life is great!

Here is my sad face

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I must go home to an internet-less apartment. It will be beer, books, and maybe a DVD.

God! How do people live this way?!?!

Amazing coincidences!

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So, Wednesday after work I discovered I couldn’t connect to the internet at home. This was annoying, because I have writer-type crap that needs doing, but hey, it happens. I called Qwest tech support and after nearly an hour and a half I was told they’d traced the problem to my modem. I was entering the username and password correctly to connect to the ISP, but the modem wasn’t retaining the info (or something). They could access my modem, but I couldn’t get the internet.

Obviously the solution was to buy a new one, which I did. It wasted an hour and a half (notice the trend) of my evening, but I went out and bought a new Qwest-compatible wireless modem. ($90!)

When I brought it home to install it, guess what? Same. Exact. Problem.

After another long call to tech support (you know how long it took) the guy informed me that, by amazing coincidence, my brand new modem had the exact same problem as my old one. AMAZING! Go back to Best Buy, I was told, and exchange it for another one. And see if you can get them to test it right there in the store.

And… fine. I don’t believe them, but fine. I’m not going after work today (because I have a life[1]) but I will be going first thing tomorrow. So long, most productive writing time of the week! I will have to reschedule you, because I have to fix my fucking internet connection.

And if this doesn’t work, Qwest is out. I’d hate to lose the email address I’ve had for years but I may not have a choice. The main problem is that I don’t have any other really good options. The cable ISP in my area is Comcast, and those bastards are the ones pursuing the lawsuit against the FCC about packet-slowing. To hell with them. What other choices do I have?

::Shakes fist at corporate tech support::

Best Buy provides the email address for the manager of the store I’ll be visiting tomorrow. I’m going to drop him a line to let him know what’s going on and why I’ll be there. I’m sure Gary Mylie will be overjoyed.

[1] Not really

This doesn’t work

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This is one of those complaining posts, because sometimes shit just doesn’t work out. There will be one positive note included at the end, just so you don’t think everything in my life is petty annoyance. People who hate to read griping should skip to the end.

First: My modem at home has died. I emailed a link to myself from work at 5pm. When I got home at six, the email was there, but I couldn’t connect with the web. After more than an hour with tech support, they decided that I just need to buy a new modem.

I’m counting that time as my “cleaning” time for yesterday. Grrr. Today I need to take a bus clear across town to buy a replacement. Maybe that will be my… I don’t know. Maybe I can’t follow my guidelines today.

Second, after a night of leg cramps and nightmares, I completely overslept. I hate oversleeping, especially on day-job days, because that’s my writing time. So not only was I nearly an hour late for work, but I have written nothing today.

Third, (just to bury the lede) I may be losing my day job. It’s not an ideal job, but I need to be part time on these particular days, or I can’t work here. The company is “reorganizing” (iow, trying to drive out a union for a different dept) by combining all its call centers into one. I will go from being employed by a non-profit to a state employee, which means I’ll be doing the same job, but starting over as a new employee.

That means: new benefits, six-month probation, loss of accrued sick time, an end to my retirement plan, new bosses, new office, new co-workers, etc. Will I still be part-time? Will I keep my same shift? That “hasn’t been decided yet.” They still have to “examine the work flow.”

Did I leave my wife alone in upstate NY to deal with all this family crap because I didn’t want to lose a job I was going to lose in two months anyway? Shit.

Anyway, here’s the upbeat news. I’ve received permission to post Chapters 2 and 3 of GAME OF CAGES online. Chapter 1 is already here, of course, but the next two won’t go onto the internet until closer to completion date (especially considering the work I have to do to get them ready).

I just put my wife and son on a bus

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They’re headed downtown to connect with the Link light rail and then on to the airport. My mother-in-law had a medical emergency today. I’m not going to give details because it’s not my place, but my wife threw a bunch of stuff into a rolly backpack, grabbed the kid by the ear and lit off for upstate NY. I’m not sure where things stand, but I hope it all turns out all right.

Me, I’ll probably be following on Saturday morning, if the state of emergency is still ongoing. Until then, I’ll be doing what needs doing to leave this place for a full week, namely: paying bills, cleaning, drinking heavily.

It’s a plan.

Today is my wife’s birthday

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I won’t be online very much, I expect. Have a great day.

Discolored skin

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On Thursday, my color inkjet printer finally gave up the ghost. It had been iffy for a long while–the paper feed hasn’t worked correctly for years–but if finally started chewing on the paper, and when I reached in to clear it, it sprayed multi-colored ink all over my hand.

I didn’t wash it off quickly enough, either, and I still have weird colors on half my left hand, 36 hours later.

Worse, I no longer have a color printer. The truth is that I don’t use it much; my black Samsung laser printer is great, relatively cheap on a per-page basis, and super reliable. Is it worthwhile to drop a couple hundred bucks on a replacement? We don’t use it often, but we do use it. Not to mention an expensive vacation coming up and a looming (and equally-expensive) family emergency coming up. Dunno yet.

On another note, while waiting for a bus yesterday, I saw a homeless man with a really alarming look about him. Judging by his features and reddish-brown beard and hair, he was a white guy, but his skin was a blotchy purplish-gray. The internet suggests he might have an excess of silver, but at the time I was worried he’d fall over dead right there.

The dreaded “nice guy.”

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Today’s writing session was cut short by a “nice guy.”

As I’ve mentioned several times, I usually do my writing out of the apartment–fewer distractions and it helps to get my work finished if I have a set time I have to stop. There’s a Starbucks close to my house that I used to visit all the time, but it became a pain in the ass. A lot of folks with serious issues began hanging out there. Sometimes they would carry on loud conversations in that small room. Sometimes they would do wound care right there next to me. It was distracting and gross.

Today I thought I’d give it a try again. Unfortunately, someone sitting nearby decided that he and I should have a pleasant chat. He kept trying to start a conversation with me, even after I told him several times that I was sorry, but I’d come to work and didn’t want to talk. It would go like this:

“Nice computer you have there. Apple right? Is it an eye-something? A MacBook?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, but I can’t talk. I really need to work.”
“Work? You’re working, huh? I got my Master’s degree at the University of Minnesota. Where did you get your Masters in Computer Science?”
“I never said I had a Masters in Computer Science.”
“Oh, so insurance or bank, huh? Which bank do you work for? Wells Fargo? B of A?”
I don’t answer. Three minutes of silence.
“You get movies on that thing? What’s your favorite movie?”

For an entire hour. He managed to keep a wide-eyed and polite tone through the whole thing, almost to the end, as though he was being perfectly friendly and polite. But there was something off about the guy. I still managed to meet my small word count goal, but not my usual Sunday goal. I’m not going back there again.

Also, yesterday I received a really crazy PM on LiveJournal from a complete stranger. He was trying to enlist me in this project to do something nice for a Third Party (who shall remain nameless). If this had been a quick “So and so needs X. Would you like to help?” I would have been tempted. Instead it was 800 words of how Third Party irrationality and inability to make sensible decisions, and how Third Party wasn’t letting the stranger offer the necessary help, so stranger wanted to do it through me as a proxy.

Ugh. It was creepy as hell, and a perfect example of the “nice guy” who thinks they’re entitled to steal someone else’s agency because they know better and they’re being caring and polite about it. It didn’t have the undertones of a criminal looking for a mark, but it made my skin crawl anyway.

This morning, in the Starbucks, the creep eventually became irritated with me. “I’m trying to be nice, here!”

“No you’re not!” I answered. He looked surprised. “I’ve been asking you not to interrupt me while I work, and you’ve been interrupting me anyway. That’s the opposite of nice.”

(added: Sadly, I’m pretty sure this isn’t parody.)

Whoa.

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One of the items up for auction on the Do the Write Thing for Nashvilled flood benefits is a lunch with Miss Snark!

I know! Bid here.

So far, the auction has raised over $53,000 dollars to benefit flood victims in Nashville. And I still haven’t heard back about the books I offered.

Under the heading “Good News”

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I am informed by Reliable Sources that the Delivery and Acceptance check from Random House is on its way. Yay! Man Bites World is now officially turned in. All I have left is title it, review the copy edits and galleys, plus whatever promotional stuff I have to do.

I feel unemployed.

Randomness for 5/10

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1) Holy cow, but this is amazing. And here’s some poster art.

2) Miranda and monologuing.

3) Creating the sociopaths of the future.

4) A teeny murder weapon. Weirdly, I was going to show this to my son, but he’d already seen it. My little boy is growing up.

5) A personal remembrance of Frank Frazetta, in two tweets.