Rockets, Ramsey and Return Of The Jedi

The word of the week is depreciation.

June 4 - Why Buy New?

Buying used technology has been a mantra of mine for years, moreso because I balk at paying full price for products I know I can get for less elsewhere and else-when, for that matter. Used cars, older video games, computer hardware or cell phones that are a year old… all cost a LOT less than buying new and usually work just as well. I've felt the urge to have cutting-edge tech less and less as I usually don't have a full grasp of what I can DO with it right off the bat… or in the case of video games my current tech can't run it at full speed anyway. Why buy a game for $70 right at release when I can get a used copy for less than half that price in only a few months? I love to surf sites like Kijiji, UsedVictoria, Craigslist and RedFlagDeals.com to search for bargains and giveaways… heck, FreeCycle.org DOES have people giving things away that are perfectly usable! You can also head out to garage sales or swap meets locally… the possibilities are many and the costs low… why buy new, if depreciation costs so VERY much, I ask?

June 5 - Fan Pics from the desert

While I count myself a Star Wars fan( I've been one as long as I can remember )some people go FAR above the call of duty… without being slavering fanboys. Such is the case for a small group of fans who, back in the 1980's, traveled over TEN DAYS into the desert to find the secret set where Return Of The Jedi was being filmed. Incredibly, they FOUND it… AND were allowed to STAY! George Lucas told them they could film all they liked as long as they kept beyond the security fence and didn't interrupt the filming process - absolutely amazing compared to modern sets with private security forces and lawyers on standby. Here's a slideshow of what they found… and below is the video they took!



June 6 - Goodbye, Ray Bradbury

When I was a young boy in grade school, I devoured books; not literally, but I read everything I could find that was science fiction and later added fantasy once I discovered Tolkien. I remember finding a book called 'R is for Rocket' that was filled with SHORT stories… by Ray Bradbury. These were smaller flights of fancy more easily digested by a young reader, and I was hooked on the format. Ray( I feel that close to him )had a wondrous way with words, simple yet so powerful. His stories have stuck with me my whole life; 'A Sound of Thunder' introduced the consequences of time travel to my mind and it's never left. I think what I liked the most about Ray Bradbury though, was that he never lost the ability to just be a kid… and to a kid, this was a revelation: that a famous, successful author could STILL allow himself to just have fun. I've held on tight to that part of myself as well, and I have Ray to thank for it.

June 7 - Words…

This week has seen some positive gains in writing my novel. The backstory is really taking shape, with lots of ideas pouring in from my muse and creating a lovely balanced structure for the plot, characters, setting and more. I've re-worked Chapter 3 into a MUCH larger chapter and made inroads into Chapter 4, which should see our first look at the society of the invaders, from within. Putting it all together is very slow though, as I'm trying NOT to edit things as I go, just to GET them onto the page. Ideas keep percolating and turning into solid story bits, so getting those all down and shuffling them into a shape that supports itself is not easy. I am happy that the ideas are flowing so well, especially as they're not derivative or uninspiring… I just have to hammer the overall plot into place to know where I'm going and that's taking the most time.

June 8 - Out with the New, In With the Old

Over the years, I've sold, recycled or tossed a fair number of things. But I have held onto most of my favorite video games despite the problems they have running on modern systems. Even sites like GOG.com don't have some of my true favourites, like Klingon Academy, which came out in 2000. No amount of tweaking on my part could make it work once XP vanished from my PC's but I kept it still, hoping. It seems my yearning was shared by others, as a small group of folks over at KlingonAcademy.com have tweaked, patched and otherwise made the game perfectly playable on modern systems, under Windows7 even with multi-core CPU's( always an issue with old games ). Now Klingon Academy plays smoothly and has barely any hiccups whatsoever. It's better than it was when I first played it on my old Pentium system with barely 64 megs of RAM - sweet! I'll have to spend a little time in the next few months checking up on some of my other older games, to see if similar groups have managed to quietly make them work again with their coding magic.

June 9 - Writer's Conference and Meg Ryan

After spending the evening out last night at the local Beagle Pub, I was up early today to attend an all-day Writer's Conference hosted by my recently-made local friend Matthew. It was at the Ramada Inn here in town and went from 9:30 until dinnertime, with a break for lunch. I was one of a dozen people there, all of us writers( obviously )and we all got along quite well for the entire day. Matthew presented quite a few things to us, concepts that perhaps some of us hadn't thought of and on topics that we were all interested in, for becoming author's and successes. He answered questions as we went along and I found myself taking copious notes, as there was a lot to think about that I hadn't yet discovered in my own researches as well as spending time with the local Victoria Writer's Group. It was a day well-spent and apart from my shoe finding some fresh dogflop on my lunch break( it was a BIG dog too... *sigh* )the entire day was a total success in my eyes.



Too bad my wrists hurt enough by day's end from writing that I couldn't do much work on my novel in the evening, apart from picking at a few ideas as I could manage. I ended up watching a good portion of You've Got Mail, which is amusing for its 1998 tech as well as for the expressions on Meg Ryan's face… her OLD face, not the new post-surgery creation that bears little resemblance to the lovely one she had back then. As a quote from her 1994 movie When a Man Loves A Woman says, she has "600 different smiles" - so far, I've only seen 156, but I never get tired of trying to spot more in her movies.

June 10 - Cooking Success

There were a half-dozen back-to-back episodes of Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares on BBC Canada today, which I had going in a PiP window as I wrote. I find the UK episodes of the show FAR better and more honest than the sensationalized and dressy US series which plays up the drama far too much( like a reality show, in some ways ). One thing I was curious about was if ANY of the restaurants portrayed in the UK series were still open; it's been five or six years since the episodes aired and I wondered if some had survived or even prospered. I found this list of restaurants listed by season for the UK and the US and I was pleased to see some HAD survived: Momma Cherri's especially made me smile to see that they were still going. Sadly, most of the places had closed or been sold, though a little looking showed that some of the owners had re-opened new places to go on to better things. I find the UK series a refreshing look at the honesty that restaurant operators HAVE to have with themselves in order to be a success, which can apply to any walk of life, not just in a commercial kitchen. Take your lessons where you find them.

I worked on and off on my novel today, but the words weren't flowing nearly as they did on Friday; the few bits I did get down felt in no way related to the chapter as a whole, so it was a creative bust today. I did manage to get some computer gear going, but the one 'found' computer stubbornly refuses to give me a picture despite a new power supply. So I messed around with my home network today and managed to double the wireless speed, added in a secondary router and got my media server running - briefly, as I think a hard drive failed after an hour. Meaning it's back to the drawing board tomorrow - I'm done.

Tendons, Tech and Temptation

The word of the week is practical.

May 28 - Science Fiction

Tonight I was at my writer's group meeting, with a special guest speaker I had arranged to have there. Ben Coles, author of The Virtues of War, is a local Victoria author who self-published his book to critical and financial success. He gave us a wonderful two hours, speaking on his experiences as a new author and how his road took him from his initial draft all the way to having his novel on store shelves. It was extremely interesting to me especially, as the journey he took parallels my own to come as my novel progresses - I have a lot to learn but talking to someone like Ben makes me less fearful of the unknown road ahead. Ben also runs his own self-publishing company, so I have that resource to draw on in the future should I choose that route. E-publishing was also part of the discussion, which did a lot to de-mystify the subject: having an eBook doesn't hurt you in any way and can really boost the sales of your traditional book, according to Ben. It was a great, informative evening and I feel very privileged to have had Ben there to speak to us with good news and valuable tips from his experiences.

May 29 - Two for the price of Free!

In the last few days, I've been trying to get my 2nd PC working, with no success. It's a cheap old P4 that I've scrounged from eBay along with some old parts I've kept for just such a thing. It will be my 'media server' PC, that I can shove old spare hard drives into and use to serve TV series, movies and the like to the TV, as well as music... all that and probably some network backup too. I've been looking forward to having a 'spare' PC to play around with and given that I have a few terabytes of old hard drives here, there's no shortage of space to work with. Of course, I have to get the thing working first... and tonight I did, after discovering ALL my efforts were wasted: I looked inside the case to discover that the twerps at the factory had FORGOTTEN to hook up the power button's cord! ARGH! Such a simple thing and it cost me days of head-scratching... and this case is from Zalman, a company KNOWN for it's fine cases. To have them mess up such a simple thing is almost unbelievable.

Know what the irony of all that is? Today I found TWO complete PC's sitting out by the back dumpster, completely intact! One was missing the power supply, but otherwise they EACH still had their CPU's, RAM, DVD-ROM's and TWO hard drives each! I rather giddily hustled them inside and after dusting them out, I powered up the one - it ran perfectly AND even had Win7 installed! I'll as like end up wiping them and selling them on eBay for fifty bucks or so, but still... it boggles my mind that some people just toss things like these out, in perfect shape!

May 30 - Space Command is go!

The old space TV serials are a little before my time, but I can appreciate the contribution they made to getting science fiction into the mainstream. I loved Flash Gordon's adventures, so the idea of a new similar series making it to the screen in this modern age was rather appealing to me. Imagine my delight when I heard that a Kickstarter project with JUST that ideal in mind recently found itself fully funded in just 3 days - huzzah! Space Command is a series idea that springs from the mind of Marc Zicree, who has extensive credits working with television and science fiction in general including Babylon 5. He is a huge fan of the old space serials, like Space Patrol, and wants to create a series that is positve and hopeful of the future while having fun with some drama for spice. Check out his video pitch for Space Command, it's great:



May 31 - Happy Early Birthday, Mom!

Dinner tonight was with my family at the Waddling Dog Pub in Saanich, as tonight was All-You-Can-Eat Pasta night! Being part Italian, this spoke to me on many levels… I was just too busy eating to reply. We were out tonight to celebrate my mother's birthday two days early, as my dad had to work the next few days and it would have been impossible for all of us to have dinner together in the evening otherwise. Just like the last time we were there, the pasta was dimply delicious: we were able to add in any of two dozen ingredients as well as a dozen spices to make each dish exactly suit out tastes. And the portions! We needed two hands to hold the metric ton of good food that was served up; I was hungry for a change and STILL had to take half home with me! I can well see some people slipping into food comas eating this much… but I was merely pleasantly full and enjoyed the company of my family even more.

June 1 - Summer's Here

It's been a LONG time since I mentioned BACON in my blog, for various reasons. As some of you may know, I love bacon a LOT… and I don't like coffee a LOT. So I had to really stretch today when I picked up a Bacon Latte at Moka House Hillside - Bacon yay, coffee not so much. The fact that I got it for a dollar was icing on the cake: as part of a FBook promo, any drink was a dollar! Which was good, as the bacon latte… wasn't. It tasted very strongly of coffee and had no bacon-y taste I could detect; I was rather disappointed. Seeing as it was the first coffee I'd deliberately had in several decades, I was glad to be having it in the afternoon so as not to affect my sleep. Which it didn't. Bacon = zero, coffee = zero. Dang

Also on people's minds lately is the weather; it's rather cool here for late May and now early June. It brings to mind 'June-uary' back in 2010, which was rather cool as well - local news channel CTV ran a story about it this week. Brrr! 

June 2 - Day Out And About! 

Today turned into a total day out unintentionally, which was great. I did breakfast at the Blue Fox with my friend Kevin, then headed out of town to Langford to spend a few hours people-watching at the Starbucks on Goldstream. The sun was shining and a ton of people were out thanks to the good weather. I visited my mom for a few hours as well, as it's her birthday today and I'm again thrilled that she's still here to enjoy it given the crazy events of the last year with blood clots and the like. 2012 could have been a VERY different, sadder year...

Later in the afternoon I saw The Avengers for the second time and enjoyed it just as thoroughly. A lot of smaller details stood out this time around, as did the humour - the Hulk stole the show again. The shawarma scene at the end was still just priceless and well worth sitting through all the credits. You can really see on the screen all the effort that has been poured into the film and I'll enjoy it again a third time when I pick it up on Blue-Ray before the end of the year. High-Def Marvel goodness, yeah!

June 3 - Torn by Tech

It's so cool, but do I have a use for it?



I love cool technology... and yesterday I spotted the above laptop at Future Shop on the way out to see The Avengers. It has TWO 14" touchscreens instead of the normal screen-keyboard layout, which got my attention. What made my fingers twitch was that it was marked down from $1,199 to $699 ... $500 off - gah!! All day long today, my mind whirled with the question "What can I use it for?" as it usually does when I see tech I haven't come across before... and sadly, I couldn't find a solid answer. There is NO compelling reason for me to jump on this deal( aside from the still-hefty price )apart from simply looking cool while sitting in the local coffee shop. Which would get old fast, especially as the thing is easily twice the size of my current ASUS TF101 tablet, which DOES have an actual keyboard and so makes it comfortable to type compared to tapping on a screen. Much as it pains me( yep )I had to set aside my g33ky wants today and let the Needs dictate my actions... while making a mental note to keep an eye on eBay for the next few years to see if any of these Acer units pop up!

I slept in fitfully today, as I've rather tired for some reason of late. My arms have begun hurting again as well, so this week I'll be digging DEEP into all I can learn about stretching and recovering from CTS - I am tired of being unable to type more than a few hundred words an hour while in pain. I'm willing to suffer for my novel but not to the point of crippling myself into a state where I have to learn to type with my toes.

Burgers, Books and BrockU

The word of the week is graduate !

May 21 - BURGER DEAL!

Oooh, a discovery today! While I despise karaoke, I found out that a local dive( "restaurant" )called Soprano's has a special EVERY Monday night that just can't be beat: $5.00 for a burger, beer AND fries. Yes, that's right: a 'complete' meal for FIVE BUCKS. My sister and I checked it out for dinner tonight after a long day. The place is literally a hole( well, door... )in the wall. Inside, it reminded me of The Lion Tavern in Port Dalhousie: a bar that someone put together out of leftovers from other bars, painted brown every other year and replaced the TV's showing sports games when they burned out. I was surprisingly comfortable there, but perhaps that's because it was mostly empty. Also, the burgers were HUGE and tasty, probably due to the 'extra' bacon and cheese we each had( adding $6.00 to the total ). The beer was a house draft that went down well and the fries were both plentiful and tasty, in good portions. In the end we were both stuffed and the bill came to $17.50 after taxes... least expensive dinner and drink I've ever had. While we won't be back any time soon, we WILL be back, as a deal this good can't be passed up too often before it's gone. Unbelievably, they made CraveOnline's Top Ten Canadian Sports Bars… which is why I won't frequent the place, as sports bars AND karaoke together make my brain ache.

May 22 - Voices

Yes, voice acting is still on my 'career' horizon; again, it's something that doesn't have a built-in age limit to it. Heck, Stan Lee is STILL narrating things! So far, I've discovered that the best part about voice acting is getting to work with OTHER voice actors. When you line up a whole bunch of top voice acting talent like Billy West, Tara Strong, Maurice LaMarche, John DiMaggio, Kevin Conroy, Jess Harnell and Rob Paulsen at a convention - it's magic! Especially when they're reading the ENTIRE script to Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope!



May 23 - Creative Thinking

You can put in all the hard work you want, but if you have the imagination of a doorstop, then you're going to plateau sooner or later. On the other hand, creative folks often lack the nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic that Gets Things done; I fall into this category some days as it can just seem like too much. Even so, I do manage to get a fair piece of my mundane day-to-day challenges finished. These past two weeks of moving have seen a lot completed domestically, but creatively it's been a bust, especially thanks to my friggin' arms - burning cables do not a comfy typist make. But I AM persevering and typing a little every day... even when my creativity ebbs low. One way to help get the creative juices flowing, to paraphrase an old metaphor, is to think outside the box. Five Embodied Metaphors That actually Foster Creative Thinking looks at five phrases you've probably heard a hundred times each, REALLY looks at them, to extract the useful truth that often hides in such simple things.

May 24 - What a difference a week makes: Degree?

When I last spoke to my adviser at Brock, she said she'd get back to me "in a week or so" - a month ago. I had been putting the thought of finishing my degree on the back burner as I said last blog post, so I was surprised to get a call today from her. She said she had some news…

I have already qualified for my English degree, she said to me.

Stunned, I gabbled out something like "That's nice. Really?" and tried to get my brain into gear to listen to her. Apparently since I'd last attended Brock back in the day( circa the year 2000 )they had eliminated( in 2011 )the language requirement, which is the only thing I was lacking. Current degree requirements were all met, she said; all I needed to do was to apply to graduate this fall… for a mere $35 and I didn't have to attend, if I couldn't.

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My smile nearly split my face all morning. I'm going to be a university graduate, at last!

Take that, naysayers… good things DO come to those who wait. Or procrastinate while attending the School Of Life. With that thought, here's Neil Gaiman giving an AMAZING speech to new graduates; HE never graduated( or went )to university either! :-)



May 25 - My feet and the street

Walking is going to be a big part of my daily activities for the next few months, at least until I can get access to an outside locker to store my bike at. I live within 30 minutes walk of almost everything I need here, which is one of the main reasons I wanted to be in the Fairfield / Cook St area. I refuse to take public transit for several reasons, in the main because I am cheap and my feet can get me most anywhere given that the weather here is excellent for walking almost every day. Once I get my bike relocated I can venture further afield, but again walking will easily take me to what I need close by; a bike will just make it faster and right now I don't need speed, I need exercise daily.

Today I walked almost ten kilometers, to get to various places - I have to plan ahead a bit, which I like anyway. I've been diligently using Endomondo to track my walks, so that i can get a solid grasp on how MUCH walking I'm doing in a week or month. One thing that's frustrating is that my phone( HTC Desire HD )tends to stutter when playing music while doing other things( like running Endomondo )so that's been a struggle - taking five minutes at the start of every walk to set up Endomondo and music and wait for the GPS to lock makes me wonder about when I should next upgrade my phone( when my novel is done sounds good! ). Still, just HAVING a phone that can do so much is wonderful as it cuts down on all the gadgets in one's pockets - so I'll learn to adjust to things, for now. Though I do covet the new Samsung Galaxy III...

May 26 - Yoga?

Eurgh. I couldn't fall asleep easily last night for some reason, probably due to the lingering excitement about my degree - still! So with barely six hours of sleep behind me, the kids above me pounded out of bed well before 7 am - yippee. They kept running and pounding and dropping things, so I dragged myself to the front room and endured it for an hour with earplugs, then headphones. Just when I couldn't take it anymore, my sister suggested I join her for yoga up in the Skylounge( as I am calling it ). I've never done yoga before in my life and while it was relaxing, the pain in my arms kept me from fully embracing it - for now. I can see it becoming a fairly regular part of my life, as I badly need to both relax AND improve my flexibility.

For the rest of the day I battled a simmering anger, which I knew was wrong but my lack of sleep kept me from dispelling totally; even a furtive nap didn't help. So I went back up to the Skylounge and wrote for a few hours, alone but for a few passing birds in a place with NOBODY on the floor above and with a view of the city, mountains and sky there at a glance. It was glorious. Soon, I will have worked out how to easily get some internet connections up there on the cheap; right now I am talking to Shaw about their EXO WiFi service, which would see FREE wifi for all the neighbourhood Shaw customers 24/7 if I can wrangle it. That'd make me very happy too!

May 27 - Being Elsewhere

The joys of living with kids… I feel like the ones in the apartment above are my own, since I'm up when they're up. I listen to them run around the place, drop things, jump off couches… touching, really. But since I can't take so much joy so early in the mornings, well before 7am, I am planning on being up and elsewhere well before then. Probably the SkyLounge, with a portable breakfast of some kind and my ASUS tablet so I can get some writing done instead of focusing on the various ways that I don't like being woken rudely.

 

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Since this was the second day in a row I'd had less than 6 hours sleep, I felt bleary-eyed and lethargic all day; even a short walk didn’t help. I didn't game online, I didn't do much around the place save read and take a much-extended nap during a quiet period above - boring, but that's all I had in me. The evening was more exciting, in a way, as I watched The Goonies( got it for $4.00, new! )with my sister for a nostalgia kick. What was GREAT tonight was that I FINALLY got to see the brief deleted octopus scene as one of the bonus features! And boy, was it cheesy, but that's what I expected. I still loved it. After, I watched a stellar episode of The Simpsons entitled 'The Book Job' which by chance was ALL about the business of writing… AND it had NEIL GAIMAN in it! I'd say the universe today was trying to tell me something, not subtly either. My arms are feeling better with a week's worth of mostly-rest, so I'm going to try to type more than a few paragraphs this week and see how it goes. I'm not comfortable talking to my computer, despite what you'd think, so being able to sit and type in my own unique half-trained way is very appealing to me. Catch you next week!

We're fairly well settled in at the new place now, so this week I'll make some time to take some decent pics of the place. My sister's interior design skills have really made it seem like a home, I think you'll agree when you see the images!

Darkness, Degrees and Difficulties

The word of the week is steadfast.

May 14 - Connections

I've been offline, save for my phone's connectivity, for most of last few days. Today I took the time to hook up my network gear, which surprised me by working fairly well spot-on right out of the box. At my new place I have a 25mBps connection, which is MUCH faster than what I had before; I'm more excited about the upload speed which should be 10x's my old limit, great for using online storage and other services. What I'm most pleased about is the deal I swung for cable TV and internet: for a total of $30 / month, I get basic cable AND the blazing-fast internet bundle guaranteed at that GREAT price for the next two years! Considering I was preparing to pay twice that for JUST internet alone, I am thrilled to bits... if you'll pardon the pun.

Moving: yesterday saw a TON of things removed from the storage unit, with less than half remaining today. So it was my dad and I taking two loads to Victoria, as my sister in still in Seattle until tomorrow. We managed fairly well, with me doing minimal lifting, though I can push things just fine, like a balanced loaded dolly. By day's end all that was left was the artwork, which is both heavy and large - so large that it won't fit into our van. I spent the rest of the evening unpacking as best I could.

May 15 - Doubly So: Just Moving thoughts

Today's the middle of the month, when we would have normally taken possession of our new place. Thanks to a very generous building super, we were in as of the 11th and have had 4 'extra' days to move in - I'm always astounded by the generosity of people I encounter and never take it for granted. The extra few days, along with moving from my parent's place, have meant that we didn't have to scramble to get everything done within 24 hours before the doors were locked behind us. It's still been a LONG week so far…

I rented a U-haul van today for a single trip to Langford and back to the storage unit. What I hadn't counted on was just how HEAVY the art was; between the large 72"x58" frame and the almost-as-large mirror was probably 200 lbs. My dad and I struggled to get those to the loading platform on the dolly, but were stymied as to being able to get them into the van itself. I had thought to roll the dolly right into the van, but the size of the art meant they had to be slid in sideways. Luckily another storage unit customer was there and helped us easily move them all into the van; kindness of strangers! Once we were in Victoria, we were again surprised with help, as my as-yet-unmet upstairs neighbour chatted us up as we arrived and offered to help us in with the art - again, amazing! Once that was squared away, we went up to my parent's place after dropping off the rental van( total cost: $40.57! )and loaded up a lot of odds and ends. That took us into the late afternoon and we finished up to go pick up my sister from the ferry after dinner.

May 16 - Degrees

Sometimes everything happens at once. Having left my job of nearly 12 years, I was eager to put the bad experience behind me and move on. One thing that came up recently was my returning to school for my degree, something I have put on the back burner for a long while as a pipe dream for when I had both the time AND money to do so. For the past few weeks I've made inquiries at UVic and Brock to see about finishing off my mostly-complete degree. It made sense to look into it, as I'm not working and have the time… sort of. Thinking about it, I'm not certain it would be a good idea, as I'd be taking a lot of time away from writing my novel to complete a degree that would have little impact on my life personally or professionally. So for now, it's still shelved… but not as far back as before, when I thought it would be almost impossible to budget for it. Maybe in 2013? We'll see.

Moving: today was my 'Techie Day' when I assembled and connected all my tech gear: TV, computer, xbox, DVD player and all the rest. While there's fewer cables now than there were in my setups even 5 years ago, there's still a LOT to be sorted. One thing about technology: it moves fast, so there's always new types of connectors, power-warts to plug in, etc. By late afternoon I had it all tested and working again, with everything in it's place. Just having my computer again was great, making it seem more like my home.

May 17 - The Boob Tube Lives?

I'm of two minds when it comes to having TV at my new place here. On the one hand, it's cheap entertainment at the push of a button without having to leave your home. On the other, it's SO easy to flick on the TV and lose hours of your day to non-creative activity, if you can call it that. I have hundreds of hours of shows on DVD( only partially converted to digital on my PC )plus dozens of movies, so I can't say I'd be bereft of entertainment if I didn't have cable. I was prepared to do without, and now I have TV with dozens of channels… tempting me away from productivity. Maybe I'll just lock the remote into a box with a timer set for 8 hours and see how that works out…?

Moving: still lots of running around today, helping my parents with shifting things around at their place( minimal lifting involved )as well as assembling a bed frame they had in storage. Still collecting bits and boxes of things like kitchen foodstuffs and other things tucked into corners and mixed in with stuff that's not mine. However it's been a GLORIOUS week for moving in terms of weather: sunny and warm EVERY day with no rain. At all. Perfect… if I wasn't busy moving, that is. But it's worlds better than slogging away in the wet!

May 18 - Writing and working for myself!

I've given some more thought to my novel this week, in between going box-blind and sorting-crazy. Self-publishing looks to be my route, firmly so; it makes no sense to sit and hope that my work makes it out of a slush pile somewhere onto the desk of an editor, when I can strike my own path on places like Kindle and Kobo. This article on i09.com does an EXCELLENT job of outlining the case for self-publishers making a living at their craft without needing to beg at the tables of the Big Six publishers for a handout. I'm very tickled at the idea of working from home, running the business of Me day to day and not being beholden to a corporation or even just someone else. I'm the one accountable; if I fail, then I'm only failing myself. If I succeed, then I'm sharing the spoils with nobody but myself and my audience. I like that.

Moving: today was just a whole lot of sorting, as most everything is unpacked. Going through all the things and getting rid of anything that didn't make sense to keep helped to pare down things to find permanent homes for here. I wish I'd had time to do it before the move, but when my family accelerated the schedule there was no time to do ANYTHING save pack it all into boxes. So today saw a lot of things tossed, recycled or donated as I worked my way through everything in my room, setting a fair bit aside to fill our closet-sized storage unit down the hall until I am able to see to it- a lot will be sold off on eBay or just donated as well.

May 19 - Dark?

You know your life is becoming more domestic when you get excited about... curtains. For me, they mean a DARK room I can sleep in on my own schedule, instead of waking with the dawn. Or the kids in the room above me, whichever gets me first. All this week it's been wakeup calls around 7am, which is not my usual bed debarkation hour, so I'm a bit knackered. I think for the summer I WILL make it my regular wake-time, as the short-legs above have no concept of walking softly. At all. So if you can't beat 'em( with a stick? )then join them, which I think will be better for my creative streak anyway; typing new words at the end of a long day well into the night hasn't really worked for me in the past. Maybe taking a hot tea up to the deserted sun room on the 5th floor might be a good habit to get into...?

Today my sister and I took a mid-afternoon break to go down to Cook St. Village to unwind in the glorious sunshine, the last bit of good weather for the week. We sat at Mocha House on the patio, taking in the activity; there was a group of schoolchildren all playing violins right out front with a sign that say 'Playing for ice cream' and they were rather decent for all that. I treated myself to a specialty of Mocha House called a Hedgehog, which was a ball of chocolate cake rolled in various nuts; it was heavenly. Being able to do things like that a mere five minute walk from my new place makes me so very VERY happy!

Moving: today most everything was completed; the living room, kitchen, bathroom and my room were all completed by late evening as both my sister and I by unspoken agreement just wanted to Get It Finished. I was very happy to soak my aching arms in a bath and collapse into bed with a satisfied sigh.

May 20 - New Home

The new place is great. Lots of room for my sister and I, as well as our things. As I've said previously, I'll be reducing my Stuff over the next few months, working my way through things to sell or donate. My goal is to eliminate the need for a storage unit, with the additional goal to open up more storage within the apartment once that's done. We're close to MANY great places: Beacon Hill Park, Cook St Village, Fort Street's shops, the ocean and downtown is only fifteen minute's walk. The area is lovely: lots of trees, incredible gardens, simply lush greenery that smells so fresh every morning. I'll post some pics on FBook this week, now that it's mainly put together and looks like a home with art on the walls and a distinct lack of boxes. 

Yes, the tendons in my arms still ache. No, I won't bore you with the details. Yes, it makes it HARD to type without pain. No, I won't give up writing my book because of it. That is all... for this week.

Moving, Mother's Day and Morlocks

The word of the week is MOVING !

May 7 - About my novel

Good news for my wrists: I played a few hours of Xbox on and off yesterday with no ill effects as of this morning. Considering that I did a lot of typing over the weekend( with many breaks )including typing out the blog Sunday night, I am quite hopeful that my CTS symptoms are in remission and I am well on my way to recovery. I hope that the next few weeks of moving will not be TOO hard on my wrists as I intend to do a LOT of writing immediately afterwards for the rest of 2012!

On the writing front, so far I have completed two chapters of my science fiction novel; a third chapter is mostly complete. I have outlined much of my world, in more words than I currently have in chapters, which is good: detail makes or breaks a novel. Too much and you overload or bore the reader; too little and the reader thinks you're not doing your job of telling a good story. So far I am VERY happy with the way my novel is turning out!

May 8 - Change of plans!

After much discussion today about time frames for moving, it was decided as a family that we would Move Early. As in, 'Not by May 20th, a few vanloads a day' but 'Get most of the book boxes and ALL of the furniture done on Friday.' Yes, THIS Friday, May 11th, a full week less than planned, which will make my mom happy. Seeing as she's helping to foot the bill for the movers, I'm inclined to go along with the plan. So I booked the movers today, same ones we've used the last 3 moves, though just 2 guys and a smaller truck this time.

Which also meant we have 3 days to pack up all my things in the condo. ALL of it into boxes, carefully and in good order. That's where I made a few trips today to bring a few loads of boxes INTO the condo; fortunately I am an old hand at that and know that most liquor stores are happy to get rid of their uniformly-sized, solidly-made empty boxes, for free. In fact, just ONE store today in Victoria provided ALL the boxes we needed for the move, which was great; one-stop shopping at it's best!

--> I have to say the weather has really turned around this week as well; cool days and on / off clouds have given way to blazing sunshine and blue skies, warming things up. It should be a glorious weekend for moving, if it keeps up!

May 9 - Pack and pack and pack

Packing took up ALL of my day today, into the later afternoon. I have a LOT of books, but I already knew that.

However, I took a break and went into Victoria today after 4pm to meet a former MMart friend for coffee. We tried to sit outside but the wind was gusting very strong and VERY cold in from the ocean so the patios were all empty for good reason. I ended up visiting at his place for a few hours, as we had both been invited to another ex-MMarter's birthday tonight. Happily, it was literally across the road at the 5th Street Bar and Grill, so we headed over there well after dinner to meet about a dozen more folks. We sat 'outside' on their covered patio, which was a square space with a four-sided fireplace in the middle and a few heaters that made it very comfortable. The food was all right( I had some stylish Mac N'Cheese )but it was the company that made the evening special. Everyone ended up sharing all sorts of NON-work-related stories, which was great. I headed home feeling full and happy on many levels.

Which meant when my crazy downstairs neighbour banged on the ceiling angrily after I had been sitting quietly in my chair surfing the 'net for over fifteen minutes, I wasn't really put out. From what I can deduce, they go to bed early, around 10pm, as they are up early. Being sensitive to sound, things like my walking softly in stockinged feet, or closing my mini blinds, apparently are over their sound threshold. I am SO GLAD that the place I am moving to has NO-ONE on any floor below save earthworms and Morlocks! I won't miss the last 3 months of walking on eggshells in my own room, afraid to make any sound above a tiny whisper after 10pm!

May 10 - More Weekday Packing

Going through my things as I packed ALL day today, I am again reminded of how Stuff can subtly come to rule our lives.

We work long and hard to afford to BUY Stuff. Better Stuff, cooler Stuff, fancier Stuff.

We then put a lot of the Stuff away after a while, as it's no longer Better or Cooler or Fancier. But we still keep it, as we paid a LOT for it.

My weakness are books, paperbacks in the main: I have over 2,000 books or thereabouts. I've mainly stopped buying them, due to space restrictions.

Other stuff I've hung onto for mainly sentimental reasons, but things like my old DnD books, some collectables and the like I will be letting go... but the dollar value, if any, that I regain will be a pittance.

But I'll be glad to see some Stuff gone, if only to clear space. Not for more books, though that's a thought...

May 11 - Moving Day!

The movers were here at 9:15am and we got to work; well, my mom and I did, as my Dad had to work and my sister was in Seattle for the weekend( her plans couldn't be changed when the Moving Plans were upped by a week ). Still, we had two efficient moving guys plus two of us and that made things go fairly well. A king AND a queen-sized bed were both loaded along with a couch / chair  / loveseat combo, plus other bits of furniture and dozens of packed boxes. We were on the road at noon and unpacking by 12:30pm. Most of it went smoothly, with little or no damage to anything, but the large couch was another matter. Having spend a fair deal of time removing the feet( due to my wrists I couldn't )the movers still couldn't get it in the front door of the place due to the low ceiling and cramped walls. So I went outside, measured and told them to put it through one of the front windows; bonus for living in a ground-floor apartment!  A few screws and a set-aside screen later and it was in!

The movers were done by 3:15 and we paid them gladly, as a week's worth of daily grind was done in 6 hours flat; huzzah! My mom and I spent most of the rest of the evening unpacking things

May 12 - Weekend un-boxing

Not much to say today: it was all about emptying the storage unit. My dad and I managed to get a few vanloads done and my friend Kevin spent the afternoon with my mom and I helping to unpack and move around boxes as my wrists were not in great shape. I could push boxes along the carpet( I have carpet now! )but not pick up much of anything with weight to it. By day's end we'd all managed to unpack forty boxes or so, plus another twenty I did in the late eve in a burst of energy; most of those were books, so I could just shove them along and unpack them en masse to the shelves in my room. Efficient!

Pics of the new place will come later next week, once most everything is squared away and nary a box can be seen...

May 13 - Mother's Day

My mom has been central to this move all week, tirelessly helping to pack and organize and unpack things. So today was a very special day, low-key as we always are with Mother's Day - we all gave her small things, with a mutual gift of a trio of different violets in a lovely planter; she loves those things. Just like we do her.

Back to moving... breakfast at the Fountain Diner was great, we left just as it was getting crowded well before 10am to take JUST my TV into town - it was the only aspect of the move I was worried about and it went flawlessly. My buddy Kevin helped us again to empty most of the storage unit today, a MAJOR accomplishment. We loaded probably forty boxes between my Mazda5 and his Mazda3 hatchback, which I nicknamed 'The Black Hole' because it kept taking in box after box. Fully laden, we headed to Victoria before 2pm again and spent a few hours unloading and sorting things. Kevin volunteered to do the lifting and pulling of the boxes onto the dolly, as my wrists had quit yesterday, especially the left one - I have to be careful for a while longer, it seems. The rest of the evening saw me go back  to Langford for another load of odds n' ends, especially electronics that my mom had packed very carefully. We waited until after 6pm to head into Victoria, as I'd noticed on the way out before 5pm that the highway into Victoria was jammed for kilometers with people heading into town for the evening with the fantastic weather - it was 24 degrees C here and as sunny as it's ever been. Another few dozen boxes were unpacked and the place is really starting to look like a home.... with boxes in the corners.

That's about all I have in me right now, as my wrists just can't take any more typing. So no pics or fancy aspects, just a blog... I even had to email it into Blogger as my tablet can't use the new Blogger interface to edit online, which stinks. Ah well - hopefully I will be better next week, as I am BEAT after a week of 14-hr days, with another day to go still...

Beauty, Backstory and Beginnings

The word of the week is lifestyle !

April 30 - Iron Man Is Cool

Ever since my first brushes with science fiction, I've always wanted to put together a 'power suit' of some kind. From the flashy chrome of Captain Power to a fifty-foot-tall BattleMech, nothing says "I'm bad!" like power armour. Weirdly, I've never been a fan of Iron Man, as I've never thought past depictions of his armour were cool - clunky, in my opinion. Not until the recent designs of Adi Granov revitalized the character did I take notice; CTV did a great article on the character design for the original Iron Man movie. Lucky for me, since my crafting skills extend only to words and not the physical, other people have put together stunning examples of Iron Man costumes. The one below is simply the best on the planet; it has ACTUAL moving parts like flight stabilizers and the face shield:


May 1 - New Beginnings

It's a new month. By the END of THIS month, I will be happily ensconced in a NEW place in the BEST part of Victoria. By odd co-incidence, this is the SAME sort of arrangement as I had in my very early twenties: sharing a cool living space with my cool sister. THAT place was a half-house near Burgoyne Woods, down the road from Brock University and rather special in a few ways, the least of which being it was my first time Out On My Own. For various reasons it didn't work out, the main one being I was working full time AND trying to go to school full time; that's a story with only one unhappy ending. But the IDEA was great, though it ended in 1998 with my independence from then on, due to my need to support my family. I cherished that idea and that time, as it was something I KNEW I would get back to eventually. And make even better.

 

Now, I can SEE myself in a similar place in life - writing my novel. Searching for a GOOD job, one that won't complicate my life but instead, compliment it. To get ON with where I SHOULD have kept going from in 1998, to think about getting my writing life rolling, finishing school and then look for new beginnings. Again, what this blog's all about… finding the future, not dwelling on the past.

May 2 - Valve Is Coolness

Of the things that interest me in terms of Working For A Living, video games are right up there. Other than BioWare( now owned by EA, booo! )the other company whose roof I would give an arm and a leg portion to sit under would be Valve. They do things differently, VERY differently. So different from the norm of how a typical corporation works that it's hard to grasp. So I was tickled to find Valve's New Employee Handbook on the web; it's stunning to read through. For those of you who can't or won't bother, let me pick out a few key points: (1)Their management structure is FLAT; nobody is pressuring you to Complete Assignments (2)YOU choose WHICH projects YOUR skills can best assist and will GROW your own skills (3)Nobody EVER gets fired for making a mistake; these are encouraged as you LEARN and GROW (4)Each employee is paid what they are worth; the more your peers value you, the more you make and (5)Steam has kept PC gaming alive and healthy. Well, the last point is my own opinion, but it's shared by millions, which according to Valve is a snapshot of the way they work: give Customers What They Want!

May 3 - Star Trek Reunion!!!!!!!!

When it was on television, I watched every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation as soon as it hit the airwaves. I say this without hesitation, as I think it had some of the best characters in the genre at the time as the show progressed. Sure, it was episodic and didn't have the over-arching story arcs that came in later shows, but you could see from the first seasons that the cast had gelled and become family - it was right there on the screen. That kind of bond shone through and made the characters they played all the more captivating to watch as they grew, struggled and LIVED on the small screen over seven seasons.

Which made their reunion this past week in Calgary all the more poignant; it was the first time EVER since TNG went off the air that ALL the cast were together on stage at a convention. It was an event I WISH I had been able to go to to see, JUST for that reunion( apparently the Calgary FanExpo was mobbed for the same reason! )but luckily that magical hour-long even was ALL caught on tape. I was deeply moved by the emotions and caring expressed by each cast member towards the rest of their TNG 'family ' - watch it and see!

May 4 - May The Fourth Be With You!

Growing up, Star Wars and all it entails played a HUGE part in shaping my psyche… and would explain more than a few quirks too, at that. I've seen the movies often enough that I no longer NEED to see them; I can replay them almost scene for scene in my head, which also shows I may not be using the space up there for the best purpose… but I digress. Today is May The Fourth, Star Wars Day for the unenlightened and a day I like to quietly celebrate by adding to my collection of Funny Star Wars pictures. I do draw the line at cruel pictures or poorly drawn art; they have to make me smile AND be a little unique in their way. So for your edification today, I give you… Calvin and Hobbes Attack The Death Star:

( click to enlarge )

May 5 - The Avengers is SO COOL !

After a cartoonless Saturday morning( mourning? )I MORE than made up for it by going to see The Avengers( in 3D / UltraAVX! )in the afternoon. I was prepared for a good movie, given the limited hype I allowed myself before going to the theater. What I wasn't prepared for was a GREAT movie - Wow! Apart from a few slow spots, Marvel really knocked it out of the park this time! Superlatives aside, I was with the characters the whole way through the movie; even Loki, whom I thought somewhat uneven as a villain, had enough good moments to win me over in the end. Really, I could nitpick the film to death( as others have I'm sure )but it is the ONLY film I can think of since LOTR that I would go BACK and see AGAIN - something I almost never do! I'll be buying it for SURE on Blue-Ray in 3D( yay new TV! )and I hope, HOPE it is packed with special features like Iron Man. Wow… I spend the rest of my evening having cool parts of the movie bubble up and make me smile. :-) 9.5 out of 10, easy - even RottenTomatoes agrees!

May 6 - Lizzie Beautiful

Yesterday I saw a video that made me re-evaluate some of the things in my life, in a positive way. Most of you have probably not yet heard of Lizzie Velasquez, a 23-year old woman who years ago was voted the Ugliest Woman on YouTube. This was due to her having a rare condition, so rare that only 3 other people in the world share it; among other things, it keeps her at a weight of 60lbs, has made her blind in one eye and distorted her features. Yet she has NOT given in to despair and instead has fought against the handicaps life has given her: she has set herself real goals and accomplished them. Things like graduating college and doing motivational speaking that not every able-bodied person in this world has accomplished. I have to say that stories such as hers move me deeply, to KNOW that the ONLY thing holding YOU back is YOU. Success comes in many forms but it is never GIVEN to you - you have to want it, to work for it and earn it. Lizzie's goals are concrete, real and for her, part of making a future for herself in a world where looks are still the measure of a person, instead of the powerful beauty of self that we all can achieve.

It's been a fruitful week for me, writing-wise. After a slow start, the creativity started bubbling up and my muse got into full swing by Friday, with thousands of words pouring out. Most of them backstory, which meant that Chapter 2 has been re-written almost totally and looks to become my new Chapter 1, depending on reviews. May looks to be a VERY productive month!

Meds, Mediocrity and MLP

The word of the week is focus !

April 23 - About the novel...

Looking ahead, as I often do, I find it exciting that I can't picture what I'll be doing close to the close of 2012. I'll be finishing off my novel, that's for certain, but what's still foggy is if I'll be working part( or full )time at a new job, or if I'll be pulling in enough from freelance work not to need that option. Heck, if things go well, I might even be doing some voice work by the end of the year! It all depends on me, of course: you are your own limiting factor and right now I need to focus on my novel, above all else. If I can get 75% of it finished in the next 3 months, then I'll be well on my way to revising it and getting all the other marketing aspects in place for a 2013 launch. Revisions are something I'm looking forward to, where I can shuffle bits around so that they make the most sense and tighten things up based on the advice and observations of critical proofreaders. I am well aware that as an author I am too close to my work and if something is out of place or doesn't make sense to a reader, I need to know about it pronto. The book won't write itself!

April 24 - Lego Zombies!

Well this is cool: Lego projects get votes to become actual sets! Over at Lego.Cuusso.com, talented Lego builders create amazing custom sets, which then get voted on by site users. If they tally more than 10,000 votes, then Lego will officially review the project to see if it merits production. Recently, the magnificent Shaun Of The Dead: The Winchester Arms was reviewed and sadly, found wanting. It didn't meet Lego's requirements to appeal to their core audience of 6-11 year olds, which I think is silly, but I guess they're going for overall sales and not just a few thousand g33ks snapping them up.
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April 25 - Ponies...?

The internet is a strange place, full of wonders… and other things that should best remain undiscovered. For every gem there are a hundred husks of good ideas… such as this one: Star Wars reenacted by My Little Ponies. Avert your eyes, lest they melt!




Myself, I preferred the classic 'Star Dudes - Episode IV: A New Dude' from a few years back. The acting's not bad, either:





April 26 - Books and Budgets

For now I've stopped entering my book collection into my Android tablet's app, BooksApp, as a serious glitch has arisen: the scanner no longer works. I've emailed the author and waited a week for a response; nothing so far. I don't want to waste my time until I am sure of being able to import the rest of my collection, which stinks as I've already input almost 500 books, with pictures. I did pop over to GoodReads.com and try to import my data, but the dang thing keeps getting stuck at 42 books and won't budge past that. So I'm stuck, which stinks royally - I had hoped that I could put my entire collection into BooksApp and thus avoid re-buying books that I didn't realize I owned. To avoid that, I will simply not purchase any more books until I get a solution in place, which will be difficult but will also help my monthly budget.

On the topic of budgets: being who I am, I've put a lot of thought into the costs of living on my own( well, rooming with my sister )in a month's time. I created a basic budget spreadsheet, similar to this one but a lot more streamlined. I input our combined income, add in expenses line by line and the spreadsheet tells us if we're cash-flow positive or negative for the year, month by month. This is very handy for planning ahead, allowing us to see what reducing expenses( or taking them on )will do to our long-term budget. The spreadsheet's helped me see problems coming a long time in advance and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in making their dollars count - you can download it directly from my DropBox folder, hope it helps!

April 27 - On my free time...

It struck me this week that I haven't said very much concerning my 'sabbatical' that I am currently on, of all the 'free time' while I'm on EI. So:

I don't like it.

It's FAR too easy to see a day slip away. Mornings vanish into lunchtime, which soon turns into afternoon and time for tea, then dinner and finally a longing for bed. Real accomplishment seems to be for the next day, not the day that just vanished. Setting goals and DOING things is all the harder when there's no time limit to them; they can always get done 'tomorrow' if need be. I do admit to being FAR more relaxed now than I was during the holidays, but I also admit that I have watched very little of my 'Must See' DVD's or done much towards crossing things off my 'Do When I Have Time' list. The one thing I would dread to see is to reach the end of 2012 and still have most of those things still undone. Which means each day now becomes a test: do, or do not. There is no postponement!

April 28 - FanExpo thoughts

A week ago I was knee-deep in g33k at the Vancouver 2012 FanExpo and loving it. I took a few pictures to put up on FBook, but I wasn't happy with the quality of the pictures my camera took indoors. Thankfully, I saw that many, many other people with better gear than I were taking pictures and would be posting them online. Some of them also took videos, of which some were eye-wateringly unwatchable and some were very well done. This is one of the latter and gives you an idea of what it was like to walk the floor there( see if you recognize the host ):



Now, if I can just find a picture of that cute girl wearing that customized set of N7 armour from Mass Effect 3…

April 29 - A day of medicated rest

Today being Sunday, I prescribed myself a day of rest as I'm still dozy and tired from the muscle relaxants and prone to involuntary hour-long naps that sap my energy further. Thankfully today is the last of them and I should start getting my energy back this coming week - a good thing too, as I am moving in less than 2 weeks time! The relaxants seem to have done their job though: the rigid cable-like stance of my wrist tendons has faded to normal levels and I no longer feel any discomfort day-to-day. I still have to be careful not to overdo things while lifting objects or typing for too long, but I believe I have turned a corner, so to speak, to get back on track to normal.
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In between sudden snoozes today, I again looked into playing some of my older games under Win7, including Planescape: Torment, which I've never got very far in. While researching bug fixes, I came across a page that blew my mind about this game: the Fully Modded version of Planescape! Seems that many fans over the years have put together software that ups the resolution of the game to current standards, fixed HUNDREDS of bugs and piled on all sorts of other goodness to bring Planescape up to modern specs. I've purchased the Gog.com version a while back but didn't install it when I upgraded to my Mushkin SSD - I took the time to do that tonight and after a few minute's work, I started up the game again. What a difference! High-res screens, readable fonts and smooth gameplay make it seem like a brand-new game. I can't wait to dive in later this week, as a reward once I finish off Chapter 3 of my book. According to my schedule, I need to turn in at LEAST a chapter a week if I want to hit my mark of completing the book's first draft by the end of September. That's five months and 30 chapters in total, so it's nose to the grindstone... or voice to the mic to dictate, we'll see how that goes

It's been a snoozy, dozy week for me; the medication combined with the excitement of FanExpo really socked it to me, so that I napped for hours overall each day this week. The weather hasn't helped either; grey skies and drizzle kept me from doing much outside the condo. Ironically, I will be making myself stay IN the condo this coming week in order to complete the required chapters of my novel. If I treat it like a hobby, then that's all it will ever be to me...

FanExpo 2012, Ferries and Lou Ferrigno

The word of the week is Fanexpo!

April 16 - Weathering my novel

Work on the novel is progressing slowly, as I can only type a few words an hour before my wrists force me to switch to the voice recognition software. That is also painful in its own way, as my creative methods do not include speaking a story in the form of a novel. I can TELL a story, sure, but that doesn't translate well to a printed version. So I'm spending my time thinking about plot development, characters, setting and the sundry other details while the story itself slowly flows out onto the glowing screen. It's slow going overall.
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The weather this week hasn't done much to get me outside, either. Fitful minutes of sun and many hours of gloomy overcast make for a trapped feeling sometimes. Which I do my best to alleviate with my sunlamp and doing other things( not video games though! )to help the hours flow by in a relaxing and productive way. One thing I am not doing though, is diving into my DVD collection; I'm setting myself some goals and one of those is not to trade off working on the novel for a few hours of entertainment. If I'm going to do this, I have to treat my available daily time as working hours and put in enough of them

April 17 - Tax Deadline? I'm done already!

A word on taxes: do them yourself with a little help and save a LOT! I've been doing my family's taxes for almost ten years now with ease, using TurboTax. It's an online service that allows you to work through your taxes step-by-step and review any part at any time, plus has a running total of your return amount… or amount owing. Best of all, with the link above you can file a single tax return for less than $15.00 with tax - an incredible bargain!!!!
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As I've mentioned before, you can find many good hints and tips for saving money each year on your taxes at sites like TaxTips.ca, Canadian Living (weird, I know) and the HUGELY useful 78 Tax Tips For Dummies all spell out strategies and overlooked ways to reduce the amount of money you have to pay to the government each year. My own simple advice is just this: do whatever it takes to balance to ZERO: you don't owe the government money AND you haven't given them an interest-free loan for most of the year before they give you back a 'refund' once you've filed. As the old adage goes: "Neither a borrower nor a lender be." Good advice, that.

April 18 - Passing Genius and Creativity

Fifty-six years ago today, one of the greatest minds of our age died: Albert Einstein. He was only 76 years old. Einstein was in the same class of genius as Leonardo DaVinci, Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking: minds that truly helped to re-shape the world through their work. I hold minds like theirs in the highest regard, as examples far better for my life and beliefs than celebrities with passing fame or sports stars with fading accomplishments. Genius is the word I have heard all my life that truly resonates with me and reminds me with every utterance that I too, have great things within me that are waiting to be done.
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Hand-in-hand with genius is creativity, an elusive element that many artists possess but few can articulate the origins of. Creativity is the thing that enables one person to look at a formation of rocks to see the remains of an ancient kingdom of mysterious people, while another just sees a rock pile. Myself, I am creative most every day in small and large ways, as my mind is always working and observing. Ideas are easy to come by for me but the focus and execution of those concepts are where most people fall down. John Cleese gave an amazing speech on creativity a few decades ago; it appears below and I URGE anyone who wants to make better use of their creative side to watch it in full:




April 19 - It's WHEN?


Very last-minute, I discovered( told, actually )that FanExpo is happening next door in Vancouver in 2012... THIS weekend! After a quick calculation, I realized that I could travel there and back with a 1-night stay for a relative pittance, so I jumped online and bought tickets for myself and my sister. I used Hotwire.com to search and found a STEAL of a deal: for a mere $100 after taxes, I secured one night in a double-bed room in a 3-star hotel only 20 mins walk from FanExpo - wow! So then it was a matter of checking on the BC Ferries tickets and planning the weekend trip.

I've only been to 2 other conventions like it, Baltimore in 1998 and TorCon in 2003. Both were fabulous experiences and ones I am eagar to repeat more often in the future, once I get my novel off the ground. I'm not sure I would want to attend more than one a year, at most, as that might take the magical shine off these events, which are 25% g33k-celebrity-fest and 76% cool-stuff-for-sale-take-my-money-please vendors. Fortunately I am not impulse-buy driven and I have little desire to collect signatures from every celebrity that stars at a convention. I'm content to take it all in and be thankful for being there, among people who to various degrees share my love of many things g33k. Like finds like and at conventions like FanExpo it does so with a vengeance! I'll post my pictures on FBook later this week!


April 20 - Creative Comments! 

These days I don't put much stock in Yahoo's news stories, as they tend to recycle things from months or even years past and often have misleading titles on a piece - sure signs that their days online are numbered. Yet I still go there every few days to browse through story comments, which are often FAR more insightful and informative than the stories themselves. Case in point: a piece on a couple who 'accidentally' created a $10 million / year business, which as it turns out isn't the case. But apart from the so-so story, the comments on the piece are HILARIOUS as people banter back and forth about entrepreneurship, the economy and money in general. It's definitely worth a read and easy to see which are the best comments, as people will 'like' the better ones and 'thumbs down' the irrelevant or idiotic. Makes me smile to see how the 'hive mind' as it's called reacts to mediocre journalism with very funny results:

April 21 - FanExpo Vancouver, Day 1 !

Up WAY too early today for the trip to Vancouver; we were at the Ferry terminal for the 7am boarding, bleary-eyed but excited. Moreso for me, as my sister has only a passing interest in Things G33ky, but wanted to come along for the chance to spend time with me in Vancouver - what a sis! I did make a somewhat silly decision in purchasing round-trip bus tickets while on the ferry, but it turns out my worrying at the overall cost was unnecessary (more on that later on). We were in Vancouver and dropped off at our hotel a little before 10am and managed to check our bags into our room already (that was great!). I went to the Vancouver Conference Center and waited in long lines for about 30 mins to get in... and wait a little longer in more lines. But all went smoothly and by 11am I was on the floor, looking around. These sorts of events usually end up being mostly a vendor's show, seasoned with some cool events and celebrity guests. This weekend had people like Lou Ferrigno (he look barely at the end of his 40's!) as well as Adam West, Burt Ward and many, many comic / anime-related guests.

Spiderman, not Spider Robinson

But the highlight of my schedule was the chance to talk to Spider Robinson while he made a leisurely appearance signing books. I brought along old copies of his books, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon and Time Travelers Strictly Cash and spent almost ten minutes chatting with him about things author-ly. It was great, but I left a little disappointed in that I couldn't ask him about what it was like to dive into being an author while shedding all other types of work. I also talked briefly with John DeLancie ('Q' from Star Trek: TNG) who was VERY low-key, almost standoffish yet still likable. I also briefly chatted with Gary Chalk, an actor / voice actor with over 30 years in the business, as well as Shirley Millner, both of whom worked on one of my all-time fave shows: ReBoot. Gary gave the impression of putting in time, but Shirley made up for that by being absolutely sweet and very thankful for her fans.

Spider Robinson

The other Big Thing for me today was meeting almost ALL the crew of Electric Playground: Victor Lucas, Scott Jones, Briana McIvor, Shawn Hatton and Marissa Roberto. I stood in line for most of an hour and was not disappointed; all were exceedingly nice and interested in what I had to ask and to say. Brianna was graciously interested in my questions on working in the game industry, Scott was intrigued by my choice to pursue writing and to try to translate that into games and Victor remarked that I had a great voice for doing voice-acting work. I even spent some time with Shawn, chatting him up about his experiences working with EP and how he liked working on the show. It was definitely worth the lineup and confirmed to me many reasons that keep me watching their show: they honestly love what they do and don't make a big deal about the show, only that it exists because of the fans. Exactly what FanExpo was all about.

Victor Lucas and most of Brianna McIvor from EP

I was out of the convention well before five, so I met up with my sister and we both went back to the hotel to drop off our bags and then went in search of dinner. We ended up searching via UrbanSpoon( Yelp! was offline? ) for inexpensive places downtown and wound up with Pacifico Ristorante, a nice little Italian place - the shared pizza was great! The rest of the later evening was capped by cold drinks on the patio at Milestone's by the beach at English Bay, where the view across the water was the best thing about the place.

April 22 - FanExpo Vancouver, Day 2 !

Another early morning had us checked out by 8am and walking downtown to beat the rush after 9am for the 10am convention opening. Vancouver on a Sunday morning downtown was surprisingly clean and quiet, with most folks just out for walks or jogging. The Tim Horton's we'd found yesterday was in no way crowded for breakfast and we easily made it to the Convention Center for 9am. The ticket lines moved rather quickly and we were on the floor by the 10am opening, amused to yet again see the throngs of people lined up to buy at-the-door tickets instead of the online ones which get you in faster. The place didn't really start to fill up until 11am, by which time we'd had a leisurely stroll around the place to check out all the vendors. At noon we split up to cover two different events: my sister went to the ReBoot reunion and I went to the Professional Voice Acting 101 Q&A, which was packed! There was a panel of five people, including a voice-acting agent and a young woman who had used VoiceRegistry.net to break into the business just recently to find success and a happy career path. Fascinating, useful information that I'll take to heart when considering my own voice-acting career path; one tip was to take as many acting and lesson classes as one can, as the ENTIRE worth of your performance comes from your voice. Being flexible and capable of taking direction are two of the keys to success - I'll be dipping my foot in the waters later this year once the bulk of my novel is complete.


After that, we had lunch and I attended another seminar on voice-acting with Christian Potenza, of 6teen and Total Drama Island fame. Who also happens to be a friend of someone I know, which is cool. After the seminar he was very busy on the convention floor with fans but took the time to let me introduce myself when he had a moment. I was happy to find that he a very cool laid-back guy; I'll be talking more with him again on FBook and hope I'll be able to run into him again soon.

The very classy Bus Terminal

My sister and I caught the Skytrain from downtown before 4pm and disembarked at the bus station early, which was no problem as there was a tiny Starbuck's tucked just under the station. We boarded the bus with no problem and a short while later we stepped off into the vehicle deck on-board the ferry and relaxed for the journey home. Thankfully the waters were very calm and we made it to the ferry terminal as darkness fell. I have to say that the weather in Vancouver was amazing this weekend; one fellow passenger remarked that it was the FIRST time he'd ever been in Vancouver in decades that it didn't rain two days in a row, so we lucked out with only cloudy skies for a few hours and a chilly wind once in a while.

That was it; an amazing weekend made possible last-minute thanks to a whole combination of factors and good company in the form of a sister who was willing to indulge her brother's g33k-out tendencies to head to the big city next door for a bit. It was my first time in Vancouver and the city was great: very tidy, very green, with lots of unique architecture, a wide variety of shops and restaurants and a transit system that was clean and efficient. I'm not sure I'd go back anytime soon just as a tourist, but it's definitely way above places like Calgary or Toronto on my Canadian destination list. Nice!


The tendons in my forearms are still too tight, but thanks to the muscle relaxants the doctor prescribed this week they're no longer achingly painful all day and night. I'm trying several techniques to relax them each day and I hope that by the time I have to move house in mid-May that I will be fully back to normal. Especially as I need to increase my daily typing quota ASAP!