Sometimes a frustrating morning at work gets evened out by having a handful of outstanding issues completed successfully. :)

I am now wireless and set up in Spare Oom. Now all I need to do is set up the printer and the externals and we're golden!

I can haz wireless internets on the new PC! :p

I sprang for the more expensive wireless adapter to give it that extra oomph. Now for the next test...trying it from the other room!

As promised...

( in which Jonc goes on about life, liberty and the purfuit of happineff.* )

* Why yes, that was a joke from Cheers. Yes, I'm old. :p

I'm jockeying between 2 PCs at the moment to make sure I can download everything, and it's kind of freaking me out how fast this new one is. Then again, I've never had a PC that has 6 gigs of RAM before, so everything is kinda going VOOOM! on me, the hard drive is a terabyte big, and the monitor is all kinds of huge and I feel like I'm swimming in it. It's overwhelming, I tells ya.

Seriously...doing all sorts of downloading of stuff at the moment, just to make sure I have all the programs I need, especially the ones that need downloading, such as Media Monkey, iTunes, Google Earth...you know, all the stuff that will keep me from actually getting anything done. ;)

Next post coming up soon, as I've been avoiding it--resolutions! :D

So spending $25 at Best Buy for a Wireless Adapter instead of calling up the maintenance guy to set up a phone jack would actually make more sense.

Not that I want to spend even MORE money this weekend...! But dropping a twenty for something that will *hopefully* work rather than drilling a hole in a wall seems to be the lesser of two evils. ;)


Also: After Emm making fun of me for needing to expand my vocabulary and suggesting I get a word-a-day calendar, I actually found one for 30% off at Books Inc up the road. :p

So my plan at the moment is that I may move Arkham West into Spare Oom later today (or tomorrow, depending on how much time I have) so we can set up Emm's new desk. The only downside to this is that I won't have internet access right away--I need to call our maintenance guy to see if he can wire up that back room (which, if I'm correct, would pretty much involve drilling a hole in the wall to the outside, a wire going up to the roof and connecting to the phone system up there...but I could be wrong). Any internet access will be achieved by commandeering Emm's old laptop for my own, as well as using that for writing as well. WAH days would still be achieved by way of plugging into the router, no change there.

Other than the connection issue, I still need to do some backing up of stuff on B3K here. I may need to hook up the new PC to the internet as well, just so I can download some of the programs I'd need or want to update before temporarily going offline. Mind you, I'm not wiping B3K's memory right away, so any info/programs/files can be moved over at any time. But I'd like to make sure MS Word is updated and I have my precious MediaMonkey mp3 player. :p

And on top of all of that, I still want to make sure I get some writing done. ;)


So yeah...if you don't hear from me right away, that's why.

Spent WAY too much money at IKEA across the bay (thanks to my in-laws for the gift certificate!!). We now have more furniture!

Will take more pictures soon...for now, we're having lunch and will soon spend the rest of the afternoon putting stuff together. :)


Also later: my post o' future plans, predictions and resolutions, writing and otherwise. :)

EDIT: Just got back from another trip to IKEA...it seems someone in the warehouse put the wrong chairs in the bin, so we ended up with one that we wanted and three that didn't match (and added to that, the wrong ones weren't on sale so it was an extra $30 each). Worth the trip though, because they look quite nice!

Tiny Sepuku on Predictions. Amusingly enough, what got me was what the Martians said in the middle panel. :p

...I am jumping into bed a little after 9pm on New Year's Eve. I even got a bit of writing done tonight (a paltry 218 words, but at least it's something).

Catch you all on the flipside, people. Have a great New Year's, be safe, and I wish you all the best in 2010. Peace.

So here we are in the final hours of 2009...lots of good, lots of bad, lots of WTF. Been an interesting year...most of it I've already mentioned in a post from earlier today. And musically, like the last couple of years, I haven't tried to follow the alt-rock scene and just went with what I liked. I'd started listening to Channel 92.3, a San Jose station that used to just come in when we went on road trips southwards, but now has a wider signal, and they filled me with all sorts of alt.rock goodies. :)

Videos below the cut!

( A foxtrot above my head, a sock hop beneath my bed )

And that's it! Thanks for playing along, everyone! Happy New Year, and hope you all have a RAWKING 2010! :D

[A brief break from the musical decade overview posts...I will be finishing off with 2009 later today.]

Hoo. Weird decade, this. Lots of good, a good wallop of AWESOME, and a lot of GEH! to even it out. And a bit of sheer pissed-offery for seasoning. As I know I've posted most of this before, I'll just dispense with the highlights like maps_or_guitars did.


2000: Unceremoniously not-fired-but-talked-into-quitting from HMV after four years of working there. Ironically the US chains would close two years later due to bad business sense. Luckily found a job soon after at Yankee Candle, whose products would make my clothes stink for the next few years. Finished The Phoenix Effect around this time, I believe, and its rewrite A Division of Souls started. Met good friend and eventual jamming partner Bruce.

2001: Bruce and I the first people to test the new equipment when we moved to the newer and much larger YC warehouse. Start jamming with Bruce and Eric in jeb!. The continuation of roadtrips to Showcase Comics on a weekly basis, the start of roadtrips to Newbury Comics in Amherst on a weekly basis. Savings don't quite suffer, but much space taken up in the process. Freaked out by 9/11 terrorist attacks...and had the sinking feeling that the state of US politics was going to get uglier from here on in. ADoS finished. The start of going down to the Belfry almost every single night and writing for two hours.

2002: The Year Jon Bought WAY TOO MANY CDs. Great year for music, though. My department at work wins MVP of the Year for kicking ass during a major chain rollout. Probably the last year where working at YC was actually a lot of fun. The start of finally taking politics a little more seriously when I start having conversations with one of my managers about it. More writing done...The Persistence of Memories started and finished in exactly one year and a few hours' change.

2003: Kind of a blur...work frustration, not as many (but still too many) CDs bought. More jamming with jeb!, and started in on The Process of Belief soon after TPoM is done.

2004: Had a very strange dream about having a female vampire as a girlfriend, and Love Like Blood was born, which would go through various versions and finally get finished 3 years later. Cursed very loudly out the window of my car when NPR states that Kerry lost. head58 and lynxreign play matchmakers and introduce me to emmalyon, and the rest is history. :)

2005: The Year Jonc's Life Changes. Quit YC, moved down to NJ to be with Emm, Lynx and inochinoakari, went to WorldCon in Glasgow, got married, moved to San Francisco. And during all of this, made the insane choice of getting rid of most of my music collection that I'd amassed over the last two-plus decades. Successive temp jobs give me ample time to follow politics even more closely, and realize I'm more frustrated at GWB and his team than I thought I was. Work on TPoB falls by the wayside due to way too many life changes going on as well as frustration with the story. Plusses DEFINITELY outweigh the minuses this year, though.

2006: Start the year workin' for the Man at BofA, first as a temp in one department but switch to full-time by being Your Friendly Customer Service Rep in the CD/IRA area...where I come up with the mantra "'Yes' is NOT an account number." Bought an eMachine to replace the Dell that was slowly crapping out on me, and Belfry 3000 was born. Some writing done, but not nearly as much as I'd hoped. Finished LLB on New Year's Eve, and celebrated with a bottle of Vampire wine.

2007: Transitional year, I suppose. Started rewrite of LLB, and tried writing some other stuff, but didn't get too far. Finally made myself purchase Fluff online after jonesin' for it for a few years. Not a terribly exciting year, but ended on a good note when I got hired to my present position and ran away from the phones for good and avoided another year of working IRAs during tax season.

2008: Very interesting year, much more exciting/weird/frustrating than '07. Another dream, this one of me and one of my sisters visiting our parents' house years after everyone's moved out and meeting the new owner...and Can't Find My Way Home was born, and completed a full outline for it. Was working at home the day McCain named Palin as running mate and immediately felt it was more of a chessboard move than a political plan. Stared in wonder and excitement when Obama won. Got pissed off when Prop 8 lost. Looked forward to seeing what '09 would be like.

2009: Personal? Great year, things went well. Moved to a new apartment across town, competely on a whim. Work? Frustrating, but made peace with it. Music? Not bad, actually. Writing? Picked up The Process of Belief after posting the entire trilogy on an extremely friends-locked LJ, and feel right at home with it again. Political? Well...'09 was the Year of You Can't Make This Shit Up, and the year I really started to wonder just what the hell some of these people are thinking, if at all. Still, I refused to let the year/decade end on a sour note and promised myself that I wouldn't let the bastards keep me down. Ended the year by buying a Gateway when my eMachine started crapping out.


All in all...very strange decade. A lot of great, a lot of YAY!, a lot of anger, a lot of WTF?!??, and a lot of good ol' fashioned creativity. Although there was a lot in it that I wish had turned out differently (and most of that was world events), there were enough plusses in my life that kept it all sane and worth going. I'm looking forward to the next year and decade, no matter what it throws at us. And if I can be a part of it in some significant way, either by writing or other way, so much the better.

So! Did 2008 live up to my theory of years ending in 8's having awesome music? Well, er...not as such. Lots of good stuff, but as I'd said in the last TN:AO post, it seems that around 2007 I'd started backing away from music again and focusing on other things in my life. I suppose that's a good thing in certain ways--it certainly means I'm no longer so obsessive about music as I once was. Lots of things going on this year, personally and politically which took up a lot of my time. On the other hand, after putting this list together, there were a lot of good songs that popped up...perhaps, like 1988 for me, it'll become a great year for music in retrospect. ;)

With that, 2008's cool music below the cut. Surprisingly, I was able to embed most of them this time out!

( Look outside at the raincoats coming, say Oh )

Coming up tomorrow...best of 2009! :)

Writing novels, on the other hand, is something I am entirely in control of (Step one: Put ass in chair; Step two: Write until said ass is sore; Step three: Repeat steps one and two for 100,000 words) and so it’s what I plan to do. --John Scalzi, Whatever post from earlier today.

I can grok that. Not a bad idea, actually. :)

We were woken up by thunder and lightning last night. Just a few rumbles, but still...so not used to hearing that here, let alone at the end of December. O_O

I don't remember where I got this from, but it seems to sum up how my writing sessions go sometimes... :p

Okay, so in the midst of my musical retrospectives and other "best of decade" memes out there, I thought I'd post what are probably my favorite books of the decade. Interesting that they're either genre or YA...there's only two nonfic books that really jumped out at me. This is far from complete, of course, since I know I'm probably forgetting a few titles.


For your enjoyment...

House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski. My favorite of the decade. This novel has so many levels to it, and so brilliantly woven together. Not to mention it being the written equivalent of The Blair Witch Project. Creepy, mindbending and entertaining all at the same time.

The Children's War by J.N. Stroyar. By no means the best "Germany won WWII" alternate history out there, nor is it exactly the most brilliantly written novel, it's nonetheless one of my favorites in that genre in terms of story.

Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. Poor Harry Dresden is always in deep shit at the start of every novel, and it never seems to let up...but when he faces his foes by quoting nerdy things like Looney Tunes or They Live, you gotta love it. Exciting and funny at the same time.

Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series and Harper Connelly series. Sure, they're the latest thing, but they're all kinds of fun to read. The Sookie books are fun in terms of supernatural weirdness, and the Harper books are just damn creepy.

J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Sure, some of them came out in the late 90s, but nonetheless...brilliantly written, and contains some of the best worldbuilding out there today. A series I wish I'd written.

Wen Spencer's Ukiah Oregon series. Interesting series about a guy raised by wolves who works as a tracker...and eventually finds some rather interesting things about his past. Lots of fun reading this one.

Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch series. There's something to be said about foreign writers writing in genre...they always give it a great twist that you don't always see elsewhere. This series is not quite horror, not quite supernatural, but pretty harsh and exciting to read.

John Harris, Britpop!: Cool Britannia and the Spectacular Demise of British Rock. One of the best books about a genre I listened to and obsessed about in college.

Inside 9/11: What Really Happened, from the editors of Der Spiegel. Out of all the books about 9/11 I've seen, this one got me the most, simply because it was decidedly clinical and nonpolitical. Pure reporting without any heartstring-pulling, anger-inducing or flagwaving, and extremely well-written.

Hitori Nakano, Train Man. Go ahead, buy the book and read it already...I dare you not to get all "Awwwwww ^_^" at the end! Very cute and excessively nerdy love story told in the form of a 2chan bbs. SO worth reading!

Cory Doctorow, Little Brother. Great YA book that takes place here in SF, and pretty intense in places. Sure, the parents might be a bit flat in the book (I'd like to think that was done on purpose to show a "go with the flow" fear on their part), but it's a great read.

Miyuki Miyabe, Brave Story. A doorstop-sized YA novel about growing up, changes in life that you can't always control, committing to a quest, and of course, learning now to be brave. Well-written, exciting, and definitely worth it.

Frank Portman, King Dork. Another YA book, this one written by the singer of the Mr. T Experience. Funny, nerdy and goofy in a very John Hughes-ish sort of way.

Steve Kluger, My Most Excellent Year. Most of my all-time favorite books and movies are ones that get me all wound up and want to sit down and get some hardcore writing done. This one, on the other hand? I just wanted to start it over and read it again, it was that enjoyable of a read. I did a brief blurb of it here. Not bad for a book that I impulse-bought up in Napa. :p

Alex Robinson, Tricked and Box Office Poison. Let me start off with BoP. If you gotta pick up an indie comic omnibus, you MUST pick this one up, and I'm not just trying to shamelessly plug alexbot3000. It's just that good. Sure, most of the issues came out in the late 90s, but the omnibus is from '01, so it counts. ;) As for Tricked, very interesting take on the jaded rock star story, not to mention AR's great ability to tell a story from multiple POVs.

Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise series. Sure, it started while I was still living in Boston, but he finished the series about the middle of this decade, and it's a great series to follow.


Here's to hoping we get even more great novels out there next decade! :D

And of course my favorite scene from one of my favorite Christmas movies, While You Were Sleeping:

(come on, who of you in New England hasn't had this happen to them? :p )

Yes, another ELO reference. Currently listening to the albums I downloaded from eMusic!

I'm currently listening to their first album, released waaaaaaaaaaaaay back in March of 1972, and it's quite the trip. For a background, it grew out of Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood's wanting to do a side project outside of The Move...basically a more string-oriented prog-rock thing than their sort-of-psychedelic Move stuff. The only track I knew from this one was "10538 Overture", which was their first single (as well as a b-side on some US single), so this was an interesting experience.

My first two reactions was A)an interesting cross between the Moody Blues and ELP, with a little bit of, well, latter-day ELO thrown in, and B)This HAD to be in Melora Creager's record collection when she was a kid, because this totally sounds like a Rasputina album. :p

Next up: Eldorado! As I didn't get to download II or On the Third Day (I missed those two plus Balance of Power due to running out of points), that one's next. I think it's considered their Brain Salad Surgery to some extent, from what I've read. :p

Facebook group upsets Simon Cowell's Hit Machine!

Sometimes the internets is full of hilarious AWESOME. :p