Thursday Thirteen #3 – Things you need to do today!

Okay, I missed last week. My bad. Blame it on the Easter weekend. Anyways, one of the things I always do before I write my Thursday Thirteen is get a peek at one of my friend’s Thursday Thirteen and this week she has some good news. So read below and then go check it out.

Thirteen Things about things you need to do today Go visit Christine d’Abo’s Thursday Thirteen #22. View her impressive new book cover on her bog (#13). Write a little comment congratulating her. This will be her first published book. She’s put a lot of work into it and deserves it. Tell your friends. Write a blog about it so that even people you don’t know can hear about it. Email a link to her blog to your co-workers. (Make sure to put in a note that they should really be discreet in their viewing.) Make little hand-out cards with Christine’s blog address. Tell people you meet on the street. (You might want to give them one of those hand-out cards.) Go back and visit Christine’s blog again to make sure it really is true. Reassure your friends that you’ve double checked and it really is true and this is not a hoax. Wait for news of when the book is due to hit the book shelves. That news probably won’t be available today but you can still get started in the waiting. Change your email signature to suggest people should anticipate the arrival of Christine’s new book Put up posters in your neighbourhood announcing the comming of Christine’s new book and how good it will be for them to get a copy for themselves. Darn, thirteen already. Ah well. You can add the rest of the items I was going to add to me list into your list.Links to other Thursday Thirteens! Christine d’Abo – Things I did when I saw my cover Xilly – My 1st 13 Friends in Thursday Thirteen Sonja – Sonja’s (slightly neurotic) Writing Habits Denise – Things I wish I could do Angela – Things that happend or will happen in 13 days (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Finding that editor groove

I’ve been spending too much time lately not editing or writing.  I’m not too concerned with the writing as I have suspended my writing with a section that I know I can get  back into easily and I have the next steps all ready to go.  The editing I just started to pick up again.  It was good to get back into the chair and invest some time into making a work of art come out.  (Well it should be a work of art when it is finished.)

Things not to do

Okay so I got back yesterday on Monday and found that I had forgotten to get my Thursday Thirteen out.  Bummer.  I came up with what seemed like a brilliant plan.  I decided to write a Thursday Thirteen on Monday about why Monday is sometimes Thursday.  It seemed like a nifty idea.  I got to about the fourth reason when I had to take a break.  Bad sign.  By the end of yesterday I got all the way up to 11 reasons.  After that I had to quit.  In reviewing my reasons I realized that a lot of them weren’t even why Monday was sometimes Thursday but more why Monday and Thursday were similar.  A couple of the reasons I found were so similar I had to edit them to ensure they were separate reasons.  It became an excuse pile to try and bail myself out of having missed the Thursday Thirteen in the first place.  I was becoming very sad.  I finally just kept my post in draft and slept on it.  Waking up today I realize that it was foolish and have deleted the draft so that I can move on and keep up my blogging.

So, having written this blog entry, I feel much better.

Second guessing your story

I’ve been taking some time off of writing my story in order to edit another author’s story.  Even in doing that I can’t help but think about my story from time to time to time to time.   Okay,  so I think about my own story a lot.  I’ve been reviewing the main plot and essentially the premis to my story and I’m starting to wonder if I’ve got a dumb main plot.  My story is set a bit in the future in an almost distopia.  Life isn’t horrible but it’s not all peaches.  The future gives me a bit of lee-way on technology.  I don’t want to give away my story but the part that I’m having a problem with is that my villain is spending a lot of money to deal with my hero in a specific way and I’m not sure that the cost is worth it.

Here is an analogy:

Suppose that the villain has captured the hero and is using an elaborate means of torture to extract information out of the hero by which a rare and expensive herb is used to drug the hero and by using several hundred employees dressed in wacked out costumes, get the hero cough up the information when pulling out a simple knife and starting to inflict pain on the hero is just as effective and cheaper.

So the part I’m having difficulty with is the believability that the villain will go to so much trouble and expense when there are much simpler ways of getting to what the villain wants.

Obsess Much?

Ha! I couldn’t help but steal the title from my good friend Christine at her site.  I’m self tagging to write 5 things I obsess over:

1.  Gaming:  I can’t even put this one lower on the list.  I have a facination with the complexities programmed into the great games that are made in this age.  My current fav. game has to be World of Warcraft.  What a time consumer.
2. Writing:   I’m constantly thinking about my story and where I’m taking it.  I’m reviewing how it’s progressing, I’m reviewing the next chapter that I’m writing (on hold at the moment), I’m reviewing how the rest of the story is going to pan out, I’m reviewing what I’m going to have to change, I’m even contemplating having that first review by someone else.  *shudder*
3. My Wife:  What!?!  I can’t help it.  She’s just so gosh darn….lovable.  I just can’t help but give her a hug when she’s within reach.
4. Computers:  Perhaps I was a mainframe in a previous life.
5. My Kids:  Okay, it’s not that they are the last thing on my list because they rank that low.  They are great kids.  I love to have fun with them every day.  We wrestle, game, play imaginary games, socialize, bike, learn, read and watch TV together.  And with that, I think having them at this part in my list leaves all of you readers with a warm fuzzy feeling.

Tip: How to not have to moderate each comment

Okay so I finally did some looking around the settings of wordpress and finally found the settings which were requiring me to moderate each comment.  What I found was that although I had removed the checkbox which indicated that the owner had to moderate each comment, what I had missed was a checkbox which required first time commenters who had not commented before on my site to be moderated.  This can be found under Options/Discussion where you can find a checkbox for “Comment author must have a previously approved comment”.

This option, by the way, is a genius idea for blogs that are prone to draw in unwanted comments and have a regular following by a stock number of readers.

Keeping up with the Browns

Wow, I start hooking up into some of the blogging community such as Thursday Thirteen and suddenly my visibility climbs.  Now I have to make sure that I create something interesting on my blog for everyone to read.  I don’t know if I can keep up with the pressure.  I mean how do you create something different and interesting all at the same time?  At least my Thursday Thirteen should be interesting.

I just need to keep working at this blog engine and train it to behave the way I want it to behave.  If I can just keep the thing from messing up the flow then I should be good.  First thing on my list is to figure out how to let those comments come through without having to moderate every single one of them.  Need to find options…..

Thursday Thirteen #2 – My Morning

I’m starting to get the hang of the Thursday Thirteen thing so here is a list of my morning.

Thirteen Things about what I do in the morning Hit the snooze button on the alarm clock. I don’t know what it is but I need that extra 9 minutes of sleep. Have a shower. I’m generally a pretty clean person. I like the fresh feeling of being clean first thing in the morning. I also think this helps me wake up in the morning. Put in my contacts. Yay! I can see again. Dress in the dark. This is more difficult than it seems. I can usually find all the stuff that I need however I don’t keep my socks together so finding a match can be difficult. Why in the dark? I get up before my wife and I try not to wake her. Sneak down stairs. If I can get downstairs without waking anyone (presuming my shower didn’t wake them), I get to have my morning to myself. Make some breakfast. I don’t do the eggs and bacon thing. I’m more of a cereal or bagel and cream cheese type guy. Clean up the kitchen. This doesn’t generally involve much. Most of the big stuff has been handled from the night before. I do want to make sure that I don’t leave the kitchen a mess for my wife when she gets up. Get my pocket things. This includes my wallet, bus pass and office access badge. There have been days when I’ve forgotten my office access badge and have had to wait outside for someone else to let me in. Brush my teeth. Have to keep those pearly whites! Collect my gear. I need to make sure I have my stuff that I bring to work each day. Grab coat and shoes. Obviously I won’t need my coat when the weather starts to get warmer. Shut the lights off in the house. No need to waste electricity if nobody is up yet. Re-arm the security system and lock the door as I leave. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! Christine d’Abo – What I do as I’m editing (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Silencing the Noise

Ever notice how noisy a workplace gets?  I work in an office and I sometimes find it amazing how much noise we live with on a day to day basis.  The excessive whine of 30+ computers struggling to stay cool and the groan of the air conditioning system keeping the air moving in the building is enough to drive one crazy.  Add to that the fridge in the lunch room and the occasional fan pushing air and soon you can’t think straight.

Thankfully there is a solution to all this.  Noice cancelling earphones.  Luckly you can then pipe music into your ears or you would probably go crazy in the silence.

You little Whelpling!

Did I mention that I game? In World of Warcraft there are cute little non-combat pets that you can find that can follow you around and add coolness to your character. One of the ones I find most interesting is the Black Whelpling. This is a rare pet drop in the Badlands. Apparently 1 in 1400 kills can produce one of these. I spent a few hours grinding the mob that should drop these and didn’t find one yet. On the other hand, I did advance half of a level and managed to pick up some good vendor trash.