So I have been asked if I regretted voting for Barrack Obama over John McCain for president of the United States in 2008.
John McCain does not stand for the protections of the Constitution for US Citizens.
Nope, I do not regret my choice. I regret that Republican Party failed to give me a viable alternative.
Well, my sweetie-wofe came down with a cold over the weekend and now it seems that I have it as well.
I came home early from the day-job yesterday and stayed home today. I’m dizzy with clogged sinuses and my throat is quite sore.
All in all it has not been much fun in Stalingrad.
So, Thursday night I checked into Alvarado Hospital for the second night of my sleep study. This time I was fitted with what are called nasal pillows, then wired up for anothe nights of data gathering.
Nasa pillows is an alternative to the nose and face masks used by many CPAP users. A small hose goes to your nose and sort of like oxygen in a hospital you has vents blowing directly into each nostril. I found this setup much more comfortable than either if the mask arrangements.
I had a splitting headache so I did not work in the hospital that night and instead watched TV until it was time to sleep. (I was so brain dead that I found myself actually watching Futurama.)
The numerous leads for the data bothered me again so I did not sleep through the night, but other then that I slept rather well and the next day I was actually refreshed. My coworkers were able to see a difference in my energy levels.
Sadly I am back to normal now. It’s been two nights without a CPAP machine and I am tried and groggy during the day. I won;t be seeing my sleep specialist until Mid-May so it’s going to be a long two weeks.
32 years late to be precise.
Most people in America get their driver’s license when they are sixteen. For all sorts of reasons far too numerous to go into here I did not.
I have never had a driver’s license . Many learner’s permits, but something always interceded and prevented me for completing the plans at time for getting my license.
Today I had my frist road driving test ever, at the age of 48.
My examiner was an older gentleman who appeared utterly bored by the process. He quizzed me on the car and its equipment. (I failed to find the defroster right away but in San Diego they are harder commonly used pieces of equipment.)
Then we buckled up and hit the road in the Clairemont area of San Diego, This is an area where I used to live and know many of the streets.
The test was shorter than I expected. Frankly I spent more time waiting in a roasting car for my turn to be tested than in getting tested. I did not perform perfectly, but long story short, I passed.
Be terrified I am now a licensed driver.
My sweetie-wife reported that the DMV building seemed to be shaking while I was on the road. I guess me being licensed is truly unnatural.
Tomorrow night I do sleep study tests 2: The Sequel.
I’m rounding on 200 pages or about 50,000 words done on the first draft of Cawdor and that when massive hits to my productivity due to bad sleep and headaches. I am on track to complete a first draft version by mid June and that will be simply astounding to me.
The plot has decided to deviate from scripted outline, but that is no cause for concern or panic. An outline is just a guide, showing me where I want to end up, if it turns out that Route 66 is more exciting than Route 8, but both get me where I need to be than there’s nothing wrong with Route 66.
What had started off as a re-intrepretation of Macbeth has now become an exploration in paternalism and the cynicism of the viewpoint. The book actually now has villains beside the Macbeth analogs. It’s quite a turn but one I am very interested in and very excited to explore.
So this week’s movie was a bit of a gamble for me as it was something I had never seen and further more was something I had heard little about.
I started the Sunday Night Movie habit as a way of utilizing my movie collection. I had realized one day that I rarely watched so many movies in my collection and when I did I tended to watch the same ones over and over. I started Sunday Night Movie as a regular event to enjoy those movies that I love but so rarely watched.
This is not one of those movies.
I Sell The Dead is a story about two men in the resurrection business in what I presume is the 17th or 18th century. Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan) is partner and former apprentice to Willie Grimes in the resurrection business. That is they steal corpses and sell them to doctors. Their lives take a dramatic turn down a path of bump in the night events when they discover that digging up some corpses leads to a much more active product than the pair is accustomed to finding. They have a number of serious threats in their wretched lives, There Dr. Quint (Angus Scrimm, Best know as the Tall Man in Phantasm.) who is extorting their services without compensation by threats of the law. Then there’s the House Of Murphy a rival gang of resurrectionists with a tendency for murder and mayhem, and of course there’s the very active undead who are always ungrateful for being dug up or unboxed.
This movie is supposed to be a comedy and as such one is expected to give it more leeway that a traditional horror film or dramatic feature for suspension of disbelief, however this film had too many flaws for me to do that. There are endless anachronisms, historical errors, and a general failure to understand just what it was that resurrection men did. (They did not sell bodies to doctors for their general practice, they sold them to schools and teaching doctors for study, instruction, and research.) In the end this movie was simply too much of a mess with too little plot and too much gag to work as a film.
I recommend pass if someone offers a viewing to you.
This morning I awoke with a mild headache. Unfortunately this is a frequent side-effect of sleep apnea. I was lucky in that the headache was not of Migraine levels, so I was able to go to work. However, the constant irritations of bad phones lines and other negative stimului has conspired to ensure I will continue to have this headache.
It’s slowed my writing, but I have no stopped. More scenes have been completed and I am still looking at finishing th loved.unloved novel by mid-june.
So I was looking for a soundtrack that I thought was out of print and it cause me to ponder the ethics of downloading it.
I fully support buying material to support the artists. I buy my books, I buy my DVDs and Blu-rays, and I buy my music, but there are times when what I want is not in print. I cannot buy a copy that will support the artist. (Buying a used copy generates no royalties for the copyright holder.)
So in that situation is it ethical to download a copy? Certainly on the legal front it is illegal, but I’m asking a question of ethics.
I think so. I will support the legal methods of reimbursing the artists and such whenever I can, but if the copyright holders do not make it possible for me to pay them for the product I then I really do not feel bad about finding a copy on my own.
My story had a happy ending for the copyright owners. Not only was the soundtrack to The Wicker Man (1973) in print it was available from iTunes!
This week my speedy progress on Cawdor has been hampered by my lack of good sleep. I am even more tired all the time than I have been recently and that has dropped my per day productivity by half. I am still making progress and I am in many ways very happy with the product. (While still certain that no one else in the wide world will like it the way I do.)
The speed of this novel has mee thinking about the other novels I have written and how long it took, editing included.
My first novel was Freeholder an SF novel about liberal, pacifist survivalists. It was written while I was in high school from Sep 1978 through May 1979. The poor suffering readers of that novel endured a really horrid writer with no edits. Yesh, I pity them now.
Freeholder – 47,000 words over ten months
The next novel I wrote was much much later and it was The Mark of Cain. The first draft was written between January 2004 and July 2004, about seven months. It went to beta read, got properly savaged and I produced a new version by December of 2004
The Mark Of Cain – 121,000 words about seven months, plus five months re-write and edits.
The third novel I have written is Love and Loyalty. I started writing it October 2005 and finished the first draft February 2006. I spent two months editing that manuscript for the beta readers and it was ready by April 2004.
Love and Loyalty – 92,000 words five months to write and two months to edit.
(A special note on Love and Loyalty, In May of 2008 I started a line edit to tighten the prose and that turned into a major rewrite as I had an inspiration in how to improve the novel. So the final version experienced and additional round of edit lasting about five months.)
Cawdor has been different, it has been about two months and I am half-way through the first draft, and this is really surprising because I have been doing a rolling edit for the first time. I write a chapter, edit it, correct it, then move on to the next chapter. If I stay on this track Cawdor will take about 4 months to write AND edit.
It seems that the worst sleep I have been getting has followed the diagnosis that I have sleep apnea. I’d swear that knowing I have sleep apnea has made it worse. The last few weeks have been the worst for unrestful sleep. Everyday I have been waking up tired and had to struggle through the waking hours.
Last night I went to bed at 8:30, got nearly ten hours of ‘sleep’ and yet I am tired. I can’t wait for my treatments to start this is really taking a toll on my quality of life and quality of writing.