Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

An Amusing Meme Used Before

Which I got from Mary Robinette Kowalski in 2011:

This is one of my favorite memes. It’s a look at the last year, through the first line of my first blog post of each month.

The thing about LJ memes is that you don't always know where it'll take you, so I'm willing to give this another try. I modified this, giving the blog title and the first line(s) or paragraph(s). This is all cut-and-paste, typos and all. If you want to see the context or whole posts, or just the whole year, you can go to my 2014 LiveJournal page or 2014 Dreamwidth page.

Dr. Phil's First Lines of 2014

1 -- Happy -- I am home.

I am healthy.

I can walk.

I can stand.

2 -- Pay Attention! -- But I Worked Five Days

Long strange week. Monday was a snow day. Tuesday was half a snow day -- GVSU closed but WMU didn't. I guess that makes Monday three-quarters of a snow day, since WMU closed and GVSU closed at 2pm. Anyway, on Tuesday I declared it a Too Dangerous To Drive day. Lest you think that this made it a three day work week for us, Mrs. Dr. Phil busied herself by reviewing for a journal and other stuff for classes. I worked and even Skyped in my lecture on Tuesday.

3 -- The Long And Short -- Wavelengths, that is.

I've been meaning to do this for a long time. I have two sibling camera setups. The Nikon D100R (a D100 converted to infrared use) with a 28-80mm f3.5-5.6D (New) AF-NIKKOR and a regular D100 with a 28-80mm f3.3-5.6G AF-NIKKOR. And I wanted to shoot them essentially side-by-side or rather serially, so I can see the same image in visible and IR

4 -- Ah, Deadlines -- What's the quote? I love deadlines -- I love the sound they make whooshing by.

Nice of the Kindle Fire HD spellchecker to have "whooshing."

5 -- May Day May Day May Day -- It's the First of May. 2014. We've managed to get through an odd April, only to have May weather start out equally unsettled.

6 -- The News We Knew Would Come -- By now everyone has probably heard the news. Checked my Friends feed this morning on LJ and there was official news about Jay Lake and his long battle with cancer.

Jay passed this morning, June 1 at 5:45 (PDT). Lisa and friends were with him. He will be missed.

Jay Lake had many, many friends -- he was generous with his time. And thousands more who, like me, saw him at a few cons and voraciously read his daily blog posts. His Link Salad -- a term I stole for my Astronomy classes -- was a daily fixture. And several times items I came up with were linked by Jay.

7 -- HBO 20 -- Lost In Space -- The Matrix -- Twentieth session: Lost In Space (conclusion)
There is a semi-time travel motif to the third act of Lost In Space. And they even manage an Omega-13 do-over. The second act is a Don't Go Down Into The Basement movie. Hint: you have a giant robot and have found a strange ship which may be from the future with no people but the power is on. Send the damn robot.

Any signs of intelligence in the first act are pretty much gone by the third.

8 -- Please Release Me Let Go... I Don't Love You Anymore... -- As if there aren't enough reasons to hate phones and telemarketers, there's a new and disturbing issue that has been building for a couple of years... And getting worse.

9 -- The Dread Pirate Roberts Goes To College -- Most weekends we do movies on Saturday. But this is a three-day weekend -- the last three-day weekend of the year -- and the official end of summer. So with rain forecast as possible on Saturday and Monday, we decided to see what the options were for Sunday. There's the new Daniel Radcliffe movie, but at Celebration North it would be in the evening, otherwise we'd have to go to Rivertown. We've talked about seeing Guardians of the Galaxy again, but that's a low priority. In the end, there was one amazing movie to see. A little early, so we didn't finish the Sunday paper first, but a nice day for a drive.

10 -- Foreign Objects / Aliens / What The Hell...? II -- Huh. It happened again.

While up at Michigan Tech, there was a new bruise, area of bleeding, but on the back and side of the heel, not the bottom. Mrs. Dr. Phil had joked that maybe it was that other missing piece of hydraferra blue that went missing trying to get out. But really, we thought it was irritation of resting on the back of the heel in the AFO orthotic during twelve hours of driving.

11 -- A New Theory -- Thursday morning gas was $2.96.9/gallon for regular, $3.11.9/gal for midgrade. No coupon. (Sigh)

12 -- It's Official -- Sabbatical 2.0 -- I'm adjunct. I don't get sabbaticals, unless I want to declare one.

Statistics

Health -- 3
Teaching -- 2
Writing -- 2
Rants -- 2
Other Topics -- 3

Of course cherry picking just the first post of the month misses lots. But it's like posting the first lines of story -- you never know what you get. And it amuses me.

Dr. Phil

Posted on Dreamwidth
Crossposted on LiveJournal

An Amusing Meme

via maryrobinette Mary Kowal Robinette:

First lines of 2011

This is one of my favorite memes. It’s a look at the last year, through the first line of my first blog post of each month.

The thing about LJ memes is that you don't always know where it'll take you, so I'm willing to try. I quickly modified this, since my blogging format includes boldface headers to sections, so I give you the header and first line after that, though not the blog entry title. I also didn't include any links. This is all cut-and-paste, typos and all. If you want to see the context or whole posts, or just the whole year, you can go to my 2011 LiveJournal page or 2011 Dreamwidth page. (Yes, when I added Dreamwidth in late December I ported over the whole LJ blog, comments and all, and currently crosspost between LJ and DW.)

Dr. Phil's First Lines of 2011

01 -- Scarce -- Yeah, I haven't posted much in the last six weeks or so.

02 -- IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD -- Well, the weather people in West Michigan have been hyping this winter storm for nearly a week.

03 -- Yes, I've Been Very Quiet Here Lately -- I just made it back from my third round-trip drive to Greensboro NC, after the ones on Thanksgiving and New Years.

04 -- Ah, The Capriciousness Of Reality -- As we currently watch our local PBS rerun of Ken Burns' awesome The Civil War, the men's NCAA Division I basketball championship has just gotten underway.

05 -- Forty Years Ago... -- Saturday 1 May 1971, the results of the 1970 Railpax bill are the formal start of operations of the National Rail Passenger Corporation, more commonly known as Amtrak.

06 -- Mmm... Pizza -- As regular readers and friends of Dr. Phil know, I am a huge fan of Chicago stuffed pizza.

07 -- Happy Canada Day! -- It's July 1st and that begins a whole month of national holidays.

08 -- Some Awesomeness -- jimhines posted about people who are awesome.

09 -- Milestones Continue To Accumulate -- Today, Saturday 3 September 2011, I shipped my 400th submission to any market.

10 -- October Already? -- September ended cold and rainy and gusty.

11 -- Realms of Fantasy Closing -- I've already written this obituary -- twice -- here and here.

12 -- Writers of the Future 4th Quarter 2011 -- Just got an email from Joni Labaqui that my story "Andromache" has earned a Silver Honorable Mention in the Q4 2011 WOTF contest.

Statistics

Writing -- 4
After Being On The Road -- 2
Weather -- 2
Other Topics -- 4

Though these don't directly mention teaching, my long commute means I have to stay weather aware, especially in the winter. And in 2011 I made four road trips to Greensboro and one to Atlanta. Since each of those road trips run about ten days and four days of driving, I spent over a month and a half on the road in the service of my family during 2011. And writing!

Well that was amusing to me. (grin) Later I should repeat an old meme -- give the first lines or first paragraphs -- of the stories I worked on in 2011. What about you?

Dr. Phil

This Has Been Roiling Around The Internet For A Day

This isn't about SF publishing, but it is a cautionary tale about publishing and the Internet.

Nick Mamatas started the ball rolling when he alerted his minions that something was afoul with Cook's Source -- a freebie print magazine which makes its money on advertising and apparently doesn't think it needs to spend money on content. Certainly not content they found on the Internet. Here's a link to the original author and a truly pathetic reply by a clueless editor:

"Yes Monica, I have been doing this for 3 decades, having been an editor at The Voice, Housitonic Home and Connecticut Woman Magazine. I do know about copyright laws. It was "my bad" indeed, and, as the magazine is put together in long sessions, tired eyes and minds somethings forget to do these things.
But honestly Monica, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn't "lift" your whole article and put someone else's name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me... ALWAYS for free!"

Bet you didn't know that everything on the Internet was public domain, did you? Yeah -- I didn't know that either.

Oh, and about all that editing? Apparently the original article had archaic words in Old or Middle English, or something, which the editor "helpfully" corrected. Clue. Less. Fail.

Well, Nick updated this morning as to the Internet shitstorm which has fired up. Among others, John Scalzi had posted "The Stupidest Thing an Editor With Three Decades of Experience Has Said About the Web Today".

This free publicity managed to send people to write comments on the Cooks Source Facebook page and they even started a Discussion Topic on The Cooks Source Editor's complete ignorance of copyright laws.

Behold the power of the Internet -- All shall tremble before me and fear!

Really -- People Can Be This Clueless

One of the things that keeps many new SF/F/H writers from publishing their works is the fear that if they submit a story to an editor, that rather than buying the work someone might steal it for their own. This rarely happens because people eventually figure it out. Same with cowards who simply plagiarize someone's work and submit it as their own -- the truth will eventually come out.

This is more of a warning to anyone who thinks they can start a website or e-zine and stuff it full of other people's good stuff. This is a case of someone whose business plan may actually be based on criminal plagiarism of copyrighted material. Bad, bad behavior -- No cookie for you and you've left yourself open to a whole lotta legal troubles. Because as one of the commenters observed, this can hardly be the first time they've done this is the editor -- with three decades of experience -- assumes the Internet is all public domain. (It isn't.)

Dr. Phil

Last Thursday At An Undisclosed Location...

Jim Wright is a retired Navy Chief Warrant Officer, now living in Alaska, where he turns wood into sawdust and shavings, leaving very pretty leftovers. He also runs a most excellent blog at Stonekettle Station. If you've never read any of Jim's musings or rants, might I suggest you start with some of his posts on cats -- after all, the Internet was invented for showing pictures of cats and telling stories about cats -- such as his hilarious 2009 post There Ain't No Such Things As A Free Cat and one of the funniest things I've ever read, his 2008 Manly Bloggin' Thursday, before you tackle some of his wickedly biting political commentary such as the recent Reverse Engineering The Tea Party.

Jim actually grew up in West Michigan and his folks are still nearby in Middleville MI, but events conspired such that we couldn't do the whole same-place / same-time face-to-face real world meet last year. So we both worked hard to try to figure out something this summer. Despite coming down to the Lower 48 and spending days working on his parents' house, which up to his armpits in very un-Alaska-like temperature and humidity (he claimed that all he needed to hear was howler monkeys and he'd feel like he was back in Panama -- sorry, all we could offer was very loud cicadas) AND coming down with some sort of summer cold he blamed on the poor ventilation on the long flights to get here, we did come up with a plan.

So I left the office a bit early and drove up US-131, managing to pick the correct lanes to make good time and slip off the S-Curve and pick up Mrs. Dr. Phil at the downtown GVSU campus before hopping on I-196 and heading down towards 44th Street/Rivertown Parkway.

... For A Meat Up With Joe Chicago's Pizza


Dr. Phil and Jim Wright with their dueling Bluetooth Borg ear implants.

We met on neutral hallowed ground, a la Highlander, i.e. Joe Chicago's Pizza near Rivertown Crossings Mall at 6pm for some serious Chicago stuffed pizza. He was carrying an armload of technology -- an HP netbook, a Nikon D5000 SLR, a Blackberry, the inevitable Bluetooth earpiece and the remote key for the Dodge Charger the rental car company had "upgraded" him to. We ordered two mediums, so both parties could take leftovers home in a convenient box. Good planning is essential for these sorts of things. (grin) Pepperoni, black olives, mushrooms, garlic on the left. Sausage, roasted red peppers, spinach, black olives and mushrooms on the right. Or something like that:

Jim Wright and Mrs. Dr. Phil and Serious Pizzas.

We didn't quite close the place down, remember it takes 35-45 minutes just to bake a Chicago stuffed pizza (yum grin), but it was almost 9pm when we left, after covering war stories, science fiction, writing, West Michigan and Alaska politics, etc. And now that we've met in person, I might work my way through my telephone phobia and give him a call sometime when (a) he gets back to Alaska and (b) I send him some more stories to get his professional opinion on. (double-word-score-grin)

All that's left is figuring out how to get him to Greensboro NC to meet my parents, who are huge fans of his Stonekettle Station bloggerings.

Oh, and Jim? Those howler monkeys may be closer than we thought. Yesterday I found a half eaten banana at the end of our driveway, probably dropped by some monkey driving past...

Dr. Phil