Horoscope

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TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Lately I have this recurring vision of you crawling up out of a deep hole. I’ve even had two dreams with that theme. Each time, you seem to defy gravity as you climb by clawing at the sides of the hole and pulling yourself higher and higher until you finally emerge into daylight. Why am I having these fantasies? Are they a metaphor for your life right now? I shudder to think that you’ve been in an abyss as profound as the one I’ve been seeing, though I’m ecstatic about the prospect that you’re about to escape.

When he’s right, he’s right.

This is it, ladies and gentlemen.

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This is it.

My novel, The Remembrance, will officially be released on Saturday, May 6th.

We will be celebrating this momentous occasion at In Perpetual Motion on Saturday night, with a book release party. Come one, come all to Detroit (er, Ferndale), Michigan! Listen to incredible music, revel in drunken debauchery, and get your copy of the novel signed!

If inebriated craziness isn’t your thing – I’m looking at you, – we will be holding a book signing at Lansing’s Gone Wired Cafe, the very next day. Sunday, May 7th, from 2 PM to 9 PM.

Not only will we have copies of The Remembrance available for purchase and signing at both events, but in a few days from now, you’ll be able to pre-order your copy. It’ll be ready and waiting for you when you get there, and I’ll even wait for you to show up to sign it. The softcover will cost around $15, while the hardcover will be about $25. I’ll announce the pre-order here, and provide a link to PayPal.

For those of you that are out of state, or even out of country, but would still like me to sign in your town, fear not! *cue trumpets* Get in touch with and bug your local book store. A signing tour isn’t out of the question this summer, especially if crash space can be provided. ;)

Think you’re interested, but not quite sure? Free e-book teasers will be available at PenguiCon in Livonia, MI. After the convention, on Monday, April 24th, the teaser will be available for download from the novel’s website. As always, feel free to tell your friends about these events, and to bring them along. All are welcome.

Holy crap, am I excited.

The irony of passive voice in my novel’s release announcement has not escaped me.

Weekend Update, with Dave Crampton

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This weekend has been amazing. Friday night, I joined many of the at the Peanut Barrel. It was so good to re-connect with those guys. And, since it was a gathering of barbarians, copious amounts of beer cascaded down the gullets of those present.

Last night was a housewarming party at ‘s new place. Holy crap, he’s put a lot of work into restoring that apartment. Something like 5 layers of wallpaper had come down, a ton of holes in the walls had been repaired, new lights installed… just amazing.

Not to mention the cool people. For a framework, someone had a license plate that read “DRKSPRK” – as in Dark Spark – as in the episode from Beast Machines about Megatron’s rampant spark. Such wonderful geekdom.

Oh, and the drunkenness. Cannot forget Joe’s half-keg of Killian’s. Seems to be a theme. :)


Moisturized!

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I’m hunt-and-peck typing while the moisturizer soaks into my skin. Cocoa Butter hand and body lotion from the Body Shop. The bottle encourages me to recycle it. I think it was 1997 when gave it to me.

Practically every winter, I say that I’m going to use this bottle of moisturizer, and really attack my habitually-dry elbows. Every spring, the bottle gets “put away” (lost?) having been barely dented. It was still nearly full when I pulled it out this Fall.

Those spots between your knuckles? Yeah, mine were drying out and cracking this year. First time, really. The bottle is a tad under half-full (half-empty?). My elbows aren’t getting much better as the spring hits us, so I’m not sure that the bottle is going to get lost this year.

I think, if we take all of the body moisturizing lotion in our house, and put it into one place, it would fill one or two gallon-sized jugs. Luckily, once this stuff is gone, I have some Kroger moisturizer (odorless) from back in the day. Well, less back in the day than this stuff. There will be at least a few months of not smelling girly. Heh.

Also, servers take quite a long time to be scanned for virii, despite the gratuitous amounts of RAM that are usually installed therein.

From , who got it from .

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From this blog entry by J. Steven York:

“Rules da 8 – How Becoming Published Will Change Your Life

Rule da 8: When you make your first sale, your problems are only beginning.

Rule da 8.1: Publishers don’t buy books, they buy careers. If you aren’t thinking past your first book, you are of very little value to anyone. Pray the publisher forgets to ask.

Rule da 8.2: Wash, rinse, repeat. Repeating is the hard part.

Rule da 8.3: The only time a second book can be easier than the first book is when the second book is already written, and even there lie pitfalls.

Rule da 8.4: You can’t rest on your laurels unless you have some, and even then, laurels don’t pay the electric bill.

Rule da 8.5: Sharks gotta swim, writers gotta write. Sharks stop swimming, they die. What does this tell you about writers?”

Horoscope

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TAURUS (April 20-May 20): I once knew a psychic who worked with people in comas. He contacted their spirits, which were wandering in limbo between this world and the next, and tried to convince them to either fully return to their bodies or else let their bodies die and formally exit to the other side. The task you now face is nowhere as dramatically life-and-death as that, Taurus, but it’s comparable in a sense: Being neither here nor there is a futile state that you shouldn’t continue to accept. Do what’s necessary to make the knotty choice with as much grace as possible.

Whew. That’s a relief.

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Electrical charge once again graces my iBook’s battery. Cue the huge sigh of relief.

I have caught up on all laptop-related things that were behind, AFAIK.

Anybody know someone that might want to purchase some old V:TES/Jyhad cards? I found an old card box full of them. I’m not really interested in playing any more, and would rather sell them. If worse comes to worse, I’ll organize and price them, and see what collectors/players want them. As it stands, I have no idea what’s in there, except that some are actual Jyhad cards.

On an unrelated note, does anybody know where I could find some inexpensive PC133 SDRAM, preferably in the 512 MB variety, which would technically fall under the SO-DIMM qualification. Unfortunately, 512 megs is the highest capacity ever made for PC133 RAM. I wonder if anybody ever made any higher-end RAM (in 1 GB size) that could scale back to PC133.

Any ideas?

Sensors detect high levels of rant particles ahead, Captain.

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I had the damn thing memorized. My Japanese speech was clear in my mind. I read over it last night. I memorized sentence by sentence on the multiple-bus ride to class. I had plenty of time, and I had it down pat. I felt GOOD about it. I knew what I was saying in English, as a backup in case I forgot the Japanese phrase. I could take a few seconds and re-translate if I had to.

I was READY.

And then I stood up in front of class, and it was gone. I stammered. I had to start over. I stuttered. I’m not even sure I hit all of the sentences.

I blew it, and I am so enraged at myself that I’m making myself sick.