my cake? / Is it Fish? / I want cake (Kon’s part got sung a lot so we kept changing it up)

This worked for a while, but then Molly started getting tired, and when Molly’s tired she becomes a very much broken record. And so she started saying “I want to go to the castle” over and over and over. Fortunately we were actually in the city by this time, and coming in off the Gardinier Expressway, there were lots of “castles” to be seen.

Park. Valet? Yes. I’m too tired to park myself. Check-in. Unpack. And while we unpacked, Jack got his wish: some time to zoom about, free from the carseat: Molly was also happy to be free from the car seat, and quickly claimed the Chaise lounge and settled down with bunny, Bubbles and a good book (I love you, Stinky Face)

And Sue took some pictures of the sunset outside our hotel window:

A quick kiss, and we were on our way to part 3

Part 3 – Dinner Crash

The Concierge directed us over to The Old Spaghetti Warehouse as a fine family type eatery. And by the time we got there and were seated, it was pushing 7:15. The place had a lot of character. It reminded me of backstage in an old theater, where the restaurant was carved out around all the old props that weren’t in use. We sat in a carousel. There was also a trolley car, a british style phone booth, and a bunch of other interesting rebuilds containing tables with people eating copious amounts of pasta. Here are some pre-meltdown pictures:

And though it was incredibly cute when Jack discovered the fun of playing with spoons, and Molly learned about the world of blowing bubbles in her milk, our food didn’t really arrive until about 8:00, which was exactly Jack’s bedtime, and the little man, after a a good many hours crabbing about being in the car for too long, was DONE. So he proceeded to FLIP-OUT (Adventure Time style). Despite the fact that dessert was included in the price of our meal, we had to skip out on it and head back to the hotel, where we all promptly crashed. Molly insisted on sleeping with us, which meant that she bed hogged big time, leaving me with next to nothing for mattress and a constant arm, leg, or head resting on me. Still, at least she didn’t do the cry-whine/itch thing she did last week (that was a true hideous night).

Part 4 – Sue’s 30th Birthday, or, Saturday in Toronto

Originally we were planning on hitting up the Toronto Zoo on saturday, but seeing how I had no working GPS, and was still fatigued from Friday’s driving, I suggested that we leave the car where it was and took advantage of the public transit system to tool around downtown Toronto. Sue was down with the idea, and Molly was pretty jazzed about taking the trains, so after some breakfast purchased at the little grocery store across the street from the hotel, we were off to Union Station.

You know, Japan, our first real experience with subway systems, trains and the like, really spoiled us. Ever since, we have forever been mildly confused with American, and now Also Canadian mass transit systems. In Japan, there were big maps of destinations, with prices on them. It was very easy to navigate even without know much of the language. Toronto was ok to navigate, but buying tokens was a bit confusing, and in the end, we got a family day pass, but that was after I ignored Sue’s good advice to ask before purchasing anything. Oh well, we have 4 souvenir subway tokens.

We took the subway to Yonge and Queen street and started out in the Yonge Street shopping district with the intent to hit up the Eaton Center. It wasn’t quite open yet, so we headed into an egg restaurant, and ordered up some more breakfast for Molly; because the kid never eats enough.

After second breakfast, we went into the Eaton Center, which had some very cool fake Geese flying in from the ceiling. They also had Flying Kitties:

Molly wanted one. Can you imagine the damage a flying kitty would cause in your house? Despite being heavily under construction, the mall turned out being quite good. There was a Godiva store, and Sue got her high-end chocolate fix (The Blood Orange Bats are fantastic if you need a fix yourself). She also landed some super deals at The Body shop and got a bunch of free stuff for use with Massages. I was wishing that I didn’t buy her boots in Houston, and instead saved the money for Toronto, because Toronto is apparently a boot mecca. They had lots of very cool boots there. Molly got herself Blaze from the Tinkerbell series, and I picked up a new GPS, so we’d be able to navigate home and other places in the future.

Here’s a picture of Jack and I before we then exited part 4 for

Part 5 – Chinatown, or the best part

Sue was pretty excited when she saw on our hotel map of Toronto that there was a pretty big Chinatown section. And we definitely weren’t disappointed. We walked down a nostalgic lane pretty much immediately upon entering Chinatown (via street car this time), when we found an Anime store. Though it was cool to browse through all the anime stuff, I think it just made us feel old. Still it was kind of cool.

We then started looking around for lunch, and stopped in a bakery for some Chinese buns. We were almost going to settle for that, but I knew Jack would be needing a pile o carrots soon, so we pressed on a little more, looking for the perfect lunch place. And we found it: an authentic ramen shop. And if you know Sue at all, you know that she will stop at nothing to get a good honest bowl of Japanese noodles. And this place, was by far the best Ramen we’ve had since Japan. We both ate EVERYTHING. And to make the lunch all the better, they actually had Black Sesame Ice Cream, another favorite we haven’t really been able to have since going to Japan. It was super lovely. And I think the high point of our vacation. The food was that good.

Sue also found a very cool bamboo shop that fulfilled another longterm search of hers: wooden rice hats. Back when we were on our honeymoon, her mission was to find one, and we never saw anything beyond some cheap touristy kind that you can get over here. But this place had some very nice ones and Sue bought two as well as a very nice paper umbrella.

A little ways further and we went into a teashop where Molly made friends with the little girl of the shop owners. The two of them ran around the shop like little banshees in this roller-racer type car while we looked at the teas. We talked to the owners a bit, so the kids could play some before heading back to dump off our bags.

Part 6 – Why Kids need naps, or, the shittiest part of the trip

We got back to the hotel, dumped off our bags, and I sent Sue down for "the weirdest Swedish Massage she’d ever had” with the hopes that Molly would take a bit of a nap, because she was starting to go crazy. Well naps didn’t happen. And when Sue got back, we decided to hop the ferry and check out the islands in the bay.

Supposedly there was a harvest festival going on over on the Island. But as we walked around, we didn’t see anything like that. We did, however, find a really cool Labyrinth made out of cedar trees, which Molly dubbed Owiee’s house (Owiee is Molly’s imaginary friend. He lives in trees, and is green with green pants and brown shoes. He doesn’t wear a shirt and keeps his towel in his belly button.) So we tromped around in Owiee’s house for a bit, finally coaxing him out to walk with us (Molly kept calling the island Owiee’s island, by the way).

We walked down to the far side near the beaches, and they were all closed for the season—everything was closed. So we went over towards a playground. Then everything went downhill. Molly played the brown note in the playground. Crapped her pants big time. Didn’t even tell us she had to go, despite constant asking her if she needed to go potty. We made her walk back to the beach area, so we could get her cleaned up, but the restrooms were also closed for the season. We walked back further, to some other restrooms we saw on the way into the island. Also closed. Sue and I are both furious now. Not only has Molly made a mess of herself, but it seems like we’re stuck on a series of interconnected islands populated by hundreds of people that came with our ferry alone, and no public restrooms. Fortunately, right by the ferry drop, the restrooms were open, and Sue performed magic by turning her hoodie into a makeshift skirt for Molly.

Standing in line to catch the ferry back, we were somewhat alleviated to see we weren’t the only parents with this plight; some filthy and poorly mannered Swiss or Austrian (not sure which nationality beyond the fact that their German was really sloppy awful sounding) kid had done the same. Except the Swiss parents really weren’t doing much about it, and letting their filthy crap pants child all over the place. But, we did get some nice pictures of the city waiting for the ferry:

Part 7 – Dinner and a Movie

We were pretty much done after the big letdown of the Islands. So we hit up this little Gyro place right next door to the hotel and ordered up Iron Man 2 from the hotel tv. The gyros were super fantastic, and despite the ridiculous fee for the movie, Iron Man 2 was really enjoyable. Both kids were completely exhausted and slept very well…Molly even left our bed and laid down on the little chaise lounge at some point, which, though confusing, was really nice too.

Part 8 – Toronto Zoo

So Sunday we packed up, got breakfast from the Kitchen Corner grocery store again (they had some super wonderful hard crusty bread, and aloe vera water), and then checked out. With new GPS in hand, I programmed in our destination, and we zipped off to the zoo, all of us sad that the new GPS didn’t have Dr. Nightmare’s voice loaded in it. If you don’t own a garmin, they have customizeable voices you can download. one of them, Dr. NIghtmare makes constant ghoulish comments as you’re driving, like “Can we stop for some rope and a shovel” Or “I think you’re being followed.” or “There’s a goblin behind you.” Etc.He’s quite fun, and we generally combine him with the hearse car marker (because if Sue had the money, she’d be tooling around town in a hearse.) Traffic was again hideous.

Once we got to the zoo, we kind of balked at the price--$23/adult. We balked again when we saw that some parts of the zoo, like their new Shark section and Kids section required additional fees. Screw that. We skipped those parts. Some pictures from the zoo:

The Toronto zoo had some pretty cool exhibit houses. The above picture of the alligator snapping turtle was amazing; that thing was easily 40 pounds or so; it would have no trouble taking a foot and not even saying what. Molly got a kick out of the baby lizards and flamingos. Sue got to see a bunch of arctic foxes. But the biggest drawback was that the Toronto zoo was way too spread out. It made Cleveland’s overly spread out zoo look like the Erie zoo. Not only did you have to walk forever between zones, but some places like the Ruined Mayan Temple, were islands of stuff that were one way in/out, requiring you to backtrack a lot. We got there at 10, and by 2, we were done, and we hadn’t seen about 1/3 of the zoo yet. So we ended up just skipping the rest in favor of trying to get out of Dodge before the traffic got too bad.

Part 9 – Journey’s End

Canadian traffic jams center themselves around on/off ramps. All the way back to the states, every time we got near an exit, the traffic would lock up and we’d be down under 40kph. As soon as we got past the exit, it was back up to 70-90. It stayed like this all the way to the QEW, which was pretty close to the last leg on the way out of Canada. And aside from a few “why are you taking me this way” Moments from the garmin as it led us on the backroads back to Erie (so we’d avoid the awful traffic jam on I90 we saw on Friday), we made it back home by 9PM.

All in all, our Birth-iversary trip was a hoot. I know we’ll travel to Toronto again, but probably not until both kids are potty trained. There was so much more we could have done there.

Coming Soon!

2010-10-10T23:23:00.000-04:00

An account of our Birth-iversary Trip to Toronto!

2010-10-01T20:52:00.000-04:00

Yeah we just throw our kids in with the laundry. Keeps em fresh and clean, but they can be staticky at times.

Lots of writing, or My wife is awesome

2010-09-07T22:06:00.000-04:00

Starting in on another week of lots of writing. Almost 14k words of new material in the last two and a half weeks; it's like NaNoWriMo but on my own time. Sue and I have been co-writing the Nigel and Cersee Sagas, and recently she convinced me to stop working way back at the beginning and to start working up at the same spot she's at. It's damn invigorating. And we're spending time together not watching TV.

Maybe sometime in the near future I'll post something of our combined efforts.

Mollyisms Part the Second, Back by Popular Demand

2010-08-17T22:12:00.000-04:00

Ahh parenthood.
These are the things that we hear day in and day out.
Sometimes we laugh
sometimes we don't
but any way you slice it, Mollyisms are not a dumb one.

Molly: Knock Knock us Who's There? Molly: Come in!
It ok Jack
Daddy Jack need a binky.
Molly: Reeed Robin Us: Yum
We going to get presents?
Make the car talk, Mommy (Molly wanting Dr. Nightmare of our GPS to talk)
I had a hard day. I need to lay down.
I want...choclate icecream with a cherry on top and the sprinklies
I want a Star one flavored bug juice (note: star flavored = cherry. Obviously because cherry star kisses from Dairy Queen are red and Star flavored)
This sucks
I want to go back pack ride. I want to take a kitty on it.
Oops.
It's a hard poop mommy (Like a true girl, Molly hates admitting that she too must poop)
Peepee on the potty peepee on the potty (sings)
I make the water turn green Mommy (we dump blue food coloring water in her potty to help make peeing more exciting; try it at home, spice up your potty time.)
I dump it. I dump the peepee in the potty
I flush it.
Mommy I flush your potty?
Yaay Mommy you go peepee on the potty too! Good job Mommy! (followed by a high five)
Build me a castle with the pillows. and the blanket.
I wanna ride a pony
No. That's a dumb one.
Hey Kid. Hey Kid you dropped your cellpone.
I help you?
You play with me kid?
Thank you playing with me kid
your welcome kid.
I have a butt.
Yetitiz (yes it is)
Wanna play? (proceeded by Molly yanking you off the couch onto the floor)
No eat my food Kon not for you.
I want....appiejuits
I tirsty
I want... choclatemilks
I want the cheeeez (cheetos)
I need my Tee-B
I need watch my show
I want.... Adventure Times
Ummm Powerpup girld (Power Puff Girls)
No hamburder
No hot dog dumb
I want to eat yeaves (leaves = salad)
I want trees (broccoli)
I dip it?
I wanna go to the plaaaayground
Daddy, Watch out for the trees!
Oh no monter train!
Daddy you gotta get a stick and yell at the monters and go yah yah
grap the stick with you han and you yah yah
don't hurt baby brodder (shortly after that statement, Molly got banned from coming to Jack's doctor's appointments for trying to slay the nurses for stabbing her brother with shots)
Not your little man daddy, it's mommy little man
It's ok Butterfly, Molly got you (said in the same cadence as Fawn says things to animals in the Tinkerbell Movies)
I don't like it
No funny dumb funny
My Jammies... My glasses! (said in the same cadence as seen in the city of thieves episode of Adventure Time. My daughter is a true nerd in the works. I'm so proud)
You be the monter daddy (I then chase her around the play ground until she stabs me repeatedly with the sharpest pointiest stick you can find)
read me story
you play my kitties?
Need to get the babies for the mama kitty
no like boom booms (thunderstorms)
Mommy I want to watch animals A-N-I-M-L-S
When counting Molly does good up till fourteen, then skips fifteen and sixteen jumping straight to seventeen.
You need a bandaid daddy?
Daddy don't pick your toe
Mommy Daddy needs a bandaid (the above three were in conjunction to a hang nail I had on my toe, which Molly carefully observed daily until it was healed, informing Sue at every instance when it needed a bandaid.)
I got a boo boo too. Need a bandaid (Molly's boo boos are invariably almost always so tiny you can hardly see the remnant of a scab that was a boo boo like three weeks ago. But she's very insistent. And of course anytime someone else has a boo boo, hers are waaay worse and she always has to compare.)
I kiss it better?
Say your sorry to Daddy Mama. Gib Daddy a hug. (Molly always takes my side in arguments; yet another reason why she rocks).
That a dumb lady. (to the lady that almost hit them the other day because she ran a stop sign while on a cell phone)
No hit the car. No hit the car.
Put Jack down he sleepy.
Carry me.
Jack I play your toys?
I not stinky. I Molly.
I not a baby. I a yittle girl (little girl)
Jack smiling at me, Mommy.
Aww it's cuute.
Jack making noisies

Stay tuned for more fun later.

Ontologica, Turning a New Page

2010-08-11T20:39:00.000-04:00

After a whole lot of stress, hot nights cramped in my attic, and chipping away, Issue 2 of Ontologica is now ready for consumption. This issue features:
Rod Dixon
Colleen Harris
Kilean Kennedy
Loreen Niewenhuis
John Seay
Scott Walker
Susanna Childress
Jeffrey M. Hopkins
Josh Smith
"Gentle" Josh Makowski

This issue also saw a changeup in the editorial leadership as Dave Harrity stepped down from his position as Poetry editor and we added Susane Andracki as Art Editor.

If you have a moment, check it out!

I caught the Steampunk bug

2010-07-08T00:00:00.000-04:00

Sue and I like to game whenever we go on walks. We've about exhausted all of my D&D lines, and I've kinda screwed up the line Sue started, so until that gets back on track, and under the heavy influence of Abney Park, we made a foray into the world of Steampunk. I whipped up some new landscape, and sue created a shutter-pixie named Locke, and we've been grinding away in the dark post-cataclysmic landscape of North America. I'm trying to run it with a balance of emerging steampunk technology and post-apocolyptic Mad Max/Fallout kind of feel. So far, it's been pretty entertaining.

Here's some stuff I wrote up about the gameworld:

Setting Earth 100 years after a global EMP cataclysm.

Memories are soft on exactly how it happened, but around 100 years ago all electronics, radio frequencies, and computers went dark. Major rioting ensued with the fall of most governments and public utility infrastructure. Power plants became the most powerful piece of property, but many were unstable without electronic monitoring causing at least 5 nuclear plants (including three mile island) to go critical.

People in large cities struggled the most -- finding, transporting, and keeping fresh stores of food became increasingly difficult, and cannibalism soon became rampant.

the stabilized powerplants (those that could be easily operated without electronics--largely old coal plants) became havens for their surrounding communities, as they provided vital power, which they soon began to regulate and control by destroying key substations ensuring their grid would remain within a localized zone of electricity, effectively creating city states clustered around coal plants. The Great Lakes Region of the former United States, for this reason, continued to remain relatively stable with its great number of coal power plants (http://www.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=115725047472986165665.00046eed968dc7a707394&cd=4&sll=37.926868,-95.712891&sspn=46.431705,78.837891&ie=UTF8&ll=41.861379,-80.375977&spn=5.547099,9.854736&t=h&z=7&iwloc=lyrftr:msid:115725047472986165665.00046eed968dc7a707394,00046eed9a2a4d87d3ca9,40.513799,-79.200439,0,-32)

However the diminishing supply of coal, and increased difficulty of extracting remianing coal in appalachia gave way to rising fears of a permanent blackout, and many city states began fighting over coal aquisition rights, even going so far as highjacking coal trucks and rail cars. the instability lead to more unrest, and many people began migrating north into canada where the open space held promise for a more pure lifestyle living off the land.

Also during this time initially after the EMP shock, the world's weather systems changed drastically with record high and low temperatures. Hurricanes slammed the coasts of the Americas as far north as Nova Scotia, and coastal flooding swallowed tens of miles of shoreline only to recede in terrible drought a few years later. Scientists presumed that the EMP shock on the planet was enough to force the Earth's magnetic poles to begin to shift drastically, identifying Magnetic north to be somewhere near Moscow, Russia 5 years after the EMP cataclysm, and sliding southward into the Caspian sea within a year. There was an increasing worry that the magnetic poles would reach some form of terminal "Flip Point" where they would drastically roll to opposing sides of the planet over a matter of days or hours, and with this fear in mind, several scientists began development on the Magnetron Network.

Using a top secret method, the worlds' top scientists created hundreds of Mini-magnetrons and began placing them at key locations around the world. the Magnetrons, initially stood no more than ten feet tall and were composed of a single four inch diameter black carbon rod buried five feet into the ground, but the great magnetic force contained within the rods began to draw the metal from the ground and surrounding areas, causing the magnetrons to grow into towering dark obelisks in the sky.

At first people feared these things, seeing that the obelisks deadened the ground surrounding them, and eventually began to gather floating satellites of debris that had yet to settle into the obelisk's form, but within two years of establishing the Magnetrons, the earth's weather patterns stabilized, and scientists determined that the risk of the earth floating off course of its revolution around the sun or the potential of a violent magnetic flip were, for the moment deterred.

The existence of the magnetrons, however, fairly ensured that modern technology would never develop along it's original path--the power of the magnets was so great that they could draw electricity out of any object within their radius, a side effect that turned many power plant city states into ghost towns of ionizing metal slowly being consumed by the magnetrons' draw.

In the mean time, some technology started to resurface. Vintage cars--muscle cars from the mid-late 20th century contained few electronic components, and were relatively easily restored and hybridized with ethanol and solar fuel cells. Solar and wind power also began to grow in effectiveness in areas far from the Magnetrons' influence. Thus four major types of society began to emerge:

The Protectors -- Cities and peoples living near and supporting the upkeep of Magnetrons. these people often lived rusty dark lives with no electrical power available to them. their machines rely on solar, or more commonly, steam. Within the last 15 years or so, many people living in these areas claim to be able to manipulate the world in unnatural ways. Some call it magic, others mutation, and a few very smart folks noticed that the Magnetrons follow key joinings of ley lines, amplifying the fae power flowing into the area. Either way, this magic is soon applied to technology and clockwork steam technology begins to grow and thrive allowing for the bending of natural laws of science to create great flying airships without helium or balloons. Rumors of clockwork prostetics simmer across the land as the protected areas slowly build great walls around their domains to keep their inventions protected from the Wandering.

The Naturalists -- Peoples that lived far from Magnetrons' reach. These areas tended to bee the loosest forms of civilization with return to farming, beasts of burdon, and hunting. The wilds of Canada and more rural areas of the Southern united states returned largely to this way of living

Those Who Challenge God -- Some cities far from Magnetron lines, used aggressive solar and wind technology to try to recapture the modern world before the EMP cataclysm. These areas became the central locations of innovation. The first airships graced the skies over these cities, combining zeppelin technology and solar power. Despite their distance from Magnetron influence, no inventor can revive electronic technology, radio waves, or computing. Scientists are at a loss as to why this technology no longer works and lack the tools to delve deeper into this.

The Wandering -- Over the last hundred years millions of people were spurned from their homes to the dusty roads, some forming ragged bands of nomads, flitting through ruins looking for food, work, or trouble. Most people in settled areas fear the wandering, but for the most part, most wandering ar good people looking for food and work. there is, of course, a dark undercurrent of wicked people out there too that do more than their share to earn the fear felt by most folks about these vagabonds.

The current landscape of the former US holds few major cities, with the most influential being:

Pittsburgh -- Those who challenge god

Homer City -- largest powerplant city state

Sioux Falls SD -- Largest Protector City

Stevens Point WI -- those who Challenge God

Rochester NY -- Protector City

Seneca NY (a new city grown on Seneca Lake) Naturalist Collective

Bangor ME (Now a prime Port of trade) Those who challenge god

Reading PA (Prime Port City and resort area) Those who Challenge God

North East of the former US -- AEC (After EMP Cataclysm) 102

In the years after the establishment of the Magnetrons, along with the growth of "magic," the appearance of supernatural creatures began to grow. Unicorns were sighted in Ireland and around Vancouver, Canada. Pixies, Faeries and other fey creatures have also been found, though they remain rare.

In AEC 85 a dragon was sighted over the ruins of Asheville, SC and burned the remains of the city.

In AEC 86 a team of mercenaries brought down a 20 foot dragon near Stonehenge in England.

In AEC 92 a 25' long Sphinx emerged from the ruins of its own statue in Egypt. It razed a nearby city and demanded that the locals keep it fed with a steady supply of virgins.

In AEC 92 the Protector City Rochestor unveiled a new model of clockwork airship operating on a modified hunk of magnetron and gears. The plans were stolen and pirate clockwork ships began appearing over the skies, levying attacks on protector cities to gain more magnetron hunks.

In AEC 93 a small army of Trolls emerged from the swamps around Shreveport, LA and nearly decimated the city, retreating only after a dying defender accidentally dropped a live grenade near an abandoned gas station, causing a huge explosion and killing two trolls

In AEC 95 confirmed reports of Vampires and Werewolves surfaced from the Black forests of former Romania.

In AEC 98 a Medusa like creature appeared on a small island in the Agean sea, turning all the residents of the village there to stone. The creature was slain by a well-read history buff a year later

In AEC 100 a creature claiming to be the forest king emerged near the Seneca Collective and demanded fealty of the surrounding lands; with the local naturalist's support, the surrounding forests of the Fingerlakes return to their virgin states, trees awaken, and faerie creatures begin appearing in great numbers.

In Defense of Access...Sort of (the good parts at least)

2010-06-09T00:08:00.002-04:00

In my real job I use Microsoft Access a lot; some would say that I use it too much, that Access is an archaic backwards monstrocity that should be dropped from the Microsoft Office Suite, that I should be running on SQL Server with a .NET frontend managing things, that Access isn't powerful enough, isn't fast enough, isn't good enough for anything.

In fact, I think it's easier to think of reasons why Access sucks than to think of its benefits. And as I delve deeper into Access development, I find myself getting more and more indignant when people start shitting all over my development platform du jour.

Don't get me wrong, if I had .NET and SQL server again, I'd probably use them, but I wouldn't be as productive even if everything were shinier, faster, and more "professional" from .NET.

Herein lies the gem that is Access: it allows for fast, useful automation of day to day office activity. It integrates into other Office applications, and after six years of tinkering with it (with much of that time under a really great mentor), I can make Access do all kinds of things that would be a lot more complex to replicate under .NET.

Currently I have databases talking to Outlook, Excel, and Word; making documents, sending emails, creating attachments, all automated with very little user imput needed. And this is just an iceberg's tip of the things I've done/can do. Access as a development platform gives me a lot of really great tools with minimal setup and configuration. And I can extend all of that with Standardized Modules containing all of my most-often-used code. Currently I have 12 Standard Modules for each database containing functions from Basic Database connectivity to Form manipulation, to automated emailing.

The only thing that really holds Access back from being a real contender is Microsoft. Every version of Access I've worked with has had some mind-numbingly stupid implementation Fail on Microsoft's behalf. Want an example? Let's talk Synchronizing.

Prior to Access 2007, there was a feature called Replication. It let you create a replicant database, where you could go offline, make updates and then come back later and synch in with the master. In pre-Access 2007 days I never really had a need for it, but it was always there.

With Access 2007 Replication is supported only in Compatability mode (ie .mdb/mde format). My need for Replication didn't come about until after I upgraded all of our databases. And so some quick searching revealed that the "new" way to handle replication is through SharePoint. Cool. We have that. And everyone in Corporate wants us to use it (because well it's pretty useless). So I tried it out.

Small database, only a couple of tables, and uploaded it to SharePoint. The first thing I found was that Databases run like Garbage on SharePoint. The small table limit (2000 records or less for optimal performance) mixed with our not-so-great network meant that, well, access times went way up. So I turned to synchronizing. Immediately I saw two things: performance went up, and the database started to unravel.

Yes synchronization with SharePoint let's you work Offline with much improved access times, BUT

When you upload a Table to a SharePoint List, SharePoint confiscates your PrimaryID and Renumbers it from 1 -- So I hope you didn't plan on using that as a foreign ID anywhere Else
You can't access that PrimaryID any longer for anything but reading -- So don't bother trying to re-renumber your ID back to what it was
Referential Integrity? Yeah, SharePoint doesn't deal with that bullshit (Seriously, what Database program needs Cascaded Updating and Deleting between Primary and Secondary tables?) [Note Severe Sarcasm for you non-programmer readers].
Validation Rules? Nope.
Default Values? Nope.
Additional Unique Fields beyond the Primary Key? Nope.

How could you NOT be jumping out of your order SharePoint 2007 as your new Online Table Source? Oh wait. Because it's fucking useless. Especially since it's the Only supported form of replication for .accdb/.accde files.

Oh and get this: Microsoft's Solution: Go back to Access 2003. Nice. Why would I, or anyone want to depreciate to 7 year old software? Isn't that against the general plan of things? But then again, Microsoft made Vista and Me and the Early versions of Win98 and XP both sucked too, so I guess I should know better with whom I'm dealing.

Oh the light at the end of the tunnel though: Microsoft will support Referential Integrity in SharePoing 2010...too bad our shop won't update to that until 2012 at the earliest.

My current solution: Hombrew Synchronizing. It'll be awesome when it's done, but it'll be a bit of a beast to retrofit the databases for it.

The point of all this is this: Access, since it is part of Office, beckons lots of know-nothing users into fucking around and making truly hideous databases, but those of us who really work at it, can and do make some pretty powerful applications, with our only limitations being that of the poor design decisions on Microsoft's behalf. So before you start dropping your condescention on the next Access Developer you see, take a moment to find out what's going on under the hood and reserve your words for the people that make us look bad [ you insensitive clod(s)].

Mollyisms Part the First

2010-05-24T23:31:00.000-04:00

Editor's Preface
Parenthood is an oft-celebrated cliche, in which a parent waxes poetic on how smart, funny, beautiful, and tantrum free his or her darling little human-child is. Often, this is done in comparison to another child, wherein the second child is more oft compared to that which spawns in the mucky muck lurking beneath that condemned trailer over yonder by the railroad tracks (wrong side implied). Yet in reality, parenthood is ridiculous work, perilous even (consider the evil plastic cheese wedge, your foot, the bottom of the steps and 3AM--Fucking Deadly) where dog-tired adults pray to any god who will listen that the children sleep [at some point, hopefully at the same time]. Where two year olds learn how to enact passive-aggressive regression tactics (let's un-learn how to use the potty!). Where parents feel embarrassed when their toddler starts slapping the nurse for giving her baby sibling a shot; when deep down we're saying, "Rock on kid, for sticking up for your brother." Yea, parenthood is a minefield...sometimes more literally than we'd like. But,

There is one thing, that above all, pushes parenthood, for me, away from being a brokedown misery of pleading, deal making, and flat out yelling: that being the amazing process of child-like language. Herein lies the first of several installments of Mollyisms.

Mollyism -- (n.) 1. Something Molly said 2. A moment of phrasal hilarity 3. The fruits of parenting at its best.

Part 1: An annotated List of Terms and Definitions

What are you doing here? -- A constant phrase can be used as an introduction, conversation starter, or general question
Sprinkly one? -- usually used in conjunction with ice cream
Do you like it? Do you lub it? -- often paired questions. Consequentially, we lub lots a things these days.
No. Birdy has a turkey leg. -- Molly's answer to the question, "Does a birdy have legs?"
I want a poopcon. --One night outside of Sheetz, Sue and I were talking about coupons--I, stupidly thought that 1. gas stations didn't take coupons, and 2. that a coupon for a free coke was not a coupon and in fact a voucher. I was later set straight by the cash register clerk. But in the mean time, Molly blurts out, "I want a Poopcon." And we lost it. She then started talking about how Kon, our fat kitty, pooped and mommy had to clean up. We're still not sure what she thinks poopcons are, considering that she's been given some, but either way they have something to do with making the fat kitty poop.
Doctor Horsey. -- Molly has many roles for her My little ponies. One of them is Doctor Horsey. And Doctor Horsey can heal any animal by stomping its head.
Hotchipot -- Molly's word for hospital. We had no idea what she was saying till Doctor Horsey showed up to help a sick kitty.
I lub the Chu. He's my faborite. -- Chu's our other kitty. He tolerates Molly's insanity with the patience of the gods. Someday, that cat's going to collect and demand tunafish for all meals till he dies (I think he's waiting for Kon to kick the bucket though, since Kon eats most of the food in the house anyay)
One more -- One more does not mean one more. Molly will One More something twenty or thirty times if she really likes it.
Anotherone poop? -- One time Sue was changing Jack's diaper and Molly was watching. She pointed at Jack's ballsack and said, "Anotherone poop, Mommy?"
No Poop mommy, I farted. -- We hate this phrase. Molly won't tell us, or admit when she poops. Lately this has been leading to messy escapades, as the training diapers don't quite have the sheer containment space of traditional diapers. Shit storm :'(
Dammy. -- Sue's eternal pain. Dammy is what you get when your two year old isn't paying attention to whom she's speaking, so Daddy/Mommy gets slammed together into Dammy. Occasionally she does the opposite, Maddy, but Dammy happens all the time, and it brings out Sue's Irish rage. I feel her pain though--I used to be Dwerf (Drew/Derf [Derf's my step-dad]) for years.
Chickennuggetfrecnchfry -- The only way Molly orders McDonalds
Let's take the walk -- We like walking. so does Molly.
i wanna go to the wateraparrk -- Molly also likes the water park. Currently she's banned till she learns to use the potty.
I'm crying Mama -- This happens usually when Molly's fighting bedtime and she's turned on the pathetic cannon (her mouth). Crocodile tears + this phrase = us having a difficult time not laughing as we try to order her to bed.
Hi Little guy -- Anyone she doesn't know the name of becomes little guy. This can be kids on the playground, action figures, or people on TV.
Kids! Come back Kids! -- Molly lubs playing with other kids on the playground. Unfortunately, very few unsupervised pre-teens have the patience to race around with a bossy two year old. Also, Molly has a knack for showing up at playgrounds when everyone is leaving, hence this phrase.
Mommy, you clean up? -- Said whenever there's a mess. Messes are caused usually by cats in Molly's eyes. She conveniently avoids pointing out many of her own messes. Strange...
I'm cold need a nice and warm -- a nice and warm is a blanket. Sometimes she does say blanket, but nice and warm gets thrown in invariably. She really huddles up and sells the being cold part too once she gets the blanket.
No. I'm the Molly -- Ask Molly if she's pretty much anything , and this is how Molly will respond. She gets real mad when people try to tell her that she's the big sister. Sometimes she even goes as far as adding "I'm a little girl." when people do that.
It's ok Jack -- Whenever Jack cries, Molly tries to soothe him. She's a bit crazy to be touching him up, but sometimes she'll even come over and kiss him.
Mr. Mommy! Mr. Mommy! -- Since we call Jack, Mr. Jack most of the time, just about everyone gets to be a Mr. these days.
Want to take a bubble bath? -- Molly lubs bubble baths. Some days she wants to take like 9 of them, and probably would too if we let her.
It's my Faborite. -- Molly has a lot of faborites.
Moob. -- Molly's version of Move. She tells us to moob a lot.
I help you? -- She loves to help.
No take my car. -- The family car is hers; did you know that? I get in big trouble when I drive to work (good thing I like to try to walk)
I want a chocklate -- apple didn't fall far from the tree here; our little girl is a choco-holic
Mnem an nems -M&Ms Molly style
Open the door.-- Usually so she can escape
Turn up the light -- This can also be used with the dark. Turn up the dark or turn up the sun. She doesn't like the night because that means she has to sleep. Why oh why do little kids not like sleep?
lemme out mommy -- we have to baby gate her into her room because she can open the door and won't stay in her room at bed time.
I got the key -- Molly lubs keys and opening doors with them. To her, a key can be anything that fits in a keyhole.
awww isn't it cuute -- She says this to Kon a lot. Especially when she glomps on him when he's sleeping. It's about the only time she can catch him.
eew that digustin -- Molly's usually spot on when something is yucky, and she doesn't hesitate to tell us.
that's dedicious -- Molly's real good at keeping this word for just the right moment; only really tasty stuff gets the dedicious label.
I come too -- She'll follow us anywhere; even to the crapper
that's dumb! -- sometimes this is cute, but when Molly is mad, tired, or both, everything, even things that are her faborite can become dumb. And she gets pretty violent about hating dumb things; she'll slap em around pretty good.
No Nigh night -- she fights bedtime pretty often anymore. Before Jack, she was clockwork good about going to bed. 9PM zing up the stairs brush the teeth wash the hands kiss good night love you.
I wanna wash the han -- Washing hands and brushing teeth are two things she's pretty good at. And
Need a bandaid? -- Because she's a big help and because she lubs bandaids, she's there to help you with even the most insignificant abrasion. Oh and Hello Kitty is what' she's packing these days, so I hope you like pink kitties and bunnies to heal your wounds.
Wanna play my toys? -- Two year old games are crazy. Sometimes they're real interesting with the rules that she thinks up, but two year olds have a cognitive limit on toys playing, I think. After so many minutes, the game resets and she starts it all over fresh. Sue can beat this repetition by adding crazy fox elements that rock Molly's world.
Play in my room daddy? -- She lubs when we play in her room, but her room is a minefield of toys that scattered from an un-attributed pipe-bomb blast.
oh no the monters. Hide! -- Molly's not generally afraid of much, but she does like to pretend to be afraid of monsters. There's all kinds of monsters to be afraid of. And usually you're safe if you're under a blanket. Personally, I like Monter Train (train whistles heard while outside at night); Molly gets proper freaked out by that.
I'm scared daddy (fake shaking) -- when Molly is "scared," she fake shakes like she's cold. It's real funny.
dukadukadukaduka -- Because Molly doesn't know all the parts of a sentence, she often fills space where she knows words should be but doesn't know the word with rambly word-like syllables.
wait waita minute -- we say this to her a lot; it's only natural that she turn it around on us.
want to draw mommy -- Molly loves drawing and painting, especially 3D objects. Michaels sells these little wooden animals for like 2 bucks. She'll be blissful in painting heaving for like an hour.
I need it -- Molly needs lots of things, and she won't hesitate telling us.
It's my map -- any piece of paper with stuff other than her painting or drawing on it is a Map.
I'm running -- She tells you when she runs. It's good information.
I got a poop pigeon -- How could I not buy this for her? Littlest Pet Shop has a toy that's a pigeon and labeled as a "Messy" one. It also comes with a park bench and a sticker sheet with stickers of bird poop. When we asked Molly if she wanted a poop pigeon in Walmart tonight, she was like "Yeah! I want a poop pigeon." And she kept talking about it all night. I lub it. It's freakin hilarious.
Awesome -- She says awesome. How awesome is that?
I want Edidabeth -- Elizabeth is Molly's best friend. They're the same age and they lub playing together. Molly talks about her constantly.

Brave New World(s)

2010-05-02T00:11:00.000-04:00

[Most] of my students' final grades are submitted, and as I sit here, slightly uncomfortable in the attic during a strange off-season warm spell (not that I'm complaining), I'm looking at the wide-open door of future writing. Writing, that poor sweet creature, that generally likes to hide from "what have you been working on?" will now have to step up and start flexing her muscles again.

And since I"m no longer under the gun to turn papers around with ninja-like quickness, I have some time to reflect on the projects that I haven't been paying attention to at all for far to long of a span.

Not an Autobiography -- I'm sort of on the down spin of this one right now. Though the final Johnny story, "Cliche" is definitely in the works, I've sort of hit a point in the project where I'm questioning it's overall import in the world of literary worth. Most of this is fueled by my more or less recent growing distaste for literary snark. So unless I'm in a snarky mood or I stumble across a gem of an idea, I'm sort of floating this to the side of my headspace. Aside from "Cliche," I figure that I need to write 1-2 more first person narrator stories, overhaul the second Johnny story, "Endings Lead to Beginnings" (starting with the title, which sounds real clunky to me) and finish up Clare's last story, "7500 Miles to Find Herself" A tall order, but a good todo list.

Shadowman (the working title of the series) -- this will probably be my main project for some time. I want to take and revise and continue working on the NaNoWriMo project from November. I have some plans to workshop the NaNoWriMo project with another NaNoer this summer, and I'm hoping to kick into high gear on continuing Nigel's story here soonishly.

Ontologica -- We're aiming to have Ontologica's second issue out in late June, early July. At the moment, I'm not really sure if I'll contribute anything, but I am looking forward to a smoother publishing this time.

All of this, of course, is made possible by my decision to not return to teaching in the fall. The decision, while a bit of a mixed bag of emotions, I think is a good one overall; not only for me but for the family. Adjuncting is rough stuff financially when you're single; damn nigh impossible when you're trying to support a family with just adjuncting. Overall it was a really great experience, but it's time to move on; time to move back to a more regular writing schedule; back to working more regular hours; back to not having to blow off my family to grade papers.

Teaching is a funny thing. At once it's vibrantly exciting--especially if the class is both active and involved, like my rockin-awesome ENGL004 class from this past semester--but it can also be a super-drag. Nothing is more gut-dropping depressing than a bright student that doesn't give a shit. It gives me fits to watch kids piss away their college careers. Someday down the road, I hope to find myself in a classroom again; hopefully bullshitting about fiction instead of composition, but the future is no mistress that I bed with regularly, so she can keep her secrets for now.

On the more professional side of the writing world, my marketing job is taking me to some pretty wild places. I've been going hog-wild on developing some pretty keen stuff, and it's got me thinking back about the creative nature of programming vs. its scientific nature...something I think I want to expand on more. But not tonight. I think tonight calls for some sort of outline of Nigel's timeline from forever ago to current.

Dadaism

2010-03-23T22:54:00.004-04:00

No this isn't about an artistic movement I only vaguely remember from Art History. This week's blathering is much more personal-the whole parenting thing.

Part 1: The wasteland
On the outside, I think, a lot of 20somethings think that parenting is kind of an end of the road--your life is over kind of thing. Not to mention the physical wasteland of toys strewn about, all of them lying in wait for that midnight run downstairs barefoot in the dark. Yellow Cheese Triangle. Yes, I speak of you and your many pain inflicted nights. Then there's the wasteland of personal fulfillment--the whole me time sorta goes out the window.

Part 1.5: Is it that bleak?
No.

Part 3: Let me explain what happened to part 2
A couple weeks ago I was talking to Grace about the fun of having a 2 year old and an impending stork delivery, and she said "You know you really need to write something about parenting. Part 2 was: Grace, your wish is granted.

Part 4: It's not what you think
Parenting is like the wild west. And you get to be Clint Eastwood or Annie Oakley (for you female types) [Maybe I should reference Buffalo Bill instead for a better parallel with Oakley? Nah. Eastwood is far too badass to leave out. I'd be like referencing a samurai flick without mentioning Akira Kurosawa or Toshiro Mifune.] Sure we all were kids, and our parents did a [fine/meh/wonderful/terrible/great/shitty/so-so/average] job raising us, so more of the same, right?

To me it feels a bit like playing God. But in a safe way. Sure we got to create life, and as parents we get to shape it. But we can't go willy-nilly. It's not like It's an easy process to start over, and god knows Sue'd kill me if I said, "Oh shit, we fucked up this kid, let's game over and start fresh." She's totally done being pregnant in a forever kind of way. And I can't blame her.

But it is a bit like playing God. We choose as parents what goes into their little impish minds (Molly is thoroughly an imp, no doubt there). They gestate and regurgitate in their own version. The rewards are amazing. Within only a couple years, you have this little creature that runs up to you and says "Bao Bao" [That's 'hug' in Chinese] because 1. she loves you and 2. she watches a whole freakin lot of Ni-Hao Kai-Lan. So I have a partially bi-lingual 2 year old in a language that I will never understand as well as her because she's at the language sponge age.

Other rewards come in all kinds of packages from the Daddy-just-got-home-from-work-excitement to an un-prompted Thank You or random hug. Show them love and attention, and man, Kids rock.

Part 5: What about that imp thing?
Yeah, Kids can give you fits too. They give us fits every day. It's part of parenting, and in a way like Stress exercise. How much kid insanity can you take without losing your cool? Tonight, my daughter decided to drink the bathwater [something that we've been yelling at her for for, um, forever]. Not only because doing so is gross, but because she could choke. Well guess what, tonight she choked on it. I was right there, and averted crisis in seconds. But Sue, also FLEW up the stairs, terrified that something happened to her baby. This leads to part 6

Part 6 : Redbull may give you wings, but parenting gives you superpowers
Holy hell. Being a parent allows you to somehow slow time down sometimes and catch children that are mid fall from 30 feet away when you have a herniated disk, broken leg, and are wrapped so tight in a snuggie that you're certifiably mummified. And it's instinctual. I don't know how we do it, but parents get the powers to SAVE LIVES pretty regularly. And we do it on not a lot of sleep

Part 7: Caffeine, a father's reprieve
You know that bullshit line, "Females are the weaker sex?" Childbirth aside, try raising small children that don't sleep well. Then try it without caffeine. Why? Because moms don't get that chemical stim fix like us dads if they're pregnant or breastfeeding. But yet they carry on just as well. Wives/mothers of the world, you rock. For us dads, we may get a little more sleep and get to dope up on [Coffee, Tea, Monster, Redbull, PowerEdge, Mt. Dew, Coke], but it's also our duty to not bitch about being tired, ever. And if you can let the wife sleep in, for god sakes do it.

Part 8: It's an adventure and a half
Last Night, after class, my Daughter, who realized it had finally stopped raining, called me on a promise I'd made to her when she woke up first thing Monday. I'd said, "We can go out and play with your chalk [sidewalk chalk received from Aunt Yam on Sunday] as soon as it stops raining." So at 7:30 Molly and I are outside in the freakin cold wind drawing on our porch. Yet despite the somewhat miserable conditions, Molly came up with a really hilarious game. I had to draw letters of the alphabet. Then she would dictate how many times you had to stomp on said letters. Stomping had to involve silly walks [ala Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks], and it was pretty constant. So despite being cold, it was actually a lot of fun.

Part 9: The Caveat
What I'm trying to say here is that parenting is indeed about the best thing I've ever done. And since I'm on vacation from everything but teaching, I'm happy to say that I'd be real glad to be a stay at home dad if I could. Here's the caveat to all of this though: Most Americans, I think are far too lazy and narcissistic to actually be good parents. It's evident in our legislation where people feel the need to try and control maturity ratings on music and games. Good parents don't need this kind of gov'ment policing, because they know what their kids are capable of handling. And it doesn't take much to be involved with kids; they crave attention.

Outro
Parenting rocks.
[this post partially written while rocking Jack to sleep].

Begins Here One Hundredth Account of Operative Me

2010-03-18T23:23:00.002-04:00

Or, how to get teenagers, dildos, sodomy, terrorism, Wal-Mart, school shootings, and the word "Chesticles" together in one book.

Wow. Before I begin, I just realized this is post 100. [Insert small party here.]

Today, it's all about Chuck
Palahniuk. Specifically Pygmy, his latest (2009) tromp into the world of decidedly disturbing distopia. Two things before I get going: 1. I like Palahniuk. Even when his writing isn't grand, I still like him because he's got the balls to say and do shit that stuns even my thoroughly desensitized core. 2. I'm pretty thoroughly desensitized (which is a good trait to have when you read Palahniuk. Especially considering that people faint at his readings from his wonderfully visceral descriptions.)

With finishing Pygmy, I've now read half of Palahniuk's library, and I have at least two more of his books sitting unread on my shelves. I generally like the guy.

Pygmy the book
A coupla weeks ago we took a trip up to Borders (a store I usually avoid because hours will pass and wives and children will murder me for getting lost in the stacks for too long) and I decided to finally blow the gift card I got at Christmas. I settled on this book because, knowing my reading time constraints, I needed something that would be both interesting and a fast read.

Overall the book has a very promising premise. From the jacket, "Pygmy, one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students...all the while planning and unspecified act of massive terrorism....It's a comedy. And a romance." Thoroughly Palahniuk, right? Add to it the fact that the entire book is written in very poor English, which though difficult to decipher at first, manages to maintain a consistent and logical flow to it.

I've long been a fan of books that play with dialect, and this application, of foreign English worked very well and in a humorous way without relying on custom grammar rules. Here's a fine example:

Magic quiet door go sideways, disappear inside wall to open path from outside. Not total all glass, extruded aluminum metal frame silver edge, doors slide gone until reveal inside stand old woman, slave woman appareled with red tunic, spring apparatus gripping tunic front to hang swinging sign, printed, "Doris." Ancient sentinel rest gray cloud eye upon operative me, roll eye from hair and down this agent, say, voice like old parrot, say, "Welcome to Wal-Mart." Say, "May I help you find something?"....
Smile of operative me say, "revered soon dying mother, distribute you ammunitions correct for Croatia-made forty-five-caliber, long-piston-stroke APS assault rifle?" (Palahniuk 9)

It's both quirky and entertaining, and not so distracting that it breaks down the overall flow of the narrative.

Palahniuk also plays it smart with the actual nature of the terrorists. First, he casts them as kids, making it more difficult for a redneck America to redflag bomb these would-be killers before they get a chance to reciprocate. Second he doesn't show the terrorists doing things that you'd expect right off the bat. Sure the ultimate plan is to kill millions with some type of bomb, but the going about that isn't as you'd expect. And this is typical Palahniuk--always twisting away from what you'd expect; it's one of his primary modes of building tension.

One of my big worries with this novel is that it's structure, consisting of thirty-six dispatches would not be explained. Since we have a metafictive setting of the main protagonist telling his own story, the vessel of that telling needs to be explained. Sadly many books don't do this; they set up the story within a story for effect and don't really explain the purpose of said effect, and thus destroy the relevant power of using metafiction in the first place. Since I'm writing this more in book review style than literary analysis style, I'm not going to reveal the purpose for this structure, but know that my need to have well formed metafictional structures in books was satisfied.

I've said a number of good things here about the book; but if you look over to my GoodReads account, you'll see I only gave it two stars. Why? Well, while this was an enjoyable quick read kind of book it lacked the oomph that other Palahniuk books like Rant and Invisible Monsters, carry. And unfortunately, like Haunted, (and from what I hear Snuff as well), Pygmy relied far too heavily on the shock factor. Very early on in this book Pygmy does something pretty hideous, and Palahniuk apes that image throughout the rest of the book. While I'm desensitized enough to not be bothered by things like this, it seemed like he was trying to use this to build a lot of reader revulsion for the Pygmy's character, you know, cut him way down before building him up, and in the long run, this wasn't enough for me. The overall character growth was marginal, and I'm not entirely convinced that the outcome was entirely earned.

And for all the effort that went into generating a novel in broken English, the overall net effect is that the novel becomes sparse. Weighing in at only 241 pages, there isn't a whole lot to work with to start with, and with the added weight of broken English, the narrative became somewhat scattered and choppy, skipping and jumping across a fairly decent span of time (the dates are all purposefully blacked out, so I can't give the span, but I'd expect at least 4-6 months).

The book was funny and quirky, but not one of Palahniuk's best.

Hello World, Jack Chaucer

2010-03-16T00:37:00.003-04:00

Today at 5:10 PM, Jack Chaucer came out just in time for dinner. Sue did most of the laboring at home, arriving at the doc's this morning already dilated 3cm. Jack was born after only about two hours of active labor--way less than the 30 hour labor-a-thon she had to go through with Molly. Despite this, Sue says Boys hurt so much more. Thank goodness he's out and everyone's safe and happy. 8lbs 9oz. 20.5 in.

Molly's doing well with the change. She was real quiet at the hospital; I've never seen such a serious look on her face. But on the way home, she started to open up a bit. "Jack no like the baath," she said, "He mad." And she was right; Jack was not at all a fan of his first bath. Otherwise though, he seems like a pretty happy kid. Here's to hoping that everything continues to go well.

Nine Weeks

2010-03-09T22:19:00.002-05:00

So this week marks week 9 of the Spring semester. While a good many of my students are living it up in exotic locations and participating in drinking sex parties, I'm thinking about the state of things.

The [soon to be] kid
or sir not appearing yet. Jack's officially due on St. Patty's day. Everyone's hoping for something sooner. Tomorrow would be nice. Seriously. [Jack, are you reading my blog yet? If not, well get with the times, son].

The [insane] kid
Yep. Totally bonkers. Molly is so endearingly crazy that my teeth fall out only to grow back in again so that they can fall out more. About this, she says, "Do you like it, Daddy? Do you lub it? I lub it Daddy. Daddy. Daaaady. Awwww sooo Cuuute." [all of this followed by her trying to bite my nose--a game I started except that she uses her teeth and really does try to bite it off]

The [omfg get this baby out of me] pregnant wife
She's done. The bellybutton's popped. Get that kid out before I become collateral damage in a pregnant lady in pain rampage.

The Writing Front
At present I'm arming the mail cannon to fire a story to the Colorado Review for the Nelligan Prize. It'll likely be my only contest submission this year (despite the grave odds). But 1. I'm broke 2. I'm only entering because most pubs don't consider anything over 3k words let alone stories [like mine] that are largely over 10k.

The Cats
Hey cats, quit barfing. k thx bye.

The student blogging project
Totally kicking myself for not making the students post comments on a regular basis. Just about all of them are gung ho on waiting till the end and posting all 30 in one day. So much for blogs being a gateway to conversation and an extension of class discussions. Sigh. Also too bad since many of them are posting some real good content that could/should get some discussion face time.

The Dayjob
I like working for a truly global company. I have some German coworkers that don't mind me fumbling around in German in an attempt to get better. Plus, with database work on top of that, I'm both blissfully busy and working on stuff that doesn't make me hate life. Who'd a thought that?

D&D
Shut up. Yeah, Sue and I started throwing together some stuff for a new campaign last night. I love the early planning stages of new campaigns. It's the middlish parts where Sue expects me to have some kind of plan (at which point I've been gunning by the seat of my pants for far too long) that I start to fizzle and want to take a break. Here's to hoping for a nice long run on this new bit.

Reading
Joey Goebel's Commonwealth -- Nightly reading to Sue. Gotta love Goebel.
Chuck Palahaniuk's Pygmy -- Lunchtime at work reading. meh. I'll finish it soon.

In Praise of Pat Rothfuss

2010-03-02T23:40:00.003-05:00

So wayback in grade school I got hooked on D&D, and started reading just about every single TSR produced book out there; especially the Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and Ravenloft series. For most of highschool I read nothing but TSR fantasy and D&D rulebooks. And while I did branch out a little and read some Robert Heinlein and David Eddings, I stayed pretty true to the D&D offerings.

Then I started up college, and around started reading literary stuff. And with that came a sense of academic snobbery--the notion that the genre fantasy that I loved was somehow not good enough, and that I needed to aspire to higher things. Of course I was too young in my English career to feel that I had the authority to challenge the status quo, so I found new loves: postmodernism, experimentation, etc ad nauseum.

And my fiction, too, shifted away from fantasy into experimentation and postmodern screwity. But always in the back of my head, I've wanted to get back to the ole roots, and write up some worthy fantasy.

Back in November, I started just that with my NaNoWriMo project. And as soon as the semester's over with, I plan on setting up a regular writing schedule of no less than two nights a week to Sally Forth on said worthy fantasy project.

So how does all of this tie into Patrick Rothfuss? I'll tell you.

Rothfuss author of The Name of the Wind, is the kind of author that we all sort of envy. He had the testicular fortitude to draft up a giant novel over a period of (I think) seven years or so, and then publish it. And by Giant, we're talking rivaling Dostoyevsky. But in a good way (and not to bash Dostoyevsky, I love him, but today's kids...not so sure about that). Anyway, Rothfuss writes and eventually publishes this massive book. It's meaty, it's tasty, it has character development, and goddamnit the language isn't garbage. So, in short, it's fantasy, but fails to fall into any of the genre-pitfall traps that snooty folks poo-poo at when they condescend to genre writers.

Rothfuss not only has an ear for the natural flow of language, but because the story is told largely via dictation, his word choice necessitates such careful selection. And not only that, but he handles for a lot of the common type plot holes you'd see. The most obvious being, how can anyone dictate dialogue from years ago, or how can anyone conceivably keep up with the dictation. All of this is handled in the book in a natural, "Oh yeah that makes sense" kind of way. And that's how the whole book is largely. It's a rampage that somehow manages to take its time but also build incredible strong tension.

I read this book aloud to my wife in our nightly reading. Usually we read about a chapter's worth, but there were days where we'd read 50-70 pages in a drop without stopping. While that may not sound like much, keep in mind that reading aloud nets you, maybe 5 pages in 10 minutes.

And so dovetailing in with all of this is the fact that I received this copy from my best friend as a gift with him saying, "When I read this, it reminded me of how your fiction would look if you wrote fantasy."

I can say I'm deeply humbled by such a compliment, and also, driven to live up to it.

So long of the short, Pat, thanks for rocking out a fan-damn-tastic book. Thanks for paving a new road into the world of fantasy literature.