And I mean writing that doesn’t exist, not writing about things that don’t exist.

So I’m working on what feels like a novel, perhaps of slightly shorter than what would be considered a big book, but not so short as to not fall into the novel category. It also seems to want to be a young adult book, through it wasn’t one when it was still rattling around in the cobwebs of my lack-of-brain.

That it exists in its unfinished form means that it isn’t fictional. However it hasn’t gelled sufficiently that I have more than a vague sense where the hell it is going. This frustrates me, and makes me wonder if it exists anywhere other than the vague shimmering of characters and ideas. Not that I have much experience to go on here; maybe this is how The Process always feels.

I do manage to write between a few hundred and a thousand words a day, but it just isn’t going anywhere. My silly characters are muttering to themselves and aren’t getting together like I’d planned. The BIG HONKING event that starts things off doesn’t want to happen.

Anyway, that’s where I am and I’ll keep you informed about where I go from here. This ramble brought to you by Debbie, blog secretary extraordinaire.

Originally published at Greg's Adventures. You can comment here or there.

I wonder if it is the nature of the beast that when someone does something for a living day in and day out, it stops being fun. I’m starting to worry that may be the case with me.

Why am I bringing this up? One reason is due to watching my friend Rab having fun with Python. He’s having fun. He’s doing it for fun, and thus he’s having fun. Doesn’t that sound like fun? It does to me. Yet he’s doing the same thing I do as a job, and I don’t have fun. Maybe it is because he’s writing a game?

Reading his adventures, and talking with him about python programming is fun. It makes me want to start programming for fun too. As it doesn’t make sense to me for the idea of programming to be fun but the programming itself not to be, I suppose I’m just looking at the the wrong way. Maybe all I need to do is adjust my point of view, and I’ll start having fun again. I say again because I did enjoy programming once. I know it is possible for me to do so.

Thus starts the experiment. I’m not sure yet how I’m going to approach this. Perhaps the best method is to just adjust my thinking — find the “game” in whatever I’m doing, cling to it, and use that shape my overall view.

Microsoft has released a record number of patches many of which are of the most critical variety.

Please, please, please! Update your system(s) now! Don't get bitten.

When I walked out of the garage this morning, and felt the cool, dry air around me, I knew that fall was finally here. The sun was just coming up, and everything around me was still and quiet. Mornings like this make me want to spend the whole day outside. The quiet makes me remember how blessed I am to no longer live in a miserable apartment in the city.

In an attempt to alter our reality, we've taken to writing the opposite of habitual computer problems on the whiteboard in my office. It is our hope that, through the power of positive thinking, we'll make them come true.

( Here's our current list... )

The paper shredders are here today, and they park their truck right outside my office window. Now, I don't mind that they've parked their truck in a way that obscures my view nearly as much as I mind the rumble and noise that accompanies said truck.

Woe is me.

We needed offsite backup at the dayjob, and after some research, I went with rsync.net.

Their support is above and beyond what I expected. I had a small problem with their payment form, and they responded very quickly to my email and even set up the account anyway while they worked on the payment issue.

These guys get it and are great to work with. They also provide very easy and secure access in several ways including ssh,ftp and dav. Ssh means you can do some really cool things.

For example, using the magic of FUSE, I've set up an encrypted filesystem over sshfs. Performance is surprisingly good, and I can use rsync via the local mount point while still having the benefits of encryption.

If you need offsite backup, you really should check these guys out.

I've noticed that I'm becoming much more critical of writing. In the last few years, books that I thought were brilliantly written have lost some of their lustre and are now only mediocre. Books I'd loved and re-read dozens of times are now nearly unreadable. I used to like almost everything I read. Now, I find some books embarrassingly bad, and just can't finish them. I'm not sure if I'm getting a better grip on what makes writing good, or if I'm just becoming grumpy and cynical.

One thing that I keep seeing is "Proper Noun Syndrome." It may have been Ken Levine of Irrational Games (he was at Looking Glass at the time, I think) who coined that phrase in an essay about writing for the once great game mag Computer Games Strategy Plus. I may have misquoted it, because Google can't find it, but the essay was a brilliant rant about the lack of quality writing in games.

Anyway, you may not know it by that phrase, but you probably know the problem, which I will now demonstrate with a delightful demonstrative example.

One thousand years ago, when King Jerrious Billswag the Thirteenth still ruled over the Kingdom of Gigglesgensenton, there was a terrible calamity known as The Terrible Calamity. Igglewing the evil Dark Templar Demon King stole the mysterious Obelisk of Right Triangles and started the destruction of the Well of Eternal Power that the god of the wells, Puddlejumper, had left to protect the people of Omgwtf.

In the rant that I've attributed to Mr. Levine in my memory, he mentioned how tired he was of seeing things like this. I'm sure you can think of at least one game that has an introduction cut-scene with almost real looking CG people and a deep voice-over providing a Proper Name Syndrome filled narration. (He had another rant about cut-scenes, by the way. Ken Levine is smart.) It didn't bug me as much then, but now anything that reads like that bores me in just a few paragraphs.

I want to read about the events in more detail. I want to know why they happened, not just that they happened. I want to understand the reasons behind the character's decisions. I don't want to read pages filled with lists of summarized deeds.

I find it even more annoying when I read a long detailed world history of summarized events, filled with facts that were either made up by an in-game historian, or were channeled right from the minds of the game developers to the page. Well, that part isn't annoying. The part that is annoying is the part, pages in, where I find something like this: "Somehow, the terrible thingamabob was stolen from the all powerful god by Bill the Terrible." Somehow? What a cop out. Surely the in-game historian or channellee (channelized?) would know the details behind a turning point event like this.

Perhaps the writers were trying to fill in backstory after the fact. They have this event (a "wouldn't it be cool if?" event) to which they are welded, and then they need a sequel a few years later, so they get someone (maybe even a Famous Author) to fill in some story before it and, on getting to the event, discover it doesn't really fit so well with what they planned for the backstory and the sequel. So it happens Somehow. This really rips me out of the story.

First, it has to make sense to keep me in the story. How did Bill get this powerful item away from an all powerful god? Why did it exist in the first place? Second, instead of just saying "somehow," wouldn't the story of this daring theft make for a more interesting story than paragraphs of Names doing deeds?

The reason for this rant? I read something recently written and published by a very large and successful company full of both of these problems. And what is really interesting is that the story is good enough that it was still readable. I can only imagine how good it would be if it was reworked.

Get the VML patch at WIndows/Microsoft update now. Don't wait. Do it now.

(NOTE: if you unregistered vgx.dll, be sure to register it again before applying the patch.)

For some reason, I've been feeling the urge to give World of Warcraft another try. As I still have the game installed on the Windows PC, it tempts me from time to time.

I've quit twice after playing a short time each instance. I just couldn't get into it. But with Jerry Pournelle mentioning it all the time, and that damned icon on the gaming machine, it is just so tempting.

Oh well. It only costs 15 dollars to see if anything has changed that will capture my fancy. Now that I've finished justifying it to myself, I guess I'll reactivate my account. ;)

EDIT:

Oh and by the way, did I mention I got a nice new MacBook? I was offered one for a price I couldn't refuse. I guess I'll be sending back the Dell that replaced my iBook for a few days. It wasn't a bad machine, but I sure missed OS X.

The bug is old news, but folks have started to actively exploit it.

http://secunia.com/advisories/21989

You really should unregister that DLL or switch to Opera or Firefox. Or just get a Mac. :)

It isn't panic time yet, but this could get really nasty.

Monday. Oh, how I hate thee. Rotten to the crunchy center art thou.

For some reason, I feel like I didn't get any sleep last night. I know I did though. I even had some bizarre dreams. I don't usually get those on weekdays. My theory is that I don't sleep long enough to allow REM sleep on weekdays.

My subconscious refuses to be ignored even in those cases. I get all the wacky dreams come the weekend. Saturday morning is always wacky and adventure filled. I wonder if this is common for folks who don't get enough sleep during the week.

Once, I dreamed that I was dreaming that I was dreaming. I woke up twice into a complete reality that was my own, only it wasn't. In that way that only dreams can. I've only had that happen once, but I don't think I'll ever forget it. It may be the oddest and most lucid dream I've had thus far.

In geeky news, I discovered rsync.net over the weekend. We've been looking for offsite backup at the dayjob, and this looks to be a good fit. The price is a bargain, and I get to use rsync. Together with one of the FUSE encrypted filesystems, I should be able to use all the power of rsync and have a nice safe encrypted offsite backup.

Geez, I love this music.

One of these days I really ought to try the game. ;)

(Well okay, I tried the beta, and it wasn't all that much fun.)

EDIT:

If you are interested, there are very high quality samples on Bill Brown's website. If you have any love for orchestral game music, you really must hear this.

So tomorrow I'll be 28. I've been out of school and in the workforce for TEN YEARS.

When I was young, I was told to expect time to go faster as I aged. I couldn't believe it was possible. A month was a very long time. A year, nearly forever. A decade? Unfathomable. And here my folks were telling me that a year would be nothing when I was "their age."

Well it has happened. I still feel like I just got out of high school. Where have these ten years gone? I sure don't know what happened to them. Maybe I dreamed them?

Hell, I can't even remember how old I am without doing the math in my head. Birthdays used to be so important, and now I don't even think about them. When I was very young, I measured my age in half-years. That half year was so important. It meant I wasn't just six, or eight. I was better. Those who were just eight were little kids. I was eight-and-a-half!

Now I can't remember my age. I don't count it at all. My internal measurement of time has become unreliable. If I lived to be two hundred, would years feel like weeks? Does this time distortion continue to grow as I age? If so, does that mean that more of my perceived life is over than my age leads me to believe?

I feel like I've not accomplished anywhere near what I'd intended in what is, given the averages, three sevenths of my life. But do I have even less time now than it appears to accomplish these things?

If so, then I suppose I'd better get my ass in gear, right now.

I'm always game for a good serial, and I had high hopes for Jericho. The previews looked pretty good, and the premise was intriguing and looked as though it would make for a good developing plot arc thingie.

( Nearly spoiler free ramble that probably has too much ranting about the music for most folks, but dammit it is my blog, m'kay. )

Crazy day so far, including a nice whack on the head while replacing a UPS battery at o-way-too-early. At least nearly everything worked after replacing the battery. Except the tape drive in the big important SQL server. Rebooting seems to have helped, for now. I hate to see anything backup related become unreliable.

By the by, I finished Spin last night. It had a great ending. You gotta gotta read it.

I woke up to yet more thunder and rain this morning. I love storms, but now that I live in the outskirts of nearly nowhere, they provide a totally different experience.

The most noticeable difference is the sheer power and ferocity as compared to the storms in the city. We get so many near lightning hits, and the thunder following would be perfect to usher in the end of the world.

A couple weeks back I was outside working on my car under my nice safe metal carport when a storm came in with a ruckus, booming and spitting. I was under a nice safe metal carport (did I mention that?), so I kept on with my car tinkering. It became clear I had made a poor decision when a flash-boom hit a tree about ten feet away.

I'll never forget the way the air smelled. Ozone and burnt tree. I could feel the heat and charge left behind. As I ran to my garage (well, what would you do?) a second bolt hit almost as close. Yeesh.

But even more critical at this time of the morning, when one is meant to be able to shower and get ready for work, is the reliability of power during a storm. While this isn't unique to outskirts of nearly nowhere, it presents more of a problem for me as I have a well. And said well will, well, stop welling if the power fails. That means my shower will stop showering. Right when I have shampoo in my hair.

But it the power is still on this morning, so happy day -- err, morning.

The thunder tonight is unnerving. Perhaps it is partly due to the scary music I have on, and the fact that I keep my house dark. But damn, I'm getting loooong extended thunder booms with sudden concussive blasts interspersed that sound like they are going to push all the windows in on me.

There was just one that went for almost thirty seconds. Yipes.

I sent the comments below to Bob Thompson in response to his post today.

( I'm not sure I see how iPod sales are tanking in a big way )