Stuff Done, Stuff in Progress

“In Progress”: I have no idea whether this post will go online or whether it will stick once it does. Beloved Web guru Jesse, now constrained (by a job, of all things, poor guy!) to the weekends to perform his magic for the clientele, worked into the night to move the blog empire to WestHost and reported, sometime after midnight, that he would be spending a fair amount of today in pursuit of the same goal.

So today’s idle post may be being scribbled while he’s roaming around the site doing whatever it is that Web Magicians do. Oh well. It all goes off into the Internet Ether anyway, I guess.

Yesterday’s frenzy, the one that produced NINE major jobs all of which occupied Slot #1 on the priority list, did eventually produce a little forward progress. To wit:

1. I studied the Calibre user manual and thought holy shit! Decided to go through KDP for most of the Magnum Opuses, with the possible exception of the diet/cookbook. The cookbook has a relatively complex layout. Friedman’s user manual for the Word templates I purchased claims that if styles are used assiduously, even something with lists and tables should transfer into the enormously arcane Calibre software. But I’ll believe that when I see it.

If it doesn’t work, then I’ll have to hire my friend the e-book builder to prepare that one.

The smυt, though, is extremely simple and should fly through the process with no problem. I hope.

1. And I studied Barnes & Noble’s self-publishing tool. It looks extremely simple.

Okay, we do know looks can be deceiving, and that where things digital are concerned, 99.998% of the time looks are deceiving. But at least I have an idea of what I’m supposed to do.

1. Tina’s edits are now entered in the diet cookbook MS and some final layout polishing has been done. The thing should be ready to convert to PDFs today. The e-book conversion is more problematic; see above.

1. I realized the PoD version of the cookbook could and probably should be coil-bound, since those who don’t buy its e-book incarnation probably have in mind opening it out on the drainboard so they can follow recipes while cooking. Coil-bound cookbooks work better for that purpose than perfect-pound, because they lay flat. This is good, because it  will be much simpler to convey the cover to the Snowflake Press. So the cookbook and the PDFs for Slave Labor go over to the printer today.

1. Though I did not start a month’s subscription and start downloading cover images, I did go through all my notes (with URLs for the images already spotted) and transfer the relevant data into a spreadsheet. This little ledger will show where stock art was acquired, the vendors’ stock number for each piece, when it was acquired, what work it was used for, and when it was published. Today if I have time, I will start the subscription and begin the downloads, a chore that will take some hours.

1. Though I did not create a second mock-up cover in PowerPoint (I’ve done that in the past and see that it seems to work, but whether it gets past Kindle and Nook’s gatekeepers remains to be seen), I did ascertain that a color image converted to a JPG by PowerPoint does convert in RGB, thank God. So, if the guy who says he makes his covers with stock art in PP is right, creating covers for the p0rn will be down-and-dirty easy, since nothing very artistic is required for those.

1. And finally, I managed to add a few words to the current Bobbi and the Biker bookoid, in which BillyBob finally calls Bobbi (whose lust for his magnificent body can best be described as “overheated”) and invites her to go line dancing at his favorite country-Western sh!t-stompin’ bar. This should be interesting…

 Today I’d like to start with a sample chapter a prospective contributor sent over. Looking forward to reading that more closely — took a brief look at it yesterday but became swamped with yesterday’s frolics, which occupied almost every living breathing moment until about 9:00 p.m., when I crapped out. So probably that will be priority number one, after a bunch of Life Maintenance chores:

1. DONE Feed dogs

2. Check pool chemicals, restore balance; clean pump pot; backwash if necessary; shock-treat if necessary.

3. DONE Pour vast quantities of Bayer Tree & Shrub evil chemical around the paloverde and climbing roses in attempt to damage and kill off as many evil paloverde borers as possible.

The “beneficial nematodes” that I bought from Arbico last fall and this spring seem to have helped some, but another dozen of the monsters emerged from the ground, meaning hundreds if not thousands of root-eating grubs reside under the surface, where they’re working at killing the magnificent paloverde that shelters the west side of my house from the blast-furnace afternoon sun. Seeing their exit holes (which go about 18 inches underground), I got the idea of pouring borer-specific insecticide directly down those holes, on the following theories:

a) the fertilized females often return to their hole to lay their eggs…laying the things in a bug-killer infested hole can’t do the babes much good; and

b) applied in this way, the liquid will go directly down to the level where the damn grubs are chewing on my tree’s roots and presumably, by capillary action, soak into the soil where the little horrors reside.

4. UNDER WAY Wash and dry the bathroom rug and the puppy-dirt-collecting rug by the side door. Clean the dirt out of the washer and utility sink (a larger job than it appears, involving use of a shop vac and repeated running of the endlessly annoying washer’s “rinse” cycle.)

5. DONE. Find a place to store stacks of notecards indexing research for Boob Book. Get that stuff off the family room desk so the desk can be dusted!

6. Read contributor’s creative work; respond in something that resembles a coherent manner.

7. Upload Slave Labor to Snowflake Press.

8. UNDER WAY Write back cover copy for print version of diet/cookbook.

9. Upload diet/cookbook to Snowflake Press.

10. Continue writing the latest installment of Bobbi & the Biker.

11. Get to the 36 unread emails on the server.

12. Write job description for proposed intern, in connection with internship/apprenticeship initiative planned by members of Scottsdale Business Association.

How exactly I’m supposed to explain to some college internship coordinator that candidates must be 18 years of age but preferably over 21 remains to be seen. Oh well. Tomorrow’s another day.