greyduck.net

Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Category: Life

  • But the queens we use would not excite you.

    “So, Karel. Where the hell have you been lately? Four days without an entry?”

    Too busy to write in my journal? Guilty as charged. I don’t like to let things get so far ahead of me, but I’m not going to beat myself up about it either.

    Things have ramped way, way up at work. The in-house streaming project is about halfway done, depending on how you look at it, and suddenly it’s gone from Novelty Project to The CEO Wants It Done Yesterday. In the immortal words of Sam Beckett (the quantum leaper, not that other one), “Oh boy.”

    Add to that the fact that no less than twenty Compaq desktop computers are due to arrive early next week and you can see how busy the rest of December looks for everyone’s favorite little grey duck.

    But wait, there’s more! The computer that manages the access key-card database died Friday (or some time earlier) so we can’t add or remove key-cards from the security system. And that’s not all! The AS/400 started complaining of ethernet hiccups Thursday morning, and as of midday Friday the diagnosis is that there’s a “bad client” on our network somewhere. Guess who gets to go around the building trying to log clients onto the AS/400 until it breaks?

    And each of those four projects is supposedly my Number One Priority. Great, guys. Get me three assistants and I’ll get right on that. Or maybe that, instead. Or perhaps that. Yeah, anyway…

    Early in the week I was shooting the breeze with Gary Hilliard, Market Engineer for Entercom Portland. He’d handed me an unread PC World (or somesuch) and somehow we got on the subject of digital cameras. He offered to loan me his HP PhotoSmart C618 for a week or two. (He wants it back before Christmas. Damn.) I’m getting a kick out of the little machine, though I’m not entirely happy with some of its quirks. Nevermind that the output quality isn’t always stellar, I’m glad just to have the use of the thing for a while. (See the new Gallery for the results.)

    So far I’ve spent about three hours on the reconceptualized new anime music video. My current goal is to build a sort of visual poem out of a few very specific visual sequences from Akira. I suppose I’m trying to break out of the “stick to the original timeline” mentality of my previous three videos. Wish me luck. If this works, it’s going to be far and away the coolest thing I’ve done in AMV creation. If it doesn’t, the video will be nigh-unwatchable. No middle ground, folks, as there were in my previous projects.

    I’ll wrap up by telling you about the coolest part of my week so far. The local grade-school chess clubs met this morning at a pastel-painted school in SE Portland to engage in a mock tournament. The kids were both invited and I wanted to go along, so Wendi dropped us off on her way to go shopping. Also in attendance were the male half of the Bourgo family (Michael and James) and one of Lilith’s “demonspawn.” Michael and I shot the breeze in between my attempts to shoot various attendees.

    With my (borrowed) camera, you silly person. Sheesh. I’m not that antisocial.

    Erica may have been the star of the national shindig back in the spring, but it’s Alex who shone brightest this morning. After seven rounds of play, he stood undefeated with six wins and a draw. He couldn’t quite corner his third victim… er, opponent. Such is life.

    My daughter’s refusal to eat her breakfast may have played a part in her shaky performance. She complained of an inability to concentrate after her first two (victorious) matches. I’m hoping she learned an important lesson today about the correlation between nutrition and performance.

    And now you know where I’ve been all this time. Tomorrow? A long, long day at the office. Wheee!

  • I am a novelist!

    NaNoWriMo 2002 Winner

    50,179 words. All done. I did it.

    YEAH!

    I want to thank everyone who encouraged me along the way. I couldn’t possibly have succeeded without you. Thank you!

  • I’m waiting through the middle just to see how it will end.

    Actually, I know how my novel ends. I’ve already written it. My problem now is that when I finished the novel I was at about 40,000 words out of the required 50,000. So I wrote an interview piece, then a two-part lecture piece, and now I’m writing an almost entirely unrelated short story. I’ve always been stronger with the short subjects anyway. Remember, excerpts and (more frequent) updates are on my NaNo page.

    A few months ago Justin Emerson, a.k.a. ErMaC of ErMaC Studios, pointed me to one of his music videos as being the one he’s proudest of. While I’m not sure it’s his best work, the musical selection is really very good. Since Justin never puts artist or anime credits on his videos I had to actually visit his website (yes, I’m a lazy ass) to find out that the song is “Satellite” by BT.

    BT. That rings a bell. Oh yes, one of those CDs I got from Jaime at KNRK a couple of years ago. Do I still have it? Of course I do, I never throw out CDs. Does it have the song? Hell yes! Thank you, Jaime!

    So now I don’t have to watch the AMV to hear the song. Sorry, Justin. Don’t worry, I still love your videos.

    Speaking of videos, once December hits I’m going to apply the same “an hour per day” mentality from NaNo to my next anime music video. I’ll set the same goal: One month to completion. Do you think I can do it?

    That makes one of us. *snicker*

    How was Thanksgiving, you ask? Not too shabby. The turkey came out better than I’ve tasted in years, the mashed potatoes, gravy and corn on the cob were all excellent, and I managed not to go overboard on the Martinelli’s. No, really.

    I didn’t get in any updates the last couple of days because I’ve been writing like crazy when I’m not sleeping, eating, or putting out small fires at work. (Okay, okay, so the umpteen hours I spent losing that Heroes IV scenario are in there somewhere as well. Oops.) I apologize for my lack of output, a little, though it’s never been my intention to write here Every Day Without Fail Or Else. I do love sharing my life with you fine folks, though. Don’t worry, I’m nowhere near hitting some kind of burnout phase.

    Hopefully you and yours enjoyed the holiday as much as I did. May you be blessed with warmth and love all through the coming winter, my friends.

  • Look, I’m desperate here. Somebody throw me a (back)bone.

    So here’s the saga of DSL at the Kerezman abode:

    The Company discovers that we have trade with our ISP for DSL accounts that aren’t being used. Company says, “Hey Karel! If you pay for the Qwest line, you can use this traded-out DSL account.” Karel says, “Hot damn!” And then Qwest says, “Sorry buddy. You’re too far away and you’ve got some weird voltage on your line so even if you weren’t too far away it almost certainly wouldn’t work.”

    Argh. All kinds of folks are lining up for a chance to kick me around. I finally, after five years, convince the company to help me out in the broadband department and I can’t have it anyway.

    I’m all out of bright ideas. (No, cable is not a bright idea. It’s freakin’ expensive.) That troublesome 50k modem is going to be with us for quite a while longer, it seems.

    Again, argh.

  • Reasons To Hate Your Life

    This is going to be very personal and rather painful. It’s probably going to make Wendi unhappy, but she’s just going to have to deal with it. If I don’t vent somehow I’m going to absolutely explode.

    Getting behind on my NaNo quota is one thing. Having the landlords call you up to demand $1900 in back rent by Friday “or else” is another thing entirely.

    You see, I didn’t know we were still that far back. Wendi has always insisted that we’re in better shape than that. You see, this came up two years ago and it nearly ended our marriage. Turns out, then, that things haven’t improved financially at all since that time. We owe exactly the same amount in back rent that we did two years ago. I’m surprised they haven’t kicked us out already.

    What is it about November, anyway?

    I tried going to the Fireside Lodge coffee shop on Powell to get some writing done away from the house. Most of the ethernet jacks are along this long counter with log stumps for seating. I’d like to know who the genius is that believes sitting on an uncushioned log would be a great way to spend an hour or two. After twenty minutes the circulation had nearly stopped in my legs from dangling over the hard edge of the stumps. There were no footrests or backrests. Oh, and did I mention that the heat was set for sauna levels? After my second dizzy spell I realized that heat stroke was not going to get my novel written very quickly.

    So, basically, I spent my evening hiking to the Fireside from my house, basking in an uncomfortable sauna (and only churning out a couple hundred words over the course of an hour or so) then hiking back to the house. My hiking time was spent being supremely stressed about the very real chance that we’d be losing our home in a matter of days.

    When I got home at about 9:00, Wendi told me that she’d talked with the landlords and we no longer have to cough up the entire $1900, but instead just a portion of it. Great, let’s start hitting up the relatives for cash again, shall we?

    I hate this. I absolutely hate it. I’ve spent years making myself indispensible at work hoping to get a substantial enough raise to make all of our money troubles go away. I make about $45k in annual salary and it’s just not enough. I don’t know what more I can do. What’s worse, I find myself resenting Wendi and her years of buying Mary Kay product to keep her precious “consultant status” when she never had the drive or discipline to actually sell the damned product. I can clearly point to those years of amassing pink-labelled product as the time when our finances spiralled out of control.

    The capper, of course, is that Wendi feels compelled to lie to me about things so I won’t get upset. Which, of course, makes me even more upset when the truth comes out. I’m having some serious trust issues with her again, just like during the last two winters. I’m tired of it.

    Okay, yes, I get angry. I’m sure that years of sarcastic commentary hasn’t exactly made her eager to say things that might put her in a bad light. But dammit, this has got to stop. I’m angry, I’m tired, and I’m so tightly wound I feel like I’m going to explode in a spectacular display of flying body parts. Whoops, where’d my left arm go? Is that my foot? I seem to have lost my head. That one too.

    Maybe I’m my own worst enemy. Years of having to put up with my foul tempers have made Wendi into the person she is today, so perhaps I have nobody to blame but myself. It isn’t really fair of me to take this out on her, no matter how tempting it is. But still… dammit. Where’d the money all go? Little pink boxes?

    We may have dodged a bullet this time, but I still have no idea at all how to make all of that money. I don’t have a solution, and it’s only a matter of time before the landlords really do get tired of waiting.

    I want to make it all better for everybody so Wendi and the kids never have to worry again. I can’t, and it’s killing me.

  • Saturday Night Fever

    “Wow, Karel. You haven’t posted anything since Thursday, so you must’ve been writing tons on your NaNo novel, huh?”

    You might think that. You’d be wrong, though. I wrote maybe 600 words, tops, on Thursday. Friday I didn’t so much as touch a text editor. That’s right, not one word was added to my count on Friday. Slacker, thy name is Karel.

    So tonight I sat down and churned out about 5,000 words. That was after helping clean house for the big PDX NaNo Midway Party I proposed and am hosting tomorrow afternoon. So far I have about seven or eight of my fellow lunat– um, writers coming over, with several more surprise guests possible. It should be interesting, to say the least.

    Most of my writing was done while Wendi and the kids went to see the Harry Potter movie. Wendi liked the movie, the kids liked the movie, and I got to hear about all of the good and bad bits for a while after they got home. And on the way to the store to get snacky goodness for tomorrow’s party. As if anyone remotely interested in seeing the new Harry Potter movie needed the Kerezman Family endorsement, mind you, but now you know what they thought of it.

    No, I didn’t go. No, I don’t want to go. No, I really don’t need to see the new Harry Potter movie on the big screen. I’m saving my geeky fanboy energy for The Two Towers, thankyouverymuch. That, and I was way way behind on my NaNo word count (as previously mentioned), so staying home meant I had peace and quiet for several hours… and thus, no excuse not to produce lots and lots of silly words for my novel. Oh yeah, and I posted the third chapter of the day in its entirety as my latest excerpt. (Someone complained about the brevity of the previous excerpt. So there, Someone. Neener, neener.)

    Lilith added links to both Mari and Wendi‘s online journals. This equals 100% of all greyduck.net websites making an appearance on her link list, just so you know. Am I cool or what? Okay, so actually Mari and Wendi are cool, but I can bask in their greatness.

    Pardon me a moment while I bask.

    Tomorrow evening… okay, so it’s Sunday already. After the party, then, I’ll post some sort of rambling recap of the PDX NaNo Midway Party. Until then, I invite you to read some novel excerpts. Please?

Calendar

February 2026
S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728

My Links