Funny Anecdote

I couldn't resist posting about this. I was IMing an unnamed female recently, and here's a transcript of the beginning of the conversation:

Bryce: (knock knock)
Other: Who's there?
Bryce: :-) Do you have a sec?
Other: For you?  I have all the secs you need.
Bryce: Glad that wasn't said out loud
Bryce: ;-)
Other: Oh crap.
Bryce: lol
Other: I just read that out loud.
Other: That really wasn't what I meant.
Other: Where's the "embarrased" emoticon...

Too funny.

Lawn Tractors

 So yesterday I had my first experience mowing my yard. Not with my new lawn tractor--I'm picking that up tomorrow--but with the former owner's riding mower, which he kindly lent me. Of course, he didn't quite show me how to use it, and he left it running. This would have been fine, except when I took the brake off, I discovered he'd also left it in reverse. The mower careened backward into the open garage, taking me with it. My first instinct was to put my feet down to stop it from moving. Try stopping 19 horses with your feet. Doesn't happen. Luckily I managed to shift it into first before I hit a wall or beam or something important. I got back outside, found the brake again, and put it in neutral. My ankle is rather sore, but I managed to get through the experience unscathed. After that (and a quick lesson by the owner), I mowed the yard successfully, if not gracefully. It took over an hour, and it made me very happy that I've purchased a riding mower, too. That's a whole lot of yard. I felt kind of like a farmer, honestly, and I imagine I looked tremendously silly. That's how I felt at any rate, no doubt in large part due to the fact that I kept getting stuck in hidden hills and dips in the yard, and shifting was a new experience. It's different than a car.

Sorry--no video of the event, and I didn't take any pictures, either. Once I'm more comfortable, and have my own riding mower, then maybe I'll snap some shots.

On the bright side, I'm happy to say that, silly or not, I enjoyed the mowing experience. Once I figured out how to drive the thing halfway decently, it went much better. Before I mowed, I'd been rather stressed and tired. After, I felt much better. Good way to relieve tension, at least for now.

Google Grouse

Can I just take a moment to complain about something librarian-ish? I just read this article, a scientific study conducted on Google searches. Here's the abstract:

An eye tracking experiment revealed that college student users have substantial trust in Google's ability to rank results by their true relevance to the query. When the participants selected a link to follow from Google's result pages, their decisions were strongly biased towards links higher in position even if the abstracts themselves were less relevant. While the participants reacted to artificially reduced retrieval quality by greater scrutiny, they failed to achieve the same success rate. This demonstrated trust in Google has implications for the search engine's tremendous potential influence on culture, society, and user traffic on the Web.

Now, I'm just as fond of Google as the next guy, but I get frustrated now and then by people's over-reliance on it. There are other ways to get answers out there, folks, and relying on an automated algorithm to do your research for you is a stupid approach. Looking for a specific website? Great. Looking for easily verified information? Fantastic. Trying to get a real answer to something scholarly? Um . . . no.

It's not so much the "turning to Google for answers" that I'm objecting to--it's the apparent "trusting Google's results more than my own brain" that I don't like. At the very least, people, interpret the results that Google gives you. Simply clicking on something because it's higher on the results page . . .

*wanders off, shaking his head*

Finished

16,400 words cut later, the third draft of Lesana--now known as Vodnik--is complete. I'll be mailing it out to an agent and an editor tomorrow, both of whom have asked to see it in its entirety. This has been an interesting book to write. All along, I felt like it had promise, but somewhere in the first draft, it lost its way. It's the book that convinced me to start plotting before I write, and it's taken much MUCH longer than I thought I'd need to complete it. However, I'm happy to say that I'm very pleased with the end result. I feel like it's the best book I've written to date. I love the characters, and the plot finally ended up coming together quite well, even if I say so myself. It would have been too depressing if I'd done all this work and ended up with something I wasn't happy with.

So we'll see what happens with it. I'll be printing out the submission copies tonight, as well as writing the cover letters (never fun for me), and then tomorrow it'll be off in the mail. What a relief. I've debated what to do next in my writing, and I think I'm going to plot another book that's been kicking around in my head for a while, and then I'm either going to write that or revise Ichabod, depending on how long it takes me to plot. We'll see. I'm very glad to be done with Vodnik, though. It's good, but it took a chunk of me to get it done.

Orienteering

Once again, I find myself lacking the time I need to create a really nice blog post. Not having internet at home is becoming less and less of an option, and now I think it's just a matter of time before I get it set up. That and television. In the meantime, though, you'll just have to suffer through these short posts.

However, I wanted to take the time to talk about this cool staff retreat I went on yesterday: orienteering. You really need to check this out. They give you a map, and then you get to go from one spot to another. It's like hiking with a purpose. Sehr cool. And I won, which makes it even cooler.

Rejection

Rejection is so much easier to take when you've already forgotten you might get rejected in the first place. And it's even better when you no longer care. Yesterday and today, I got two notices that I wasn't selected for jobs I applied for back in April or May. Darn. Now, if I could have just had the same attitude when I was still looking for a job, that would have been helpful.

Writing

I've now been back on the writing track at my normal pace for two days, which is an encouraging sign. Of course, I did that last night be refusing to unpack until I was finished, and then when I was finished, I decided to watch Ghostbusters instead of unpacking. Hmm . . . Everyone needs some Ghostbusters, now and then. And it's not like the boxes are going anywhere. I even found time yesterday to play outside with my son--all in the name of procrastination. Who said putting things off couldn't be worthwhile?

$7.52

That's how much my car repair bill came to. That's the good news. The kind of bad news is they don't know why the service engine soon light came on. It might be a transmission problem, or it might be a fluke. Hmm . . .

In other news, I'm going to buy a lawn tractor tonight. Mainly to save on time and energy mowing in the summer and shoveling in the winter. I've got quite the driveway and lawn.

Wish I had more time to post . . . but I don't.

New Everything

Can I just express my frustration with the amount of STUFF you have to do when you move to another part of the country? Trash, mail, bank, tv, internet, phone, appliances, direct deposit, insurance . . . it can feel pretty overwhelming at times. Hopefully things will begin to settle down soon--I've been getting a lot of those chores done, but it takes time. However, I was able to get some writing in yesterday, even if I was almost falling asleep while doing it. Today, I hope to be able to revise an entire chapter and get back into the swing of things.

Things You Don't Want to See in Your Car

The service engine soon light. You especially don't want to see it come on when you're on your way to a flight leaving from an airport 3 and a half hours from your house, and when you're not coming back until 1 in the morning.

Thankfully, the car still works, and I made it home with no problems. I'm tired today, but the wife and son are home now, and everything looks more or less ready to get in order. I even found a mechanic. Now, if I can just get my writing done tonight, I'll feel pretty good about myself.

Stardust

Oh--but I did want to say that I saw Stardust on Friday, opening night. If you haven't seen it yet, you really ought to. Fantastic movie that deserves your support. Think "Princess Bride," but for a slightly older audience. Super!

Unpacking

Not much time today. I'm unpacking, starting my new job, closing on the house, shopping--you name it, I'm doing it. I feel a little overwhelmed, but really on the whole everything's going swimmingly. Just wish I had more time to update you all. Internet at the house is looking more and more tempting . . .

Bugs

I had high hopes for Iowa. For a while, I was thinking the state was actually pretty cool. I mean, it's got a song about it in The Music Man, so that's something, right? Well, Iowa has bugs. Swarms of bugs. Open your hotel door for a second and you have ten thousand bugs in your room bugs. So . . . no thanks, Iowa. But on the plus side, they had a cool German/Amish restaurant I ate at, and that was nice. Oh, and I'm now in Williamsburg, Iowa, by the way. Distance driven today: 619 miles. Distance to go: 1,388 miles. Definitely making progress.

On the down side, there's something making noises in the back of the rental truck. I wonder what it is, but I'd have to unpack everything to find out. Not going to happen. Opening that rental truck up after 2,800 miles will be like Christmas Morning from Hell. Yikes.

Sidney

I have officially made it to Nebraska--Sidney, to be precise. Woke up this morning, tired and achy but alive. Now I'm ready to sleep--still tired, achy and alive, but 555 miles further from where I was yesterday, which is nice. Driving in a van while towing a car is certainly a different experience. Finding parking for it is a big pain, for one thing. I think that when I'm through with this drive, going back to my car will be like putting on a pair of sneakers after wearing ski boots all day. Those of you who have skied will know what I'm talking about. 1,918 miles to go.

You Underestimate the Power of . . .

Packing. I thought I'd be done by 9. I finished at about 12:30 in the morning. I can think of few things I have enjoyed less. Honestly--packing is probably one of the forms of torture most feared in warfare. I'm exhausted. And I don't have room for the extra couch OR the free washer and dryer my brother was going to give me. And I have no television anymore. If it didn't fit, I left it. Anyway, it's time for me to go to sleep. Night all.

The Last Night

This is it. After tonight, I no longer live in Utah. Tomorrow evening I'll just be staying in Salt Lake on my way to Maine. Hard to believe, really. I've been here for about ten years, which is at least four more than I planned on. I've never lived anywhere else as a husband and father. The me that's leaving Maine is a very different one than the me that came to Utah, if that makes sense. It makes me wonder what will happen to me in the next ten years.

Scary.

There have been good times here and bad times, and I think I need to learn to focus on the good times more. That's one of my goals in Maine--try to be more positive. It's just now sinking in what's happening. I was driving home from dinner tonight, listening to the radio, and I realized I'll be leaving all my radio stations behind. It's little things like that that make the change more real for me, though I don't know why.

No worries, fearless readers. My blog isn't moving anywhere. ;-)

Revision Update

I just finished trimming Chapter 25 of Lesana. I've cut over 12,000 words of text so far, and I feel like the changes are really tightening things up. Very good stuff--but it's taking me much longer than I thought it would. Oh well. About 10 chapters left. I'll probably have to take another break while I drive cross country to move, but I should be able to submit this sometime this month, which is very nice. In fact, I think I'll make that a goal. By the end of August, this book is done. At last.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Okay--I know this is rather late in coming, but I finally saw the latest Harry Potter last night, and I wanted to talk about some of the things I noticed in it. First off, some elements were handled much more deftly than the book. I'm talking about the never-ending Umbridge scenes. In the book, it felt like those were going to last forever. Just when you finished one, you'd have another which was pretty much just like the last one. It's like that old "second verse, same as the first, a little bit louder and a little bit worse." Blech. In the film, the Umbridge scenes were handled with montages. Fantastic. You got the exact message you were supposed to get--what Umbridge was doing and how she was so horrible--without having to be shown every little horrible scene. Bravo.

The ending of the movie, on the other hand, had some difficulties. Difficulties which I wrote at length about, and then Livejournal decided to get rid of my draft. Grr. Suffice it to say that my biggest complaint was that the main villain of the movie was set up to be Umbridge. She's the one most of the conflict focused on. Voldemort was more of a sideline until the end. The problem with this approach is that I didn't feel invested in that conflict as a viewer, so when that was all that was left, I lost some interest. Plus, Voldemort was pretty weak in this film. He didn't get a chance to really take control. I know that happens in books 6 and 7, but I think perhaps Rowling brought Voldemort out too soon in the series. It relegated him to a fairly unimportant role this time around, and necessitated all the filler about the ministry, which--while interesting--wasn't all that and a bag of chips.

I had some other interesting observations, but I'm too lazy to repost them. :-)

Shoe Laces

This really has nothing whatsoever to do with pretty much anything I usually post here, but it was such an interesting site I had to post a link to it. Basically, it's a site all about lacing shoes. I never had any idea that there were so many different approaches, and that you could actually choose a certain type of lacing style in order to do different things. Go figure. Check it out here.