Waiting, Wizards and Welcoming Change

The word of the week is convergence.

Oct 6 - It's In The Air

I get the feeling change is coming.

Exactly what I mean by that, I'm not certain. At least, not yet.

Things are stabilizing in my life, here and there, enough that I can appreciate each good thing that comes into it more than I might have a few years ago when my eyes were too busy to really take things in properly. I'm thankful to be were am right now, for my close family to be here with me and for my many friends who have remained in my life despite my somewhat inattentive ways over the years. Not that I'm a terrible friend, but it's hard to keep up with people when I'm so far away from the vast majority of them.

I could ramble on here about the vagaries of friendship, of the necessity of close relationships in one's life or the way that social media has changed the way that people look at both of those things now. But I don't think that I need to right now, nor do you, my readers, need to hear another diatribe on the subject. At least not one from someone who's not put enough thought into it before speaking on the subject.

Things are changing. I think that's good and for now, that's enough.

Oct 7 - Invited, Plus One!

I finally got an invite... to buy a phone, that is.

For six months now, I've been trying to get an invite for the OnePlus One, a highly-desirable but hard-to-get cell phone out of the USA. Because OnePlus is a small company that only started selling their phones earlier this year, they don't have the capacity to take thousands of orders a day - hence their 'Invite' system, where you are ONLY allowed to purchase a phone if you get an invitation.

Said invites have to come from current OnePlus One owners, via the Forums hosted by OnePlus and as you can imagine, there's a lot of competition for invites: they're usually gone in seconds, not minutes. So it's been a tad frustrating for me to swing and miss, so often.

The phrase 'Never Settle' is one I really like.

Why do I want a OnePlus One, anyway?

Because the phone is touted as a 'Flagship killer' - its specs are comparable to the best phones out on the market today, but for hundreds less than said flagships, which is music to my wallet. There's a solid article here comparing the specs of the OnePlus One, the Galaxy S5 and the HTC M8, all three of which I've considered getting these last few months as my S3 continued to frustrate me. You can also read some enthusiastic reviews which speak glowingly of the OnePlus One here; lots of people really, really love this 'budget' superphone.

At last, tonight, I managed to snag an invite! I had popped onto the OnePlus Forums as usual, for a few minutes a day, hoping to spot a little-read or brand-new thread with Invites being offered. As luck would have it, my eye was caught by a thread titled 'Canadians Only' and I hurried in, learning that the thread owner would give an invite to the first Canadian to msg him - so I did. As it turns out, I WAS the first!

After doing a jig around my apartment with a silly grin plastered on my face, I sat down and ordered the OnePlus One, luckily having already set the money aside for this fortunate occurrence - not a dollar more, either, as I refused to consider going back onto a contract in order to 'afford' an S5 or M8… nope. Never again.

My new phone should be here next week, in plenty of time for me to configure it to take along to NYC with me. Two wonderful invites rolled into one!

Oct 8 - On Writing

Research.

That's what I'm doing at the moment, sadly, instead of writing further chapters on Book Two. Ever since I was thrown for a Feedback Loop( since recovered from )last month, I've been reluctant to return to writing Book Two, which I think has to do with my perceiving my 'world' isn't ready for prime-time yet.

Which is a good thing.

Writing's a business, more so in these times of Amazon and ebooks than ever. Gone are days when writers emerged from their Writing Retreat either to get more food or, more rarely, mail a manuscript to their agent, who handled all the Complicated Stuff to do with licensing, publishers and trivial things like royalties or film rights.

The modern writer has taken on a lot of the tasks that formerly fell to agents or publishers, which in itself isn't a bad thing: the more aware a writer is of how the real world works, the better the effort they'll put into their work in order to make it rise above all the other stories out their vying for the ever-stretched attention of John or Josie Public.

It's even harder for self-published authors, who have to do all of the footwork themselves. All the same, there's a huge upheaval in the industry right now, ever since Amazon's ebook strategies fundamentally shifted how book-buyers parted with their hard-earned cash. It's simple nowadays for people to make a few $3.00 purchases, expecting their books to be of a decent quality comparable to what they'd find on any reputable bookstore's shelves. Which is why I'm in no hurry to release my own books until they're of that quality.

Or better.

Oct 9 - Bye Bye, Boob Tube!

Today, I cancelled our cable - again.

We're fully, totally cutting ties to Shaw this time though, as $150 +tax per month is just too much money for what we're using. I watch maybe an hour of TV a week, have TV shows clogging my PVR that I'll never find the time to watch and barely use the local phone 'included' in the bundle we have as my Vonage phone suffices for all my long-distance needs and the rates / minutes are actually superior to Shaw. Leaving just the internet, which I've had at Shaw's $90/month rate for a few months now and grown to like for the speed, both upload and download.

Back in the early 1990's, finding an ISP was easy, as there were many local outfits that provided internet services of all kinds: you just had to know what you wanted and compare prices. Then cable internet came in and the rest was history, including most of those smaller ISP's, who couldn't compete price-wise or feature-wise.

There's still some independents out there though and I've decided to go with one of them, after researching for many months now. Lightspeed.ca, based out of Vancouver, offers excellent rates on internet packages comparable to Shaw's speed-wise, for about half the cost: impressive. Reviews of Lightspeed have been good for the last year, so I decided to take the plunge today after a deep breath. Amusingly, the Shaw rep who took my call didn't say a word to try to keep me, as nice as he and I both were, which surprised me. Goodbye and thanks.

My budget should be $100/month fatter from this point forward and I'll put the time that I could have wasted channel-surfing to good use writing instead. Definitely a plus on both counts.

Oct 10 - Two weeks!

I'm still waiting for the good word.

As of today, Friday, there's been not even a hint about who's received one of the five permanent positions at work. I had hoped that the higher-ups would at least give us an 'announcement date' but it looks like they've opted instead for playing this one close to their vests. From what I've heard around the office, this is normal for government positions, so as to ensure people keep working efficiently in their last few weeks - the theory is, people who've been told they didn't make the cut will slack off or even 'forget' to show up for work, which I can understand but not sympathize with: my pride won't let me do that.

On to happier things though: in two weeks, I'll be in New York City!

My passport arrived this week, all crisp and fresh, which was the last piece of the trip missing. My flight and hotel are booked, I have the area map downloaded( and marked ), my ticket to the showing of The Dark Crystal is purchased and I've confirmed with The Henson Group that I'll be attending the reception. I love saying that!

Oh and for my phone, I'll be using one of these while I'm in the States:

I wish I'd known about these cards when I went to AZ last year, but since they only work on unlocked cell phones, it wouldn't have mattered much since I just had my locked-to-Telus Galaxy S3. Eking out a wireless signal in AZ in order to check out local features was a real pain and didn't work out all that well, so having a solid data package my whole time in NYC will be a welcome relief. Yelping local places to eat, spots to see and the like is infinitely easier when you have the information right there on your phone screen.

It would have also saved me from getting heatstoke, if I'd known where to walk.

Oct 11 - Working Soundly

Saturday night: costume time!

It's not what you think though: tonight I spent over four hours working on my Halloween costume for this year, which is actually a carryover from last year when I didn't end up wearing it for various reasons.

Admittedly, these are g33kier than my costume

That's a good thing though, as this year's version will be even better, thanks to the work I put into it tonight. The majority of my time was spent using audio editing software to sample and various voice clips that I will be using in conjunction with my costume. I had hoped that I'd be able to reproduce the character's voice on my own, but as it turns out the vocal range is just too extreme for me to reproduce satisfactorily. So I'm just going to take a page from my Book Of G33k and use a technological solution to provide the proper audio for my costume choice. I'm really pleased with how it's turned out and apart from a couple of minor details, I'll be ready to go in a week or so, plenty of time.

It also helps that I've already received an invitation to a party this year - huzzah!

I should also mention I wrote part of this blog entry today at Moka House, sitting out on the patio and enjoying the intermittent sunshine in the albeit cool breezes that started blowing in around 3pm. The whole time, I was wearing my Parrot Ziks and was the happier for it: a few seats over, there was a girl who was a definite contender for Most Annoying Laugh of the year. I can't fault her for enjoying her time with her friend, but oh my… her infectious giggles of joy could have cut glass with their frequency and volume. I have to say her friend must have been a true one, to put up with that all the time. Slipping on my Ziks however, I just dialed up the volume and wrote to blissful sounds of my own choosing: even such a piercing laugh became background noise, easily ignored as I concentrated on other things.

Did I mention I really love it when technology works properly?

Oct 12 - Thanksgiving Magic

We did 'dinner' in style today!

A few weeks ago, I saw that The Empress Hotel would be holding Thanksgiving Dinner… as well as a Thanksgiving Brunch! I wanted to do something special this year - other than cook dinner - and though the 3-course dinner wasn't our thing, brunch has been a family tradition since I was a kid. We used to go out to all sorts of places to 'test drive' their brunches and whittle down the list to a few spots we'd come back to every month or two, most( all, actually )of which have closed their doors long since.

The Empress though; we've never been, any of us, so brunch it was!

We arrived around 10:30am, a little early, but the staff seated us right away. We were in the front section of the Empress room, which is a colonial-style dining area with 30 foot carved-mahogany ceilings and a magnificent view of the Inner Harbor. The room wasn't crowded, with only a half-dozen tables altogether and two of the walls lined with magnificently-set buffet tables, thusly:

So. Darn. Elegant.

The staff were very attentive, instantly whisking away empty plates or being at hand for unneeded drink refill; I even had someone poor my tea for me today, for the very first time. I kind of enjoyed it.

The brunch itself was more elegant than I had expected, with wonderful foods laid out to enjoy yet not anything I would call to excess. Along one wall, there was a turkey station, naturally, a roast station, about a dozen chafing dishes accompanied by brands, fruits, and other breakfast delights. The other wall had various roast vegetables, a wide variety of salad makings and of course, a large selection of desserts. It was all wonderfully fresh and perfectly cooked and the smell of the room was indescribably delicious.

That's my dad: try a little bit of everything...

Needless to say, my family and I enjoyed ourselves immensely, spending almost 2 hours in one another's company in the magnificent elegance of The Empress Room. We all ate our fill of the delicious foods, with the delicately-cooked salmon and an incredibly light mango mousse being my personal favorites. It was unquestionably the most satisfying Thanksgiving that we have had in Victoria to date and even before leaving, my parents had already decided we would come here again at Christmas.

For brunch, of course.

In the evening, I watched Oz: The Great and Powerful, which actually grew on me the more I saw of it. I'd seen bits and pieces a few times before, but tonight I needed something to pop back to now and then while writing my blog or doing other things. Amazingly, I found myself sitting and watching for long stretches at a time, which doesn't usually happen with a movie I wasn't really into the first time around. I think some of the elements of the film must have clicked in my head since I saw it last in the spring and tonight, I enjoyed it.

Tomorrow's a holiday, which I have off: hooray! I'll be doing some writing and relaxing, both in copious amounts and both likely indoors, as it's going to rain all day. Just being able to do as I please of a day is a welcome change, I must say. I'll have to see about getting more days like that into my schedule...