Advice, Animation and (Almost) Done Drafts

The word of the week is pernicious.

April 28 - Life Is Dirty

Advice is often free, but doesn't have to be cheap.

Especially if that advice comes from someone with a little experience in the subject. And in terms of subjects, the one that's been on my mind a lot of late is work - as in, doing something you get paid for by other people, whatever their work may be.

Mike Rowe knows a little about working for living from the bottom up. He used to host the show called Dirty Jobs which was an eye-opening as well as amusing look at jobs some people do that most everyone else wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole - or gloves, for that matter.

Shovels and suits aren't often seen together...

In a recent interview, Mike had some advice to give for people that he'd gleaned from his down and dirty experiences. What he had to say was rather illuminating and very simple in it's concept, yet difficult for most to both accept and implement in their own lives. I had a good think about what he had to say and I believe that I'm on the right path, but I'm definitely not all that far long compared to some who have embraced the concepts he spoke of.

Go have a read and decide for yourself if some good, dirty advice will clean up your life.

April 29 - Living Cheap

Victoria is not getting any cheaper as a place to live, comparatively.

The latest study to look at living wages in BC shows that - no surprise - it costs still more this time around for people to make ends meet.

In Victoria specifically, the stats show that a family of four( two parents and two young children )need to have each of the parents earning close to $19 an hour employed full-time in order to provide a minimum standard of living to each of the family members. Considering that houses here in Victoria cost on average a half a million for a two bedroom detached, this isn't an unreasonable hourly rate, all things told.

The problem is, all the jobs that are advertised here are for minimum wage or close to it. So there's a gap, a large one, between advertise jobs and what's actually needed to live on the other side of the Debt Wall. Which, if you don't know, is where consumer spending and debt get to wrestle to see who can make the economy all better again. At least, that's one of the popular theories; myself, I know that I'm much more inclined to be a happy little consumer spending money if I don't already owe it all to somebody else, plus interest.

Where I'm going with this is somewhat oblique: what I really want to say is that I've reduced everything I can in my life to minimal levels of material consumption without going into a monastery or living on the street - hopefully doesn't come to either. So all I need to do is to bridge that wage gap in order to start getting ahead in life and I think it's high time that I did so, considering that I've been working for 20 years now and have very little to show for it financially or professionally.

I do know I'm not going back to being a professional clown; the shoes are a real pain!

 

April 30 - Progress!

I went in for the job interview today!

It's a government clerk position in downtown Victoria that pays almost twice as much as what I'm earning now at Staples. It would involve answering phones, entering data and generally doing a lot of the things clerks do, which beats the heck out of trying to deal with retail customers and silly management practices most days. Seeing as this was the first call for an interview I've had in a year, I'm extremely excited!

The interview was after lunch time today and ran about 20 minutes. I was extremely comfortable and confident answering the interviewer's questions and felt extremely positive when I left. They told me that I should know within a few weeks about the position, which although is only a temporary six-month contract might allow me to transition into other positions within the ministry.

Next!

So if you're reading this, wish me luck in the job game!

Speaking of games, catching up on Game of Thrones has been fun so far, as the third season is quite enthralling. As usual, Peter Dinklage( playing the character of Tyrion ) makes for fascinating watching whenever he's on the screen. Apparently he has quite a few fans, one of whom is so taken with the actor that they created a ring tone as an homage… Which is now MY cell phone's ring tone! Enjoy:

May 1 - Finished The Third Draft! (almost)

The heavy lifting is done.

It was a long process of working every week this spring, but at 8:27 PM tonight I finished the third draft of my novel.

That's not to say it doesn't still need some more polishing, but I won't be going through it line by line again. From this point on, I'll simply be doing the small stuff like checking for logical errors in plot points, inserting necessary bits and pieces here and there to enhance the story and generally checking it over for consistency.

Meaning that in about a month or two, tops, I'll be sending out solicitations for agents. By then I'll have a solid idea of who I want to send samples of the draft out to and a much better understanding of the process involved in that. I'm certainly not naïve enough to think that the very first offer I get will be the only offer, nor should I fear too much of being taken in by unscrupulous agents, of which there are many out there. It's going to be a slow, possibly tedious process where I feel my way along the darkened hallway and tried words as I go along to see which ones lead to where I need to go next.

Oh, and I'll be starting work on Book Two by this summer. :-)

May 2 - YO JOE!

I love shared nostalgia.

A bit of an explanation first: If you haven't heard about the show Community, you're not alone; I haven't heard about it before today myself. And I probably wouldn't have cared, except that I heard through the g33ky grapevine that tonight's episode of Community was going to be animated… And not just animated in any old-style, but done with loving attention to exactly imitate the old G.I. Joe cartoon of the 1980s!

Isn't fandom great?

Tight Ship, G.I.Jeff, Three Kids, Buzzkill and Fourth Wall - yo joe!

The episode was fantastic, especially given that I'm not familiar with any of the regular cast who lent their voices to the characters in the show tonight. Their story was extremely well-written and had all the perfect little touches to make it feel like it was a new episode from the TV screen of my youth - bravo! Twisted by the show's writers of course, but great all the same.

While I can't show you the entire episode due to the wonderful world of Internet censorship, I can give you a brief snippet: the parody of the infamous Public Safety Announcement that was attached to the end of every G.I. Joe episode and meant to help kids understand that violence was the solution to any problem( how's that working out for you, America? ). If you're at all familiar with the PSA's from the cartoon, then you'll love this clip:

May 3 - Shield me...

Yesterday I caught the late showing of Captain America: The Winter Soldier - in 3D, no less. I've been waiting two weeks to go and see it and I have to say, that I enjoyed it as much as I did The Avengers, though for different reasons. Apart from the obvious political message encapsulated in the main plot line of the film, the characters were all perfectly per tray by their actors and we got to see a lot of nitty-gritty action instead of world-destroying panoramas, which I appreciated. There was quite a lot of explosive eye-candy which I thought went on a little bit too much, but if they had the budget for it, why not spend it, right? I'm sure it'll look good when I freeze-frame it on the Blu-ray purchase at a discount sometime in the next year or two, assuming that Blu-Ray discs are still around, that is…

Also on the topic of obsolescence: I haven't been playing very many video games at all of late. By that, I mean I haven't played any sense late last year and that's been bothering me a little. I have an Xbox 360 sitting unused with a small library of titles as well as a whole bunch of PC video games, both installed and in disc form sitting in boxes on my shelves, also unused.

What I'm wondering is if I'll ever get around to playing them again, considering the states of my wrists. Lately my left arm has been really bothering me and my right lower-palm isn't so happy either; my suggestion that they both take a hike and find me some substitutes didn't go over well. I'd love to be able to just pick up the controller or slide a mouse around on a whim to entertain myself, albeit briefly, but that's just not feasible unless I want to exacerbate my tendinitis.

It's also not helping me along towards my goal of becoming a professional bodybuilder, but that's beside the point. I just want to be able to again enjoy the games that I love and unless I learned to play them with my feet, it's not going to happen anytime soon. Fooey.

May 4 - You know the line

Happy May the 4th, Star Wars Day. See last year's blog entry for details.

While it wasn't quite the same weather as you might find on Coruscant this week, it's warmed up considerably and being in the teens all week here in Vic. Most of the blossoms have fallen from the trees and everything is in full-on growing mode, with long shady streets of rustling leaves making every view one of vibrant green.

Yes, it really IS that beautiful here...

It's also made for some fantastic sunsets this week and the one above is typical of what have been turning up of late. There's also been a fair number of rainbows, including doubles and I'm thinking that all this together means that spring is just really glad to be here finally.

And, I'm glad to be here too; I ran out of energy last night working on the blog and woke up at 1:30am after nodding off somewhere before midnight - hence the Monday-morning update this week. Goes to show that I had a busy week finishing the third draft on my days off and running around like crazy when I was working at the day job, so there wasn't any extra energy for me to spare between the two and it caught up to me yesterday. I simply don't remember falling asleep, it was like a switch was flicked and I went out on the couch.

But, the benefit is I was able to do a read-through of my blog this morning and catch quite a few minor errors, which I do the day after most every week as a matter of course for my blog. Dragon's still not as accurate as I'd like, so I'll have to train it even more thoroughly before I start Book Two shortly.

This week I have 4 days off( yay? maybe )so I'll be taking things a little easier as a 'reward' for hitting my self-imposed Draft Deadline of May 1st - cue cheering! As always, feel free to browse the previous blog entries on the left side column, or to leave a comment below...