Coyote Cartography

Travel plans

Thu, 01 May 2008 21:31:57 GMT

In about 30 hours, I’ll be leaving for a whirlwind trip to Seattle to visit a couple friends. To friends also in that area I haven’t gotten in touch with yet, which is a fairly large number, I do apologize: I’m not kidding about the whirlwind part. I’ll be driving to the airport directly from the office tomorrow, and driving directly from the airport to the office on Monday morning, and Saturday and Sunday plans are pretty much being put together by others. If I can, I’ll come back to the Seattle area sometime for a week, or at least a long weekend.

The reason for this whirlwind-ness is the cloud to the silver lining of gainful employment: fewer vacation days, unless I’m allowed to just take some off without pay. As I’m planning a trip to Eurofurence (insert glance in cheetah_spotty’s direction), that’s going to be five or six days chewed off right there; given other smaller trips I’m planning, I’m likely to bump into my 10-day holiday allotment as it is.

This does bring up another issue: this is likely to be the first Anthrocon since 1998’s that I’ve missed. Boo hiss! I don’t think it can be helped, though. I’m hanging onto my AC hotel reservation for the nonce and keeping a search on plane tickets running in case a Really Good Deal (ha!) happens, but between travel costs and travel time I suspect I’m going to have to table plans this year. As they say: more info as it develops.

Brief observation

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 01:29:10 GMT

So I'm tweaking the horror story and thinking I've got to make this suck more. And it occurred to me that this is about the only genre where that's a positive thing.

...Of course, I mean "make this suck more for the characters," but it's still sort of perversely amusing to be looking critically at the text and thinking how do I maximize the gut punch effect without increasing the word count?

(N.B.: thanks to shaterri the story's tentative title is "Carrier.")

Virtual Host Testing on OS X

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:04:01 GMT

John Gruber of Daring Fireball wondered if there were any “testbed virtual hosting utilities” for OS X like Headdress and VirtualHostX. I only knew of the first, but I stopped using it when I realized how easy doing this actually was.

“Virtual hosting” is the ability to run multiple virtual web servers with one Apache server. It’s how ranea.org, esmuck.net, stardancer.org and solluna.org are all actually on the same box (sneaky, huh?). For testing purposes, it can be useful to do this on your local machine, particularly if you’re dorking around with web applications like Ruby on Rails or Django: instead of trying to cram that into your personal ~/Sites/ directory, you just put the application anywhere, and make it run on a specific port on your machine. So you can run your new CakePHP application on, say, port 9000, and go to it at http://localhost:9000 in your browser.

What Headdress and VirtualHostX do is add a little GUI to make setting up virtual hosts under OS X. Yes, this is nominally easier than mucking around in Apache configuration files, but unless you’ve got a highly unusual situation, you’re not setting up new virtual hosts on a near-daily basis. You’re doing it a few times a year, more than likely, and that only if you’re into pretty hardcore web application nerdery. And, at least under Leopard (10.5), mucking around in configuration files isn’t that difficult, actually.

The first thing to do is to just open a Terminal window, and at the shell prompt type:

cd /etc/apache2

Now, edit the apache configuration file with your favorite text editor. Mine is TextMate, so I’d type:

mate httpd.conf

(Or if you’re feeling more nerdy, try sudo vi httpd.conf there. TextMate and BBEdit will prompt you for your password when you’re saving the file because it’s an “administrator” file; I’m going to presume anyone who’d be using vi knows how to set up sudo to do the same thing from the command line.)

Toward the end of that file, there’s a bunch of Include directives, mostly commented out (lines beginning with # characters are comments). Find the section that reads:

# Virtual hosts
#Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

And uncomment the include line, so it now reads:

# Virtual hosts
Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

Now save the file, and go back to the Terminal prompt. Type

cd extra
cp httpd-vhosts.conf http-vhosts.orig.conf

(This makes a backup of your configuration file in case it gets screwed up.) Now, edit the virtual host configuration:

mate httpd-vhosts.conf

And at this point, pretty much delete everything from the comment that reads

# Use name-based virtual hosting.

on down, or just comment it out. You don’t need it. Yes, this means NameVirtualHost *:80 should be commented out, too, because you’re going to be using port-based virtual hosting.

Now, add these three lines:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/Documents"
</VirtualHost>

This is your “root” host, the one that actually runs on the standard HTTP port.

Okay, so what about the virtual hosts? Glad you asked. This is the cool part here. For any virtual host you want to add to the system, add a block that looks like this:

Listen 9000
<VirtualHost *:9000>
    DocumentRoot "/Users/watts/webapp"
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    <Directory "/">
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

In this block, 9000 is the port I want to run the virtual host on, and /Users/watts/webapp is the “root” of the virtual server, i.e., an index.html file in that directory will be the one you see if you go to http://localhost:9000.

After you save that file, you can restart Apache by going back to the terminal window and typing

sudo apachectl restart

…or just turn it off and back on again in the Sharing preferences pane, if you prefer. And that’s it! If you want another virtual host running, just add another block with a new port:

Listen 9100
<VirtualHost *:9100>
    DocumentRoot "/Users/watts/drupal"
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    <Directory "/">
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Now. Is this as easy as a GUI to do this? No. But once you have that first block in place, copying and pasting and changing a couple of numbers is, to use Rails guru David Hansson’s phrase, not rocket surgery.

Something else Six Apart learned from LiveJournal?

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:04:42 GMT

From TechCrunch:

Six Apart is launching an advertising network for blogs and will begin offering professional services (design, implementation, development, optimization) after acquiring New York-based creative agency Apperceptive.

The company is now competing with Federated Media Publishing, Glam, the upcoming Technorati ad network and a number of others to get bloggers to join their network. Six Apart has long sold advertising for itself on its network of free blogs on LiveJournal (before it was sold) and Vox. CEO Chris Alden says they have significant experience in grouping like-blogs and selling to large advertisers.

Brief updates

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:49:46 GMT

The observant will, of course, have noted that despite the message bankruptcy I am indeed still using AIM and logging onto MUCKs. I’m trying to do less of each, though, particularly when trying to do something else simultaneously: office work, writing, what have you. Is this “working,” whatever that may mean? Yes, even if I have some distance to go. The next step is getting more serious about workspace organization (i.e., my room) and time management. The latter’s always been a killer for me, but I think if I can take the approach of today I would like to get X done for small but concrete values of X I’ll manage. To pick a real-life example, “write something I can show for Claw & Quill” is so large it’s paralysis-inducing, but “Get something started for Claw & Quill” isn’t concrete enough to attack.

What I have accomplished is writing a short horror story, with the intent of sending it off for submission to the Eurofurence program book. (EF’s theme this year is horror.) I’m going to get a bit of feedback from the writing group before shoving it out the door, and, oh yes, come up with a title for the damn thing. I’m fairly happy with it in its current state, though. It may eventually show up elsewhere, but—assuming it makes it into the program book—you’ll just have to go to the con to read it.

As for why I am sending that off to EF, my answer for now is: because they’re just swell people. (Which is, from what I’ve seen, absolutely true.) Any other answers are waiting on other people to say something. (“You go first.” “No, after you.”)

To reiterate past mentions, I do still use Twitter, as chipotlecoyote, and update it both more frequently and more inanely than I do this journal. If you’re desperate to get in touch but e-mail is too slow and old fashioned for you, a Twitter reply or direct message will reach me faster. Theoretically.

Declaring messaging bankruptcy

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:20:26 GMT

I read an interesting column on TidBITS; while this is a Mac news site, “Instant Messaging for Introverts” isn’t platform-specific. Instead, it’s about the author’s problem using IM and similar apps, and trying to explain first what an introvert is (i.e., not “shy, withdrawn, afraid of crowds, or lacking in social skills”) and why this can lead to the problems he’s describing:

Introverts typically need to concentrate on just one thing at a time, and are often particularly sensitive to interruptions and distractions. Now, I happen to think “multi-tasking” is a concept that should never, ever be applied to human beings (regardless of personality type), but be that as it may, I can certainly say that I’m easily distracted, and having more than one thing to think about actively at any given time is sure to make me both ineffective and grumpy. Chatting online while also working on another task, therefore, is unthinkable.

As Rands observed in his article about “Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder,” or N.A.D.D., the state of having a half-dozen different activity windows scattered about your computer screen isn’t multi-tasking. It’s context switching, or less generously, an inability to focus. I am less sanguine about the upsides than Rands is. People with N.A.D.D. have problems in 2008 that they didn’t in 1998 and really didn’t in 1988. The internet, and particular its flirtations with ubiquitous presence, offer opportunity for immediate distraction that has never existed before in all of history. No, I don’t think that’s an exaggeration.

In 2006, Internet law guru Lawrence Lessig wrote to his e-mail correspondents, “Bankruptcy is now my only option” and deleted all their messages, asking them to resend anything particularly pressing. I’ve gotten reasonably good at managing e-mail without just deleting it all, but I’m considering declaring IM bankruptcy.

Sound nuts? Here’s the thing. Suppose I have an IM window open and a MUCK window open, as I’m wont to do, and a couple of hours elapse. Now three or four (or five or six) tabs are open in Adium, each a different conversation; two or three MUCK characters are online, at least one of whom is sitting in a room with a handful of other characters, some trying to interact with him or her. In addition, several people will almost certainly be “paging” to one or more of those characters intermittently, in effect creating separate private communication channels.

That’s a half dozen or more one-on-one conversations and one or more group conversations at the same time. You wouldn’t attempt something that absurd in “real life,” but the mental context switching that you have to do online is the same. And if I’m sitting in front of the computer, the chances are there are other windows I’m trying to pay attention to, like a web browser or a text editor.

This is, pardon the language, objectively batshit.

Since many—not all, but many—of my correspondents across the internets read this, I’m going to put this here as a general beg for understanding. My “real job” work often requires real job attention, and I’ve learned from experience that I cannot write fiction and have any other communication window open. Given that at the moment I’m trying to write a novel as well as, at the immediate moment, an unrelated short story I need to get done ASAP… well, here’s my thoughts.

When I am on MUCKs, I may turn off pages more than I historically have. It’s difficult enough to keep up when I have a character in a busy room having “cocktail party” conversations — throw in a couple page conversations and it gets psychotic. (VR social dynamics apparently dictate the only cause for missing someone’s cues is because you hate them.)
I’m going to try to be more aggressive about setting my IM “away” when I don’t want to be disturbed. I’m going to try to do this instead of just not being on IM at all, but respect the away-ness.
When I really can’t be disturbed I’m just going to shut the IM client off, and log off the MUCKs. Sorry. Email, Twitter and even SMS will all get in touch with me in ways that don’t break my concentration (but won’t get an immediate reply).

Oh. And sometimes, when I am online, it may be appropriate to ask me if I’ve actually gotten the shit done today that I need to get done. I have about a decade of NADD to try and dig my way out of.

Noted without comment

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 07:21:45 GMT

(Source: Photobasement.com)

A note from Anil Dash I agree with

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:06:51 GMT

(No matter how much LiveJournal users may be irritated by him for being a principal at Six Apart:)

"Hey, there! I'm your friend, so I didn't want to be the one to tell you. But someone had to: Your April Fool's Day joke sucks."

Easter brunch

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 00:35:45 GMT

I have a vague desire to go to a brunch buffet on Easter Sunday. I blame Frang, if only by proxy. No idea where I can find a good one to go to on short notice, though, other than a hotel listed on OpenTable in Emeryville. And any of the Left Banks do brunch, but not buffets.

What's SUP, Doc?: Thoughts on LiveJournal's future

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:13:00 GMT

So I’ve generally been steering clear of the various LiveJournal-related controversies, but I’ve been chewing over a few things the last day.

Where we are

With a hosted blogging service that has 1.7 million active users, it’s mind-boggling that there wasn’t some kind of “adult content” filtering in place before last year’s fiasco. The Guardians of Virtue or whoever the hell they were may have prompted Six Apart’s headless chicken dance, but the reason to tie SafeSearch-style viewing preferences to user accounts and to provide mechanisms for labelling content is to protect the service from these kinds of attacks in the first place.

A more recent flap has been about them no longer offering the no-cost and ad-free “basic” accounts. The “content strike” proposed for March 21st, 2008 (tomorrow, as I write this) is built on the premise that all accounts generate content and that’s what brings people to LiveJournal in the first place. Okay, but while all accounts generate content, companies run on revenue; as important as content may be, the bottom line is that the basic accounts are subsidized by the rest of the accounts. Do the other account levels generate enough income to do that? Maybe, but unless someone who actually saw the books can confirm the answer is “yes,” I’m dubious.

Why? Well, Vanna, let’s bring out the chart. Only one, I promise.

This data is taken from the stats page of LJ and the web archive of that page, checking each year in March (or as close to March as I could get). The definition of “active user” is, uh, whatever that stats page uses. Note that there’s no breakdown for paid users, so this is not “all users” versus “paid users”; it’s “people who have LiveJournals” versus “people actually doing something with them.”

Notice two things here. One, the fastest rate of growth in LJ’s history was the year before the sale to 6A. I know Brad Fitzpatrick tells us the sale was basically because the Six Apart guys were just swell, but operating costs had to have been skyrocketing during 2004.

Since then the total userbase has been growing at a fairly steady rate, but the number of active users has been in a gradual decline. There are a few possible explanations for this. Old users may be leaving LiveJournal faster than new users are coming in to replace them. New users may not be finding LiveJournal “sticky” and so their journals quickly go inactive. In any case, we can assume the sizable majority of paid users are in that active group, since most won’t keep paying for a journal they’re not using.

Ah-ha! Six Apart killed LiveJournal’s growth! Well… no, probably not. LJ’s userbase is primarily in the high school and college age range, and there are a couple other sites you might have heard of that came into prominence around that time. The new prospective users entering LJ’s prime demographic were starting to collect around MySpace and Facebook. LiveJournal was already, like, four years old. You have a LiveJournal? Oh, that’s so 2002.

6A wanted some of that action, but they didn’t want to revitalize LJ—they wanted inspiration, if not actual code, for Vox, which we can colloquially dub “LiveJournal 2.0.” That was their big community blogging gamble, the next generation platform, where all of their attention was going to. If we assume that most of the code improvements came primarily from Danga’s old team still working under the 6A aegis, then most of what Six Apart gave LiveJournal’s userbase, apart from the occasional fit, was: style sheets imported from Vox.

And enough money to keep going until the sale to SUP for $30M.

Basically, my suspicion is that SUP paid a lot of money for a blogging platform that’s been stagnant for three years. What a deal, right? Well, it’s been mentioned before how important LiveJournal is in Russia, but most of us Westerners don’t understand how important LiveJournal is in Russia. In SUP’s words, “LiveJournal in Russia is effectively the Russian blogosphere.” LJ is the eighth most-visited site on the internet in Russia. Apparently, the common word for “blogging” in Russian translates to “LiveJournal.” SUP also breaks down a statistic for us: of LiveJournal’s accounts, 5.2 million are in Russia, and 523,000 of those are active. That means 30% of the active LJs are Russian. Getting the picture?

Given what we saw above about the active userbase gradually declining, from a business standpoint, all of the growth opportunity is in Russia. Not to put too fine a point on it: for SUP LiveJournal is friggin’ MySpace and Facebook combined.

If you look at the Russian LiveJournal landing page, if you’re like me your first thought will be: I can’t read any of this. But your second thought will be: this looks like a completely different site. It looks a lot more professional, for one thing. It has (somewhat) different content. And it has an ad for Renault, in the place where the “original” LJ.com has an ad for “Free* IQ Test!” (I presume the asterisk goes to a footnote on their web site reading “*not really.”)

Pop quiz: which one of those ads do you think LiveJournal charges more for?

So now we can see why basic accounts had to go. SUP is, bluntly, the first owner for LiveJournal that’s really serious about making money from it. They want to make a lot of money from it. And if you are not a Russian user, you are not who they expect to make that money from.

Where to go

So is LiveJournal doomed, at least for non-Russian users? I’ve asked the Magic 8-Ball™ three times and keep getting replies like “Better not tell you now” and “Ask again later.”

The outrage of the moment (well, I haven’t checked in eight hours, so it may have passed now) is an interview at Izbrannoe with Anton Nossik, who Google Translations informs us is “director of blogs company Soup.” You can find several better translations of this going about now; see darkrosetiger’s and furiosity’s. (darkrosetiger’s is commentary that includes a translation by russianswinga.)

However. The guy who wrote this actually (a) writes English himself and (b) is on LiveJournal. anton_nossik wrote his own response. He clarifies that his title is not director of anything, but rather “Social Media Evangelist,” and that he makes no decisions at SUP. Nossik does a fairly good job of convincing me that furiosity is mostly correct when he writes,

Translating a Russian interview into English directly will make pretty much any Russian sound like a complete dickwad, because cultural expectations are completely different. It just really frustrates me that people are not taking into account that we’re dealing with a different culture here, not just a different company. Business and economics are built on pretty much the same principles the world over, but they are never divorced from culture.

Mostly correct, but not completely. Nossik’s attempted clarification shows why better than the interview does. He defends his assertion that paid accounts were only about “just asking money to avoid showing banners,” but the Wayback Machine page that he links as proof actually proves the opposite: it lists extra paid-only features like customization and text messaging—and the “fast servers” and the poll creator are added by September 2001. He continues to describe Danga as “donation-backed,” which is wrong; as Brad Fitzpatrick wrote when 6A bought Danga, “Everybody should understand that LiveJournal was never a non-profit volunteer organization. Danga has always been a for-profit company.” And, Nossik uses the word freeloader more than once when describing basic account holders.

To Nossik, pre-SUP LiveJournal’s business practices deserve no respect. While he asserts we shouldn’t construe his opinion as an official message of SUP or its management but merely as that of a “veteran Russian LJ blogger,” well, sorry, Anton. You work for the company that owns LiveJournal, your job description at LinkedIn is “development, promotion and cross-platform integration of social media such as LiveJournal,” and oh yes, you’re giving an interview to a journalist about LiveJournal. If you don’t understand what context that places your words in, perhaps corporate evangelism isn’t your true calling. (Given your attitude toward users, I suggest Unix system administration.) In fact, I suspect Nossik’s attitude does reflect SUP’s; they’re just not going to tell the 1.2 million non-Russian users that while their money is certainly welcome, they’re just not a big concern anymore, thanks.

So. How ’bout that content strike? I’m going to be blunt about this, folks: SUP doesn’t get paid for your posts, nor for your reads. They get paid either by you directly or by you responding to ads. In other words, if you’re a basic account holder or a paid/permanent account holder, your use of the system is completely orthogonal to SUP’s revenue. If you’re a basic account holder, they’d really you rather switch to a “Plus” account or drop into the sea. And if you’re a paid account holder, participating in the content strike is like boycotting your gym by continuing to pay for your membership but not using it. For one day. That’ll show ’em!

The only effective “boycott” is leaving LiveJournal. And that opens up a whole new can of worms, because those most likely to be annoyed with perceived changes in policy are those most likely to have been around a while, ones like me who are in the top quartile of connections. (A 2004 analysis estimated the median number of friends a LiveJournal user has at 30; a similar analysis I did this morning put it at 39.) In other words, the people most likely to be enjoying great benefits from the network effect—and thus, the people with the most to lose, socially, by leaving the site. It sounds great in theory to say, “Just move to (Greatest|Insane)Journal!” but in practice, GJ has 114,406 active users and IJ has 69,309, or just over 6% and under 4% of the userbase that LJ does, respectively. Your peeps just ain’t there, and no peeps, no point.

Look, it’s possible—okay, probable—okay, all but inevitable that something else will come along that displaces LiveJournal in a sufficient number of hearts to get us to move there. And I suspect SUP will, intentionally or not, be pushing us along. Maybe this is short-sighted of them, maybe it’s just pragmatic; their growth market is very clearly in Russia, and those of us who’ve been around long enough to remember invite codes are what’s euphemistically referred to as “legacy users.” There’s little value for LiveJournal to keep competing with MySpace and FaceBook for the 18-24 crowd in the West; that battle’s pretty much already over.

But I don’t think this “post-LJ service” is here yet. I don’t know what it’ll look like, but I don’t think it’ll use the LJ code base. (Please.) Instead of catering to the 18-24 crowd, it’s going to consciously skew older, because it won’t want to be in direct competition with Facebook and MySpace, either. What new features will appeal to older users? You tell me.

Of segfaults, beer and keyboards

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 05:23:36 GMT

Yes, I’m still here!

Work is going reasonably well; not much to write about it. Things are likely to get busier as the project I’ve been working on starts getting actively beat on by other people. I’ve decided that the web framework I’m using really isn’t particularly testable in its stable version, and when I try to transfer it to its beta version, it segfaults Apache. Yes. But only when—wait for it—the debug mode is turned on. While I presume this is something peculiar about my code, I can’t imagine just what it is in my code that does this, and it happens on two different installations. Part of me wants to lock myself in a closet for a week, with nothing but the computer and an unlimited supply of nachos and margaritas, and rewrite the entire thing in Django or Rails. But I shall not.

Writing is also going reasonably well; I have about 9700 words written on the new “Gift of Fire.” This is remarkable, given that the old one was about 24,000 words, and I am not 40% through it, but more like 30%. (I think.) I’m writing in fits and starts rather than consistently; I tell myself I should write in the mornings, but my oft-griped-about problem with getting up early has been particularly bad the last month and the time change surely isn’t going to help. I should note that I usually wake up of my own volition by 9 a.m. so we’re not actually talking late, but since I should be leaving for work around 8:30 a.m. or so, to actually get a reasonable amount of work done I’d need to be sitting at the computer, coffee in hand and brain in gear, by 7 a.m. and this should not be as hard as it keeps being.

I have been feeling a little bit of pain in the wrists occasionally again recently, and so I have looked around for a truly ergonomic keyboard. No, no, not one of those dopey curved things. I mean one of these:

Yes, that’s the modern descendant of the old “Model M” IBM keyboards, the ones with the buckling spring switches and are really remarkably loud. This one is made by Unicomp, and it looks, well, pretty much like it always did—except that now it has the Windows keys and is USB. I also discovered, as a minor but pleasant surprise, that OS X Leopard has improved slightly on the modifier key remapping introduced in the previous version: now not only can I flip the Windows and Alt key mapping (Alt sends the keycode for Option and Windows for Command, but they’re in the reverse positions that they would be on a Mac), but I can do that on a per-device basis, so when I’m using the laptop’s internal keyboard or a Mac external keyboard, the remapping doesn’t happen.

Anyway, at the moment I’m just back from a trip to Forbidden Island and then Buffalo Bill’s Brewpub with dracosphynx to meet gatcat and a bunch of other people with him whose names I’ve already mostly forgotten because I suck. While I don’t feel tipsy, I feel tired, so maybe going to bed at a ~~rational~~ early time is in order.

Morning lack of commute

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:55:54 GMT

It’s about ten before nine as I start writing this, and I’m not in traffic this morning; instead I’m sitting in the Millbrae Panera, about 10 miles from the house, with a bagel and cream cheese and a cup of coffee. Yes, it’s a holiday, and one that I’d almost forgotten about having off—it was only as I was leaving the office and called “see you Monday” to a coworker that I got back, “Oh, Monday’s a day off. See you Tuesday.”

The power at the apartment went out this morning, just after seven, and as far as I can tell it’s still out. This means that my web sites and the Excursion Society MUCK are down, as well as haikujaguar’s Stardancer. I did learn, at least, that the UPS monitoring daemon in OS X actually works now, as after about five minutes Parmesan (my PowerMac G5) shut down gracefully. Unfortunately, Agii (the web server) didn’t have that enabled, so hopefully it’ll all come back up without undue stress. (In theory, I back up my home directory to Parmesan via rsync every night, and I back up Parmesan to an external drive… somewhat less frequently than I honestly should. Parmesan is actually due for an internal hard drive replacement given its age, but I’m still debating replacing Parmesan itself. That’s another post, though.)

(Note: around 9:20 or so, Agii came back online. I haven’t reconnected to it to check on my own various web services, but I shall before I leave Panera.)

So what do I plan to do with my day off, you ask? In theory, write. I haven’t done anything on “Gift of Fire” since last weekend. I’ve been having trouble dragging myself out of bed early enough to get in writing in the morning, and both of the weekend days were largely committed—Saturday to a somewhat roundabout trip to Santa Cruz, and Sunday to a large block of role-playing on the Excursion Society, kicking off a long-delayed trip and some of the first interaction that hasn’t been characters sitting around hoping something would happen in months.

In practice, I don’t think I want to sit here at Panera the whole day trying to write, though. The atmosphere’s still pleasant enough in its own way but perhaps it’s become a little too sterile, or perhaps I’m anticipating the inevitable lunch rush with dread. (They’ve also taken to shutting off your wifi if you’re on it for more than 30 minutes between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., precisely because of said lunch rush—an understandable business decision but not one that fills me with joy, even though if I’m writing I shouldn’t be on the damn network anyway.) I’m contemplating heading up into San Francisco to check out Ritual Coffee Roasters, which I’ve been to once before, many months ago, and see if I can write there. Will it be magically more inspiring? Maybe. Maybe it’ll just be a waste of time, of course.

I’ve also brought my camera with me. I have a Nikon D70; last week I became a bit technolusty after one of the newer Nikons, the D300. (For those not up on the model line, the D70 was replaced by the D70s and then the D80; Nikon’s newest cameras are the Serious Pro Level D3 and its less buff cousin, the D300, which is nonetheless a serious leap up from the D80.) But, I didn’t use it very much at all last year; if I want to re-engage my shutterbug a little, I need to get re-engaged with the tools I have before buying new ones. And, of course, if I bought a new gadget sometime for the D70—a new lens, a tripod, an external flash—it would transfer to any newer camera body. But the point is to retrain myself to get out there and start taking photos again.

Thinking about computers and camera gear also, not unsurprisingly, makes me think about finances. That too could be another post, but the short form is that on Friday, I got my first direct deposit paycheck. Regular pay means I can put into effect a regular transfer into savings, something I haven’t done since… well, I’m not sure I’ve done it this decade. Last year on contract, I did put money into savings irregularly, but most “savings” actually went to debt payment. At the end of 2006 I paid off my car, leaving just a credit card debt that was, if I recall right, about $10K. I paid that off by the end of 2007. Given the bleak economic outlook for 2008, this is probably an excellent time to not have debt. I now might have the stability to start (gasp) buying stocks and bonds—which at first glance seems odd to think about given that just-mentioned economic outlook, but over the long-term, it’s nearly always a good bet. I’m still doing my research on that.

At any rate, even if I don’t know what I’m going to do yet, it’s definitely time to do something. Upward and onward.

Returning to Ranea

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:10:58 GMT

While I’ve been lax in updating again, I’m going to blame (with some justification, I’d argue) the flu of doom that I’ve been suffering. Truth to tell it’s not a very high level of doom, but in some ways that’s made it more irritating: instead of a few days of abject misery followed by recovery, it’s just been an ongoing lingering cough and low energy.

This has put the kibosh on a lot of “what I’d like to be doing” plans over the last couple of weeks; it kind of sucks to be inspired to finally get going on projects and then find yourself completely unable to work on any of them. Even so, one long-standing idea has been pulled out of mothballs, and has actually had a little progress made already.

About (glark) eighteen years ago I wrote a fantasy novella entitled “A Gift of Fire, A Gift of Blood,” which was—at least in certain circles—wildly popular and still has fans to this day. Since it technicaly remained in print up until just a few years ago, I’ve resisted the idea of putting it into a collection, but I’ve decided that YARF! is pretty much dead to the world. At the convention, I talked with a publisher about the idea of producing a new edition.

This of course leads to the question of whether to revise the story. While there’s something to be said for not mucking with success, the truth is that a lot of people either haven’t read the original version of the story—or haven’t read it in a long time—and together with its sequel story, “The Lighthouse,” there’s basically a novel-length narrative that could probably be strengthened by, well, treating it like a novel. (Looking back, there are things that were added to the story’s “mythology” in later bits that should really have been mentioned. Most obvious so far: one of the main characters belongs to a race which has a name—Derysi—in a later story, yet is never given in the fifty thousand words of the two novellas.)

So. I’ve actually already started. I have about three thousand words written on the new incarnation of “Gift of Fire,” which comprise the first two scenes—the first one a rewrite of the original first scene, an the second one a scene that was referenced but not shown before. (Funny how show, don’t tell actually works in practice.)

Deciding what to do with “Lighthouse” will be harder; while “Gift of Fire” is written in canonical third-person, past-tense from Mika’s point of view, “Lighthouse” is written in first-person present tense, virtually stream of consciousness, from Revar’s point of view. That seemed like a great idea at the time but I’m not sure whether to retool it—still from Revar’s point of view, but back to third-person, past-tense—this time through. The argument against doing that is that, well, it works in the current incarnation, mostly; the argument for doing it is that to make this all work as a novel, I’m going to have to give Mika more to do in the second half beyond just showing up at the end, and it may be easier to do that if I can switch between the two characters’ points of views. (If you’ve read the two, you know what I’m talking about; if you haven’t, I don’t think I’ve given much away.)

Even so, it’s already been fun to revisit the characters, and the world. This time I’m trying to assume that readers have no familiarity with the world the story’s set in—an assumption that wasn’t necessarily true back in 1990. (Yes, in the early days of the fandom, my stories were actually that well known. Scary, huh?) This actually adds to the fun; I get to re-examine the assumptions I made in the world in the first place, quietly disposing of things I no longer like, and seeing if I can bring out things that, if I’m honest, existed more in world-building notes than in the actual stories themselves. Something that should inform the whole world, for instance, is the idea that magicians are basically Ranea’s equivalent of engineers, fashioning devices that are used in everyday life by normal people—but we don’t see that in practice nearly enough.

I’ve been playing around with my working habits, too, for this project, and as I get energy back I’ll hopefully be able to put more of that into practice. But that’s for another post.

Brief thoughts from the road

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 23:54:28 GMT

I'm taking an unnecessary expedition into San Francisco for coffee (from a specific shop, more about which later). Since this will involve a bit of downtime spent riding BART, I'd normally consider bringing my laptop, telling myself I could get "something done" on the train. This is, of course, a lie.

Yet here I am taking the downtime to write this little note. I've realized that since I got the iPhone, I've been carrying the full notebook with me less often. In reality, most of what I get done on trips is a bit of web surfing and maybe a journal post, and this device does that. And fits in my pocket.

This isn't a claim of unique power for the iPhone, but more musing on a threshold it crossed that the Sidekick never quite did with me. Other devices might cross the same line (and future ones surely will). Yet I'm not quite sure what that line is. It's not a given feature or convenience or form factor usability, although it encompasses all of those.

I think what it might be is the science fiction line. I grew up with home computers and cell phones and things that were the science fiction of my parents' generation; this is the sci-fi gadget of mine. It's easy to envision Picard whipping out a gizmo that looks, well, exactly like this thing.

Happy birthday!

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 19:37:18 GMT

I’m still sick — and let’s call this “flu,” not “con crud” — so my brain is still largely offline. I’m getting better, but I’ve put off going to get a passport picture taken because I’d rather not look this much like a zombie.

But that’s not what I’m here to post about! Instead, I’d just like to say: Happy Birthday, susandeer!

I can give you… uh… the flu! But I’ll try not to.

Quick update

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 01:17:06 GMT

The con was really good for me, inspiring on a few different levels, and giving me some 'work' to, well, work through. Unfortunately, I'm also too sick to write anything particularly meaningful. More later, hopefully.

A small update

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:27:01 GMT

Those of you attending Further Confusion may be interested to learn that I have a story in the program book, called “The Narrow Road in Morning Light.”

It is a samurai story, it involves wolves, and it has a frontispiece by haikujaguar.

That is all.

FC Tiki Party

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:23:41 GMT

I'm planning to host a tiki party at FC on Saturday night. This isn't going to be "advertised" except on this journal; when I have room information I'll post it here (probably Thursday night), and I'll probably also send out the information on my Twitter stream. RSVPs here (or via tweet) are appreciated, but not required. (If you plan to bring/tell a friend who wouldn't be reading this, let me know.)

At this point all one can reasonably expect at the party is: rum. There is a high probability of other mixers, a moderate possibility of snack food, and a fairly good chance that I'll be able to provide something other than directions to the nearest soda machine for those who don't want alcohol. I am hoping to at least be able to make mai tais and possibly pina coladas, traditional daiquiris, and of course your basic rum and cola (and the "dark and stormy," dark rum and ginger ale).

Anyone who wishes to help provide snacks and possibly alcohol should get in touch with me. I expect I'll be tracking down the party stuff in a state of mild panic on Saturday afternoon, because you know, that's just traditional.

Notes from the road

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 01:48:03 GMT

1:15pm: I’m sitting on a BART train at the Millbrae station. Where am I going? No idea. Ever since I’ve been aware of BART, I’ve had a vague desire to just… ride it. Go off on a public transit tour of the universe, as it were. I suspect what I’m going to do is transfer a few stations from here, off the line I’m on now that runs to Pleasanton and onto the Pittsburg/Bay Point line. I may get off at various points on the way, I may not; I think I’ll just ride it to the end and then possibly stop at Rockridge on the return trip. I’ll see. Right now, I can write rather than attempt to sight-see, though; most of BART is a subway between here and Oakland. (For those who aren’t in the SF Bay Area, BART’s trains go through a tunnel called the Transbay Tube to get across the bay, rather than following a bridge.) While the BART trains themselves are quiet, their trip through subway tunnels is decidedly not; this time I thought to get some disposable earplugs, and it does make a world of difference.

alinsa once referred to me having a perverse fascination with public transit. I don’t know if that’s true, strictly speaking, but I do like both BART and Caltrain, perhaps in part because there’s simply nothing like them where I grew up. I’ve heard people who’ve grown up with New York or Boston subway cap on the Bay Area’s public transit, but BART isn’t municipal rail. It isn’t long haul commuter rail, either, really; it’s sort of “intermetro” rail.

1:30-ish: I’ve made the threatened transfer, so I’m off on… well, an adventure of some kind, depending on what one considers adventurous. I doubt this will be a quest for food, given that I stopped at Millbrae’s El Super Burrito for lunch and had, well, three-quarters of the mysterious concoction known as a “California Burrito”: carne asada, avocado, sour cream, cheese, and French fries. Yes, in the burrito, instead of rice. It works, but it’s certainly not a light meal. I could attempt to get coffee at Ritual Roasters and might try for that on the way back, although when I’m in Oakland I might try to get Blue Bottle if I can remember where they are.

Yes, remember, not look up: I am without my iPhone today. This is sounding lower and lower tech all the time, if you discount the fact that I’m sitting here typing on a laptop. But I’ve given up on the various carrying cases I’ve tried for the iPhone—both clips broke, and I’ve been carrying the thing around in my pocket with a plastic shell that doesn’t cover the screen. So, naturally, the screen now has a small scratch on it, although you’d have to look carefully to see it. I figured I’d try one of the more serious “plastic film” protectors, Bodyguardz; applying it is a non-trivial operation, and it requires a day to dry.

3pm: I’m just leaving the Bay Point station for the return trip. Some of this trip has been fairly pretty; most of it’s above-ground, through the hills northeast of Oakland. While some of the path literally follows the highway, as I’m usually driving the highway I don’t get quite the viewing opportunity that I’m getting this time. I’m going to risk getting off at Rockridge or possibly Orinda; I say “risk” because I don’t have any idea what I’m likely to be charged for this trip. Technically, my start and end stations are Millbrae and Rockridge (or Orinda), but I’ve taken much longer to make that trip than I should have, and I don’t know if that will make the fare computer soggy and hard to light. Rockridge is a funky neighborhood in Oakland with an upscale shopping/dining district; Orinda is a smaller town I honestly don’t know a whole lot about, even though I’m positive I’ve driven through—or past—it a couple times. It’s a new place to explore, although I could easily find that I don’t have much to do there other than turn around and go back to Rockridge.

5pm: I am in Spasso, a little cafe somewhere in the Rockridge neighborhood. It’s the first place with free wifi I’ve found on this excursion.

I did actually debark in Orinda and wandered around a bit, and while I found some interesting dinner restaurants (possibly), there wasn’t a comfortable place to just camp out for a while. So I hopped back on and rode to the next stop: here. I walked down to the Bittersweet Cafe first to get hot chocolate, then back up, noting a few interesting restaurants along the way. Bittersweet also sells their own blend of coffee from Blue Bottle, so I’m returning with that.

Spasso, to be honest, really isn’t that comfortable, at least in the chair I’ve chosen. It’s clearly a college hangout. I feel decidedly old sitting here, although I’m hidden behind a laptop like 90% of the rest of the clientele. The coffee is acceptable, but just that. This is a good neighborhood joint, but not a place to go out of your way for, I think.

So. Am I going to actually stop at one of the places here for dinner? Truth to tell, I don’t know. I’m dressed in a T-shirt and jeans and the jeans have a hole in the knee, which makes me feel somewhat underdressed for anything that isn’t, shall we say, extremely casual. And, for that matter, I’m still full of burrito, and I don’t plan to hang around Spasso another hour until a proper dinner time. While I’m tempted, the better part of valor might be just going on home and getting something light. Nonetheless, I think I do want to come back for À Côté, which looks like it has a nice French/Mediterranean vibe with remarkably good prices.

In any case, I’m going to start wrapping things up here, now that I’ve finished the acceptable-but-not-great cappuccino, and head back to the BART station.

Macworld notes

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 05:46:32 GMT

Here are my vague thoughts from wandering around Macworld yesterday.

Apple’s new products

MacBook Air. This is the rumored Mac “sub-notebook,” and in typical Apple fashion it isn’t a sub-notebook the way the rest of the world would define it (a 13.3″ screen, for goodness’ sake). However thin you’re imagining it is, it’s thinner than that. Really. While of course we don’t know what weird problems it may have when it starts colliding with real-world usage, it looks like a remarkable piece of engineering work. It has some other typical Apple hallmarks: being a few hundred dollars more than you wish it was, and exhibiting a ruthless minimalism. This is already causing angst about what a poor design choice it was to leave out ~~floppy drives~~ internal optical drives and ethernet ports. Well, in the name “MacBook Air,” Air should be understood as shorthand for use the wireless, bitches. The form factor was clearly the top design priority. A second USB port would have been nice, although the number of times I’ve actually used both of the ones I have on my MBP approaches zero. (At both home and office, I just plug the USB cable from the monitor in, which connects the keyboard, mouse, and the ports along the side of the monitor.)

I’m not really in the Air’s target market; I moved from the MacBook to the Pro because I really did want a machine that would be a “desktop replacement.” But I think the Air’s a pretty nifty machine.

Time Capsule. Eh. If I hadn’t just bought a base station I’d be more interested, and I’m irritated that so far they’ve made no noise about updating the base station I have to let me use an external drive connected to it for Time Machine backups. Having said that, it’s really not a bad price for a wireless NAS.

iTunes Movie Rental. Fine enough as far as such things go, with the exception of perpetuating the common stupidity of a 24-hour time limit on watching a movie once you start it. This needs to be a minimum of 36 hours and really should be 72.

Apple TV 2.0. Vastly improved all around.

iTunes Digital Copy. “Provides customers who purchase a DVD of a Fox movie title with an additional digital copy of the movie.” Whatever.

Other stuff at the show

Microsoft Office 2008. The last of the big name apps to go Intel native, it looks like a seriously major overhaul, and — to the degree office suites can be said to be pretty — it’s pretty. No longer being a major Office user myself, I didn’t look at this in much detail.

Nolobe Iris. The latest “ultimate image editor” for OS X goes into public beta. Wake me when somebody tries to make a better Fireworks than Macromedia Fireworks — that is, a graphics program aimed specifically at creating graphics for the web — rather than a better Photoshop than Adobe Photoshop. Speaking of which:

Photoshop Elements 6 was announced and demoed for the Mac at the show, but isn’t shipping yet. It’s got an excessively consumer-riffic UI, to be sure, but it’s definitely a big chunk of the real Photoshop engine in there. Philosophically, I approve of Iris and Acorn and Pixelmator and the other “independent graphics apps” on the Mac and support their aspirations to compete with Photoshop. But on a lot of fronts, even Elements is capable of not just kicking sand in their face but dunking their heads in the toilet and flushing repeatedly.

Elgato EyeTV 3. This is basically a hardware/software combo to add a TV tuner to your Mac, capable of handling HDTV and “ClearQAM” (i.e., unencrypted) cable input, and with pretty good DVR capabilities. The new software adds pretty good iTunes integration, which means that if you set it up correctly, recorded shows would be quietly synced over to your AppleTV. I confess I was pretty tempted, but made my saving throw for now.

Eve Online. Okay, this isn’t a new game, but they had a fairly elaborate booth at Macworld, which surprised me. Actually, overall the “Mac games pavilion” looked better. Given how dismal it generally looks (“let’s pretend that two dozen ‘casual games’ make this a good gaming platform!”), this is a very low bar.

Random aside on gaming: the main stumbling block for Mac game releases, as I understand it, isn’t underpowered hardware, but simply market share. Big name games are extremely expensive to develop, but have very short shelf-life. A big-name productivity app might cost just as much to develop, but it’ll sell for three times as much as the game and have a lifecycle of measured in years, whereas the game will be in the bargain bin in under six months.

Still alive

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 06:51:25 GMT

I’m being lax in updating again, aren’t I? I’m still here, and I’ll write more on… several things, hopefully, soon.

Tomorrow I go off to spend a day at Macworld, as is my not quite tradition (one day on the exhibition floor). I’ll be attempting to meet dracosphynx for dinner at Mexico DF in downtown San Francisco after the day at the show.

My one Macworld prediction: if the rumored Mac subnotebook is released, tugrik will have one on order before the keynote is over.

Heading back

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 14:33:13 GMT

I have about an hour at the airport before my first flight, so I’ve commandeered an outlet and am taking the time to do a little catching up here.

As my last entry implied, my “post-Christmas” was busy, but just as much of the holiday for me as Christmas itself and the days leading up to it. I saw haikujaguar for the first time in… well, a couple years, at the least (since the last time she and elusivetiger were out in California). I saw an old friend (and former roommate), David, for the first time in eight years, since he moved to the D.C. area, and met his partner. And, yesterday I got to see ladyperegrine and have a wonderful evening with her and two Tampa area friends, talking at a cafe and later having dinner at Seasons 52.

I’ve had problems since I’ve moved out to California with mild eczema (ick!), which I mention only because I seem to have confirmed one of my suspicions about it—it’s a combination of dry weather and dust allergy. After moving to the new apartment it lessened somewhat, and it’s just about gone now, after being in my mom’s considerably less dusty place—and Florida’s considerably more humid weather.

Of course, that humidity’s also one of the things I don’t miss about Florida. My mom tends not to air condition unless it’s over ninety or so—to her, seventy-five degrees is cool weather—and yesterday it drizzled rain and remained cloudy in the evening, which means the night stayed humid without cooling much. I don’t think I slept well the last two nights in particular.

On the flight out, I’m doing something I avoid when I can: checking a bag. Some of the little stocking stuffers I got were things like cooking sauces and shampoos, and since we all know that liquids in containers over three ounces are dangerous when exposed to overhead luggage racks, I couldn’t bring it with me. I do hope it arrives at SFO at roughly the same time I do.

It’s still nearly an hour before the flight, and about twenty-five minutes before boarding starts, so I may get up and wander around a little. Tampa International’s not a particularly interesting airport to explore, an ironic side effect of it being very well-designed for an airport’s main function: getting you between your plane and your ground transportation (or vice-versa) as efficiently as possible. But it’s reasonable comfortable as airports go, and—in a welcome break from the “charge as much as we can get” attitude of many airports—offers free wifi throughout the buildings.

I’ll see people in a few hours on the other coast, and decide whether I want to do more for New Years’ Eve than sleep. In the meantime: Happy New Year.

After Christmas

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 15:36:44 GMT

It’s been a good Christmas, overall. The day itself was quiet, just my mother and I in early morning, and a friend of hers coming over for breakfast. We have our big dinner on Christmas Eve, rather than Christmas Day, and hellesfarne came up to join us.

Today begins a marathon, of sorts, seeing people in various parts of the state: in an hour I drive down to St. Pete to visit an old friend and former flatmate. Tomorrow evening, I’ll be down in Tampa to visit haikujaguar and other friends. Saturday, off to Orlando to visit ladyperegrine, probably in the company of hellesfarne again. Sunday, my last day out here, I expect to spend at home, helping my mother set up her computers with OS X 10.5 (a gift I got her, which is slightly self-serving: I think I’ll be able to provide remote tech support for her more easily using iChat’s screen sharing).

I don’t know what I’ll do on New Years’ Eve yet; I’ll be back in California then, my flight arriving around three in the afternoon. It could be a quiet evening at home, it could be a trip into San Francisco on BART to see fireworks if such happen there, it could be a get-together with friends.

My Christmas vignette from a couple days ago was posted with a quasi-riddle of why the main character is a collie. There were a few inventive responses, but only kereminde guessed that it’s because collies are shepherding dogs. Jean (the collie) had, after all, spent all those years watching over her flock by night; this was the Christmas an angel appeared to her with news of salvation.

Christmas vignette

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 03:54:30 GMT

This is a Christmas story—well, vignette—I wrote for the writing group I’m in. It does, as is my wont, feature anthropomorphic animal characters. (Bonus candy cane points to those who guess why the main character is the species she is.)

The bell on the diner’s door jangled, stilled, jangled again spasmodically as a blast of cool air came in from the mostly-empty city street outside. “Hi, Frank,” Jean said, before she’d looked up from the counter, cleaning rag still in hand.

He could have looked worse, but he was an hour and three coffees away from looking sober. As he fumbled his way past the door, the tiger waved grandly. “Merry Christmas!” He managed a credibly straight line to a seat at the counter right in front of the collie; she was setting down a full cup of coffee—one sugar, two creams—as he thumped heavily into place.

“Merry Christmas, Frank,” she said, glancing at the clock. Eleven-thirty. “Shouldn’t you be in bed waiting for dancing sugar plums?”

“Feh,” Frank said, reaching to straighten his collar and instead just mangling it more. She leaned forward to straighten it for him as he kept speaking. “No Christmas bonus this year, you know. Bastards.” She knew; his office hadn’t given him a bonus for the last eight years and she heard about it every year in late December. He hadn’t been in Joe’s on Christmas Eve in five years, though, back when Gracey and he had separated. They’d gotten back together by the next Easter. “What the hell is a sugar plum, anyway?”

“An old-fashioned candy.”

“You’re so smart,” Frank said, with the dopey sincerity of a professional drinker. “But this is the last Christmas Eve I can spend at Joe’s. Gracey’s pissed, but I hadda spend at least part of it here.”

“Thanks, Frank,” she said. “I’ll get you a breakfast going.” She put in the tiger’s usual order and headed over to one of the few other occupied tables with the coffee. She didn’t need the reminder that Joe’s was closing for good in six days.

Nick, the wolf sitting there, straightened out of his own slouch as she approached. “Thank you.” He’d finished his own dinner an hour ago, and a pie slice on top of that. Now he just sat with a coffee, a cigarette and a laptop. She knew he was a jazz player, and the gig he’d been expecting to be at tonight had been cancelled.

“No problem,” she said, smiling.

He grinned back. “So why are you always in a diner on Christmas Eve, Jean?”

She paused, tail curling down. “It’s what I do for a living.”

“Why? I been coming here fifteen years and you’ve been here all that time.” He took a drag on the cigarette, then waved it in an arc, the tip tracing a dimly glowing line. “All of us, we got nowhere to go. Didn’t you?”

Jean considered this a moment. “People with nowhere to go end up somewhere, Nick, so somebody’s got to be wherever they are.”

Blinding white light suddenly flooded the diner, overwhelming the old incandescents inside and the blue neon that normally shone through the window. Jean turned toward the big windows, shielding her eyes. She thought she could make a figure out in the light walking toward the door.

“They’ve found me!” Frank cried. Rather than running, he slid out of his seat to the floor. Jean glanced down at him, sighing, then looked back up.

The door opened, and they could hear the sound of a truck engine running. A fox stepped inside. He stood tall, over six feet, and he wore a white business suit, expertly tailored. After a moment, the truck engine and the light went off, and two more foxes stepped in, shorter but just as dapper, flanking him. She wondered if they were about to whip out submachine guns; this all felt disturbingly like a TV gangster movie.

“Happy Christmas, Jean,” the fox said.

The collie squinted, frowning. “Do I know you?”

“No, you don’t,” he said, stepping forward with a smile. “But you’re indirect family to me, just like you’ve been to everyone who’s come through here late at night.”

“Right,” she said, cautiously. “Can I get you and your friends anything?”

“I can’t be here for long. I’ve got a lot of places to be tonight.”

“Right,” she said again, and put a hand on her hip. “You’re not exactly what I picture when I think of Santa.”

He laughed, and the other two foxes smirked. “If I could bring you any gift, Jean, what would it be?”

“Can I say world peace?”

“You can, but that’s a tough one.”

“Well, there’s...” She hadn’t had a working car for nearly a decade. She’d never been able to afford more than a studio flat in an older building. She’d never traveled. A couple times she thought she’d been in love, but she’d spent the last ten years secretly hoping her Prince Charming would just wander into Joe’s and order biscuits.

Sighing, the collie shook her head. “You know what? I’d just keep Joe’s open.”

He nodded, as if he’d expected that answer. “My father spent a lot of time here. He used to say you saved his life.”

“I’ve never saved anyone’s life, unless you count keeping Mrs. Abernathy from swallowing a chicken bone twelve years ago.”

“You saved my life,” Frank said from the floor. “A few times now.”

Jean stared at him, then looked over at Nick. The wolf shrugged and grinned. “You mighta done that for me by some measures,” he said.

“So what,” she said at length, “you’re back to thank me?”

He nodded. “Yes.” He leaned forward, and gave her a soft kiss on the muzzle. “Thank you.”

The collie’s eyes widened. She felt like she should slap him, but she didn’t.

The lights and truck engine came on outside again. “You’ll see me again after New Year’s,” the fox said.

“It’ll be closed then.”

“It can’t be. I have to come back for biscuits,” he replied, stepping back outside.

She blinked, twice, as the lights receded.

“Christmas angel, or Christmas fruitcake?” Nick said with a grin, lighting a new cigarette.

“For tonight, we’ll go with angel,” Jean said after a moment.

“Order up!” the unseen cook called, and she headed behind the counter to pick up Frank’s plate.

Two weeks in

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 00:35:03 GMT

Geographically, the new apartment is in an odd limbo state between urban and suburban. It’s just a stone’s throw from being on San Francisco Bay itself, and is at the corner of a pleasant residential neighborhood. It’s also the equivalent of a block or two from Highway 92 and the San Mateo Bridge. So if you walk around the neighborhood, it feels quite suburban, and the closest shopping and restaurants are all chains and strip malls. But add the nearby highway to the streetlights by the entrance road (which the apartment happens to be right over), and it means two things: it never gets completely dark in my bedroom, and if the rest of the apartment is quiet, road noise is a noticeable background, even late at night. It reminds me of nothing so much as being in a hotel near an interstate.

Yet sleeping hasn’t proved to be a problem for me. I’m fairly adaptable—perhaps I like being in hotels near interstates?—and I’m able to keep my room at a nice enough temperature for sleeping. I’ll have to see how things change as summer approaches. The apartment catches a lot of sunlight through the back wall my bedroom’s on (with a southwest facing), but on average Foster City’s highs don’t get past the mid-70s, so perhaps it will balance out.

From my window, while I get a clear view of another building in the apartment complex, I also get a clear view across the peninsula west to the Santa Cruz mountains. As the sun rises over the eastern range, the light’s surprisingly beautiful, suffusing everything—trees, buildings, even pavement—with gold. It’s a nicer view than I imagined it would be.

My evenings feel like they’ve changed markedly, although I don’t know how much of this perception is true. We have no television set up yet and may not for the foreseeable future; I’m using that big monitor I bought a few months ago as a TV set, effectively. I still have a few shows I’m watching through iTunes* and I’m trying to catch up with neglected video podcasts and add a few more. Mostly, though, I’m just working serenely on the computer or reading, and the background music is often coming from the table radio I have, tuned to KCSM. I suspect once the living room gets a sofa and tables, I’ll migrate my reading out there, and probably do considerably more of it—I’m a firm believer in the Big Comfy Chair as the best reading vehicle when compared to a bed.

My sleeping schedule’s also changed a bit, ratcheting somewhat earlier. I leave later than dracosphynx but given the peculiar parking arrangement, I need to be out at eight to move my car to let his out. This isn’t a bad thing. I come back up, have some coffee, get my act together, and usually get out before nine. I’ve been getting in a bit earlier, and I’ve been in bed by midnight every night this week. A slightly bitter part of me is attributing this to getting old, but I don’t think I was regularly up late when I lived in Brandon, either—only when I got myself hooked into a project of one sort or another. (I hope to get hooked into a couple projects again, finally, in 2008.)

This morning I got in earlier still, as part of an experiment: I drove three miles to the nearest Caltrain station and took the train in, hopping the free North Bay Employer Shuttle to get to the office. I gather this shuttle is really just for Intuit employees, but the closest stop is just a couple blocks away. Getting back may still be a minor adventure, but we’ll see. Unlike my time at Cisco, my employer isn’t paying for public transit, which makes the proposition less attractive—and there’s only one somewhat anemic deli within walking distance of the business park, so I’d be bringing my own food if I wanted anything else. (We have pizza brought in on Fridays, so I knew today would be fine.) I could buy a bike, I suppose, and ride to and from the stations. I’ll have to say, the experience was actually… pretty good.

I haven’t cooked much yet but I’ve cooked a little, doing a very simple pasta sauce last week and “Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic” this week. (I made a smaller portion, and indeed, only used 30 cloves.) Tonight I may do another pasta improvisation; it’ll have cheese sauce, which make make it a bit of a challenge with my usually cheese-hating housemate dracosphynx, but we’ll see.