Who Needs Role Models?

I’m doing the proof edit of my book, this is my last chance to fix typos or correct errors.

Naively, I thought there wouldn’t be very many because I’d already had my draft copies (written in Pages and converted to Word) reviewed by me, two tech editors, my acquisitions editor, my development editor, my copy editor, and me again.

HOLY SHIT! was I ever wrong.

You see, whenever the copy editor made a change to one of my headlines, that resulted in crazy stuff happening in the Word conversion. Interestingly enough, I wasn’t seeing it in my copy of the .doc files, but when it would get to the production department, they’d be left with headlines that read such things as:

I know, I’ve ranted in here about email before, but seriously, the messages I receive sometimes send me around the bend. In the last week or so I’ve had the following (paraphrased) gems:

• One man asked me for some help in building a complex website. He sent his first message on day 1 and when I hadn’t had a chance to answer it, he sent it again on day 2. I finally responded to his question suggesting an answer and that if he had more specific questions, he should post them to my forum. Over the next 3-5 days he sent me numerous more questions, and if I didn’t respond within 24-hours, he would resend the message. Finally, after getting tired of answering his questions (he really needed to take a class on how to use a computer before he’d be able to build a basic website, let alone the complex one he wanted to build) I just stopped. After four days of no answers from me, he started over. Yes, he sent message 1 (which I’d already answered) to me again. Messages? Meet the spam filter…
• I got a long (LONG!) letter from a man who wanted to build a complicated photo-submission website. He seemed to have a good idea of what he wanted but no understanding of how to do it. I was getting ready to ignore his message when I saw that at the end he asked me if I knew anyone who could help him. Phew! I sent him my “hire someone” spiel talking about RFPs and Freelance Switch. He wrote back saying thanks. This one was unusual because of that thanks. Most people never respond at all.
• Then I got an email from someone asking a bunch of questions that indicated that he really had no clue how to use the interwebs or describe his problem. The questions were along the lines of “I tried for 2 hours!! to read your email, but I couldn’t open it. Um, buh? How the heck should I know what is preventing you from opening an email message? And telling me how long you flailed blindly at it doesn’t improve my chances of figuring it out, but it does improve my ability to ask the last question you asked—“Do you have to be a computer science major to understand this or am I an idiot?” Uh, I’ll take answer B!
• So, then Mr. Idiot answers my reply. His way of saying thank you “wow! I didn’t think I’d get an answer!” does not inspire me to great heights of desire to answer more stupid questions from him. Now he wants to know why my article doesn’t work on his web page. Of course, he doesn’t include a URL. Unfortunately my psychic powers are on the fritz, so I ignored that message.
• He emailed again today, this time with a URL, and to tell me that because of my site 2/3s of his entire site is gone. I think he also mentioned that he spent 16 hours working on it. Maybe I’ll answer this one, um let’s see… [DELETE].

Here are some tips if you want to get an answer from me by email:

This is a “podcast” or audio recording where I’m trying out doing an audio recording of my thoughts.

What I notice is that when I was staring at the computer it was very hard to talk, as I kept getting distracted by the machine.

Some things I talk about:

• idea for an article on Webmaster tools and Google analytics
• working on editor reviews and my plan to create a video of my favorite web editors
• thoughts about a new(-ish) category of web editor—the WYSIWYG editor so people don’t need to know HTML at all
  • should I create a separate evaluation of these editors?
  • do customers make a distinction between WYSIWYG editors and “development” editors?

Here are all the finalists in the NPR Science Fiction and Fantasy Vote for 2011. As I finish them I’ll put a ✔ next to them along with the date I finished. If I write a review, I’ll link to it. If you’re curious which ones I’ll be reading for a second (or more) time, I’ll indicate that with a ☞. 1632, by Eric Flint✔Started August 13, 2011 Finished August 15, 2011 ☞1984, by George Orwell ☞2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne The Acts Of Caine Series, by Matthew Woodring Stover The Algebraist, by Iain M. Banks ☞Altered Carbon, by Richard K. Morgan ☞American Gods, by Neil Gaiman ☞Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman Anathem, by Neal Stephenson Started August 15, 2011 ☞Animal Farm, by George Orwell The Anubis Gates, by Tim Powers Armor, by John Steakley ☞The Baroque Cycle, by Neal Stephenson Battlefield Earth, by L. Ron Hubbard ☞Beggars In Spain, by Nancy Kress ☞The Belgariad, by David Eddings The Black Company Series, by Glen Cook The Black Jewels Series, by Anne Bishop ☞The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe ☞Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley Bridge Of…

It’s stupid how I fall for giveaways so often. When the reality is that they are done solely so that the blog or site owner can get more readers and more comments. They have no interest in you as a person, and are most likely going to give their products away to people they know (either IRL or because they’ve posted lots of times before). They may also give away to people who write the most “heartwarming” response. But of course, they say that they’re giving them away to a “random” person. The nice thing about Goodreads is that they don’t say it’s random. They even say that people who read and review books of a similar type are more likely to win. Unfortunately, giveaways end up making me feel bad. In one case, I commented for the first time on a post because I wanted to tell the author that I really liked her post. Then I realized it was a giveaway post as well (I hadn’t read that far) and wanted to remove my comment, as the fact that the post was a giveaway made it seem like I was posting some lame “I like your site” post just to get the crappy lavender chatchkies she was sending to “one lucky reader.” Whatever. In other cases, I think I have a good chance of winning something, either because there are very few posts, or there is a large number of prizes, and when I don’t win I’m disappointed. I’m reminded of the contests About would have where the person who wrote the most content in a month would win. The first one they did, I was on fire and submitted like 20-30 new pieces of content. This was easily 3-4 times as much as I normally did in a month. Of course the winner a) didn’t have another job and more importantly b) wrote about 20-30 glossary entries A DAY. In terms of word count or character count, I probably wrote just as much as s/he did. But because s/he spread it over 600+ one sentence pages means that s/he won. This was over 10 years ago, but it sticks in the head. Of course, staff saw this contest as a huge success and so held another a few months later. And no one in the computing channel competed. We all (or nearly all) had other jobs and couldn’t waste our time on contests we had no chance of even coming in third or fourth for. At least that was the reason I didn’t bother. Our editor was very disappointed. I’m sure that another giveaway will come along tomorrow or next week that I’ll really hope to win. And maybe I’ll have the strength to think “no, don’t bother” as I don’t need more stuff anyway… But I suspect that my willpower will be weak or the thing given away is sooooo cool that I can’t stop myself. All commenters to this post will receive a FREE copy of my eternal goodwill. :-) Of course, you’d get that if you comment on any of my posts.

Every dog I’ve ever owned came from the pound or a rescue organization (okay, Homer might not have, but my parents got him before I was born, soI don’t think he counts). But wow, trying to get another dog now that I’m not likely to burst into tears at the though of Shasta has become, ahem, challenging. Some of the challenges:

• every rescue I’ve found lists their available animals on Petfinder. This isn’t a challenge by itself, but it means that you have to use that system to find a suitable animal. And because most of the rescue organizations at best make guesses regarding breed, age, health, training level, whether they like kids or cats, etc. The data is, ahem, suspect. I can’t tell you how many dogs I’ve looked at after searching for “cat-friendly” dogs, narrowing it down to 7 or 8 animals, and having the description say “this dog cannot, under any circumstances, go to a house with cats”. I finally gave up using that search parameter, as it was useless. Same goes for the “young children” parameter.
• just like when we adopted McKinley, there is a huge “application” you have to fill out to even meet these dogs. It’s annoying to me, as I’m sure I’m instantly put on their mailing list (well, instantly in the form of whenever they get around to reading their mail. They don’t let me see any animals or even answer my mail, I just get added to the mailing list. (I’m betting on this, I have no proof, yet)
• but the rescue places are all staffed by volunteers so they don’t have a lot of time to read or respond to email, even if their site says “you’ll get a reply within 72 hours” I figure this must mean hours on Jupiter or something.
• the aforementioned application includes tons of questions about your home, lifestyle, vet, trainer, groomer, etc. which is fine, but so far 2 out of 3 have required references, one required four references - including how long they’ve known you and in what capacity, and they can’t be relatives. (because, I suppose, we all know that Aunt Mary who has been with me and my dogs all my life might be biased and give me a good review, while my co-worker Sarah, who barely even knows I have a dog wouldn’t be…

I just wish it were a little easier. I mean, when we got Shasta, we just walked into the pound, saw him, decided to play with him and his brother, then decided to adopt, filled out the form, paid the fee and went home with a dog. When we got McKinley from Rescue Pup, I found him (on Petfinder), asked to see him, met him, filled out the application, they came and visited our house, and we adopted him. It took more than a day (because of the home visit) but definitely no more than a week. I’m currently on week 3 of trying to find out more about Hope, Darla, and another dog who’s name I’ve now forgotten. I got an answer immediately about Darla, saying “you sound perfect, please fill out an application” so I did, and then nothing. I didn’t get an answer about asking to see Hope until today and all it said was “please fill out an application” when there was nothing on the Petfinder site about an application or anything. I had to dig around to find what I think is the correct application. And finally dog #3 they haven’t answered yet (that’s the one that said I’d get an answer within 72 hours - Jupiter hours, I’m assuming). I would go and adopt from Rescue Pup again, except that all they have are blue heelers, which they won’t place with kids. Since I remember what Brendan’s pant cuffs were like (they are called “heelers” because they bite the heels of the cattle they are herding, and if they don’t have cattle, they bite the heels of the children they are herding), I don’t blame Rescue Pup, but it is annoying because I understand that about that breed. What’s sad to me is that the difficulty I’m having makes me want to go to a breeder. Do you know of any “mutt” large dog breeders I can visit? Luckily the pet store that we go to only gets drop-kick dogs in their puppy consignments, so I’m not tempted to go there to get a dog. But man, if they had any large dog puppies (great dane, mastiff, great pyrenees, akbash, shepherd, wolf hound, etc.) the only thing that would probably stop me is that their prices are insane. So, hopefully my application for Hope will be considered, and maybe I’ll be able to go visit her later this week or this weekend. But I’m not holding my breath.

So, I just finished reading 1632 by Eric Flint last night (from the finalists list). This was a book I saw on the shelves when it came out but I passed it by for several reasons, including:

• I’ve never been a fan of alternate history
• The idea of knights mixed with pickup trucks seemed ridiculous
• And I just didn’t think I would like the book

But I couldn’t have been more wrong! This book was very fun to read. The characters were engaging and I cared what happened to them. The fact that it was set in 1632 was an interesting historical backdrop, and I wanted to learn more about the 30-years war. For example, I didn’t realize that Cardinal Richelieu was a real person. I just thought of him as the villain in “The Three Musketeers” (yes, the Errol Flynn version, I haven’t read the book). The stated goals of the people transported to 1632 Germany were ones I could completely get behind. They seemed like people I would enjoy having as my neighbors. I loved that they decided immediately to draft a constitution and that they did not immediately wall themselves off from the rest of the world. I’m not confident that is what would really happen, but it’s nice to think that it could. Some of the things I didn’t like:

I was reading an article yesterday about how facial recognition is getting so good that there are apps being built for cellphones that can identify random strangers from photos (taken as you walk along with your cell phone). The article was bemoaning the fact that this was a “further invasion of our privacy” and that pretty soon nothing we do would be private. I then moved on to another article that talked about how Google(?) was working on an algorithm that could evaluate the writing style of someone online and make a good correlation as to who actually wrote it. Even if the author had posted anonymously or with a pseudonym. The article was bemoaning the fact that this was a “further invasion of our privacy” and that pretty soon nothing that we do online would be private. But is this idea of “privacy” such a good thing? Ultimately, what it really is is the idea that we can go out in public or online and be anonymous. And some people see anonymity as the same as the freedom to do anything they want. And as we saw in London over the past few days, anything they want seems to cover a wide swath of things that most civilized societies consider wrong. Some examples of things anonymous people do:

Very happy to report that I now am getting both Analog and F&SF delivered to my iPad. The layout is somewhat hard to read in the default mode, but I quickly switched to one column viewing for a better experience. The first story I will read is by Robert Reed. You may be wondering how this will fit in with my goal to read all the SciFi finalist novels, and that would be a good question. To answer let me say that I am easily bored. So if I am slogging through an otherwise good but long book (Matter, I am talking to you!), I can now take a break with a shorter story to mix it up. Plus, I have been reading my dad’s copy of both these magazines for thirty years, and I want them to keep publishing, so I feel I should support them. And both magazines digitally are less than $5 a month with tax, so it’s a great deal. If you have a Kindle or a computer that can use Kindle apps, I recommend getting these magazines. They (along with Asimov’s, which I am debating getting too) provide great short speculative fiction. And now I must return to reading. I have a lot on my list. Status: page 164 of The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. Who has a story in the F&SF I’m reading too.

I have decided to read or re-read all the books on the list of finalists for best Science Fiction and Fantasy from NPR. I just finished Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre. This is one of the first science fiction books I remember reading and re-reading. I know I read others before this one, but this one really stood out in my head as something really interesting. Mark was laughing because my copy (most likely from 1978 when it was published) was tattered and worn. Because I’ve read it so many times. Today I’m starting The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. This is another favorite from childhood. I’ve read it easily as many times as Dreamsnake, and I’ve of course seen the movie several times. 1632 should be coming in the mail in a few days. I requested it in a swap on Goodreads, and I’m trying to find 1984 in my collection.