Stray Thoughts

It could be bunnies!

It’s almost Easter. Where did the time go? Still writing. Still working on the newest part of my ‘Yucatan Job‘ series.

A side note – for those wanting a taste of Yucatán culture – there’s a cooking show on PBS ‘Pati’s Mexican Table‘ and in Season 5 Pati Jinich. the host, spends time exploring Yucatan and cooks Yucatecan influenced dishes.

Rick Bayless, in his cooking show ‘Mexico-One Plate at a Time‘, also on PBS, spends time in Yucatan.

Two different approaches/shows. Pati visits with more ‘ordinary’ cooks while Rick spends times with “Chefs” before cooking.

Fanfic, NaNoWriMo

Almost that time again!

9 days until NaNoWriMo 2016 starts. Not ready yet but I do have an idea or two.

  • Continue my Glee Space opera – The war begins. (Though I haven’t posted last years side story yet or even finished posting the year previous (2014) – 1 last chapter of that to go – this weekend. Maybe.)
  • Something completely different.

And maybe, this time, I’ll post it here as I go? Just the “ugly draft” Yes? No?

Blogging, Stray Thoughts

Slow? Or is that just me?

Might be time to move to a faster hosting server. Granted, it seems to be only WordPress generating that first page that feels slow. When the server does other things, like backup of the blog or other things, it responds okay.

Or I need to start using this one more, considering it isn’t free.

Ideas, NaNoWriMo

Halfway there

Only 6 months until NaNoWriMo 2016! What am I going to write this time? Another part of The Yucatan Job? The Big Honkin’ Space Gun Episode?

Or something completely different?

I’ve got 2 chapters of the current part to finish, and then that side story (from NaNoWriMo 2015) to clean up and post.

 

Life

Long year…

So, it’s now April. And I haven’t finished posting last year’s epic from NaNoWriMo or started editing the next one. Hopefully I’ll have both done before NaNoWriMo 2016 but I’m not too confident. Real Life is getting complicated, and not just work.

Also, I need to keep this blog up to date. I’m paying for it, need to use it. Or cancel it.
And I’m thinking of posting my 2011 NaNo fic The Dragon Hunters Daughter to AO3. I wanted to turn it into a real story but that might never happen. And the other story I’m using it with (exerpts) is stalled because it required too much rewriting to make sense in that way.

Fanfic, NaNoWriMo, Stray Thoughts

NaNo Survived

Made it through NaNoWriMo 2015. Though it looked close there for a couple days. Managed to hit the minimum ten minutes before the end.

Can’t say it’s very readable. Gonna take months to turn it into a “real” story. But it’s done, and I’ll be busy with real life things for the next month or two first.

NaNoWriMo

NaNo-slow…

So, today we’re at Day 18 – 60 percent of the way. Unfortunately, I’m only at 30 percent myself. Not looking good. Ugh.

That’s the most I’ve been behind in the last five years. Don’t know if I’ll catch up.

NaNoWriMo

In the NaNoWriMo-bary

Yes, it is that time of year again. November – National Novel Writing Month.

This year, I’m writing (attempting) a spin off/side story to my in-progress Space Opera – The Yucatan Job. And then NEXT year I’ll finish things off with the action adventure/massive space battle conclusion. Just needed to do something different this year.

But things are off to a slow start… 4 days in and I’m already behind. Not insurmountable but not where I should be. But moving forward.

Blogging, Life, News

State of the Blog

Just a quick one – The hosting provider I use (Yahoo) is spinning off their web hosting services starting this month. Not sure how that is going to affect this blog other than who bills me. If they increase the $$ by more than I’m willing to pay (I’m already overpaying considering all I really use it for.) I’ll be shutting this blog down and moving it elsewhere (Keeping it WordPress probably since I can export the whole site easily and move it). Not sure about keeping the domain name in that case. Probably should move that elsewhere also.

We’ll see. Too soon to tell.

My Profession, Programming, Stray Thoughts

Rambling thru August

I’m not a huge Windows user, except at work. 85% of my work days are spent using Visual Studio doing something with C#. Coding, fixing bugs (usually other peoples in some legacy app), enterprise back end stuff. Rarely UI/UX unless it’s a bug in something.

(I’m actually working on my first new coding project of the year. Heavily UI based, though I’m following a design by someone else. Fun stuff. CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, etc. things I don’t get to do very often for work projects except when bug fixing.)

The rest of my time is spent in Outlook or other office tools. With the occasional foray into things like Balsamiq or LinqPad.

At home? I’m heavily invested in the Apple ecosphere. I’ve been a Mac use for over 2 decades. OS X user since 10.0. And an iOS user since it became available.

I’m not looking forward to Windows 10. I don’t have any issues with Windows 8.1 (at home) and Windows 7 ( at work). After all… Visual Studio works just fine on them. I can just ignore the minor  nits in 8.1. Why change now?

Life, My Profession, Stray Thoughts

One of those days

Ugh! Office politics!

Ever have one of those days where you do your job as requested, but someone else above you or in  a different department thinks you shouldn’t have done it that way? Maybe you inadvertently stepped on some toes you didn’t know were there? Because this job ‘task’ intersected with their ‘spear of influence’ ?

And now, you wonder if you’ll have a job the next day? And should you be polishing your resume, after 20 years working for the same company (in assorted roles) ?

 

That as me when I got home from work yesterday. Feeling the unemployment avalanche headed my way.

Not a good feeling. Maybe I’ll win the lottery and it won’t matter? I’ve got enough in the bank right now that I could spend 6 months job hunting. Not that I want to. I like what I do, just not the politics than I’m suddenly running into (The tech lead in my group left a couple months ago, with no replacement in sight, and now I’m getting hit with their stuff in addition to mine. Maybe this was why they really left? Office politics making it impossible to do their job? Just a wild guess.)

Stray Thoughts

Halfway

Beginning of July. 2015 is half over. Yeah?

Going to be busy work wise this summer. Not going to be able to take vacation time in August like I normally do. Too many things due this and next month. Maybe in September/October? We’ll see.

But still writing. Trying to get something done for the 2015 IDF. 

Stray Thoughts

Now in progress

I’ve started posting the next installment of my pseudo-space opera, The Yucatan Job – written for NaNoWriMo 2014, to both AO3 and Ff.Net. Posting frequency? Approximately 1 chapter per month, as I revise it (It was a bit incoherent/messy towards the end.).

AO3: All the world’s a Stage

Ff.net (entire series in 1 fic) : The Yucatan Job Book III

At this point it’s looking like there will be a side story between Book III and Book IV (tentative title: The Battle for Earth ) though it may not be written any time soon. Or it might be my NaNoWriMo 2015 novella. Not sure yet.)

Just over there