Tag Archives: editing services

Construction at 6:30 AM is noisy

August 29, 2011 jkkblog Leave a comment

…but that is one of those things we simply bear without too much grousing, as it cannot be changed. I looked out when I awoke, and a third of my driveway was gone. I must remember to wear earplugs to bed tomorrow, as I ought to have tonight. I guess I have had such lousy contractor experiences that, deep down, when they said they’d come, I didn’t believe them.

Yesterday I had an inspiration and need to talk to the contractor. Why not pour a low speed bump where I park my truck? The logic is that I would use it as a wheel block, really, one additional safeguard against failing to engage the parking brake and forgetting to leave it in first gear.

Homeownership

Here comes the concrete

August 27, 2011 jkkblog Leave a comment

Concrete guy was here today to drop off his Bobcat, which I agreed he could park in the driveway early. It would be pretty illogical to cause petty inconveniences for the guy. Showed him the brackets he needs to seat in the concrete so that when someday I bestir myself to replace the fence, I have good fencepost anchors. Feeling hopeful, but apprehensive. Evidently they are starting work at 6:30 AM Monday, so that should be a pleasing wake-up call.

Got Deb here for a day and a half, so we are going to Outback for dinner, then the fair. Harmonic convergence: saves us from spending a lot on fair food, which often isn’t that great and is usually difficult to eat with flimsy utensils in crowded dining areas, and means we get out and walk after we eat. We will engage in one of our timeless rituals: I will make a manful attempt to win my wife a cheesy stuffed animal, usually by throwing darts. I’ll fail. Deb will step up and nail it immediately, winning a larger animal.

I always wonder about the carnies. It’s a hard life, I think, with long hours and no dental care (to go by the looks of most of them). They always look like they lived in Wyoming and aged prematurely due to the harsh conditions. On one hand, it would be an interesting summer adventure for a young person–especially a young male with little to zero sexual experience. On the other, you could end up doing meth and/or getting hepatitis. What strikes me is to look into those eyes and wander what sort of story lies behind them.

Homeownership

The driveway begins…

August 25, 2011 jkkblog Leave a comment

…with a concrete sawyer. The garage is built onto a concrete pad, so in order to pour a new one without causing a huge mess, someone had to make a clean cut along the garage door, the rockeries and the steps. The process started today. I wasn’t here, but god that must have been noisy.

I have cautious optimism about the contractor. That’s about as good as I get until I see proof of honest, prompt, quality work. My enthusiasm about engaging contractors corresponds to most women’s enthusiasm about mammograms and pap smears: it makes you feel vulnerable, it generally hurts, and there could be very adverse results–and whatever they are, you will have to pay. But if this is not done, water will keep getting into my garage and damaging my siding. Not good.

Part of the headache is the need to find alternate parking for my truck and Deb’s car for a week. Happily, we have wonderful neighbors. Mrs. A has graciously permitted us to park over at her place except for Sunday, when her place is full of family. Long life and health to Mrs. A.

Why am I writing about this mundane subject? Because I was told to, and because I didn’t do any other writing today (errands), and because writers must write.

Homeownership, Married life

I am Become Hedgehog, Slayer of Yellowjackets

August 24, 2011 jkkblog 3 Comments

No, this isn’t about Ron Jeremy. Out trimming the hedge and other overgrown stuff in preparation for the pouring of a new driveway, and since I could definitely stand to lose weight, the title seemed to fit. For some reason I like doing work outside when it’s in the nineties and up–I feel like I get more out of it from an exercise standpoint. Of course, there is probably a study posted somewhere with the headline: “Working in high heat or cold actually burns less calories” because of the ‘everything that seems to make good sense can be proven wrong by some study’ principle. Don’t care, I’m doing it anyway.

It doesn’t come without some excitement. It seems that yellowjackets build their paper nests in my hedge; I’ve already uncovered two tangerine-sized nests, and I think there’s another. The yellowjackets naturally did not appreciate the construction work going on near their homes. Were it up to me alone, I would not molest them, but it isn’t just my decision. My wife is apiphobic, meaning she has a morbid fear of bees, and if I left the nests alone she would phone a pest control service and have them soak the entire property in toxins. Thus, selective hosing of the nests with bee killer is the lesser of the two evils.

Protip, by the way: if you ever get stung, get baking soda and make a paste with it using water, and rub that on the sting. I was at my cousin Roger’s in Wichita some years back and got stung. Well, Rog was the chief chemist for a refinery, so when he says to do something with chemistry, I pay attention. “Ah reckon their poison’s based on formic acid,” he said, “so this ought to take care of it.” I don’t know if all bee sting venom is acid-based, but if it is, a base (such as baking soda) should neutralize it. It certainly did for my own sting.

When the people around you ask you where you figured this out, blow their minds by telling them you got it from an editor.

Editing/writing life, Technology

Container of bubbles

August 23, 2011 jkkblog Leave a comment

This feels very weird. I’m writing on a netbook from a hotspot in a Starbucks in Renton (that’s south of Seattle). It is noisy in here, and 80% of those present here have their faces buried in computers. This isn’t a coffee shop; it just looks like one.

It feels so Seattle. It’s even cloudy outside, with rain threatening. Air’s humid, though it’s not cooking hot. And not a single person in this Internet terminal that happens to serve coffee would voluntarily have a conversation with any other person, unless they met here on purpose.

This is what I do not like about cities. I understand wanting to have one’s bubble of not dealing with random people; I really do. But if you look at this situation right now, this place of ass-numbing hardwood chairs and crappy music, it is all just a container of bubbles. There is another human being three feet from me on the right, and if I tried to have a conversation with him, I would absolutely shatter all the social rules. I would be marked as fundamentally odd, probably dangerous, and quite irritating.

Technology may be connecting us with people far away, but it is isolating us from people who are close enough they could grab each other’s junk without leaning.

Technology

My dumbest computer user ever

August 20, 2011 jkkblog 2 Comments

You’ve all heard the computer-idiot stories about the executive who complained that his computer’s coffee cupholder no longer retracted, right? I have a true-to-life one.

Before I was an editor, before I was a writer, before I was a computer shaman, before I was an assistant MIT at an investment company that managed ten-figure sums, I was a computer salesman about five miles from the Micro$oft campus. I worked for a very wise entrepreneur from Taiwan, Mr. TeLung Chang. Mr. Chang (who had literally been an American longer than I had) gave me opportunity, guidance and consideration. I returned his kindness by being contrary, troublesome and having the highest profit margins in the company, so I was a mixed blessing for him. He passed on in 2008, and the world was the poorer for it.

This was from 1988-1990, and the main computer sold was the AT (80286) clone in some form or other, gradually giving way to 80386-based machines. IBM was trying to make the world want MicroChannel PS/2 machines. The world was laughing at IBM’s doddering distance from reality. A woman named Nancy bought an Acer 900 from me, a great big can of an AT clone. She ordered it with the standard 1.2MB 5.25″ floppy, a standard 40MB hard drive, and the usual 640K of RAM. It was for her plastics company in south Seattle. She had bought it over the phone, and picked it up while I was at lunch, so I never met her in person.

That afternoon, I get a call. It’s Nancy. “Jonathan, Jonathan! My computer’s no good!”

“It doesn’t work?”

“No, it doesn’t. The disk is broken.”

“Your hard drive won’t start up at all?”

“No, I don’t have the hard disk, the little one. I have the big kind, the floppy kind.”

I then had to explain to her the the hard disk was inside the case, and that the 3.5″ disk was actually a floppy, just with a firmer case, so yes, she did in fact have a hard disk. Then: “So what exactly is the problem?”

“Well, my disk is broken.”

Clearly we weren’t communicating. “You must mean that the floppy drive is broken, then?”

“Yeah. It’s stuck.”

I brightened. “Oh. So there’s a floppy stuck in the drive and it’s not working?”

“Yes.”

“Just out of curiosity, Nancy, what’s on this floppy? Is it important data?”

“No, it’s my dose disk.” At this point, I admit, I put the conversation on speaker so my colleagues could hear the rest of it. Mr. Chang would most definitely not have approved, so I’m glad he didn’t come upstairs right about then.

“It should boot up to a C: prompt. How come you put a DOS disk in?”

“Well,” she snipped, as if explaining the obvious to an imbecile, “I opened the manual that came with it and it said to insert your MS-dose diskette in drive A. So I did.”

I then had to explain to Nancy that we had actually loaded DOS on her hard drive when we assembled the machine, and that while we included the DOS manuals and floppies because she’d paid for them by buying DOS, she did not need to do anything with them but hang onto them. Might be useful to look up some DOS commands, if need be. Then back to the problem-solving: “So this is your DOS floppy and it’s stuck in the drive. Is the arm broken?”

“There is no arm!”

“Then there must be a little spindle where it used to be. Perhaps somehow it came off. That could explain this. Is there?”

“No, there’s just a slot. There’s no arm and no spindle.” The 5.25″ floppies of the day always came with a closure arm that engaged the drive and locked the floppy in place. It could be removed, or could slip off or break, but never without a trace. What she was saying was absolutely impossible. Unless…no, surely not…

“Nancy, where exactly is this slot? On the right side of the case are three rectangular bays, one with a floppy drive and two covered with faceplates, all the same size. Is it over there?”

“Yes.” Oh, no…

“Let’s narrow this down very precisely. Where exactly is the ‘slot’ in that area? How high up is it, and how much room does it have?”

Her frustration with my stupidity or obtuseness grew worse. “It’s right about a third of the way from the top! It’s the width and height of a disk!”

She had. She had actually managed to stick a floppy into the small, 1/8″ high space between drive bays, failing to notice the authentic floppy drive immediately above it. I had a sudden burst of hilarity, which I had to strangle. The effort broke my voice. “So, what you are saying is that you stuck your DOS disk in the small space between the faceplates, and therefore, you think your computer’s broken?” I am lucky my colleagues didn’t have worse control; I was beginning to tear up with suppressed laughter.

“Yes! This is a design flaw! This shouldn’t be possible!” Now she was angry. And I was about ready not to care.

“Well, Nancy,” I croaked, “most people do not traditionally do this.”

“Well, I want it fixed!” Raising her voice. I didn’t care. I summoned my composure.

“No problem. I can give you two options. The warranty is not on-site, so for $75 an hour I’ll send a tech out. He will fish the floppy out of there, then put scotch tape over those gaps so that this ‘design flaw’ will be remedied. Or, if you feel technically competent to do so, you may open the machine and push it out, then apply the tape yourself. If none of that is satisfactory to you, you can bring it here, and I’ll fish it out and put the tape on it for you for free. How’s that?”

“Fine!” she snapped. “I’ll be there in about an hour!” I’m not sure now if she hung up on me, but the conversation was at an end. As soon as I buttoned the phone off, my fellow sharks howled with laughter. At least someone could benefit from this. But it wasn’t quite over. About fifteen minutes later, Nancy called back.

“What’s up, Nancy?”

She sounded miffed. “I don’t need to bring it in. The disk slid out while I was loading it in my trunk.”

“Great! All’s well that ends well, then?”

“Yes,” she growled, her tone making clear that it hadn’t ended well, that she was very dissatisfied with my equipment and me. Thank the gods. I hoped she never called us again, or if she did, that she got another salesperson. It was the last I heard from her. But here’s to Nancy, who brightened a few days by giving me a funny story to tell.

Editing/writing life

When one is not on an assignment

August 18, 2011 jkkblog Leave a comment

Just because I’m not on a writing assignment doesn’t mean I get to goof off all day. That wouldn’t be good for me anyway. What to do on such a day?

Read. Authors must read, as must editors.
Respond to a business query about editing work.
Find nephew guilty of leaving boxcutter in shorts put in washer. Criticism–much stinging criticism.
Do some financial stuff, since I’m also the $ manager around here.
Think for a while about the Ireland book and what needs to happen to it to improve it.
Watch Big Brother.
Drop off wife’s prescription refills.
Blog.

Not an arduous day, though I will pay for it another time when I’m writing for fourteen hours a day seven days a week. I’ll take the more relaxed days when I have them, remembering the ones where it felt like my eyes would bleed–and a few that left marks.

Book reviews, Social comment

Rereading: James Michener’s ‘Iberia’

August 16, 2011 jkkblog Leave a comment

I have come up with a recurring topic idea I’ll continue if people find it interesting: re-reads. I have a lot of books, enough that I could not re-read them all in five years, including many to which I later return. I don’t like to post reviews on Amazon, unless I have a motive; I resent them shipping my content to affiliates. (Yes, they have the legal right. Not disputed. Nor should they dispute my legal right to refrain from donating my content to them.)

♣

When most of us think of Michener, we think of his great historical fiction novels that span great ranges of time. They walk us through the development of a culture, and in so doing they help us see that culture’s modern residents in light of their forebears. My personal favorites are The Covenant (South Africa), Centennial (Colorado), Alaska, Texas and The Source (Palestine).

Iberia differs. It is a composite personal travelogue of the author’s experiences in Spain (Portugal is not really included). This is that rare book for which hardcover is by far the best edition, because I own it in both hardback and paperback, and the hardback contains many more of Robert Vavra’s excellent photographs. James Michener met Spain as a very young man, came to know it well, and its people showed him their country as thoroughly as a people can. Spaniards can be sensitive about the world’s take on their world-shaping, gold-glittering, intensely religious past. Said world has given them ample cause. It follows that they considered Michener an honest broker worthy of hidden knowledge, frank debate and candid admission.

It reads differently from his fiction, as you would expect, because fiction and non-fiction narrative often differ slightly. In the editing world, we must take account of this. If this is his natural style, though, I like it. It is sophisticated yet word-economical.

What it means for you: a trove of cultural enrichment. Think of every social science and humanity discipline applied to a given nation, from history to fine arts. That describes Iberia with respect to Spain and Spaniards.

Adventures, Editing/writing life

Live from Spocon

August 13, 2011 jkkblog Leave a comment

It is fairly obvious that if you have a blog, and you are at a SF convention in which you were actually on a panel about blogging with the very person who urged you to begin a blog, and you do not actually post anything while there, you Missed The Point. Okay.

Friday was arrival day and no obligations but to check in (hour and a half in line…better than Radcon). Much oohing and ahing over costumes. I was elated that the homespun Rasputin costume I ordered from Jane Campbell arrived just on my way out of town. The drive up was the usual Spokane trip: two hours of freeway gliding, half an hour of Spoconstruction getting into town. Spokane is a pretty nice place, but the city pastime is road repair and delay.

My local con-pal Sharon was present, but would not be for the entire con (had to fly somewhere), so to a large degree this would be winging it not knowing many people. At the same time, plenty of at least familiar faces. One great thing about Spocon this year: half an hour between panels, so no mad rushes akin to college when you had ten minutes to get to your next class and a long distance to hike. Patricia Briggs is author guest of honor this year (famed for the Mercy Thompson books set in the Tri-Cities, where I live). I hit CJ Cherryh’s reading from the new Foreigner hardback, always a pleasure. Decided to bag out of opening ceremonies, which never really attract me, and dine on a sumptuous meal of Coke plus whatever muffins and scones the coffee stand had remaining at 7 PM. Then off to the Mad Marmot Asylum (a Spocon staple) for about six Marmot Juices and good fellowship with con-friends. Left before becoming plastered (good move).

Rarely do I sleep well in hotel rooms, and this was the same. With a 10 AM Saturday panel on Research for Search Engines, I got up, put on the Boer costume in which people seem to find me dashing, pounded a large coffee with about seven shots of espresso, and showed up on time. Two panelists and only two panel-goers! I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or to get more nervous. An okay brunch afterward at the hotel breakfast restaurant, then a very interesting panel on voices and accents in writing and roleplaying. Then came the panel on blogs/podcasts/ezines, and while I had the sense not to talk a lot–it was called ‘Maggie and CJ understand this far better than I’–it went all right with a small but interested attendance. Directly afterward, the one that had me a bit rattled, Steampunk through history…and I think none of us were vastly well prepared, but we all chimed in: the artist, the tinkerers two, and the history guy. For not being quite sure how to approach the topic, I thought we acquitted ourselves admirably.

Decided on a quiet dinner alone at nearby Shenanigans, a steakhouse and brewpub; very nice. This is Spocon’s first year away from Gonzaga (Jesuits and SF weirdos not being subject to RC tenets against divorce), so the area around the convention center is getting used to the influx of strangeness for the first time. Shenanigans isn’t cheap, but neither is it outlandishly priced, and I’d go back. Took in some music back at the con by the Seattle Knights, went up for a Marmot Juice, then decided that a sore knee and hip entitled me to come back to my hotel room for a bit of relaxation and blogtime.

I have to give Big Chris and Spocon credit for doing a good job here; they have grown the con since it began about four years back, and the many volunteers were pleasant. One should always be kind to the volunteers, especially when things are going wrong, and this was not really put to a trial this year. If there were significant catastrophes, they were remedied out of my sight, which means that they didn’t impact me. That has to stand to the credit of ConCom and volunteers alike. Sunday will be a short day, really a half-day, as I have to be out of here by noon and things begin to wind down.

What is amazing is that despite Spokane’s size (double the Tri-Cities), the con is half the size of Radcon (Pasco, Tri-Cities). Surely it’s a longevity matter, as Radcon has been around much longer. If I had to characterize Spocon in one word, I would say ‘enthusiasm.’ It is still building a name, but they work very hard and their dedication shows. I suppose I have months to decide if I’ll come up next year, and if so, do I want to do this panel stuff again. (Radcon doesn’t want my services, which used to affect me a bit; now that I have done it, I see benefits in being able to just attend without obligations and prior study.) The dealer room was perhaps my main disappointment, being rather lightly presented, and this is likely a matter of the economy (and the lack of stuff I happened to wish to buy).

Your (reasonably) faithful correspondent, signing off from Spokanistan.

The Editorial Maverick