…answers pending. We’re closing in, folks. I have nothing really to say other than tackling the nit-pickies trying to get this thing up and running.
Of course...I have no product yet. Just covers. :lol: Oh, and a few, mostly-corrected files. Now that we’ve got Carolyn’s test file up on her site, that’ll help a lot. Once we know the process, it’s all mechanics.
Have faith!
A sneak preview of the opening page is up at Closed Circle. Not that it’ll tell you much…the link buttons aren’t on it yet and there’s nothing live, but I can say that page will have links to all the major internal pages. That’s what the buttons are for at the bottom.
I’m exhausted, but I think we’re getting somewhere. Wish us luck…
It’s filking time!
Gotta a call last week from the local filk group. They’re having a get-together tomorrow and Patty and Mike Briggs are coming up for it. Patty suggested they call me, and, well, here we are, looking forward to the get together, tho with no small trepidation, considering we haven’t done this seriously in, oh, fifteen years!
Filking, for those who don’t know, is SF/F folk music, i.e. music written by and for SF/F folk about subjects, be it books, movies or spaceflight, that are of interest to us. For decades now filkers have come together at conventions and home gatherings to share gossip and music. It’s a fun community within a community which has gained increasingly public acknowledgment in recent years. I understand there’s even a filk radio station somewhere.
The work “filk” allegedly comes from a typo in a program book back in the stone age of conventions. Whether or not that’s true or whether some clever fan or pro came up with the term, it’s stuck and filkers wear it proudly.
Filk isn’t the reason Carolyn and I got together back when…that was her work and my wild notion of doing a graphic novel adaptation. But once we met, Carolyn, who was heavily into filk at the time, introduced me to it, and it certainly became part of the glue that holds us together.
I’ll never have the voice my mom and sis had and has, I’ll never be more than an average amateur (and now PPA) with the guitar, but it’s brought me many hours of enjoyment over the years, and I’m looking forward to getting back into it.
We’d already begun to drift away from it when we were in OKC. We moved the guitars with us, but apartment life was not at all conducive to practice. Then, we met Patty and Mike, and they were into filking and we sort of brushed back into it, briefly dusted off the guitars, then kinda drifted away again, because of those too-close quarters of an apartment. Once we moved into the house, we hoped to turn the basement into a filking area, but we’ve just not had it at a top priority. Now, with this little event looming, we’ve dusted off the quitars, restrung, and am desperately trying (in two days) to reconstitute calluses and break in the nylon strings (on my classical baby. Carolyn’s 12 string beast is doing just fine).
Hence, the Band-Aids. And the WD-40? My vocal chords are beyond rusty and all the way over to frozen solid.
Wish us luck!
Update: I haven’t (nor do I expect to) heard from Reebok, but I rather suspect, giving them the benny of the doubt, that what they’re doing is going for the most lucrative market as a test. They must be having to do major conversions of production facilities, and it’s highly possible that they’re waiting to see how much of their marketing can be done by word of mouth. If these are as effective for other people as they seem to be for me, sales should be through the ceiling, once people realize they actually work. So…hopefully this is the case and we will be seeing them for men … soon. But…write anyway! Give them feedback that the market is out here!
The campaign has begun. I wrote to Reebok this morning. Let’s change the world, one pair of feet at a time!!!! :D
I don’t think I’ve ever had a pair of shoes that one of the first things I think of in the morning is getting them on. Even greater shock: Carolyn, the barefoot queen, has the same reaction. These shoes really are something. My ankle gives me only the occasional twinge now, with or without the shoes on.
You’ve got to be a little careful the first few times you squat down to work because they play subtle games with your center of gravity, but stretching to reach top shelves and standing on tippy toe has never been easier! And no inserts and no plantar fasciitis! Like…wow.
But they don’t make them for men! How cruel is that? They’re being touted as these great exercise aids, for butts and thighs…which I know is a huge selling point for the 21st C female market…but…don’t guys want to have good butts, too? 
I know I want guys to have good butts!
Probably they don’t want to advertise the orthodic advantages of the shoes…that being not nearly as glamorous as a good behind…Weird world we live in.
But still…why not make them for guys?
Shoes both Carolyn and I not only can wear but want to wear because they’re so comfortable.
Carolyn’s feet and mine are about as different as frogs and ballerinas. Mine are flat as pancakes; Carolyn’s got these great high arches…which make finding tie shoes that don’t cut off the circulation durn near impossible.
I’ve been having terrible problems getting rid of the tendonitis in my right ankle. Probably if I spent two weeks sitting with it elevated and iced 24/7, I’d make some headway, but that’s just not going to happen. The other day, I just happened to see an internet reference to the Reebok Easytoners. (We have black on black ones.) Rather than flat soles, rounding up at the toe, they have three rounded lumps on the sole, one at the heel, one on the metatarsel arch and one at the toe. They’re touted as adding 28% (why 28 and not 30? Who knows? We live in the day of digital clocks.) to any workout, but what I liked about them was that it looked like they might quietly activate the small muscles all around the foot and ankle that control balance. I was especially interested in those side muscles, considering my chronic problem.
I decided to try them out, but I needed to try them on: no internet surprises where it comes to my feet. Trying to find someplace that had them was another matter. Finally went to Reebok and found Lady Foot Locker was the only Spokane source.
In my attempts to find the easytones, I’d tried on their marketing competitor, Sketchers Shapeups. These were amazingly comfortable, and my ankle didn’t hurt a bit in them, but they didn’t have the side to side stability challenge. I also found a good anecdotal site at About.com: Reebok Comments
So…Wednesday, I headed for Lady Foot Locker. I tried the Reebok on and they were more than I’d hoped for. Though not was immediately comfortable on the ankle as the Sketchers, they did ease the pain, and there was this wonderful added benny…that lump at the toe encourages you to really use your toes…all of them, because it’s right in the middle, so from the outside in, they all work. This is unique in my experience of shoes, and what your toes absolutely must do inside the shell of the figure skate.
Sold!
Two days later, the ankle is feeling great with just the occasional twinge, my knees and back, too. And although they’re designed to accommodate orthotics, I haven’t needed mine at all. The pesky fascia is doing great, even with lots of walking both days.
To top it off, they’re cute.
Thursday, I kidnapped Carolyn (I was driving) took her to LFL, and made her try some on. Her feet are sooooo different from mine, I was dubious about suggesting it, but guess what? She walked out of that store with a pair just like mine, and such a spring in her step, I had a hard time keeping up with her.
I’m very excited. I’ve never paid that much for a pair of shoes, but I think they’re going to be worth every penny.
P.S. the more I’ve looked into it, I think both Reebok and Sketchers are doing their own take on MBTs, but at about a third the price. Likely MBTs are the cadillac this type of shoe, and someday, if I ever get the chance, I’m going to try them out, but somehow, I don’t think I’ll like them as well: like the Sketchers, they don’t have that toe action.
I love my Reebok!
…just paid for itself several times over.
I’ve never said this, but I actually wanted this drive for one reason and one reason only. All the sorting of files and Carolyn’s Herculean efforts notwithstanding, what I wanted was one tiny text file, created by notebook, which had eluded me for years. I can’t even begin to count the hours, days, weeks I’ve spent searching disks for this little gem.
Last night, Carolyn found that blessed little file.
Back when I finished the initial ‘Netwalkers, I sent it to two dear friends who gave me magnificent quotes to send along with it to publishers. One was the darling Rob Sawyer (now of Flash Forward fame, but author of so many wonderful stories) and the other was my dear friend and endless supporter, the now best-selling author Patricia Briggs.
Patty is one of the most supportive authors in the business, and fame hasn’t changed that one bit. She’s an author who has never lost the love of reading, and she’s a very fast and clever reader, in the sense that she quickly “groks” the essence of what makes a story pleasurable to her (or not so pleasurable). She’s an utter delight to share writers’ workshop duties with because of her insight and her deft manner of expressing those “less than pleasurable” aspects of a story.
Patty spent her time in the trenches writing magnificent mid-list fantasy which got, like so many, lost in the detritus of too many mediocre books on the shelves. Those years of work and that generous appreciation of every form of literature have paid off. When NY decided that Urban Fantasy was the only way to go, she was already a fan of the form, had read extensively, both the good and the bad, and was more than prepared to accept the challenge. Had she any idea the second Mercy book would become a #1 bestseller? Of course not. Like all good authors, she was just trying to write a good story about characters she liked. But Patty, unlike so many, had done that work in the trenches and so wasn’t trying to break in using a popular medium, but was writing something charmingly original, with the skill of a seasoned veteran.
All that being said, back when she read NW, she wrote me this wonderful quote. I sent it to my agent and DAW…both lost it. Meantime, the emails that had been the exchange method, had been lost in moves, backups, and such (I’m sure the Outlook archive with it in still exists somewhere on a disk). At one point, in anticipation of a happier outcome for NW, I made it into a little text file and put it with my stuff to use on me website.
Then, the years of silence from DAW came. I decided to quite waiting for them and put the quote up on my website anyway, but could I find it? Of course not. Hours and hours of going through CDs with searches that should have found it and then file by file searching didn’t turn it up.
Patty has generously offered to write me another, and for certain, I plan to take her up on it, now we have CC to make use of it, but something in me really longed for this quote, because nothing is ever quite like that first reaction.
But last night, Carolyn found it, and it’s as wonderful as I remembered. So…without further ado: Patty’s quote:
“Reading any book by Jane Fancher is like sitting down to a cup of really good hot cocoa—rich with just the right touch of darkness to make it interesting. Her Science Fiction balances cutting-edge, hard science with character-driven plotting. Her fantasy is multi-layered, intricate, and unusual. Her characters walk out of the pages, grab you by the throat, and don’t let go.”
Could a writer ask for a better recommendation? Not in my book.
Thanks again, Patty. I love you!
Another day, another computer annoyance.
Tried to run Windows update and Up comes a white screen that says “Windows update page failed to load.”
Oh…goodies.
I try several obvious answers, none work. I go online and find several different “solutions,” all of which involve several complicated steps and consistently result in a “didn’t work” response. Then, I came across one that sounded promising. The problem was on Vista 64 and came up after the September Windows updates. The suggestion didn’t work, but the poster came back to say he/she had found a solution and it involved a Stardock program that had been proven to interfere with the update page.
This is the company that does the fancy gizmos that are attached to Vista…clocks and fancy window frames and other useless junk. Their problem was “Windows Blinds”. I didn’t have that, but I have “my colors” from the same company. I brought it up, it said it needed an update before it could run. I let it update and restart and…bingo. Problem solved.
So…if you have Vista and Windows upload isn’t working…check for programs from Stardock.
Ja ne!
And it’s gorgeous!
Merry Christmas to us! This is the one thing we really wanted for the house, and it’s a whole lot cheaper (and cleaner) than plumbing the fireplace for natural gas. Besides which, natural gas fireplaces give me a headache if I sit too near. Carolyn’s very sensitive to wood smoke, so a real fire was out of the question. To top it off, there’s a bit of a compromise in our chimney, nothing that compromises its structural intgrity, just a flashing or something that needed fixing if we were going to use it as a wood fireplace. Considering I don’t do roof work, that fix would probably cost us more than our new insert! (We won’t even talk about the work of cleaning a real fireplace!) So, this was actually a relatively inexpensive answer to our need to spot-heat the living room in the winter and take care of a big dirty black spot (the fireplace) that dominates an entire wall. Last winter, we had to heat the whole house to take the chill off the living room. Not now! We might well save the cost of it in just a couple of years…only time will tell.
I tried to get some pictures. Setting it on the table and taking a delayed picture worked like a charm. Thanks, Walt! I took one really long exposure to show the fixture, but in actual fact, at night, it doesn’t show at all. Spent a lot of time this afternoon checking out various fireplace screen options, then it finally hit me: we don’t really need a fireplace screen! I’m going to get a tension rod and make transparent, seasonal drapes to help disguise the fixure when it’s not in use. I’m thinking nifty, sparkly spider-webby stuff for Halloween, something with sparkly colors for Christmas… I’m sure I’ve got something downstairs that’ll work beautifully and take (knock on wood) half an hour to construct! Wheeee….
Anyway, for now, here’s the fire….
