12K's of Xmas PR RR

12K's of Xmas PR RR

This race starts in downtown Kirkland, WA, right near my office. The day was cloudy and cool, about 40 with a light wind. This is the one and only 12K of the year, and as usual they had a small sign at each K with a picture of each "day" of xmas on it.
Fashion report: (all nike) black long sleeve top, blue/gray shorts, visor, black gloves to start, NB 857, garmin 305.
This is a fairly hilly course, but since my office is literally on the course, I run these hills all the time. That didn't really help me today. I haven't felt well lately. I missed last week's 5K due to a kidney stone. I had to bail on Friday's 5.5 miler over a lot of the course at 4 miles when I just felt tired and had no strength whatsoever. Today I felt better but not 100%. My kid had a fever on Friday so I know something's going around.
So here's the breakdown:

• 1 10:30 +99
• 2 10:02 -56
• 3 11:24 +148
• 4 11:23 +91
• 5 9:20 -213
• 6 10:12 0
• 7 10:06 -71
• .5 4:46 -5

I don't think the elevations are all that accurate but you can get a general sense of how hilly it is.
The last couple miles I really tried to get down to 5K pace but I really didn't have much in me. I couldn't even get to 10K pace.

Final stats:
Current course record:
1:21:44 (10:57)
Current 10K PR pace: 9:57
New course record:
1:17:46 (10:25)
A ~4 minute PR and 32 seconds/mile faster

Well, that's the last race of the year. I've had 11 out of 14 races be PR's at that distance. (which I guess a PR for PR's)

Added:

overall place:	694 out of 939
division place:	71 out of 83
gender place:	297 out of 347
time:	1:17:35

Author Report: John J. Nance

Author Report: John J. Nance

Today John J. Nance gave a talk at my office.
This guy is a great speaker. He's a pilot, a consultant for ABC, a lawyer, and the author of 18 books. He talked mostly about his latest book Orbit. It's the story about a space tourist who gets lost in orbit, and how the world comes together to save him. It sounded incredibly interesting.

I actually talked with him over lunch as well. He and his SO are working on creating a new publishing house, so I may send them my synopsis and see what they think. I'll try to find out more about it and make a separate post.

He talked a little about politics, the airline industry, the state of the military reserves, and the current state of the publishing industry. He is pretty opinionated but speaks in an entertaining and convincing way.

He said in his latest book, his focus was far more on characterization than on action for once. He said he's been under pressure to keep his books fast-paced and not waste words on dialog, but now he's decided that he's more interested in his characters. I like that attitude, and I think I should do some of the same things.

I Can Do Better Than That...

I Can Do Better Than That...

Do you ever just read something or watch something on TV or see a movie and just say to yourself, "I can write better than that"?

I think part of the frustration is knowing that I'm sitting through a crappy movie when I could be home working on the next masterpiece. Or reading a book that makes no sense and uses awkward prose. It's like the author just mails it in. Do people really not care about the quality of their work, or is there so little good material out there that people will just film anything?

Here's an example: If you ever start thinking "Hey, what if my Main Character had an evil twin--" STOP!
The Evil Twin paradigm has been done to death. Yes, we all understand the yin-yang dichotomy of the modern intellect, but please...putting a goatee on someone and calling them evil doesn't fly any more.
No clones, twins, brothers, yourself from the future/past, a ghost of yourself, yourself from Dimension X, yourself as the opposite sex, the you that "should" have been, transporter accidents, lightning bolts, whatever. Enough is enough!


And for God's sake...enough of Vampires and Zombies! Repeat after me: DONE TO DEATH! Do you know what "done to death" means? That I'd rather die than watch or read another uncreative author/writer's take on vampires and zombies! ENOUGH!!
Create some other kind of monster already! Even the frickin Cookie Monster would be better. Imagine a thousand rabid muppets stalking you, wanting to eat your cookies. You would freak the hell out, beatch! Look at those googly eyes, and the deep cavernous throat. This SOB can pack a whole 10lb sack of Famous Amos before you even knew he was in the room. Look at the maw on this mother!

Come on folks, I know you can do better. No, wait...I can do better...so you'd better get your shit together because I'm coming after you!

Spending All Day Looking At...

Spending All Day Looking At...

Well, I can't really exactly say what I'm working on, but it involves writing an algorithm to filter out "adult" content based on various parameters. Of course, to verify that the algorithm works, I have to actually look at the content and determine if it is indeed "adult" or not.

Some of the stuff I've seen had been pretty graphic and terrible stuff. Very extreme stuff, with labels like "educational" or "interesting" which are completely bogus. I don't even think much of it is legal. It also comes in from all around the world, so it's not just US stuff that I'm looking at. It's strange how different cultures value things so differently. I guess the question is whether I can come up with something that my kids can view or not. Another problems is that some of this content doesn't even have English words at all, so it's really hard to know what it is without looking at it.

Writing Tasks

Writing Tasks

Here are my writing tasks and accomplishments:

• Received feedback on Dawn's Rise from the critters.org website. The feedback centered on these main complaints/observations:
1. Too much description, not enough action in the beginning.
2. The prologs are unnecessary and somewhat offputting.
3. People didn't quite understand what/why things were happening, and didn't get involved with the characters.
4. Too many adverbs.
• Finished my NaNoWriMo story. I really like the character Ellie. I want to go back and create a short story around her, but I'm not sure how to make it science fictiony.
  

Here are some things I want to get done in the next few weeks:

• Submit a couple more chapters from Dawn's Rise to Critters.
• Write up some "interviews" of my characters. This may help me to know them better.
• Write up some commentary on 30 Days so I can decide what to do with it. I think I can just put comments on all the posts.

I think I'm going to take it easy the rest of the year though...with all the holidays. I want to also focus on getting stuff done around the house.

Ski Season!

Yesterday was Opening Day at Crystal Mountain!
It was nice and sunny in the morning, but then a storm moved in and the afternoon was snowy and windy.
Noah is the kid in the foreground.
Looks like another storm is moving in as I write this...weather's always fun around here :)

"30 Days" Chapter Index This is the "blogvel" I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2007. Here it is presented in the "correct" order that it should be read in. Comments/critiques are always welcome but keep in mind that this is a very rough first draft with only the most basic edits so far. I hope to repost an edited version at some point but don't hold your breath. 1 I am Really Freaked Out 2 I'm Almost Calm 3 Now I'm Beyond Freaked Out 4 Bad Night 5 Help Me... 6 Ellie is Driving Me Nuts 7 Things are Getting Insane 8 I've Got Family Issues 9 What the... 10 Carrie's Gambit 11 More Stuff Happens That I Can't Believe 12 In the Hospital 13 This Day has been "Swell" 14 I Don't Understand Ellie 15 I'm Lost 16 I'll Never Sleep Again 17 Maybe a Clue to All This 18 At the Warehouse 19 Ellie's Gone 20 I'm Blown Away 21 Finally a Relaxing Day 22 Carrie Finds some Crazy Stuff 23 Game On 24 Agent Ellie, Part One 25 Agent Ellie, Part Two 26 I'm Getting Sick of the Lies 27 Carrie Meets Ellie 28 Modern Interrogation 29 I'm Losing It 30 It's Gone from Worse to Worst 31 Wa the hels hapinin 32 From Ellie 33 Heart 2 Heart with Ellie 34 Carrie...Again... 35 Having it Out with Ellie 36 Shotgun Thanksgiving Part One 37 Shotgun Thanksgiving Part Two 38 Shotgun Thanksgiving Part Three 39 Shotgun Thanksgiving Part Four 40 Good News/Bad News 41 "Over"? Did you say, "Over"? 42 WTF Part One 43 WTF Part Two 44 WTF Part Three 45 Getting Back 46 So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye