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Another Day, Another Dollar

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…or a tiny fraction thereof. The dollar, I mean. It’s 8 a.m. and I’ve been working since  5, so I suppose a substantial fraction of the day has come and gone.

Visit to the Cardiodoc later this morning. That meeting, I hope, will put the whole blood pressure question to rest, once and for all. After another entire month of twice-daily bicep-pinching, the average comes to 124/74, not bad for a seventy-year-old broad who drinks a lot, doesn’t exercise enough, grinds her teeth in frustration until her jaws hurt, and most days consumes meat decorated with butter. I would like very much not to have to hear anything more about that!

Yesterday a very nice little discovery came my way: Joel Friedlander, a graphic designer who blogs about self-publishing, has come up with a whole set of Word templates tricked out as book formats for various types of fiction and nonfiction. Once you pour your copy into one of these and tidy it up a bit, you can convert to a PDF that any printer should be able to use to produce the desired trim size.

While, no, Word cannot do really top-flight page layout (largely because its fonts just aren’t up to the job), for most self-publishers’ purposes Page Layout As High Art is not required. Something that’s readable and doesn’t look like it was put together by a sixth-grader will suffice.

These things more than suffice. I’ve been putting Slave Labor into one of them and finding the task moves right along. The styles built into the template work smoothly and provide excellent consistency. It would be good to be able to insert a hard hyphen to force a line break, by way of fixing the occasional loose line (the particular template I’m using won’t allow that), but otherwise I have no serious complaints.

Student papers are starting to come in, so when I get back from the doc’s place I’ll have to kill at least part of the afternoon reading that stuff.

Two of them have plaintively begged to be told the title of the book. Uhm…it’s at the top of the FIRST PAGE of the syllabus. What part of download the syllabus, an instruction emitted three times on the first day of this online course, did they not understand?

They have an open-book quiz on the syllabus that gives them FIVE CHANCES to find the answers. It should be impossible to get less than the full ten points. We have scores of 7.3, 8.5, 8.3…jeez.

Wonder how they’ll do on the quizzes over the book’s chapters (assuming any of them manage to buy the book)? They only get three chances to get the answers right on those things.

This train of thought is making my teeth grind again. Must get up, feed the dog, and fix some breakfast.

Unstuck in Time?

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Honestly, I never thought I’d get old enough to become a fuddy-duddy. But that surely seems to have come to pass.

Yes: the age in which everything stylish, au courant, and “hot” seems foolish, silly, redundant, or downright obnoxious.

Here I am at an uptown coffeehouse, waiting to meet another blogger who happens to lurk in the Valley. Should be interesting.

It’s a young upwardly mobile hangout, the parking lot always jammed. The place is littered with young males glued to their Apples, alone in their private worlds. The Muzak is so loud you’d have to shout to make yourself heard, but that doesn’t matter because it’s one of those hard-walled, hard-floored, hard-ceilinged spaces that reverberates, so that when enough people occupy it (more than three, maybe?), you have to shout to make yourself heard above the racket of their conversation.

So far, I have yet to grasp the charm of these venues.

And I’m out of synch with these young things, even though I’m sitting here glued to my own Apple, plugged into my own private world. This may create the illusion that I’m the real thing, but…who would guess I have no smartphone? Who would guess I have no desire for a smartphone?

A few middle-aged folk come and go, mostly male. A guy in hospital scrubs. Another with a “boldly go where no one else…” look about him.

But the bulk of the clientele?

Fine young men. Brave young women. Lovely creatures of another world.

DUCK-Duck saves Day from Hell (almost)

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Well. She tried. Until a fly fell into the last few drops of cheap red wine we were self-medicating with.

She’s so, soo cute. Come 4:30 in the afternoon, she dropped into the pool (like a fly into a puddle of wine, only DUCK-Duck can swim). Ruby and Cassie the Corgis went bat-sh!t, of course. Cassie has been distracted by Ball but Ruby is still running around in circles. Anxious. A very anxious little dog.

DUCK-Duck is a calm bird. Nothing seems to faze her, not even very anxious little dogs. Evidently realizes that the VALD can’t get through the fencing between Duck and Pups. Even if VALD could pull that off, by some magical canid trick, Ducks have wings. VALD’s do not.

Today has been a Day from Hell, oh so inappropriate for a Sunday. Especially the Sunday of a Memorial Day weekend. I guess it’s because we’re not singing for the summer, unless of course we could afford to go on the European tour. Those of us who are on Social Security, who believed the Mayo Clinic would ding us for something between three and ten grand, and who are generally flat broke under the best of circumstances do not fit into the European Tour category.

By late last night, it became apparent that DropBox, the system through which we deliver services to Our Beloved Clients, had cut off the Fat Lady from its sacred services. The Kid could still access it, but to her puzzlement noted that those things I claimed I was posting to Our Current Beloved Client’s folders seemed not to exist.

A little squirreling around revealed that DropBox was quietly — very, very quietly, yea verily almost inaudibly — saying that it was “not running.”

Not running on the laptop.

Not running on the desktop.

Not fucking running.

So to make a long story short, I started working at 5:00 a.m. of this lovely, crankifying Sunday. I worked until 2:30 p.m., with one midmorning break of about an hour to gulp down some fruit for breakfast, feed the dogs, and run a  load of laundry.

Six hours of banging around seems to have caused DB to “run” on the laptop but not on the desktop.

Having been around the technological block a few times, I sensed that the damn thing was about to do quite the little number. Seeing the hundreds of thousands of megabytes that resided on DB still visible on my terminals if not on anyone else’s, I began the downloads.

Downloaded as fast as I could to flash drives (one was not enough to hold all the data, ohhh no). (We do run a bidness here, after all).

I backed up to flash drives. Backed up to the laptop’s hard drive. Backed up to the iMac’s  hard drive. The iMac backed up to Time Machine.

These processes revealed some extraordinary weakenesses in our organizational architecture: to wit, this stuff has been growing like kudzu.

Grabbed a machete and started to hack.

Reorganized and sanitized the mess on one computer.

Cloned the reorganization and sanitization on the other.

Searched (and searched, and searched, and searched) for a fix online, since as is SOP for these accursed tech entrepreneurs, no human being could be reached.

Struggled and thrashed and banged and thumped and struggled. Eventually both terminals were back online with DropBox.

Let both Bidness Partner and Client know they could access the ongoing project.

Five minutes later, the iMac lost contact with DropBox.

Just this minute, the MacBook (laptop) still seems to be in touch. But I don’t expect that to last long and don’t give a damn. Whenever I sober up (which probably will be along about 5 tomorrow morning), I will open a new account at some other provider of free online Cloud space.

Pisseth me off.

Do you know how much productive work I expected to do today?

• Download and install Scrivener
• Learn to use Scrivener
• Apply it to at least one FireRider serial installment; but
• Ideally, apply it to three
• Check on new online stoonts
• Read the several papers early-bird online stoonts have already posted
• Work on Old New Bad Novel
• Come up with some spice to replace a very boring post-adolescent passage therein
• Clean the pool
• Walk the dogs
• Socialize with the neighbors
• Socialize online

Oh hell. At least we got the pool cleaned.

I love computers. I hate computers

YoungDucksminimized

Spending Frenzy!!

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Two of my dearest friends invited me to join them on a shopping expedition to our favorite vendor of pain-free footwear, the Shoe Mill, a now venerable joint in the studenty heart of Tempe. We first chowed down at the House of Tricks, probably the best restaurant in town, IMHO — certainly in Tempe, if not the entire Valley.

Then it was off to the expensive environs of our target.

P1030497
(Click on the image for a decent view.)

I’m afraid I went completely berserk — must’ve been the wine. Or maybe the exotic dessert…  Five hundred dollars later:I love me a red shoe…especially if it’s a strappy sandal! Those things are SO LIGHT they feel like they’re made of styrofoam. You have never seen a pair of shoes that is so comfortable and so…almost unnoticeable.

They’re made by Romika, a brand I never heard of but will certainly look for again. Then we came up with this somewhat dressier number, created by Brako:

P1030501I’ve been searching for a pair of decent shoes in this color. They were originally presented to us in bright orange, which really DID look awesome. But I’d already decided to get the red sandals, and I couldn’t imagine what I could wear orange shoes with. These will go with almost everything. And they’re also extremely comfortable.

And of course we couldn’t get out the Shoe Mill without another pair of Naots:

P1030510Why stop at orange when you can have purple and red in the bargain?

The last pair of Naots I bought — which admittedly are a conservative black — have been on my feet almost every single day for the past two years and are only just beginning to show some wear. They’re so comfortable yet at the same time so good looking I wear them almost everywhere, from church and business meetings to the Costco.

So I spent a lot. But I have it: the once-a-month limit on the Costco junkets is saving so much in the monthly budget that I actually was able to cover the horrifying water-heater bill without having to raid emergency savings(!). So the $5000 in backup savings is still sitting there.

This spring has been so temperate — almost the end of May and I haven’t had to turn on the air conditioner! — that power bills will hit a historic low. Soooo…that means this month I probably can pay for the shoe extravaganza out of cash flow. If not, the raid on the credit-union savings account will be minimal.

And so, to work…

The New Writing Empire: Promising!

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Yesterday afternoon I sat down and began the project of dividing the epic (not to say “endless”…) Fire-Rider novel into chunks that can be serialized on Amazon. At the end of the day, I had 19 “bookoids,” as I’ve taken to calling them. That doesn’t count the front and back matter.

Our porn king’s bookoids, which he tries to post daily, are 5000 words apiece. Fire-Rider serials average a little over 8,000 words, with the shortest in the 5,000-word range.

To my delight, I found the book deconstructs beautifully into perfect little stories, each with a beginning, a middle, and an end. And strangely, the format seems to make the saga more interesting, more engaging. Instead of feeling like oh, God, here’s another chapter plod…plod…plod…plod, your sense is w00t! I’ve finished this and now I get to start a new one!

Rather than wondering when is this ever going to end?, you find yourself wanting to move forward to the next stage.

In the morning I talked with my graphic designer — the artist, not the e-book dude. He really likes the idea.

He feels we can use the existing cover image, which is extremely cool IMHO, as a kind of “brand” identity for the entire series and, without a lot more expense, adjust cover lines and a few graphic details to produce a unique cover for each bookoid.

This afternoon I’m going to divvy up the MS into the 19 segments. With the introduction and the afterword, the total will create 21 items to post on Amazon, but I think I also will put the intro (at least) and maybe the afterword online through Plain & Simple Press, giving me something freely accessible to post on Twitter, FB, and LinkedIn. Assuming that doesn’t violate Amazon’s ToS. If it does, then Amazon doesn’t get those two items; WordPress does.

Tomorrow — or Saturday, since tomorrow and Friday will be busy — I’ll download and install Scrivener and begin learning how to use it to create e-books. That or something like it is what the Porn King is using: we’re told he farms out some of the content production (“writing” may not be le mot juste) to freelances and uploads the things to Kindle himself.

Dang! I’m excited!

DUCK begins modeling career

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duck1
Click on the image for a much better view!

M’hijito snapped this photo of DUCK with his iPhone. How could anyone not love her?

Speaking the which, her admirer, DRAKE, dropped by the day before yesterday. His magnetic presence was enough to finally lure her off the nest. They frolicked in the pool, they frolicked on the deck, then they flew off, presumably to frolic far from human gaze.

I feared she had abandoned the nest, leaving one perfect white egg behind. But no. Before long she was back.

Windy City Gal, who has some experience with poultry, tells me that even though she seems to be attached to the nest with SuperGlue, she actually is slipping out at night to forage on small insects, grass, and the like. Particularly, WCG remarks, ducks like to eat slugs.

Ah. Now we know how our backyard was selected over all other backyards to host the DUCK family. The yard is overrun with slugs. You can’t walk around out there at night without squishing the things. The wretches fall in the pool. They eat the basil. They level the lettuce. They perform a slow-motion hora around the lime tree. In a word, after dark they own the place.

Go-o-o-o-o-o-o-d DUCK! Long may she and her offspring thrive.