Minor Update

This has been something of a research week. When I first started putting books on Amazon, the cover options were very limited. The way to do it yourself was to buy stock art and create your own. I did a search for that and discovered that it's now possible to buy thousands of pre-made covers in various genres. I've been looking through hundreds and hundreds of choices for AoE and the Mystery/Romance. Most of what I've seen is either too generic or too specific. Quite a lot of them look like more of the same. Why is there a wolf on that cover? Why are so many of the people facing away from the camera? Why do so many of the people project a negative attitude? Why do so many covers not present a scene or a story? Why are so many covers paranormal when that doesn't fit a genre? Why can't I find a cover that looks like it fits the market? I'm finding so many covers that rely on digital skills and not on art skills. It feels like such a waste of time to go through all of that, but it's still faster than trying to paint my own, especially since I'm not convinced my skills are up to that.

Most of the really good covers are too expensive. Another problem is that any cover I got for AoE would have to match the rest of the series. The Mystery/Romance doesn't have that problem. I'm reluctant to try to commission something, although I've looked at Fiverr, too.

Part of what I did this week was review modern comma rules. They've changed since I was in school. I studied that and took a couple of comma tests online and got 100% on both. I've finished going through AoE for commas. I could publish it today if I had a cover. I'm still going through the Mystery/Romance for commas. At some point I need to go back through all my books and update them for modern grammar.

If I can't find the perfect cover, my plan is to paint something as good as I can do and use my graphic tablet to tweak it as best I can. Even if it doesn't look like Michael Whelan, it would be better than most of the assembly line covers I've been seeing. I hope. Time is a concern. I'm a slow painter. I don't know every trick in the book.

Have a great weekend.

Book 2 Update

Aging is Reversible. I haven't read all of this article yet, but the first part sounds good. At least two anti-aging treatments aside from that article are supposed to be available some time in 2020.

I finished going through Book 2 fixing things. After that I went through Book 1 looking for promises made to the reader. That would be things like foreshadowing and what the reader would expect to happen later that couldn't be changed. If I made a rule about something, I needed to refresh myself in order not to break it later. I'm going to have to go back through Book 2 later to fix some things I think I misstated. All of that is in preparation for the novella.

One of the problems with Book 2 is that it's set so long after Book 1. At the end of Book 1, I kind of wrapped things up and tried to convey the impression that most things would work out on their own. The idea was that I could mention them later as having been resolved. Since Book 2 is almost 3.5 years after Book 1, there's not much room to mention old things without it be awkward to the story. There's a lot of room for a novella to flesh out exactly how things were resolved between books and to make the transition between books smoother. It's almost like Book 1 and Novella 1.5 are a two-book series, and Book 2 and Book 3 are a two-book series.

As kind of a break on books 1 and 2, I've also been going through the Mystery/Romance. I need to get that and AoE out the door. AoE is science fiction more or less. I'm not sure the Mystery/Romance is a mystery or a romance. It could be suspense, but I'm not sure it quite fits that category either. I'm going to try to do a pre-release and let Amazon classify it based on who pre-orders it, assuming people actually do that. It has to go under a pen name, so it would be a lone book by an author no one has heard of.

The next step is to take my list of promises from Book 1 combined with what happens in Books 2 and 3 and work out a plot for the events in the novella. I know roughly what happens. I need to figure out how to make it interesting. I've been putting some thought into it. I just need to work it until it coalesces into something I feel would be engaging to the reader. I can't write it only because it needs doing. It has to be worth buying.

Have a great weekend.

Novella

I've noticed a disturbing trend at Walmart. I'll find a new product and buy it. It'll be good. Several months later they'll switch the product out with a really cheap imitation. Now I've noticed another trend. A few months back I got a 2-pack of 48" LED lights for a fluorescent light fixture in the kitchen area One of them was longer than 48" and wouldn't fit, because there is absolutely no give to a light fixture. I had to take them back. This week I found the same problem with a surge protector. Out of six plug ins, only one would accept a plug. The other five are out of specification. Could I take it apart and try to fix it? Maybe, but it's going back instead.

Walmart has an ongoing quality problem. Maybe it's the manufacturers. Maybe it's greed. Maybe it's incompetence. I miss Made in America.

Book Stuff

Last week I presented two possible solutions to the Book 2 problem. One was to insert a novella(Book 1.5) into the series. The other was shifting the second half of Book 2 into Book 3, a move that would work very well, and writing a new first half for Book 2. The better solution is going with a novella. The reason is pacing. A new first half of Book 2 wouldn't read the same way. The transition between the first half and second would be too abrupt. They would be set about three years apart unless I revamped all the date references. I thought about making it have a Part 1 and Part 2 the way some books do, but nah. I think it would be better to make 1.5 its own book with its own pacing and its own story. That gives me more room in Book 3 for the finale and all the stuff going on. The problem now is figuring out how to make the story for 1.5 work. I have the basic idea, but it's not enough. I also have to figure out length. A normal book in this genre is going to run about 80k or more words with a page count around 300ish, depending on the margins in the paperback. I've seen novellas with 79 pages. No. That's too small. I'm thinking in the 40k to 50k range. That could give me 150 pages that wouldn't take nearly the amount of time as a full novel. At the moment I'm still going through Book 2 overhauling things.

In spare moments during the day, I've had some ideas for the new series idea I mentioned the other day. Ideally, this would be written after Book 3 is finished. Since going to the emergency room last year, I've gotten very little writing done. I'm feeling rusty. Part of the problem with Book 2 is that it uses the 3-act formula. It has plot points at specific places that have to be there, although there's some wiggle room. The 50% plot point could be a little early or a little late but not much. The same with the others. In the 3-act formula, the story takes off at the 25% mark. Up until then everything is setup for the rest of the book. In Book 2  the 25% mark is about page 75 or so. Things are happening before that, but it's not enough. That's just too many pages, especially in a book 2 where the settings and characters are generally known already. I don't particularly like the 3-act formula to begin with.

The more I think about the new series idea the more I'm wondering if I should target it to middle grade. That definition says middle grade is ages 8 to 12. Meh, I'm thinking the protagonist should be 13. In YA the characters start at age 15. If middle grade is 8 to 12, what about all the 13 and 14-year-olds? Anyway, the series idea could be set at any age. It would depend on the concepts in the book.

So, the page count for middle grade is 20k to 50k. I'm thinking about a series for middle grade that would have three books with over 26k words each. That's the length of an 80k novel. Instead of doing a novel, I could use the three short books to experiment with a plot structure that works for me. Maybe instead of using the first 25% as setup, I could start the action right away and fill in the details along the way. Basically, I'd be skipping to the 25% mark and using a try/fail cycle, perhaps with interludes of back story to fill in the gaps I created by skipping the setup. Or maybe I could have breathing spaces in between the action that fills in the setup. However it worked, 26k is really short. I could do a rough draft in a few weeks and see whether it's working or not.

But couldn't I experiment with the Book 1.5 novella? Maybe, but the rest of the series uses the 3-act structure. I'd rather stick with it, if I can. I'd rather use it to shake the rust off rather than do that plus experimenting.

An advantage of doing middle grade is that I could probably do cartoony cover art work. My art skills aren't up to professional illustration quality for a regular novel, but a kid book cover maybe I could do.

That's what's going on. At the moment it's all fixing Book 2 as far as writing goes.

I might kill the Messengers web site and create a new one branded around my name with the various series and books linked off of that. I'm also preparing for a YouTube channel. I've been painting and cleaning and throwing stuff away. I already have the lighting, although I might need to buy a new chair. I accidentally cut the fabric on the one I have when a piece of lighting rod fell into it.

There may be weeks where I do the blog and weeks where I link to a video. I'll have to see how it all works out.

Have a great weekend.

Book 2 Solution?

This was a Book 2 week. Before, I'd been going through it looking for what to keep and what to save with the idea of adding a timeline that included Calliope that would replace whatever I cut. Along the way I was fixing things and polishing prose and dialogue not sure what I would cut and what I wouldn't. I thought the beginning was slower than Book 1. How could I fix that? Hmm, not sure. From plot point one to plot point 2 is much faster. It slows down some after that but not drastically. How to improve pacing? Hmm, I'll have to figure it out.

I think I have an overall solution. The more I work on Book 2 the more I think it doesn't need to be cut. It just needs an overhaul. However, the transition between it and Book 1 is sharp due to the almost 3.5 years that pass between books. The transition has to be fixed. A while back I read a series in which the author went back and added a novella between two books in a series and labelled it Volume 3.5 or whatever the number was. It wasn't essential to the series. It just filled in a gap in time between books and was something extra for readers. My new idea is to save Book 2 and add a novella( Book 1.5) after Book 1. That would save a whole lot of time and effort. All I have to do is develop a plot to cover events immediately after Book 1 and tie up any loose ends. That fixes the transition problem pretty nicely without taking the time for a complete rewrite. With that in mind I've already begun the overhaul of Book 2.

While I was typing this, I thought of another way to do it. Almost half of Book 3 is already written. Instead of a novella, maybe I could do a new first half for Book 2 and move the end of Book 2 into Book 3. Book 3 flows very smoothly out of Book 2, so it wouldn't be noticeable that they used to be two books. However, Books 2 and 3 use a three-act structure. Plot points would have to be fixed, or I could change it to a try/fail cycle. I've been contemplating switching from the three-act structure anyway. This might be my chance to experiment.

Thinking about which way to do it won't take time away from working on Book 2. It's something I can ponder away from the computer and write down notes for. The important thing I'm pretty sure I have a solution that works.

Have a great weekend.

Getting Closer

Last week I told about a dead body I found in a truck wreck but didn't have more information because the local newspaper was a day late. To follow up on that, the driver was a man aged seventy According to the one of two local papers, he was known to smoke marijuana and drink alcohol every day. The adolescent bumper stickers all over his tailgate lend credence to that. A pipe with marijuana residue was found at the crash and is thought perhaps to be a factor in the crash. Last week I speculated that the man could have been there all weekend. It turns out the last time anyone talked to him was 11:30 p.m. the night before I found him. The story was too small for me to be interviewed by either paper.

There's a saying that every article in the paper is accurate except that rare one about which you have personal knowledge. The articles in both papers had the basic facts like the time and condition of the crash wrong. Based on my observation of the scene, the man could have survived and died of exposure either overnight or during the day. I noticed that neither article said he died of wounds sustained in the crash the way they usually do, which makes me wonder if he did die of exposure while people were driving or jogging past the wreck. There's no way to know. Maybe it just means no one did an autopsy to find out. There was no obituary, which makes me wonder if he had any close family in the area. It was a sad thing all around.

Book stuff

Let's get away from real life and on to fantasy life. I've thought some about the new series idea I had last week and have written down a few ideas. I'm not sure when I'll get to work on that. I haven't yet had the idea that puts it all together into a really good story form. I have the beginning, middle and end, but there's a lot to fill in about the world in which its set that would make it all work and make good story sense. The idea right now does not lend itself to a series. It may end up being a solo book.

On the other hand, I think I may have had the idea that gets me close to solving the book 2 problem. A while back, as a break, I wrote a little over half of a science fiction style Messengers book set during the time of Calan Sterrit, the man Kayley rescued from the cave in Call to Selah. In past blogs I've referred to that book as the space novel. Another project I've thought about but haven't been able to come up with the plot points for is the Calliope novella. I think I have a way to combine the Calliope novella into book 2 and link the space novel to it via Messenger time travel. Several Messengers from the time period of the first series appear in the space novel, but due partly to spoilers about the B'vellah series, I had to put the space novel on the back burner. It's theoretically possible that I could write the end of the space novel and the new book 2 simultaneously or nearly so and have them come out close together. As a bonus, the cover for the space novel would be dead simple to paint.

What I'm working on now is a way to put the parts of the unwritten Calliope novella that didn't appear in The Rise of Aethan Lightbringer into book 2. Instead of a novella with all the details that would involve, that story would be told from the Messengers' points of view instead of Calliope's. I wouldn't have to show things like her bored in school. Could I do it in such a way that I could still write the novella later? That's something I have to solve. Linking the space novel and book 2 is pretty easy. All I have to do is write one or two scenes from the perspective of the people in each book. It would be the same scene(s) in both books but from different viewpoints.

Before pulling book 2 off Amazon, I had already written almost half of book 3. Part of figuring all of this out is taking that into account. I like book 3. It needs to stay as much the same as possible.

Have a great weekend.

Truck Wreck

Since I don't have a car, I'm at the mercy of other people. This is going to be a short one.

It's been kind of a long week. The big news was that I found a dead body this week. I was riding on the passenger side looking out the window and saw a truck that had gone off the road and down a short drop off at the edge of a field.. The grill was smashed into the ground. As we were riding by, I couldn't see anyone inside, but I saw a small ladder that had been thrown past the truck and into the field. The way the truck was smashed made it look like it would be hard to get out of it but not impossible. I told the person who was driving me that I'd seen a wrecked truck. We decided to go back and check on it to make sure nobody was inside.

It turned out that there was one man inside. It was too steep to climb down the drop off, which was maybe 15 feet. There was a way to drive down into the field where the truck was, but I called 911 instead. In the very few minutes it took a fire truck to arrive, three teenagers jogged past and never bothered to look over to see what was going on.

I think the crash happened well before I got there, which was Monday. There was no steam coming out of the engine. It wasn't making ticking noises the way they do when they cool down. There was no smell of gas or fluids. There were no skid marks. The man inside could have been there several days with people driving and jogging by not bothering to check on him. This was on a dirt and gravel road. Any skid marks would have taken a while to be driven away by other cars. He could have been there all weekend.

Unfortunately, the local paper didn't come out on Wednesday the way it usually does, so I have no info on who it was. The license plate was for the next county over. People use my road as a "short cut" sometimes. I'm guessing the man was flying down the road and went off the side in the dark, but I don't know for sure.

Not very uplifting this week. The good news is that I had an idea for a future series. It'll take more thought to really flesh it out. 

Have a great weekend.

1937 Chrysler Royal Business Coupe

I saw something scary the other day. I can't help but wonder how that's not a type of mutilation. How is that going to affect those babies once they're grown? The appendix was once thought to be useless, but now we know that it's part of the immune system and has a function. Are we going to find out later that those babies need that part they're cutting?

I also saw something awesome, a 1937 Chrysler Royal Business Coupe. It was parked at the Captain D's I was visiting. I was in the drive-through. It was parked off to the side where pickup trucks pulling trailers or small campers park. The color was matte black with a red interior. The wheels looked modern with the rear wheels being a little bit larger than the front. I wouldn't have done that personally, but the size difference wasn't great.

Sometimes I watch old movies from the 40s and 50s and even older. When I first saw the car, I knew it was old, but it didn't look very familiar. I studied it as I waited in the drive-through and decided it had to be from the 30s or possibly older. I guessed 30s. When I got closer, I could read the 1937 on the corner of the license plate. I patted myself on the back. I also wondered if that meant I've seen too many old movies that I can tell when a car's not from the 40s.

On the whole it was a bad week. I was very discouraged at life. Nevertheless, I was able to make progress on the cat painting. It's fighting me. It's so close to working, but it doesn't. I also think I have a concept for the cover for the mystery/romance that I think I could paint. I'm not very good at the human figure, but maybe I could do someone who's squatting down and get it right. I've had to do a lot of fiddling with the cat painting that makes me think it's possible.

I'm still struggling with whether book 2 can be saved or needs a complete re-write.

Have a great weekend.

Struggling With Book 2

I've been wrestling with book 2, trying to figure out what to keep. I've been going through it fixing things and making some changes. The farther along I go the more I wonder if I should just start over with it. I'm feeling more and more disconnect with it from what it needs to be. One of the fixes was for the definition of nephilim. For a while it's been accepted as fact that nephil comes from the Hebrew word nafal, which would make it mean fallen ones. There's new research that says it comes from naphiylim(sp), a word from another language and not Hebrew, and means giants. It's translated giants in the Septuagint, which is seen as a confirmation that it never meant fallen ones. It's interesting. Some of the ancient documents that have never been translated are being translated now, and it's giving insight into what things in the Bible we didn't know we didn't know actually mean.

Speaking of religion, there's a heavily atheist state in the union. They're having problems and more problems. In my state we had a drought, and the governor called for prayer. The drought went away. Atheism doesn't work long term.

Something I often lament is how inferior American culture is today from when I was younger. The number of insane things I see keeps rising. Somebody showed me a "game" this week that was a button masher. There was no gameplay to it. It was just a button masher. It had a row of buttons. Pushing the first one would cause a counter to increment. When the counter reached a certain number, that would allow another button in the row to be pushed. When the counter on the new button reached a certain number another button would become active and so on until the end of the row. Scores of millions of people are "playing" what are called clicker games. I don't get it. Atari was better than that. I remember when button mashers were considered the worst of the worst.

But I think I have a theory about these clicker games. When I was younger in the 80s, it was a much more peaceful time. We needed excitement, so the video games were geared toward that. As an example of how peaceful it was, when a serial killer popped up, the police alerted the news media. It became national news until they caught the guy. Today, there are so many serial killers that the police don't bother to tell the press any more. They work the cases as best they can. Here's my theory. Kids today are overloaded. Drugs. Gender dysphoria. School shootings. Vicious politics. Etc. Clicker games give Millennails something mindless and repetitive and peaceful to do as a break from all the excitement in real life.

I was recommended an article that goes along with this idea. I didn't read it. I tried skimming it, but ran into vulgar profanity, which goes along with my statement about inferior culture. The article claims that the American Dream is "killing us," because the average American is worse off than a generation ago. Well, duh. As the culture declines, the country will decline along with it. I've seen a number of these articles. They all miss the fact that our culture is degrading. They focus on economics and sometimes blame a political party. That misses the point. Our culture is collapsing. These articles are all signs of it. I could go on and on, but it's kind of depressing.

Be counter culture. Be a decent human being.

Have a great weekend.

Undeserved Victory

In baseball playoffs there's something called a wild card team. A wild card team is a team that's not good enough to make it to the playoffs. But for profit reasons, they're allowed to play a one game, winner-take-all game. Whoever wins goes forward. That format is inherently unfair and stupid and contradicts the regular season during which there is never a one-game series, as well as contradicting the spirit of the game.

This years the Washington Nationals won the World Series. They were also the winning wild card team. The only reason they won the wild card game is because of an error the other team made. This is why a one-game series should never be allowed. The Nationals then played the Dodgers in a five-game series and won. I'm not sure how. The Dodgers were the better team. While that was going on, the Braves were playing the Cardinals. The Braves should have won, but their star rookie made two mistakes in game one that cost Atlanta the game and ended up costing them the series. The result is that the Nationals, who made it in through an error, ended up playing another team who only made it that far through another team's error. The Nationals somehow beat the cardinals in a seven-game series and went on the defeat the Houston Astros in seven games in the World Series. I watched some of it but not all of it.

There's a life lesson in all this. The Nationals didn't deserve to be in the playoffs. They should never have defeated the Dodgers. They should have lost to the Braves, whom they never got to play because of those rookie mistakes in game one. They should never have defeated the Astros, a superior team. MLB.com had a contest to pick the playoff winners. I don't watch American League baseball, but somehow my bracket was perfect for that side. On the National League side, errors by the Braves and the Brewers blew it in the first round.

There's this bit of wisdom from the Bible that sometimes the tail ends up being the head or the head ends up being the tail. That's what happened this year in baseball. Sometimes, life just works out that way. Sometimes, you win even though you don't really deserve it. Sometimes, you get the break you shouldn't get. Sometimes, things just go your way in spite of yourself. When that happens, I think you should enjoy it. Don't get proud and act like you did it yourself. Enjoy it, but stay humble enough to know it wasn't really you. There was something else at work in it.

Have a great weekend.

Heidi

As mentioned last week, I finished reading Heidi in French. It was something I was mostly doing on the side rather than my normal reading. Even so, it took longer than I thought, despite the fact that it's easier to read. The problem was that almost nothing happens in the story, which was published in 1881.

The story starts out with Heidi's aunt dumping orphaned Heidi at her grandfather's house in the Swiss Alps and the aunt running off to live her own life. Heidi lives there a while before the aunt comes back and kidnaps her and takes her to Frankfurt before running off again. Heidi lives in Frankfurt for a while until she gets so homesick it affects her health. A doctor orders her home. She reunites with her grandfather and lives happily ever after.

You're probably wondering why it's a classic. I wondered that the whole book. During Heidi's time in Frankfurt, one weekend she learned to read at a high level. Her favorite story was the prodigal son from the New Testament. When she returns home, she reads it to her grandfather. It changes his life. He prays a prayer of repentance and takes Heidi to church on Sunday. The ending is what makes it a classic. The restoration of the grandfather and how he's welcomed back into the community after being a grumpy old cuss for quite a long time is the power of the story.

The ending was good. It just took a long, hard slog to get there. There were a lot of missed opportunities. If I was doing a story based on Heidi, I'd make a few changes to make it more interesting to read. The grandfather would have worked for MI6 in the past. The aunt, unknown to her, works for his old nemesis from the KGB or possibly, since Heidi went to Frankfurt, the Stasi. After Heidi's kidnapping, the grandfather tries to track her but fails. Instead of training to be a domestic servant the way she was in the original, Heidi is held prisoner by her grandfather's nemesis. Her guard teaches her to read, so she won't bother him so much wanting to be read stories. She overhears the nemesis's plot for revenge on her grandfather and uses her newfound book knowledge to escape imprisonment and hides with the family in the original story where was training to be a servant. From there she devises a trap for the nemesis, which requires her to lure him to her grandfather's cabin. She flees Frankfurt in the dead of night with the nemesis one step behind her. At grandfather's she bursts into the cabin and shouts a code word she learned at the nemesis's lair. Grandfather's MI6 reflexes take over, and he grabs his old service pistol and gets into a shootout with the nemesis. Heidi provides a key distraction, allowing the grandfather to shoot the nemesis. They tell the other villagers he was a prowler, but secretly the grandfather alerts MI6 that the old threat has been eliminated. Then Heidi would read him the story of the prodigal son, and they would go to church.

Technically, they didn't have all those agencies in 1881, but it makes for a much better story. We could update the setting to more modern times. At least that way, something would happen in the book instead of it being a dry, blow-by-blow description of Heidi's child life.

Have a great weekend.

Spammers, Writing, Painting

The reason there was no blog last week was because someone I know had a so-called emergency that needed help right away. I should've known better.

I ran across an interesting article the other day that was talking about good guys versus bad guys and how it's a modern invention that never existed in fairy tales and old stories. It explains the modern origin and how it came about through the rise of nation-states and modern national identity. It's worth a read or worth a skim at least.

So, a while back I got a new cell phone and a new number. I started getting a ton of spam calls, multiple calls every day except weekends. Frustrated with that, I considered getting a newer number. Maybe the last person to have the number was the problem, and a different one would fix it? What I settled on doing was killing the calls as they came in. Guess what? That makes them not call back. I can go several days now without a single spam call. And sliding that red circle to send the call to oblivion feels good, too. It turns out there's an app that does the same thing. I haven't installed it, but it's out there.

I've been working on pre-work for the next book. It's not going very fast. I've also been working on that cat painting I've mentioned several times before. I've been able to put maybe an hour or two into it every night. I'm hoping that a side effect of doing it is to figure out a way to do book covers that have that illustrated feel rather than a painting feel. Although I'm not happy with the painting as it is today, it's slowly coming together. I'm having to learn things and figure things out. I have some doubts about my skill to make it look the way I want it to look.

I have the painting on an easel in the living room. When I come home and sit down a few minutes, I can stare at it and try to work out fixes and ways to progress toward the finish. It's not the hardest painting in the world, but cats have fur. It has colors that can be hard to match even with all my past experience mixing colors. The ears have a reddish orange color near the base that's not really quite reddish orange. One of the eyes has a dark pinkish sort of red color near it that isn't the same color throughout. Part of the fur is white. The shadows(greys), mid-tones(light grey) and highlights(white) all have to look white. It's not as much hard as it's time-consuming. The eye will think it's all white. It just has to be done right.

I've painted fur before, but this has to look like the person's pet. The eyes are a bit tricky as they have multiple colors in them. Anyway, it's taking a while. If it works, I'll post it after it's done.

I finished Heidi in French. That's what I was going to blog about last week. It had a lot of missed opportunities. Maybe I'll discuss that next time.

Have a great weekend.

The Heat

There wasn't much progress on the book front this week. It was pathetic. The air conditioner problem is still there, and a high pressure system got stuck over my region, causing hotter temperatures than in July. It was brutal and frustrating. The Weather Channel said the heat would disintegrate instead of moving out. Their heat map shows me to be in a sort of wedge area. Cooler temperatures are expected Saturday. Yesterday the high was 94F(34.4C). Today it's 93F(33.89C). Saturday's high(tomorrow) is 70F(21.1C). That's a crazy drop. The rest of the week it's supposed to be in the 70s.

In last week's blog, I did a semi-review of the new Magnum P.I. show based on a random episode I saw part of. One of the problems was the characters talked about their feelings too much instead of doing things. That lasted about 30 minutes. Then things got moving. I assumed the naval gazing was over. Nope. I watched the end of the episode. As the heros were sitting in some kind of Jeep/SUV type vehicle about to face the bad guys, they stopped to talk about their feelings again. I wish I was kidding. It was this episode.

With not being able to get on the computer much due to the heat, I saw another Magnum P.I. episode. It didn't have all the feelings talk. Maybe the first episode I caught had different writers. I also said the new Higgins had an Australian accent. It sounded like one of the more uncommon ones I've heard before, though the accent seemed inconsistent between scenes, making it hard to pin down. I looked her up. The actress is actually from Wales. Regardless, it doesn't work. The real Higgins had a sophisticated, cultured British accent. The new Higgins doesn't. Fail. The actor who played the real Higgins, John Hillerman, was an American from Texas. If somebody from Texas could fake it so convincingly, I think a gal from Wales could, too. I don't understand why she's in the show.

One thing the new Magnum show is lacking that I don't miss about the original is all the arguing. In the original the characters argued all the time. I hated it. Is talking about their feelings supposed to be the replacement for that? I groan.

The real Magnum, Tom Selleck, is still alive and working. The new show isn't dishonoring his memory. It's dishonoring him personally while he's still alive and healthy to see it. 😀 Boo, Hollywood. Boo.

With the weather turning, I expect to get more done on the book front next week.

Have a great weekend.

The New Magnum Show

This week saw some progress toward book 2. The weather interfered with using the computer some, so I didn't get as much done as I wanted. On the book cover front, I picked up a painting supply I needed for a painting I've been trying to do. I'm trying out a technique with it that I'm hoping will let me figure out how to do a book cover that looks like one. Paintings don't usually look like illustrations, so there's a gap to bridge. I'm not 100% sure I'll be able to do a cover, but if I don't try, I won't know.

The other day I was going through the channel listings looking for something, when I ran across a listing for Magnum P.I. I remembered seeing an article not too long ago that Hollywood was going to do a Magnum reboot. They've been out of ideas for decades. I set it to record to watch later. One night, when it was too hot to use the computer, I made myself watch some of it. I kind of dreaded it. I was worried it would be great but full of inappropriate content. I shouldn't have worried so much.

I remember Magnum in the 80s, though I didn't watch it until years later on some kind of rerun channel. My best friend loved it back in the day, which is why I watched it. So, I have the real thing to compare this new Magnum show to.

Millennials. One of the things they're infamous for is talking about their feelings. Instead of facing life's problems, they run to a safe room and talk about how they feel until they're not scared any more. Then they come out, problem avoided. Quite a lot of the first half of the new Magnum was the characters talking about their feelings with each other. Oh, dear. Are all Millennial shows going to be like this? Is the next generation going to vomit while trying to watch Millennial programming while being mystified at how much better even older shows are? If all the shows today are like this, we're looking at a lost generation of programming and no classics from this era.

I didn't watch the entire episode, but most of it, yes. Here are some thoughts.

Wrong Magnum. The new guy is not Magnum. It's not just that he's not Tom Selleck. He's not Magnum. He doesn't work. Casting department fail. And, hey, where the mustache?

Wrong Higgins. They've turned Higgins into a woman. I had my doubts about that, when reading about the reboot ahead of time, but if she's pretty enough,. . .I could get past that. It turns out the woman they chose has an Australian accent, and not one of the good ones. It's kind of one of the annoying ones. She's attractive enough but not beautiful and has a nice figure, but no. Higgins had a British accent. One simply cannot substitute bad Australian for that. It doesn't work. I like her until she talks. The casting department needs a decidedly firm slap across the jowls with an old English glove.

Wrong feel. The show doesn't have the same vibe as the original. Admittedly, this is only one episode, but the original had some depth and grit to it. The new one is kind of shallow. Thirty minutes of talking about their feelings lacks depth. How about trying to solve the crime instead? The original Magnum was a detective show with action. Naval gazing is not a substitute for action.

I fast forwarded through the commercials, but I did catch the end of one. It was advertising Hawaii 5-0 before the next Magnum. I remember that show, too, but I was too young to watch it. I can't believe Hollywood has two reboots back to back. However, they've been out of ideas for decades.

I didn't like the new Battlestar Galactica either. It was a melodrama. I tried watching it, but every episode was like watching September 11.

The Love Boat. Simon and Simon. Tales of the Gold Monkey. Whiz Kids. Hart to Hart. Moonlighting. Remington Steele. I could see a Remington Steele remake.

Have a great weekend.

Loch Ness Monster Solved

The Loch Ness monster hoax has been around for a long time. I wondered what it was. One day after not seeing the photo for years, it popped up, and outside the context of the monster narrative, I instantly recognized what it was. Instead of seeing the monster, I saw a table leg. Basically, it's an upside down, broken table or part of one floating in the loch. Now the only research left to do is to go into the archives and figure out who manufactured the table, assuming it wasn't locally made. The photo is from 1934. There should still be some of those tables around for comparison.

The other day I had a funny interaction with my Google Assistant.

Me: Hey, Google. Turn off the living room lamp.

Google Assistant: Sure, turning off the living room lamp.

Me: Thanks, Sweet Pea.

Google Assistant: You're welcome. You can call me Google Assistant.

Was I trying to get fresh with my technology?

Book News

Now that the weather has broken and turned cooler, I've started working on the new book 2 of the B'vellah War series. I'm going through book 1 to refresh myself on details. Once that's finished, I'll be able to figure out the right direction. I already have a general plan, but I still need to decide things like how much of book 2 can be saved and how different the new book 2 will be. It might end up being very different. For a long time I've wanted to do a Calliope book or novella but never could quite come up with the uniting idea for it. It's possible I could weave that book into the new book 2 as part of the new story. It would fit in pretty well after the events of book 1. There's only so much space in a book, so I'll have to put on my thinking cap about that.

Have a great weekend.

The Frustrations of Art and Language

It's another hot day, and the air conditioner dilemma is not resolved. This will be a quick one.

I've started work on the painting I mentioned the other day. It's acrylic on canvas. I'm not completely happy with how it's starting, although the underpainting isn't supposed to look good. It's just part of the process to get to the final result. It's going to be a cat sitting in grass. I'm not confident of my ability to paint a cat, but I've painted a rabbit before. It turned out pretty well.

There's a certain frustration with painting. It never turns out the way I see it in my head. I'll have this magnificent picture in my mind. I'll have an idea of how to accomplish it with the medium. The final product never matches my inner vision. I wonder if other people have this same problem. I'll see an incredible masterpiece and wonder if it was what the artist had in mind from the beginning. Despite how phenomenal the painting is, was it the original vision?

Moving on to another frustration, French. I just finished a 500-page book. I had to look up tons of words. I thought I would be more fluent by now. I understand that literature has a far greater vocabulary than the spoken language. If you know the 3,000 most frequently used words in a language, you can understand about 80% of normal dialogue. About 10,000 words is high school level. About 20,000 words is someone with a college education. To sound educated you need about a 20,000-word vocabulary.

At this point I've read millions and millions of words. I listen to French audio for about an hour a day. I still have to look up words. I still don't have a listening fluency. I can follow along with some things fairly well, but other things are close to gibberish. It seems like it shouldn't be this way. On the other hand a lot of what I read I don't have translate into English in my head. The same with listening. I can read something or hear something and understand it but not be able to spout off an immediate English translation. I'd have to think about how to say it first. That definitely feels like progress on some level, but listening to something and hitting a gibberish patch doesn't. Running into a paragraph with the right number of high-level vocabulary doesn't.

The solution to learning any language is massive input. Maybe I need to put more time into it. I've been reading more lately, because it's been too hot to get on the computer much. Maybe I need to win the lottery and take a French course in Paris. Sadly, I might buy a ticket once a year at Christmas and most years not even then.

I asked for prayer about something the other day. I could use more. :) I think I have a direction to go, but it's not the immediate answer I was hoping for.

Have a great weekend.

Science Says Homosexuality is not Genetic...Again

A major scientific study that proves homosexuality is not genetic just made the news. The story can be found here, here and here. I would have posted only one link, but another major study in 2015 proving the same thing is all but impossible to find now. News of the older study has been censored in the United States, because it's not politically correct.

This finding is critically important, not only because it invalidates gay "marriage", but also because a case is coming up before the Supreme Court in 2020 to determine whether homosexuality should be a civil right. According to science, it should not. But the Supreme Court cares little for science when it interferes with the liberal agenda.

In March 2015 a major study involving multiple teams in multiple countries across multiple continents proved definitively that homosexuality is not genetic. No one is born that way. No one ever has been born that way. Since there's no gene for it, no one will ever be born that way, because we have no way of genetically modifying people to be that way. The 2015 study is generally referred to as the Twins Study. It was a study of twins to determine the genetic basis for a number of things. Homosexuality was not the focus. Common sense tells us that if one twin is gay and one is straight that homosexuality cannot possibly be genetic. The Twins Study proved it scientifically. Another finding in that study is that if one twin is gay the other has a 50% greater chance of being gay. I've seen that statistic used to claim that being gay is genetic, but what it actually points to is environmental factors, genetic damage, mental illness, etc. The study already proved it's not genetic. Lying about the 50% statistic is not science.

Any story about the new study that says that homosexuality "must be" due to a number of genes or genetic influences is propaganda. The Twins Study proved it's not genetic. However, I would listen to a genetic damage argument. That's the only way it could be "genetic", if there's damage to the organism, and even that would not be a genetic basis. It would be damage to the genes like any other genetic disease. A better argument would be mental illness. In the 90s there was a news article about a homosexual survey. It wasn't scientific. It was a survey. The incredible statistic that came out of that survey was that 98% of homosexuals admitted to being molested as children. If I were a researcher in that field, psychological damage caused by molestation is what I would study to determine whether it's the root cause of homosexuality. Another area I would suspect is the chemicals people are constantly exposed to. We don't know what chemicals are doing to our genes.

As a side note, the Twins Study came out in March 2015. Remember how the Supreme Court decision on gay "marriage" came out of nowhere? Remember how the American people were kept in the dark until the decision was already made? Remember how nine people made a national decision with no debate allowed? That decision came out in June 2015. The results of the Twins Study were already known. If the Supreme Court didn't know about that study, it was too scientifically ignorant to make the ruling it did. If it did know, then that proves the Supreme Court is corrupt and should be investigated. Any justice on the Supreme Court who knew about the Twins Study and also voted for gay "marriage" should be disbarred and removed from the Supreme Court by impeachment. Radical social agendas have no place in our legal system.

Science has spoken. At best, homosexuality is a hobby. It's not genetic. No one should have special rights and privileges for exercising a hobby. If homosexuals should have gay "marriage", then I should be allowed to have baseball fan "marriage". If homosexuality is a civil right, then being a baseball fan is also a civil right. No television channel should ever be permitted to black out another baseball game again. That would violate my baseball fan civil rights. However, I don't have baseball fan civil rights or baseball fan "marriage", because it's just a hobby, and neither should homosexuals have those things because what they do is just a hobby, too.

What I expect to see from this new study is more media censorship and lying about the science. This study will probably vanish from the press. The Twins Study has been heavily censored in the United States. I never see it mentioned in reference to homosexuals. The lie about the 50% statistic that I referred to above was told on a British documentary about twins, not in the United States. The liberal media will not report facts that contradict their radical social agendas. A third study proved that transgenderism is a choice. It's not genetic either. Apparently, the entire LGBetc movement is not genetic. It's a collection of people practicing strange hobbies.

The science is in. We can't allow radical leftists to dictate how this country lives.

Possible Time Off

I might take the next few weeks off from the blog. A heat wave is supposed to be coming next week, and I still don't have a solution for the air conditioner problem. The cold front is gone, though temperatures haven't been excessive. I was hoping I'd be able to coast through the last few weeks of August but, alas, the heat front. Running the computer without air conditioning is too brutal.

My plan is to work on painting. There's a painting I've been needing to do. And, of course, I still need book covers. Maybe, if I do the painting, something will shake loose with the covers. I still don't have the digital painting skills to do them.

On a personal note, I could use some prayer, if you would, about a direction in life that could be God showing me something major, or it could be my overactive imagination. I have no way to get there from here. There are too many obstacles and obstruction. I need the obstacles removed. I don't have a clear direction on how to remove them. Any extra prayers about this would be appreciated.

Have a great weekend.

It's Us or Them

If you've ever wondered why Congress refuses to stop illegal immigration, this article, [sic]Birth rate drops to an all-time low in the United States, is part of the answer. Without illegals, the population in the U.S. would be shrinking. A major factor in this shrinkage is abortion. Going on 60 million Americans have been murdered through abortion. The population of New York State is a little over 19 million. We've lost the equivalent of three states the size of New York. Even before it hits 60 million, we'll have lost more than three New Yorks. That's unacceptable.

The main problem with illegal immigrants is that they're not coming here to become Americans. They're bringing and maintaining their own separate cultures, cultures that are inferior to traditional American values. Their cultures are not equal to ours. They're dragging us down.

Democrats and Republicans alike are allowing this invasion force. They're patting themselves on the back for "solving" the abortion problem, but their "solution" is literally destroying this country. Multiple cultures can't exist simultaneously. In the end only one can survive. The Democrat playbook states that thesis plus antithesis equals synthesis. The Democrat party is pushing illegal immigration as hard as they can, because they want to destroy American culture and replace it with a synthesis culture that they can control. For example, welfare recipients vote Democrat. That population is controlled. In order to gain that control, Democrats had to destroy the American work ethic in that population. Having succeeded with that, they want to gain control of the entire country through illegal immigration.

Democrat party beliefs and values used to be un-American. It's to the point now that they're not just un-American but anti-American. We're at a point in history beyond which either the Democrat party survives or the United States survives. It can't be both. Two cultures cannot coexist in the same country for any length of time. In the end only one culture can be dominant. If American culture is to survive, the Democrat party has to end.

Have a great weekend.

The Power of His Mouth?

The cold front the Weather Channel forecast arrived Tuesday evening. It's been a relatively pleasant week. Temperatures have been mostly in the lower 80s(26.67+C) during the day and down to 58F(14.44C) at night. Humidity has also been lower. Normally, it would be brutally hot and humid with the real heat coming in August. I was expecting a few days of lower temperatures, but the Weather Channel says temperatures will be lower until at least August the 4th. If this is climate change, I need to go burn a stack of old tires. I'll make it autumn all summer long.

Not too long ago I heard this television pastor talking about the mark of the beast. He said, "It can't be a tattoo, because I said years ago it would be about the size of a grain of rice." That's the quote as I remember it. Apparently, based on the power of his word and his word only, it must be an implantable microchip. The pathetic thing is that he was serious when he said it couldn't be anything other than something he said years ago, because he said so. He's not that old by the way, so it couldn't have been that many years. I hear other religious figures making grand statements about the Bible as if they were facts. If something sounds good and sells books, they'll say anything.

There's a problem with implantable microchips. According to an article I read a while back, they cause cancer in humans. The percentage is small, well below 1%, but would you want to gamble on not being one of the cancer victims? On a global scale tens of millions or more people would get cancer from being implanted. That's the size of however many U.S. states or however many small countries. This would include the people passing the laws to require it and their families. Is any politician going to pass a law that could give his own children cancer? I don't think so. Not unless there's a cure for all cancers by then.

A while back Somark Innovations invented an RFID tattoo that they claimed is 100% biocompatible and can't cause cancer. That link is an older one and not the best. They wanted to use it to tattoo cows to track disease outbreaks like mad cow disease, but it could also be used for things like military personnel in combat scenarios. A wounded soldier might be unconscious and not be able to give a medical history in the field. Scanning the tattoo would let a medic have instant access to drug allergies and things like that. The Somark tattoo can be colored or invisible.

The thing about Bible prophecies is that they have to occur in context of reality. Unless the Antichrist plans to go door to door healing people, something that causes cancer in humans is not very realistic. A safe, biocompatible tattoo is much more realistic, especially considering other factors. Microchips require a minor surgical procedure that takes about five minutes. The Somark tattoo takes about ten seconds. For a population of over 7 billion, five minutes takes forever compared to ten seconds.

A lot of pastors believe in the microchip hypothesis, but it doesn't match what the Bible actually says, and it doesn't match practicality. When the real mark comes out, all the Antichrist would have to do would be to say that everyone knows the mark of the beast is a microchip, and his new system has nothing to do with that. All the pastors railing against the microchips would turn out to be helping the Antichrist.

Have a great weekend.

Cool Front Coming

There's an article today titled [sic]"How the 2019 coffee crisis might affect you'. I didn't read it, since I drink tea. I don't consider a coffee problem to be a crisis. But in case you personally want to read it, it's here across the pond.

In other news there's a new flying squirrel in town.

I talked the other day about a cool front that came through in June and how awesome that was. Forecasters are predicting another one that reaches where I live on Tuesday. I'm right at the bottom edge of where it's supposed to reach, so I don't know if it'll be awesome or not. The high Tuesday is supposed to be 78F(25.56C). The low Wednesday morning is supposed to be 63F(17.22C). I'm hoping for a few days of cool weather before dreadful August. If climate change is real, I really like the cooler temperatures. 78F in late July? Awesome!

So, another female teacher had sex with a male student. He was 13. This always upsets the parents. They're so angry about it every time. What made me mad about the story was the woman got 20 years in jail. That's not justice. How in the world can somebody go to jail for 20 years for that? Has this country gone insane?

As a former 13-year-old, I'm here to tell you these woman are not predators. These students are not victims. This reminds me of that Bible story in which the woman was caught in the act of adultery, and the hypocrites wanted to stone her to death but not the man. Why don't we put the students in jail for taking advantage of lonely, needy women? That woman gets twenty years in jail while that guy spends the next twenty years bragging about living one of his ultimate fantasies. That's not right. That's not fair. That's not justice.

Don't get me wrong. What these teachers are doing is immoral, but it's not jail time immoral. There should be some kind of punishment. They should be banned from teaching for life and maybe get probation for a few years. But to send them to jail for decades with real criminals? No way. Those students knew exactly what they were doing. At 13, I would have for sure. I know they do. Losing a teaching license and the humiliation thereof plus having to start over in life is punishment enough.

I'm probably in the minority on this, but I believe in real justice. Before we go after people having sex, we need to go after government officials for routine treason. I'm looking at you, Congress.

Have a great weekend.

There was a Setting for That

There was an article this week about an Android phone malware. It's mostly limited to Asia, but it's in the U.S., too. It affects phones with versions of Android older than 7. I have version 6 on mine, and there's no patch for that. The easiest fix is to turn off allowing apps from unknown sources to install. It took forever to find that setting, and once I did, it was already turned off. It was a hassle.

However, there was a silver lining. One of the most annoying things about cell phones is the swipe screen. I really hate pressing the on button and then having to swipe the screen to actually turn it on. It seems so insane to have to do that twice. While I was trying to find the unknown sources setting, I ran across a setting to turn off the swipe screen. Yay! I upgraded my phone not long ago from an older one and didn't even know that was a setting. Life just got easier. When reading French, I almost always use my phone to look up words my paperback dictionary doesn't have, which is a lot when reading novels. Having to hit the button and then swipe the screen was a major pain, especially one-handed.

It's been muggy and hot this week but not excessively hot. I haven't been on the computer much. I spent some time thinking and watching a few shows I've never watched. One of them was an FBI show in which the agents constantly used the phrase "the unsub" to the point of parody. That's what they called perpetrators. If Mulder and Scully didn't do it, I'm not sure it should be allowed. Anyway, it was super annoying to hear that every other sentence. I finally looked it up. The perpetrators weren't unsubscribing from email lists as one would suspect. Unsub is a contraction of unknown subject.

I watched several old episodes of that show. About 30 to 40 minutes into an episode, the unknown subject's identity would become known. The agents would know his name, address, history, etc. They would keep calling him the unsub, the unknown subject. If he's known, why call him unknown? Basically, the writers for those episodes didn't know what unsub means. Color me unsubscribed from ever watching that show again. It's okay to write about things you don't know about as long as you do the research and don't try to take it too far. Not looking up the meaning of a word is a basic fail. The show genuinely felt like a parody and not a real show.

The reason I haven't been on the computer much is because I'm  having a problem with my air conditioner. Hopefully, I'll get that straightened out soon.

Have a great weekend.

Not So Woke

Sometimes, I'll run across the word woke online. The incorrect usage instantly offends my inner English teacher and is a sign of cultural decline. One of the hard things about being from the 80s is living in a lower culture today. The United States in the 80s enjoyed a superior level of culture to today's United States. Kids today have things like "woke" they think are real but actually aren't. Part of being "woke" is knowing things "the man" doesn't want them to know. Basically, it's another conspiracy theory, although there's a strong element of fantasy involved.

So many people are fighting "injustices" today, but the injustices are imaginary. I think people enjoy feeling better than other people, and that's the cause of the social justice fighters. It's about pride and ego and feeling superior to others. In the old days we had something called shrugging it off. If someone did something offensive, people shrugged it off like adults and moved on. Even kids did that. Sometimes, shrugging it off is called forgive and forget it. Instead of carrying around all this imaginary injustice, what if people would forgive and forget? How about, instead of fighting these imaginary ego fights, people just love their neighbors as themselves and stop worrying about what other people are doing? The sad thing about people who claim to be "woke" is that they're actually asleep.

At the end of the day, it's really no one's business what other people think, feel or do, as long as it's not criminal. If someone ever asks me if I'm woke, I'm going to try to play it like this:

Are you woke?

Of course, I've been done woke up since this morning.

No! You know. Are you woke?

Honestly? I'm not a morning person, so I've really only been done woke up since about 11.

I think I could pull that off without laughing. At some point, of course, there would be laughter. And that's what we did in the 80s. Instead of being offended at everything, we made fun of it and laughed it off.

To get back to the conspiracy aspect of being woke, it involves believing that "the man" doesn't want people knowing things. No one can deny that the government routinely hides things from the people. However, a lot of the conspiracy theories are pure imagination and remind me of a verse. 

Isaiah 8:12 Do not call everything a conspiracy these people say is a conspiracy. Do not fear what they fear, nor be afraid.

Conspiracy, conspiracy. Everything this people speaks of is a conspiracy. Don't be afraid of what they fear. I believe that in Isaiah's time his country had resorted to conspiracy theories instead of facing and solving the real problems. Not being able to face reality, they were conquered and driven out of their land. If modern conspiracies are a parallel, the U.S. is in real danger of being swept from the pages of history. Things like "woke" will likely turn out to be canaries dying in the coal mine.

Have a great weekend.

Drifting Through

Somebody else called today to tell me that the Microsoft Windows Corporation has shut down the services on my computer, the same one I'm using to type this. I should answer one of those calls some time and record it. Of course, I should take acting classes first, so I could properly express my anguish over such a tragedy. "Oh, I can't believe [sob] this is happening to me. [sob] I sent Bill Gates fan mail in 1996. I thought [sob] we were frieeeeends![bursts into tears]" I would go on to beg the person to contact Bill for me and remind him of my email from 1996. I know he remembers it. It was really heartfelt. And suddenly, I'm off their call list.

The excitement this week was a little black bear knocking over the garbage. It wasn't a baby but was relatively small. I saw it as it escaped into the woods. The other "excitement" was a mold outbreak caused by rising humidity. Last year the humidity didn't break in September and led to mold. This was some I had missed but was in remission during the winter. I haven't been feeling good this week, especially since it's right after that tooth infection. Mold killing primer is amazing by the way.

It was a bad week on the writing front and the French front. I kind of drifted through.

Have a great weekend.

Oh, the Hypocrisy

Some in Hollywood have been throwing a tantrum over Georgia's heartbeat bill. The bill would prevent further genocide against unborn babies who have a heartbeat. It would save an untold number lives in Georgia. The irony is that the people in Hollywood who are speaking out against Georgia are the same people who film in countries that ban abortion, execute homosexuals, abuse women, etc. Hollywood doesn't seem to care about any of that at all. Georgia does none of those things.

I was thinking about Hollywood this week, and something occurred to me. Hollywood liberals are living the ultimate Republican lifestyle. They're as rich as Republicans and invest like Republicans. They're living the ultimate capitalist dream while preaching radical socialist values for everyone else. How can they look themselves in the mirror?

Something that gets lost in these liberal tantrums is this: Do people in California really have the right to tell people in Georgia how to live? Is it really any of their business what people living in any other another state do? I question whether they even have the right to open their mouths. If people in Georgia started boycotting California for something, Californians would be outraged and start screaming about their "rights" to live however they please. Counting local governments, California is trillions of dollars in debt. They're past bankrupt. And yet that state spends hundreds of millions of dollars per year to "make sure everyone feels equal".  A state that can't even govern itself should not be making demands of others.

The Civil War was a fight of states rights versus federal rights. The south believed in the rights of the states as defined by the constitution. The north wanted the federal government to be the top dog in charge regardless of the constitution. Georgia fought on the side of states rights. California fought for big government. After all these years, the battle continues.

Have a great weekend.

A Break From the Heat

Summer in the south is a time of high temperatures and dreadful humidity. Usually, by June it's a struggle to get to the solstice, when the days begin to get shorter. From there it's a long struggle through July and August to get to around September 15th. The humidity starts to drop after about the middle of September. Every summer I keep the 15th in mind as goal to reach.

This year there was a small heat wave in May. It looked like it was going to be a hard summer. This week there was a cold front with dry air. It was amazing for this time of year. It felt like autumn. According to my thermometer, it was 48 degrees(8.89C) this morning. That's a winter temperature. Summer must have been on spring break this week.

Temperatures will be getting back to normal by Sunday. This year, instead of slogging through four months of brutal humidity, I have a 90-day countdown to autumn. Psychologically, it feels more refreshing.

The sad news was that I had a serious gum infection and had to go to the dentist this week. Even after a week of antibiotics, I didn't feel that good. It was all due to two broken fillings. The dentist also discovered a chipped filling on the other side of my mouth. I had to sit through three teeth fixes. So, unfortunately, I wasn't able to enjoy the weather to the best of my ability.

Despite the dental problems, I still was able to get some more of the comma fixes done. I'm still tired, but I seem to be getting some energy back.

Have a great weekend.

5G Internet is Coming

I've talked before about my woeful internet service and how I'm trapped in an area with only one provider who won't upgrade the switch on I'm from 1.5Mbps speed. That's not a typo. We're stuck at 1.5Mbps. I've also blogged about how my ISP, Windstream, was forced into bankruptcy after treating another business the way it treats its customers. I've also mentioned that I'm less than a mile from a fiber line with speeds up to 1,000Mbps, but the provider for that doesn't service my road. Hold onto your hat. All that is about to change.

5G internet is available in limited areas as is 5G home internet. Verizon, a company I'm not a fan of but could work with, is providing 5G home internet now. It's $70/month for speeds up to 300Mbps(compared to a max of 100Mbps from Windstream) with no contract and no cell phone requirement. In comparison Windstream charges $98+/month for 1.5Mbps. Theoretically, I could go from 1.5Mbps to 300Mbps and save almost $25/month for switching. Needless to say, I'm not in a 5G area, but according to one of the articles I looked at, Verizon is supposed to be offering 5G nationwide by 2020 or 2021. I don't know whether they'll make that goal or not, but either way Windstream's days are numbered.

Here's what I'm thinking. At some point we're likely to see 4G home internet packages, too, and cheaper than 5G. Straighttalk Wireless already has a 60GB 4G data plan for $55/month for cell phones only. More and more people switching to 5G will free up the 4G network for other uses, assuming it's kept running. It's already built. Why not make money from it? If 4G internet becomes available as an alternative to 5G internet, it's all good. 4G internet would likely be here first. I'd jump on that in a heartbeat. That wold give me a minimum 3Mbps speed and maybe a bit higher. I could live with 4G speeds for a while.

AT&T also has a 5G internet plan, but it's $70 for 15GB of data. ROFL. Verizon's plan is supposed to be unlimited data. AT&T has announced they're going for a tiered approach and thus a limited number of customers. The more you get the higher the price. Verizon seems to be going for a lower price but available to everyone.

It won't happen overnight, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. All I have to do is keep an eye on 4G data plans and Verizon's 5G timeline.

Have a great weekend.

Using a Certain Power

On the writing front, it was another week of editing old works for modern comma rules.

I just deleted a message on my answering machine that said my subscription to my Windows computer expires today. My subscription to my computer? Strange. I distinctly remember purchasing it. I don't think those people will go to hell for those lies, but I do think it will make their place in hell that much hotter.

The other day I mentioned I was reading the French version of 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke and how it seemed simpler than the other books I've been reading. It was the movie version and not the real, original book. I finished that and started Rendezvous With Rama by the same author. After a dumbed-down movie book, it was a kick in the face. I had to look up words right and left.

Hoping to find French books that are easier to read, I tried finding more books based on movies, but alas, I didn't see anything I would really want to read. Instead of books adapted from movies, Google wanted to show me movies based on books. That was a fail.

After a living for a while, you develop certain powers. On Amazon, I ordered a French version of the Isaac Asimov book, Caves of Steel, on March 18th. It was the next book in a series. It was supposed to arrive from France around April the 26th. By the middle of May I was almost out of French books, and it still wasn't here. I looked up reviews for the vendor and discovered that shipping could take absolutely forever. I decided to use one of my powers. I ordered 5 French books in a different series from American bookstores, that would arrive in about a week more or less. Thus, I would have tons of books, and it wouldn't matter how long the late book took. Doing it that way made Caves of Steel show up almost immediately. My powers are strong!

Have a great weekend.

Current and Past Scams

I've had some calls lately from people saying my "subscription to Microsoft Windows" "expires today" and that all services will stop working unless I call them back and hand over an unspecified amount of money. They lost me at subscription. How can they get away with lying like that? People in Washington D.C. can commit all kinds of crimes and get away with them with the one exception of lying. If politicians go to jail for lying, how do they let other people get away with it? Why aren't telemarketers going to jail? I wonder how many people who use Macs get those calls.

Another scam call I get is the one in which they claim that the past three months of my credit card payment history have been amazing and that I qualify for their credit card! I don't use credit cards. How can my use of something I don't use be amazing? What a bunch of liars. It's called knowing your audience. They didn't.

One day I got an email from myself saying that I'd been hacked. They wanted bitcoin, or they would shut down my account and publish videos from my web cam showing me doing naughty, sexually explicit things. Before they got to the part about the web cam naughtiness, it sounded real and scary. Hey, I don't have a web cam. And if they had my password, how come I could still log in to get my mail? If I could do that, I could change the password myself. Lots of people fell for that one. Hmm, what are people doing with their web cams?

Years ago, when it was still relatively safe to answer the phone, I got a call from a company trying to sell me a magazine subscription. I told the girl I wasn't interested, but she didn't take no for an answer. I told her okay. Do they have Physical Review Letters? I figured they wouldn't. If you're not familiar with it, it's a very high-level physics magazine that wasn't generally available to the public and still isn't. I think it was around $200 a year at the time. It might have been more. It was super expensive for a magazine. The girl told me she didn't see it listed, but she had this other magazine that had a similar word in the title. No, I really want Physical Review Letters. What is it about? she asked. Physics. Oh, they had this other magazine. No, I really want Physical Review Letters. It's really good. I kept her going for a while. She eventually gave up. Was I being naughty? Or I was I saving someone else from getting a sales call? You decide.

For a very funny video by a guy who replied to a spam email, check this out. It's ten minutes, but it's well worth it, if you like laughing.

Have a great weekend.

Fun Dream

The highlight of the week was a dream I had. I was invited to be in a new, experimental spaceship this guy was testing. Experimental made me nervous because no one would be able to rescue us if something went wrong, but I took a chance. One other person was onboard. He was kind of standoffish and didn't talk. We flew past a bunch of planets and moons kind of like a tour of the solar system. The planets/moons would be blurry from a distance then pop into focus with clear details. Unfortunately, we went by them so fast I was only able to get one good picture with lots of detail. I was by a big window. The pilot was flying the ship. The standoffish guy was kind of down a passage with no windows but still had sort of view out the windows where I was. We never crashed or lost pressure.

Before going to bed I had watched part of a Star Trek episode and listened to some Christian videos. Two of them talked about stepping out and taking chances when God throws something your way. Clearly, the dream had a lot of day residue in it. I was in space. I took a chance when opportunity arose while not knowing the outcome.

One way of looking at dreams is to see all the characters as an aspect of yourself. It's your dream. It's in your head. The characters come from your own mind. The pilot would be sort of a creative part of myself that pushes ahead with advancement when other fans of space are still stuck on the cost per pound to orbit "problem", a problem that is easily solved by the way. The standoffish guy would be the part of me that holds back too much. He had an amazing chance to experience the solar system but was back in the corridor/alcove and was merely looking on from a distance.

The me part of the dream was enjoying seeing all the moons and things, but there was a problem. The camera I had was big and bulky. It was about 12 inches by 12 inches(30.48cm x 30.48cm) with toggles and buttons. If you've ever seen one of those camera boxes that hunters and wildlife researchers strap to trees to take pictures of wildlife, it was similar to those. It was the reason I couldn't get any good pictures. We were going so fast, and the views were so amazing that by the time I hit the right buttons the planetary details were gone.

One way of looking at the camera is to see it as details or complications. I spent a small amount of time fiddling with the camera to get pictures I could look at later that no one had ever taken. I was doing that instead of focusing purely on the main experience. Maybe that's a dream imagery way of saying I need to stop sweating the small things and concentrate on the big picture. It could also be a way of saying that more preparation is needed for unfamiliar things. I didn't know the camera. The one good picture I got was after I had learned the camera. If I'd been properly prepared, the pictures would have been seamless and easy. Part of my thinking while working the camera was proving that I had seen all those amazing worlds. Maybe the camera was showing me I don't always need to care what other people think. I knew I was seeing all that stuff whether anyone else believed I had been there or not. Was the camera just a hindrance I could have let go of?

So, dreams are fun. On the book front I've been going through AoE sentence by sentence checking commas. I'm almost done.

Have a great weekend and pleasant dreams.

New Grammar(Comma) Rules

This was a proofreading week on the book front. For a while I've been aware of changes in grammar rules from when I was in school, specifically comma rules. Some would recommend a comma after the word while in the previous sentence. In my books I only put a comma after a leading prepositional phrase if it has five or more words or if it would be ambiguous not to use one, and I'm not changing it. Commas after a prepositional phrase is just one of the new rules.

Not too long ago I did some proofreading and light editing for someone and had to look up a comma rule to make sure I was using the modern rule. I patted myself on the back and went on. This week I ended up looking up comma rules more in depth. It's so discouraging. I had to email the person I did the proofreading for and tell her about the modern rules and how I didn't know all the changes.

So and nor are considered to be coordinating conjunctions now. So I could see. I've been using it as one for a long time despite knowing the rule against it. I don't see how nor could be one. I've never in my life used nor as a conjunction between independent clauses nor ever seen it done. It doen't make sense to me in standard or informal English. Anyway, I spent way too much time this week searching for and reading about modern comma rules. It doesn't help when I find conflicting information. It also doesn't help when a grammar book I own tells me some of it is a matter of personal taste. As long as it's easy for the reader, I can make it up as I go along.

My next book coming out, AoE, is for a young adult audience that sees modern grammar in school every day. I think it's important to use rules that won't distract them from the text. I also like the idea of not having to look up comma rules again. I'm going to have to learn all the new rules and go back and apply them to all my books. The struggle continues.

French Stuff

For a while I've been using a page count for my French reading, instead of using whatever extra time I have. I've been seeing better progress that way. Some of the books I'm reading are modern, and some are translations of things I read when I was younger. I'm almost finished with 2001: A Space Odyssey. Unfortunately, the French version I got was based on the movie and not the book, which was very different. I've been flying through it. It's so much easier to read than the Asimov and Heinlein books I've been reading. I was feeling good about myself until it occurred to me that the book has to be dumbed down for a mass audience the way newspapers are written at a lower grade level. It's still nice to be going through it more quickly.

A while back I got the French version of Heidi for free on my Kindle. Between having to look up words and not enough excitement in the story, I set it aside for the moment. I read a little more of it recently. It's a lot easier to read now, and I can read it faster than before. Unlike 2001, I know the improvement is real. I can imagine finishing it in the near term. It doesn't have car crashes or plane crashes. No one has been murdered. The goatherd boy isn't going to turn out to be a Soviet spy. Heidi isn't going to rebel and try to overthrow the natural order of things. Her grandfather won't turn out to be a retired MI5 agent who needs Heidi's help to stop an international assassin. Nevertheless, it's a classic. I'll at least have read one of the classics.

I've been thinking more about doing a language exchange. There are multiple sites where people can sign up to talk to a native speaker. So, if I want to learn French, a site would connect me with a native French speaker who wants to learn English. Part of the time we talked would be in French and the other part in English. It's all free. I could spend as much or as little time as I wanted. I could talk to a different person every night, if I wanted to. I'm not quite where I want to be with my vocabulary yet, but I'm getting close.

Have a great weekend.