Reconstruction I got tired of looking at blogger's "scribe" , even if it did describe me pretty well. So bear with me as I use the holiday weekend to tweak the site. It may be down, it may be scrambled, it may even be in different languages, but I hope to get through it by Monday.
In the meantime, enjoy the show.  ¶   6 comments

  A day in the life of a tech writing intern Everybody keeps asking me what it is that I do, so I decided to give a quick run-down hour by hour for you.
A day in the life of a tech writing intern:

8:00-8:30
Morning emails, covert typing of later blog entry

9:00-10:30
Note taking for exec meeting. Obviously, I can't go into details
about what's discussed in the meetings, so you don't get a sample of
the document either. It's just filling out a predesigned template with
the major points of what everyone's saying, as fast as possible so
nothing's missed. Good morning, typing exercize!
Actually, rule #1 might be "know the English Language and know it
well." We'll call this rule #1.1.

10:30- 12:30
Surprise Tech team meeting! I'm pulled into the conference room oon my way back to my desk and asked to take more notes as the technical-minded
members of the team pick at all the little things.

12:30 - 3:00
After realizing the tech team meeting isn't winding down, lunch gets
combined with the meeting. I take more notes and come to a little
better understanding of some of the finer details of our system.

3:00 - 4:00
Go through the meeting notes and pull out "action items" (things that
other people will have to do) and "issues" (things that we'll have to
figure out then make someone else do). It's more of an administrative
thing than actual "tech" writing, but rule #1 is always be flexible.
Especially when you're an intern.

4:00-4:30
This is where the only actual "technical" writing (in the most
technical sense of the word) happened. I work on my ongoing project
developing an expense tracker spreadsheet using href="http://pendragon-software.com">Pendragon software. The
actual development is not really tech writing, it almost feels like
programming, but the help file that I'm writing today for it is. I
explain how to use the sheet I've created, realize I need to fix some
things on the sheet, wrap up a draft of the document, and go home.

And that's pretty much how my day goes. In a tech writing job I might
spend a day on what I spent 30 minutes on, but as an intern I'm doing
a little bit of everything. Which is fine by me. It's getting my typing speed up.

  ¶   0 comments

  A day in the life of a tech writing intern Everybody keeps asking me what it is that I do, so I decided to give a quick run-down hour by hour for you.
A day in the life of a tech writing intern:

8:00-8:30
Morning emails, covert typing of later blog entry

9:00-10:30
Note taking for exec meeting. Obviously, I can't go into details
about what's discussed in the meetings, so you don't get a sample of
the document either. It's just filling out a predesigned template with
the major points of what everyone's saying, as fast as possible so
nothing's missed. Good morning, typing exercize!
Actually, rule #1 might be "know the English Language and know it
well." We'll call this rule #1.1.

10:30- 12:30
Surprise Tech team meeting! I'm pulled into the conference room oon my way back to my desk and asked to take more notes as the technical-minded
members of the team pick at all the little things.

12:30 - 3:00
After realizing the tech team meeting isn't winding down, lunch gets
combined with the meeting. I take more notes and come to a little
better understanding of some of the finer details of our system.

3:00 - 4:00
Go through the meeting notes and pull out "action items" (things that
other people will have to do) and "issues" (things that we'll have to
figure out then make someone else do). It's more of an administrative
thing than actual "tech" writing, but rule #1 is always be flexible.
Especially when you're an intern.

4:00-4:30
This is where the only actual "technical" writing (in the most
technical sense of the word) happened. I work on my ongoing project
developing an expense tracker spreadsheet using href="http://pendragon-software.com">Pendragon software. The
actual development is not really tech writing, it almost feels like
programming, but the help file that I'm writing today for it is. I
explain how to use the sheet I've created, realize I need to fix some
things on the sheet, wrap up a draft of the document, and go home.

And that's pretty much how my day goes. In a tech writing job I might
spend a day on what I spent 30 minutes on, but as an intern I'm doing
a little bit of everything. Which is fine by me. It's getting my typing speed up.

  ¶   0 comments

  It's the type of thing that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy... ...no, not moldy dorm room pizza (though that does too).
Ken Swain posted this discription of my happy little hometown:

am not a big fan of country music so I did not think there was going to be much culture here I could enjoy. This was an area I was very wrong about. It seems this is the “New South.” There is art museums, science centers, and a lot of good rock, blues and country music. That is not even mentioning the sports! From NHL hockey, NFL football, Arena football, and even minor league baseball. There is just a lot to do. Nashville is one of those town that have a lot to offer. They have the facilities of the a big city and the charm of a medium sized town.

The full description is on his site, linked above. Once again, I discovered it through nashvilleistalking.com (NiT, but I'm not comfy enough for abbreviations yet).
I'm gonna miss Nashville come fall. Sure, Murray State's only 2 hours away, but it's really hard to fight the urge for a 12AM waffle house run or a 10PM Bobbie's shake. Not to mention having free symphony concerts, swing dances, art shows, and live music in just about every corner. Yeah, I'm gonna miss this town.

In more personal news, the on-going car search continues. I'm shooting for something around $2k with decent mileage that won't peel apart like a tin can if I wreck it. I went and poked around a '94 Taurus yesterday that was in good shape, only 47k miles on it, and today I'm calling on... wait. I left my numbers at home. I'm not calling on anything today. So tomorrow I'm calling on a couple of Saturns and some other vehicles.
I've got to start getting up earlier in the morning.  ¶   0 comments

  Some thoughts on Satan Kathryn on Schlog had an interesting point yesterday. It's one that's been contemplated by much smarter men than me (I?) for many centuries now. Here's how she puts it:

sometimes i'm so mad at adam and eve, they did this and we all pay for it forever?? but i think no matter who was the original pair, they probably would have done the same thing? i'm more mad at satan and i wonder why satan did what he did. . where did that come from? it seemed that his magnificence made him fall, he was proud, but i wrack my brain sometimes wondering why - i've even wondered if God made lucifer perfectly, then where did that evil come from?

Tradition holds more answers here than scripture. Lucifer's story is one that has been pieced together through references scattered throughout other stories. The Father of Lies is perhaps most imfamous for this suble presence. He's lurking throughout the bible. In Job he approaches God as arrogant and smug as I imagine him to have been before he was cast out. He tempts Christ with God's own scriptures, and spends all his time in the Good Book going against our Hebrew and Christian protagonists.
But who is "he", and is he really a he? This is like calling God "He," even though God's a divine being so far above gender and all its implications. Satan, the second most powerful being in the universe, is as mysterious as God and nowhere near as approachable. It is, I think, what draws some to the occult. Millinia of tradition has given Satan an identity (in lobster red and cloven hoof), but it's those that have struggled with him the longest that have the least to say about him. Alyza on "All things Jewish" puts it this way:

the Hebrew word satan (sin-tet-nun sofit) means an adversary or accuser


There is no Lucifer, no devil in the Tanach, but there are many, many adversaries and accusers of the Jewish people.

While Alyza's page is not the most professional (says the boy on his blog...), it is a good synopsis of a common view. Satan, the adversary within. And while I will be the first to acknowledge that humanity has internal evil, I can't explain away the adversary (or adversaries) of the bible that easily.
So I've come full circle. Satan has become a symbol, even for those who don't give him the presence granted to God. He is as powerful in our minds as the Cross, or the Star of David. Satan is all that is evil, just as God is all that is good. And while some of us may not believe he exists in the way we believe in God, others point to the fact that every coin has two sides.
And sometimes I think when I get to heaven, I'd like to ask God to give me the whole story on what happened before man's bible was written.  ¶   1 comments

  NPT Dreams Last night brought another bizarre dream. This time the sources were pretty obvious, but that doesn't make it any weirder that I was dreaming about them. In fact, it might make it more weird. These bad-action-movie dreams sometimes give decent setups for good stories, but often they just leave me scratching my head and blaming television.
In this one, Tiff and I had gone to visit her old roommate Jami who now owns a giant oil company in her home country of Azerbaijan (That part’s almost true; she's helping build the world's largest oil platform out there now). For whatever dumb reason, Tiff and I decided to go be tourists. By this point my brain was plugging in all of the stereotypes of Muslim culture you can imagine. Somehow we ended up in what I suspect was Iran, but looked more like Istanbul from the Indiana Jones movies. Anyway, where ever I was, they accused of blowing up a mosque. I'd heard the blast, but was nowhere nearby at the time. Of course, no one else was going to vouch for me on that one. Tiff and I had gotten separated and I was looking for her when the bomb went off. When I found her, she explained that she had seen the woman who did it (fully veiled, making recognition difficult), and a great pursuit ensued. For whatever reason, the American Embassy was never involved. I ended up in an Iranian prison, which was rather unpleasant, but breaking out was exciting.
I don't know how it ended because Lauren's cell phone ringing woke me up for the third time that night. I went back to sleep, and as best I can tell, quit dreaming weird dreams. This is why NPT Mysteries shouldn't be watched before bed.
In other news, I'm NOT still reading that book on the sidebar. I just haven't updated my template in ages. I'm actually reading CS Friedman's This Alien Shore right now. It's good, lightweight stuff. Good thing, too, since Pilgrim's Progress is next on my list. That reminds me, (via poetry, Christian stuff, and so forth) the sermon will be up tonight.  ¶   0 comments

  Back to work No, I don't mean the 9-5 (which is really an 8-4). I found my missing notepad of character sketches. That combined with the rival talk from a couple of days ago gave me all the motivation I needed to get things going again. Well, everything except the going. The spark's there, but it's not a fire yet.
Two Iraqi voices from a radio interview this morning:
"You're risking your life to go outside at night, but you have to go. What else can you do?"
"Yes, going out is a defiance of the authorities, but what can you do?"
These people are living in what NPR called "another season of water shortages, no electricity, and bombs." There used to be a blogger who wrote from there, but I haven't read her blog in a while and I can't look up the link right now. But just imagine what it's like to grow up in that.
That's what I'm writing now. Not literally, of course, but in a round-about, extrapolated way. Imagine characters who have survived a terrible war working with ones who have no concept of violence. That's a little bit of this piece.
A very little bit.
I'm such the epoch writer. Short stories kill me. Sometimes writing scene-by-scene might create a short story structure, but generally speaking I can't help but rub my hands and grin as I drop in little bits of bait that pull the reader through dozens of pages of questions. Discovering a novel should be an exploration. Some parts might warrent hours, other mere minutes. But shouldn't the journey be just as fun as the destination?  ¶   0 comments

  Another Rant on Politics (please skip if you're thinned skin or have been on the recieving end already) While surfing the expanding ring of blogs that I read regularly, I couldn't help but notice that criticism of the war is finally becoming bipartisan. I've been labelled (perhaps not incorrectly) a liberal for a while now just because of my statements since September 11th, and especially since we started sending troops to Iraq. Now, thank goodness, a bipartisan bill is finally out there to at least get a timetable set up for this mess. As always, it's catching crap from both sides, but at least some from either side can agree.
I wish the same could be said on the home front. Between work, school, home, and the vast layers of instant messages I zip through each night, I typically overhear at least 2 political discussions a day, and am involved in at least 3 a week. When Republicans think you're too liberal and liberals that think you're too conservative, stuff like this happens. And yes, I’m a little bit of an instigator. I don't like being labelled, I don't like being generalized, and I don't really enjoy having my beliefs criticized (unless I'm doing it to myself, anyway). Walking away isn’t easy for me. It’s part of the reason I shy away from these things, oddly enough. I know that when I share my opinion, I usually do so in a less-than-peaceful manner.
So I'm just walking away.
After I get through with this, anyway.
I didn't vote for Gore (I couldn't, I was 16), I didn't vote for Kerry (I was overseas and not organized enough to get a ballot before I left). I've actually never voted. So I'm clean-slated here.
At my office we have a cafe with a wall covered in political comics. There's one with the Republicans' Elephant and the Democrats' Donkey shooting at each other. Off to the side stands a guy with a gun to his own head and a nametag identifying him as the American Public. I think it's a little more split than that (more like ranks of republicans ploughing through just as many democrats), but I often feel like that guy. I'm not caught in the crossfire. I've learned to dodge the bullet. I'm just tired of the racket. Certain political figures try to turn the war on terror into a war on policy, and others think burying their heads in the sand is the best method of survival. What do I do? The same thing dozens of other authors do. I roll my eyes at it, ignore most of it, and turn what's left into fodder to drive my writing.
Lately there's been a big enough pile that I should be able to write full time for the rest of my life.
Just not about them.
Is this running away from my duty as a voting American? Maybe. Maybe I could use my talents to win the victory for the "right" candidate. But what if I'm wrong? Do I really want to be responsible for putting a terrible person into office to represent not just me, but everyone?
I think I'll sit that one out.
It's amazing. The further you put yourself from politics, the more political you seem to become.
I don't think there's a way around it.
Tolkien had his work compared to the Great War. We all know about CS Lewis’s religion, and his political commentary really never was that quiet. Hemingway was probably a communist. Etc. Writers are still human. We have our opinions, and our writing may reflect them, but those opinions should never define our works. The writer is striving to create something greater than himself. I want whatever I write to be greater than my politics as well.  ¶   0 comments

  It's hot... LOL!
This is off the news2 ticker on their website. I just thought I'd share:
  ¶   2 comments

  Land of the [less] Free Congress actually passed the bill banning flag burning. Never mind how many times it's been shot down in the past for being an infringement on First Amendment Rights. Amazing.
No, those of you who are gasping at me, I would never burn a flag in protest (that distinction needs made simply because the proper method of disposal is actually by respectful burning). Such a blatant display of contempt for our nation makes me somewhat ill to see, much less take part in. Then again, I'm never going to become Atheist, become a slumlord, follow every third word with an explitive, or do all the other legal yet contemptable things allowed here. Fact is, there's plenty of things that offend me to the point of serious rage, but that doesn't mean that right can be stripped from others.
So, yes, I realize I'm setting myself up for serious damage here, but at least I'm not doing so alone.
Bravo to lacy for posting this quote from the American President:

"You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil who is standing center stage advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours ...
The symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free."

  ¶   0 comments

  Frank Zappa and Bjork tripping over a computer, a nintendo, a xylophone, and a dot-matrix printer in slow motion First, Danke Reike fuer siene E-mail. Es war sehr nett.
I heard a neat new musician yesterday on NPR. He's actually more of a businessman. He made the soundtracks for several of the VW commercials, along with many others. His music is sort of a transcendant, mellow techno, which sounds impossible. Maybe it's more like Frank Zappa and Bjork tripping over a computer, a nintendo, a xylophone, and a dot-matrix printer in slow motion. Yeah, that's a little more like it. Anyway, it's interesting, especially since the guy has absolutely no musical training whatsoever. J. Ralph is just a guy who couldn't cut a music deal, so he turned his stuff into commercials instead. Now he's self-published his CD with the profits from the commercials. Way to beat the system.  ¶   0 comments

  2 minutes of glory Cosmos I crashed yesterday only 2 minutes after take-off. How sad. I had hoped to see that go well, just because the concept of solar sails really tingles the Sci-fi geek inside me.

Maybe there'll be a Cosmos II that at least makes it to space.  ¶   0 comments

  Rivals So I realized tonight that I am an adversarial person. I set up rivals to struggle against in order to be properly motivated. At work, I am usually my own adversary, which is probably best. At home, I used to be an incredibly jealous boyfriend and now, well, I guess I still am, but not as much. I hope. Anyway. At school I'm fiercy competitive with my classmates unless it's something I feel I have no place in anyway (Chemistry). And tonight, what triggered this line of thought, I spoke with my literary rival.
He's not a bad person. He's a friend, actually. But hearing him discuss how far he's gotten with his novel and how original it is just makes me want to open up the laptop and begin typing away as fast as I can. I know mine can be better, simply because it's mine.
Of course, he has the one thing I don't: Time.
Still, I'm stubborn and determined, and only time will tell which of us really ends up on top.
And if he does make it before me, isn't that just further motivation?
Writers are so evil to eachother.  ¶   0 comments

  Solstice Today's the Summer Solstice. Pagans everywhere rejoice. So do some christians. Not as much as in the winter, when our Christmas falls so close to older holidays, but still some scattered remnants hold on to bits of a forgotten past.

For catholics, the feast day of St. John the Baptist is coming. Unlike most other Saints Days, St. John the Baptist's day marks his birth, not his death. Just as Christ's birth is celebrated a few days after the Winter Solstice, so too is the forerunner of Christ's birth celebrated a few days after the Summer.

What an amazing coincidence!

In all seriousness, enjoy the Solstice you pagans and you catholics (whoever still mark the Saint's Days, anyway). Astronomers too, though I suspect the winter one's more beneficial for your purposes.

I wonder if Cosmos I was launched with the Solstice in mind?

Nah, it's got to be coincidence.  ¶   0 comments

  nashville is talking ... to me?! I've been telling people all over the world that I'm a proud Nashvillian for a while now, and at the moment I can't help but feel a little more puffed up about my hometown. WKRN added my blog to their new site NashvilleisTalking.com. As flattered as I am, I can't help but feel a little out of place. Should I talk more about the disturbing opinions of those around me? How one today said that the democrats will be the downfall of the nation, or how Frist refused to sign this, that, or the other?
No, that's not me.
Sorry for anyone that got their hopes up.
I'm just Joe Student, sweating over my internship and flying X-Wings on my video game system by night.
And, if all that hasn't driven away some new reader, I also preach from time to time.
Like next Sunday.
Yikes.
Seriously, our morning with the Psalms will be uplifting. I am excited about it, and only a little jittery. It's been 3 years since I last stood behind a pulpit, I guess it's time I tried it again. My text is hardly original, even though I wrote most of it myself. After constructing my outline I dug through the internet to find out what the experts had said, and a lot of them had said a lot of the same. I guess that's a good sign, it means I'm on the right track, but it's still a bit of a shock sometimes. Nothing new under the sun, though, right?

You're still here? Thanks. I'm afraid I'm not going to be any more tonight, though. My morning starts in 6 hours. I must sleep.
Whoever dug me up and invited me to nashvilleistalking, thanks again. It's nice to know you're listening, even if I'm not always sure what I'm saying. And it's great reading all these other blogs from the city. This place is so alive!  ¶   1 comments

  Karma Work's trying to kill me now. I got what I asked for and more. I spent half the day trying to figure out where my time went and the other half trying to figure out what to do after it ran away.
But it's over now.
Watched Star Wars Episode II. It was better than I remembered. Will be watching Clone Wars tomorrow before going to see Episode III. Then watching the next three I am. :D
It'll be a good week.
Neat article, thank you Slashdot: http://www.space.com/adastra/adastra_terraforming_brody-1.html

Terraforming's pretty centric to the sci-fi story that I am still sort-of writing. I try to stay on top of the theories and speculation, but let's face it, I'm a writer. I could care less about the intimate details, I just know it makes a darn good plot device.
Still, characters care, so I at least have to sound intelligent.
I miss my cat.
That's it for now. I'm going to bed.  ¶   0 comments

  Me and My Big Fat Mouth... I got an email at work yesterday. My boss was going out of town, so I'm helping this other team.
This other team had plans for me. I was busy yesterday. It was fun, but more than a little stressful. I'm supposed to have a draft finished by 9:30 and I don't know for certain that it's going to happen. I had hoped to have lunch with Tara today, but if I'm still revising than no such luck.
In other news, I got my license, finally. I'm not sure if I'd posted that already or not. I haven't driven anywhere, really, since I'm not on anyone's insurance, but I've got it. Tiff actually found a car for me, too. A '94 Taurus with 47k miles. She's going to try and get the contact info for me.
Sermon time's coming up. I'm leading our worship service a week from this sunday. It's going to be centered around the psalms. I had a bizarre dream about it last night in which a strange woman came in, took over song-leading, and pulled out decaf-Atlantis style chick-rock renditions of several of our church songs. Most of the congregation left after that point.
Anyway, I just thought I'd try and catch you up real quick. I like to write a little daily, and since I've kinda let my story drop in favor of my sermon, blogging more often is really the only other writing I do. Then again, between work and life it's getting dropped more too.
I'll do what I can.  ¶   0 comments

  Eh. well, I'm discovering more and more that this may not be exactly what I want to do. Not that this is bad, as a whole it's actually pretty good, but it's taxing. My eyes are getting serious strain from looking at computer screens 8 hours / day, and being in a cubicle the whole time is somewhat frustrating as well.
The actual work's ok, and I'm hesitant to say it since I know how google-able I am, but it seems like there's not really enough of it.
I sit here with a document, wrestle out a draft or two, then wait for a good time for my boss to be able to revise it. While I wait I revise it (repeatedly, sometimes), re-read all my sources (over and over again), then wait some more. Occassionally I even do worthless things like blogging ;).
All-in-all it's not a bad thing. I mean, I'm getting paid to write a little and take minutes, but I think I'm missing out on something. Sure, I'm doing technical writing, but when a team hires a technical writer for a project, is this really what the do with him, or is this just what they do with the intern they're not sure what to do with?
Also, in their defense, I've had my hands tied at least once a week by technical problems. The technical problem's pretty straightforward: my laptop's a piece of junk and they don't have another one I can use.
So whenever something else goes wrong on it the help desk ends up scratching their heads, performing a ritual, then giving me a pat on the back and a rabbit's foot.
Besides the whole interning thing summer is moving out of the glad-to-be-back phase and into the "eh" one. It's fun to run around with friends from time to time, but most of the ones who stayed in Nashville are still of the mentality they were 5 years ago. That or we've grown up and in different directions.
Sometimes it's difficult not to just say "good riddance."
I already have to a few.
I'm worried about my cat. He was lying under the car last night and we backed over him. We're not sure what we squashed, but he was in good enough shape to take off up the road and hide. We called for him for a while last night and rode around looking for him, but had no luck. Maybe Mom's found him today.
I began converting bits of my blog into a more narrative form. So far I got all the way up to the plane landing. Dialogue vanishes quickly, so I'm taking liberties based on my memory. It's an interesting endeavor. If I deem it worthy, I'll post it here. Eventually I'm going to put it into a print form of the blog (you know, nostalgia and all that).
Anyway, that's my rant for the day. Lunch break ended so I'm going back to work now.
Who'd of thought I'd ever complain about a plush job?
I think I just miss the manual labor. It was so much easier just going all day on autopilot.
Oh well. Live and learn. Some.  ¶   1 comments

  A Sigh for Deutschland The Muse can be a cruel mistress.
yesterday I registered with Associated Content to -hopefully- get some of my stuff online and -maybe- even get paid for it. Today, while touring Heather through all my photos, I realized how much I learned in Europe, and how quickly it's all slipping. She got the "uhm, King... whos-his-face... So-and-So's granddad..." and similar commentary as I tried to supply her with as much detail as she had recently supplied me. I wasn't very successful.
So I poured through the travelblog again and reaquanted myself with Regensburg. Now I miss it again, but I treasure it too.
I'm in the zone to tell someone all about it.
Problem is, I'm waking up for work in 7.5 hours.
The writer in me tells me I can always caffinate and consolidate, but the practical side tells me tomorrow's going to be horrific enough that taking the entire 12-pot coffee tower probably wouldn't get me through it.
So we compromised.
You get my brief, heartfelt sigh at the place I lived for half a year.
If you haven't read the travelblog, go do so now. If you have, I imagine you understand.
And just think, there's still a lot I have to tell.

I can't wait to write these articles!  ¶   0 comments

  Dreams For the first time in a week I've had a dream I can remember. Science tells us that probably means I'm not getting enough sleep. I'd say they're probably right. But anyway, let me tell you about this one...
Before I went to bed Mom and I stayed up and watched the first 2 episodes of Wolf's Rain (which she loved) and the first episode of Full Metal Alchemist (which she was fascinated by, but didn't like as well. For those of you who have never seen FMA, or don't remember the first few episodes, it goes something like this:
2 kids live in a world where a magic-like power called Alchemy exists.
With Alchemy, anything can be created, but it takes an equal amount of material to do so.
The kids mother dies, they try to revive her with Alchemy. Things go badly and one brother ends up nothing but a soul in a suit of armor while the other has an auto-mail (mechanical) arm and leg.
Several years pass, they come up on this city ruled by a guy who has set himself up as the messenger of the sun god. FMA is disgusted by it and shows him to be a fraud, kicking serious butt in the process.

Ok, I went into that long explination because you have to know what my brain did with that once I went to sleep.
West Nashville had been taken over by a cult. They'd ensared Tiffany and (don't ask me how) Murray's VP of Student Affairs, Dr. R. (or just D.R.). I was shocked and horrified at this blatent abuse of the bible, and after several failed attempts at reasoning and a long time's punishment under the leader, I gave in and played along for a little while.
Now, it should be noted that this cult, in taking over West Nashville, was remodelling it. Everywhere I went people were digging up roads and driveways. Almost all the cars had been confinscated. Houses were being torn down or built into bigger units. I never got to see where mission control was, though.
When Tiff and DR decided to take me out of Mom's home (Mom had long since fled to KY with David... presumably I'd been at Murray the whole time), I snatched up my audio book of the New Testament. Tiff and DR couldn't object to it after all, it was the Word. Even though they only heard the Word through the Speaker, thier cult leader, there was nothing wrong with hearing it elsewhere.
It only took a few Pharisee stories to turn DR around.
Tiff, disturbingly enough, was a harder sale.
When we got to the work camp (which looked mysteriously like Edwin Warner Park), I persuaded Tiff in person. She called me lots of versions of the word heretic, until DR intervened as well. Together, though I don't recall exactly how, we were able to show her how we were being exploited. She was furious, but in a good way.
We were about to start a revolution.
Then I woke up.  ¶   1 comments

  Summer O 1 ...has been ok, but I've been working on a lot of non-summer O materials. Rummaging through old RCA notes brought many interesting things to light, as well as a couple of new program ideas to my mind. Since I swore if I got I celphone I'd pay for it with $$ from writing, I decided to find a more permanent way to use the resources available to me. I joined a forum by Casteele, the only even mildly successful freelancer I know. http://ominouscow.com/forum lists several good places to write online. Now I just have to get out and do it.
Work next week moves from the admin into the technical, so it's possible that I'll be totally fried by next week.  ¶   0 comments

  A Note from Work I realize it's been a while, but I'm going to go ahead and blog right
now while I have a few minutes of down time. My internship is
absolutely phenomenal. I'm learning how little I know about some
things (how dare they not even mention Visio to us!) and how a lot of
the things I do know can be applied. I used to consider myself a bit
of a computer geek, but since I've come here I realize I have a lot to
learn. Lucky for me documentation isn't about creating the process,
just about understanding it. They make that pretty straightforward
here.
Outside of work things have been picking up as well. Tuesday I went
to rapier practice with the Glaedenfeld Shire and
got a harsh reminder of how much I've forgotten. Drills jog the
memory, though, and now my swordsmanship is at least on the road to
improving again.
I'd love to buy one, but that's a luxury I don't intend to allow
myself any time soon. I want to force myself into working comfortably
with the online writing groups Casteele found for me. He supports
himself fully on freelancing, bringing in around $700 / month (he
lives a rather Spartan lifestyle). I figure just writing from time to
time for different places could bring in at least a trickle on my own
pocketbook.
In other news, I'm starting driving lessons. Guaranteed driver in 2
weeks. Finally.
That's it for now, I have to get back to work.  ¶   0 comments