Looking for writing-related posts? Check out my new writing blog, www.larrykollar.com!

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Weird and Wacky Wednesday

Well, not that weird, not much weirder than any other day at FAR Manor. The day started out kind of promising; Snippet woke up pissy from a bad dream and threatened to leave The Boy. His response: “Go right ahead.” (They’ve talked about getting married in July, but stuff like this has to make you wonder.) She seems to have gotten over herself though — her mom coming by may have had something to do with that. She (Snippet’s mom) had to have an MRI today, and she needs to be sedated due to seizures when exposed to certain electrical fields, so Snippet did the driving. They took Mason with them, which made for a pretty quiet day.

Daughter Dearest was a little concerned about it; she heard much of the argument The Boy and Snippet had this morning and thought maybe Snippet would bolt the manor with the baby. “That’s the absolute last thing I’m worried about,” I told her. “Snippet lays in bed all day until I take Mason upstairs and drop him in bed with her, and ten minutes later she’s asking me to take him so she can get a shower or eat breakfast, and then she’ll eff off to watch TV. She takes care of him as little as possible; she’s not going to take him on full-time.” Sure enough, they were back later in the afternoon. Mason has been free-standing for a while now, and trying to take his first steps, but he’s not even 9 months old yet. He’ll be walking soon enough, then we’ll really have to get serious about baby-proofing the manor.

My wallet is $1500 lighter, but I have my Civic back. Most of that was replacing the clutch and timing belt/water pump, but there were a few other minor things that got done. I still don’t have working A/C, but so far everything else seems to be okay.

While my net worth took a thumpin’ at the mechanic’s, today was somewhat of a net-worth watershed for Apple: today was the day Apple’s market cap overtook Microsoft’s for the first time. I don’t expect it to be a permanent situation — Microsoft will rally, or Apple will stumble, and this might only last a few days or weeks — but it’s going to be a fun datapoint to rub in the faces of all those people who thought Apple was walking-dead just 10 years ago. Too bad I didn’t grab some Apple stock back then…

Lately, I’ve been reading J. A. Konrath’s blog, off and on. Konrath is a mid-list author who writes a series of crime novels, and has lately had a huge sales boost by selling Kindle editions of his books, out of print and otherwise, and pricing them dirt-cheap (like $1.99). As book publishing (the major publishing houses, collectively referred to as “New York”) has found itself circling the same drain as newspaper publishing, this hasn’t exactly been welcome news in some circles. Publisher’s Weekly wrote a nice little hit-piece about Konrath signing with AmazonEncore, including lovely sentiments like “a book that nobody wanted” (where “nobody” = New York), misrepresenting his sales, and implying that AmazonEncore is a bare step above self-publishing. Naturally, Konrath set the record straight. I’ve been the victim of a similar hit-piece in the past, when I posted a series of articles (on a now-defunct Yahoo!360° blog) that was critical of XML — or rather, how consultants were deliberately over-complicating it for their own gain — and a consultant got a bunch of other consultants together and trashed me… of course, without bothering to contact me for a rebuttal. It did have the side effect of sending a tsunami of traffic to that blog though.

Seeing that I’ll have to write a sequel to White Pickups, which is now “Book I of the Truckalypse,” maybe I should look into this whole publish-on-Kindle thing myself.

4 comments:

  1. You should look into the kindle thing, Far. I'll bet that you'll do well with it. (And I can say that I "knew" you before fame and fortune found you.)

    Sorry to hear that Mason isn't getting what he should have from his mom. But at least his grandparents are making up for it.

    What can I say about old cars? They can be costly. I've got a couple of them myself.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the vote of confidence, Boran. I'm making a couple of tentative moves in that direction, when I firm up the plans I'll let everyone know.

    Funny, Snippet this morning is doing a lot better with Mason than usual. She's napping upstairs again this morning, but he's napping downstairs so no biggie. The Boy is the pissy one today.

    I know what you mean about old cars. The way I see it, if it goes another year or two without another major repair, I'm ahead of where I'd be with a car payment.

    ReplyDelete
  3. You should publish your first online serial, too. Check out Lulu, if you're interested in self-publishing. I've actually picked up a couple of really good books on Lulu - despite that they were self-published.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for the pointer, Wendy. In fact, my plan is to rewrite FAR Future (with new material) and put that one up first. If the current story hadn't grabbed me and refused to let go, I'd be well along with it by now. :-)

    ReplyDelete

Comments are welcome, and they don't have to be complimentary. I delete spam on sight, but that's pretty much it for moderation. Long off-topic rants or unconstructive flamage are also candidates for deletion but I haven’t seen any of that so far.

I have comment moderation on for posts over a week old, but that’s so I’ll see them.

Include your Twitter handle if you want a shout-out.

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...