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Pounding Abalone
0When I was in college, I took a memoir writing class, and one of the in-class writing exercises we were to do was to write about “our mother’s cooking.” Or, if not our mother, who did the substantive cooking (which turned out to be a …
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Best Practices
A letter I have to send far too often…. Dear people who add folks to email lists without confirmation. Someone thinks it’s hilarious to use my email address to sign me up for things I am far from interested in. This was not requested by …
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Flickr Changes
So, there’s a whole bunch of changes at Flickr. I’ve been with Flickr since 2005 and been a pro member since those memberships were available. Essentially, pro accounts are going away except for those of us grandfathered in, and that means Flickr’s going to be …
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The Culling
We’ve accumulated a ton of books through various conventions and have run out of shelf space. So here’s what a quick read of page 1 and page 119 helped cull. For books with prologues, I use the first page of the first chapter as my …
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Artist: Art vs. Reality
My dad was a physicist. He’s retired now, but when I was a kid, we’d go out to a pizza place, he’d bring a lab notebook, a slide rule and a calculator, and he’d write equations and notes in it. Sometimes, he’d write jokes. His …
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Four Sunday Travel Moments
Confession: back in the day when I had custom-made suits, I wore men’s ties because they had better range and materials than the women’s offerings, plus they didn’t make one looked gift wrapped. I also, to this day, still covet one particular Italian silk man’s …
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Creeping in Film Form
There are a number of examples of creeping in “romantic” films, and by creeping, I mean men who do not listen to what women say, taking no to mean yes. It’s the Schrodinger’s Rapist problem. In a nutshell, a man who doesn’t listen to what …
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The Vacation Interview Question
My former boss^3, Don, posted this article referencing this BusinessWeek article, which has some stellarly bad interview questions. Like: what are the top five cities you want to go to, and why? And: where do you vacation in the summer? The latter is worse than …
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Lessons Learned from Writing Fanfic
I started writing fiction around 1988. My best friend, Joyce, started a writing group out of our circle of friends. If I wanted to play, I had to write. All of us (who are still living) are still writing, too. The first piece I wrote …
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Shows I Didn’t Kill
Ever since I posted my “The Show Killer. Me. post, people have been accusing me of getting shows canceled that they liked. I was not responsible for the following: The 4400: had a longer run. I only consider it a show I killed if it …
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Sounds Like Weird
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.