jon_chaisson: (Mooch writing)
Ah, Friday...thanks for coming! It's been a mercifully short week due to a holiday and taking my birthday off, but it's been a BUSY short week here in BankLand. One coworker's laptop has decided to commit harakiri and another coworker sounds like she has the plague, so we've been a bit shortstaffed. Added to the fact that I'm reverting to work I haven't done in at least six months so I'm a bit rusty.

I'd say this week's been a bit of a wash schedule wise, but not entirely. I happened to get some serious editing/revision done on A Division of Souls and finished up Chapter 17, in which the opposing forces begin putting themselves into position for a Big Showdown later on. Now to work on Chapter 18, in which one of our heroes finds out where she stands in all of this. After that I'll have to do a bit more shuffling, pasting and editing...I've been grabbing about three or four chapters at a time, reordering and combining, and then working through the new files one at a time. This seems to work quite well, as many scenes end up getting fleshed out, and the slow, clunky and/or extraneous bits get cut out. This is similar to the way I wrote the second and third book--mapping out a few chapters ahead of time with some skeletal notes, and working on them. Not only does this make me focus more sharply on the prose and what needs work, but it also makes the process that much faster. Considering I started this revision late last year, I think I've made some serious progress in a relatively short time. It's also reminded me of what process works best for me.

I've been squeezing in poetry and photos where I can, so it's not as if I'm ignoring it. Plus I don't have too much to share photo-wise that I haven't shared already. I can of course post some of my older pictures, but I'd also like to take and post new ones too. As for the weekends--art and Walk in Silence in particular--it's been a bit of a busy month with other weekend events outside the house, so I get to it when I can. Music has been going well, as I've been gravitating to my guitar collection quite a bit lately. Just need to make sure I play with the Wacom and get some WiS work done too. I also need to update my WordPress site again. I'm a bit behind in my 'Blogging the Beatles' series, and there are a few other posts I have burbling in the back of my brain that I'd like to post as well.

Also, now that I have a replacement laptop, I can sit out in the living room with Emm again. I haven't been the last few days, mainly due to a few writing-related things that I wanted to take care of in Spare Oom, but I do plan on getting back out into the real world again. And as I'd mentioned somewhere else, I actually do like the setup of Windows 8, as it gives me that little bit of a roadblock to keep me from drifting off into internetland--by the time I get to the main screen, my brain is saying "what are you--GET BACK TO WORK, SLACKER!" and I return dutifully. :)

So! What's on tap for the next few weeks?

--Dutch paintings at the de Young Museum this Sunday (including this famous one!)
--Peter Hook (former(?) bassist of Joy Division/New Order) talking about his new book next Thursday
--Elgar's Enigma Variations at the Symphony next Friday

...and not much else, as far as I know. I chose not to go to the SF Writer's Conference this year (I may go next year though), so February is open for the most part. I'm hoping to get a good chunk of writing work done that month as well.


Hope everyone has a nice weekend!
jon_chaisson: (snoopy snow)
As usual, I find myself stuck at work on Black Friday. Somehow I've never found myself that far up on the professional totem pole where I can actually take days around a holiday off. Not that I'm complaining at this point, mind you...I work at home now, so I'm safely ensconced in Spare Oom, listening to my music and letting the day pass.

I gave up the Fourth Quarter Madness back in 2005, when I quit Yankee Candle to move down to New Jersey to live with [livejournal.com profile] emmalyon. Since then, I've gotten stuck in the office (or in this case, at home) on the Friday after Thanksgiving and the day before Christmas. The stress isn't nearly as bad, considering I'm no longer lugging boxes or fielding customer questions. It's been replaced by the ennui of working in an office that's open while all its clients are out of office. We're that office that's open "just in case something happens". The upside is that more often than not, it's a quiet (if slow) day and I get to catch up on other things. The downside is that I'm sort-of chained to the chair until 4pm, as this current job doesn't have half-days.

I think the first time I actually worked on a holiday was in 1988 when I worked at the local radio station, WCAT, back when it was AM-only. The station had been run via satellite feed by then, so all I had to do was sit around and ensure the commercials kicked off. As I didn't have my license at the time, my Dad would drop me off and pick me up a few hours later. This wasn't too stressful, just the station manager watching over me like a hawk and calling if I was a half-second off on the cues I had to hit. Other than that, I used the time to get homework done, do some reading, or talk with my friends on the phone. That Christmas was pretty quiet, so I was able to kick back and play some music on the monitors, and even snuck in a play of Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" over the air. I'd do pretty much the same when I worked there in 1995 into 1996.

I know I worked on the days surrounding the three holidays (T-Day, Christmas and New Years Eve) in the last few years I was in Boston. With few exceptions, I pretty much took the weekend off and headed home to be with family, but I'd work a day or so before and after the holiday. I remember on New Years Eve in 1993 and 1994 I had to work, and I'd try to get home as quickly as I could so I could catch the end-of-year countdown on WFNX (some traditions die hard).

The HMV years were of course my introduction to working high-volume retail in Q4. For four years straight I'd work on Black Friday, Christmas Eve, and New Years Eve. I didn't really mind it here, even it did get crazy--part of it was because I'd be hiding up back, preparing the constant flow of product coming in, or I'd be one of the register jockeys (I was a fast ringer, so I'd get the lines cleared pretty quickly), or I'd be offering my music trivia nerdiness out on the floor. Like I've said before--despite the occasional frustrations, it was one of my favorite jobs, even on the major retail holidays.

I'd also work on those surrounding days at Yankee. Those days would get insane for various reasons--ten hour days starting at 4AM six days a week, lack of storage space, a huge volume coming down the delivery shutes, shortages of workers--but with the shipping department, you kind of get numb to the actual job itself. The mechanical side of your brain focuses solely on building safe pallets of product to be shrinkwrapped, stored, and put onto the trucks, but the social side of your brain would end up going elsewhere. Despite the stress, we'd all laugh and talk and joke. There were a few blowups and firings, but for the most part we got the job done the best we could.

So yeah...at 41, I'm not in the least bothered by the fact that I still have to work on Black Friday, or Christmas Eve, or New Years Eve. I kind of expect it, really. If I can manage to get the days off, I will of course try for it, but I don't expect that to happen.


That said, I don't mind shopping on those days either. Maybe it's that I have a high tolerance/patience level for it, but it's never completely bothered me to be in a crowded mall or a store like Target during the busiest time of the year. Sure, there's the usual idiot in the parking lot, or the clueless goober taking up the entire aisle, or the impatient lady in the checkout line repeatedly sighing quite audibly, but you know--it's a small price to pay. I think it might be that I like being surrounded by people even if I'm not connecting with them at all. Even the music doesn't bother me all that much (with very few exceptions).

It's part of the festive atmosphere, and I enjoy that.
jon_chaisson: (Default)
So as mentioned on Twitter, I'm surrounded by PCs today: I've got my work laptop up and running (I get to work from home until the end of the year, woo!), I've got my Lenovo laptop on my desk that I'm using to post this, and I've got my main PC which is currently going through a major cleaning. I was listening to Save Alternative earlier today via this laptop, but it seems it was causing everyone else's PC to act wonky in the process (more on that in a minute), so now I'm going lo-fi by listening to KFOG via my old alarm clock radio that's across the room.

The Spare Oom PC has been acting a little wonky lately, and I'm not exactly sure why...it could be that I had way too much stuff (read: mp3s) taking up space on the hard drive that it was slowing things up, or it could be that an update did more harm than good, or maybe just that one of the sectors decided to wig out. I'm not entirely sure, but I'm taking precautions. All the mp3s are now over on the big external, the pictures and other things are over on the other, my writing's on Dropbox, and so on. I've just made a list of programs I use that I can redownload or reinstall just in case I need to reformat. I'm currently doing a CCleaner run that's wiping the free disk space just to clear everything up. Hopefully it'll act better once I'm done here in a few hours, but we'll see.

As for the Lenovo laptop...weird thing, this. For some reason this laptop is the culprit for our router to say ONOES TOO MUCH INFO and crash any open browser on any PC that happens to be up. If I have the time this week I should take a look at the wireless settings on this laptop to see if it's hogging bandwidth or just being stupid. Now that I'm not streaming music and have only this browser up, it seems to be working just fine.

As for the work laptop...well...not much to be said there. As I like to say, it's a POS model, just like most of the others we use at work. ;)
jon_chaisson: (Default)
Up at my usual early time here, as somehow I still need to work today. The good thing is that one of the managers has decided that working from home until the end of the year will somewhat alleviate our stress, so I'm sitting here in Spare Oom, reading the internets and waiting for my shift to start. I'm hoping that today's dead (read: hoping we won't have any emails/calls from clients who have left things until the absolute last minute and are having a meltdown because of it). This is not only so I can have a slow, relaxing day, but that I can actually get somewhat caught up. What with most of my team out sick or on vacation this week, it's been one hell of a screwy couple of days. I'm hoping we can sign off early and I can use the rest of this day for winding down and not doing much of anything except relaxing.

Also thankfully, as noted yesterday, my family's package has finally arrived at our door after being in limbo Narnia for just over a week, which means that aside from the DELIVERY FAIL of one of my Aunt-in-Law's presents, we have everything. You know, in retrospect even the delivery of the fam's package was weird--the US Mail guy buzzed our door repeatedly and animatedly, and when I answered he let me know a package was downstairs in an almost creepily happy sort of voice. I never saw the driver, so now I'm wondering if that was Tumnus dropping it off or something...

All that said...things are good here out in the Richmond. Emm's got the day off and will be doing some last-minute food shopping up in Laurel Village. All the presents are wrapped and technically under the tree (our tiny tree's on top of a desk and the presents are on the floor underneath). It would not surprise me if my boss let us out a little early, just to spread the holiday cheer. Despite my backed-up workload, I wouldn't say no.


Hope everyone has a great Christmas Eve...stay warm, have fun, and enjoy yourselves! :)
jon_chaisson: (Default)
[livejournal.com profile] emmalyon made us bento boxes o' tasty (and healthy!) goodness last night, and I think this is probably a good sign that the both of us are aiming towards eating better both at home and at work. Plus I'm trying out different things to manage my non-work time better (again, both at home and at work), and have managed to scribble out a good two hand-written pages of Walk in Silence notes during downtime.

Now to keep this going and not fall into a rut again. ;)
jon_chaisson: (Default)
Sometimes a frustrating morning at work gets evened out by having a handful of outstanding issues completed successfully. :)
jon_chaisson: (Default)
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
jon_chaisson: (Default)
[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 [livejournal.com profile] 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. [livejournal.com profile] head58 and [livejournal.com profile] lynxreign play matchmakers and introduce me to [livejournal.com profile] 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 [livejournal.com profile] 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.
jon_chaisson: (Default)
Well, of course the weekend starts with the both of us being fully awake at 6am, which means lounging around watching Holmes on Homes and other HGTV/Style shows and drinking coffee.

Once we had our act together, we headed up California to Franklin and then to Fillmore to buy a few things and check out the Fillmore strip on foot (higher-end stores and restaurants, nothing too exciting). Another bus-hop to the Laurel Village shopping center (also on California) to check out the Books Inc as well as marvel at the Ace Hardware/5 & 10 store there, which had everything--including a Jesus flashlight on a keychain. Oh, and our original reason to stop there, to buy bus passes. :p

After a very long walk, we made our way to the foot of Clement Street, which is like our local Main Street. All sorts of stores, restaurants and whatnot here! We stopped at Green Apple Books, which is a really neat new-and-used bookstore that's very dangerous for the both of us. Lots of things bought here (more on this in the next post).

Stopped for lunch at this divey place called Hamburger Haven, which claims to have opened in 1968 and looks like it hasn't renovated since then. $20 for two Country Breakfast plates which included biscuits & gravy, VERY BUTTERY eggs, bacon, and sausage. YUM! And of course our walk today wouldn't be complete without stopping at Coffee Luvers around the corner for some iced java.

I'd say we easily covered a good few miles' worth of walking today, even got some Christmas shopping done, so we don't feel guilty for goofing off the rest of the day.


In other news...
We ordered a couch online. Yes, Virginia, you can pretty much order anything online in this day and age (I commented to Emm that the weirdest thing I've probably ordered on the net was Fluff). We ordered from Home Reserve (thanks to my sis for pointing the site out!), specifically the Avenue style in a dark brown hickory. Good prices, great styles, well worth checking out!

That said...our internets seem to be working fine at the moment. we traded out the DSL filter we had, and I unplugged and replugged everything, so I'm thinking that it may have been the phone line. I was able to work from home on Friday, so all is well.

Writing...this present chapter is KICKING MY BUTT. I'm not even sure if I'll use it, but I'm writing it anyway. I'm only getting about 200-300 words a night for this chapter, where the last one I wrote flew by in about four days. Will see what happens...

Music...for those who missed it, I posted another Noughties video post yesterday, this one for 2004. I should follow [livejournal.com profile] _nimisha_'s suggestion and put these under a normal tag, but I can't seem to come up with one that I like. Any suggestions are welcome! If I have the time, I may post the one for 2005 tomorrow.

Work...well, work is work. Nothing new to report here.


Aaaand, that's my life at the moment. How's tricks on your end?
jon_chaisson: (Default)
Despite my sore throat and leftover sniffles from yesterday, I'm here in the office getting ready to crunch some numbers. FUN! I've got a pack of Halls in my pocket ready to be used when need be, my box of Kleenex is full-ish, and the workload doesn't look too terrifying. I think I can manage. I was sorely tempted to work from home today but felt I could survive here if need be.

Also--catching the #1 bus up the street from our new place at 6:05 drops me off at Clay and Van Ness at about 6:20, where I would catch the 47 or the 49 down to Market Street and to work. Of course, today was one of those off-days where one bus had the next one coming in 17 minutes and the next one was in 45, so I walked about five blocks (all downhill, thankfully) and by the time I got to the second bus stop down the 47 pulled up. So yeah, looks like that connecting bus may be a pain in the butt. On the plus side, the #1 bus is plentiful so I can get off at California and walk up one block to that on the way home without having to wait too long. That said, I got to work at about 6:40ish, WELL before I need to sign in. So all in all, despite the connecting bus hiccup to work, looks like the commute won't be all that bad.

Waiting

Jul. 28th, 2009 10:02 am
jon_chaisson: (Default)
Yup, counting down the days to vacation. The good thing is that I have the next two days working from home, and those days go by fast, and that leaves only Friday to breeze through. Yay!

Luckily work has been pretty good the last few days. The heaviest load is, oddly enough, midmonth, and the last week of the month is always quiet and smooth. Can't complain there. My only problem today is the company's server we use, which.............................is.........................about.......................this......................................slow.............................today. Well, as long as I get stuff done and don't get embroiled in some weird issue that I then would need to pawn off on my coworkers as I leave for two weeks. Not that I'm feeling guilty about that. ;)

Other than that...been a good few days. I should be updating [livejournal.com profile] edencycle with an Endnotes post sometime either tonight or the next few days when I have time. I also need to upload some tunage onto my Zune and [livejournal.com profile] emmalyon's mp3 player for our enjoyment as we take the red-eye eastward.

Hope everyone's having a good day! :)
jon_chaisson: (cat battery level)
For some reason I'm feeling very tired. I could use a nap right now...*YAWN*

I'm thinking it might be a caffeine crash...the coffee I had this morning was pretty damn strong! Guess that's what I get for having the low-grade stuff at the convenience store rather than at Happy Donut...
jon_chaisson: (Default)
Wow. It's past 1pm already. Not that I'm complaining that I have just a little over two hours to go in my workday, of course. ;)


Not-Quite-Non-Sequitur: Hmm. Just realized that I could just have easily Facebooked or Twittered the above, but I didn't. Just goes to show that even though I'm on both, I guess I don't use them nearly as often as I thought I would. Which I guess is a good thing... :p
jon_chaisson: (Default)
Work (WAH)
So far so good. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing's fallen apart (yet), and no client has come rushing in with twenty emails yelling 'OMG I NEED FILES FROM 2005 STAT' all in caps (yet). Can't complain. I'm taking my first break right now.

Weather
Rain. Not a lot of it, but it's consistent, and it looks like it'll be staying for the next few days. After a fluke of a few weeks where not only was it sunny but warm as well, looks like we're swinging back to the typical San Francisco weather, which is lots of rain. Which is actually a good thing, as that means more snow up near Tahoe and a lot less flammable dry grass later in the year. ;)

Health
I did good and worked for a full half-hour on the Wii Fit yesterday, go me! Yeah, I know, this isn't nearly as good as doing the actual exercise of running, doing weights and whatnot, but every little bit helps. Being that I haven't done squat in terms of exercise in years, it's a start, and a good one for me.

Neighborhood
Ooh, excitement galore! Diagonally across from us, they've got a ginormous crane and they're taking down old ventilation boxes and putting up shiny new ones. All while it rains! Also in other news, our apartment building is slowly but surely getting an overhaul. Our building is one that has wooden slat siding, and it looks a bit faded and worn. They just finished the other building in our complex and will eventually do ours, but at the moment they're working on the walkways and stairs. Our main stairway might be diverted at some point, too. Fun!

Other
I have my coffee, [livejournal.com profile] emmalyon gave me a rather quirky birthday present (an antique map of southern New England circa somewheres around mid 1800's, I believe), and I've got my tunage going.



Sure, it's been a mundane birthday so far, but I have no problem with that. :)
jon_chaisson: (Default)
Yes, I was correct earlier...all I needed was some food and caffeine in me and things went better later on in the day. I still feel a bit lost at work now and again, but I just need to remember that I have coworkers who feel the same way. Not sure if that's a good thing exactly, but at least I'm not alone. ;)

Now--more importantly, here's the wordcount I hinted at earlier!

Can't Find My Way Home outline
Chapter 22 outline: 535 words--DONE
Chapter 23 outline: 528 words--DONE
Subtotal: 1063 words

A Division of Souls read/edit
**again, these aren't exactly new words--they're both editing and reading counts, so of course they're high**
Chapter 9 read/edit: 1743 words--DONE
Chapter 10 read/edit: 1405 words--DONE
Chapter 11 read/edit: 1305 words--DONE
Chapter 12 read/edit: no words, but reformatting done
Subtotal: 4453 words

LJ Post on writing: 1326
**yeah, I count these too if it's a writing-themed or an RTS update**

GRAND TOTAL WORDS WORKED: 6842!

It's been awhile since I've done that many words in one go...granted, only a third of them were new words, but still...I got a lot done yesterday, and I'm quite happy with that. :)
jon_chaisson: (Default)
Morning all...another cold morning here in San Francisco...yeah, I know, 45 degrees isn't exactly cold in New England terms, so I can't complain too much, but when it's normally a good twenty degrees warmer on any given day, that's a cold morning! :p

Our sleeping in this weekend actually worked for the most part, unlike a few weekends ago when neither of us got much of a wink. We were both happy to get up closer to 7 or 8am rather than 5-ish. The only problem was last night at 3:30am when some obviously-drunk woman with some serious issues got in a catfight with some other person who, by the time the drunk woman shut up, was all the way up the other end of the block, ignoring her. Yeah, that was special...

Also: Christmas shopping nearly done for the most part! :) I just need to pick up a few things online and we're good. We tempted fate and went to the mall yesterday and it wasn't nearly as insane as I'd expected. We got some sweet deals at Kohl's and spent way much more money than we'd expected at Target, but at least we've got a good headstart on the holiday shopping. I think the fact we ordered everything online--and early at that--is the reason I keep getting this feeling we're forgetting to order something. :p

--------

[Writing]

Geh. Now I understand why Connie Willis went on about how frustrating writing a time travel novel is, when we saw her at WorldCon. Over the course of the last few weeks I've been questioning my sanity for wanting to come up with a storyline like this. Trying to come up with an interesting time-travel storyline while keeping logic in mind is one of the most mindbreaking, aggravating things I've ever done writingwise. It's a hell of a lot tougher than one thinks. But on the plus side, the outline is nearing its end--hopefully I'll get it finished by the end of the year--and with some tweaking and cleaning up, I think it will work.

In other news...I've been bad and not doing anything big with Love Like Blood lately. Well, not entirely bad...I've heard from many editors and agents that sending right at the end of the year isn't always the best of ideas, since most of them consider this their weeks off and, honestly, a good time to clean off the desk. So as much as it pains me, I'm going to wait until early-to-mid January to send it off. I should have sent it off earlier, but I won't go into that...still, I have a few places in mind that it will get sent to.

More writing news...it's still early in the game for the Eden Cycle website, but I need to get started on that as well. I'm up to Chapter 9 in the edit/once-over, partly to fix up a few things but also partly to refamiliarize myself with the story itself...that's going pretty well, and I'm still happy with most of it. What I need to be doing is coming up with some introductory passages and/or reference posts to start with, and take a weekend (or week) where I'm not doing much else and work on the layout of the site. I'd like the site to "officially" go live in January, with some sneak-peeks this month, so I'd better get cracking on this.

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[Writing: Online]

As said in the past few weeks, because of all these projects I'm working on, I'm planning on backing away from LJ and other online things for a bit to get stuff done. I'm not going to completely disappear, and I will occasionally pop onto LJ to make a few comments, but for the most part I need to get more serious about my work here. So this will probably mean a few things--some quick flyby LJ posts during work hours, and long, drawn-out posts both here and at [livejournal.com profile] jonchaisson written on the weekend. I won't x-post to both, since most people who read this LJ read the other, and I won't subject you to twice the boringness. ;)

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[The World We Live In...]

I need to back away from the Kos for awhile...maybe not cold turkey, but I've definitely been spending more time on it than I should. Sure, I like being on top of things political and whatnot, but it's eating into my writing time. In fact, now that the election season is over, I need to back away from the news for awhile. I'm getting all worked up again about everything, and I don't need that. I'll keep on top of things, of course, but not to such an extent as I have over the last few months.

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[...and Life in General]

Yes, [livejournal.com profile] head58, I used those headers on purpose. My apologies ahead of time. :p

Seriously, folks...things are going well. Health is good, work is okay, I'm keeping busy...there's always room for improvement, of course, but I can't complain.

Next year I'm hoping to get more serious about health. I'm not exactly ailing badly, but I can stand to lose some weight and get more exercise, and cut out or down on a lot of bad things I've been eating/drinking lately. Kind of funny how the worst and toughest habits to break are the ones that affect the body... Anyhoo, I want to get more walking in, focus more on keeping good eating habits at work, and not being as lazy as I have.

Of course, this also includes mental health. I don't have many worries, but I need to rethink how my thought processes work. I'm thinking about my plans for 2008 that I posted back in January, and while my list may have been wishful thinking (let's admit, there was a lot in there), I'd like to think I got at least some of it done. That makes me happy that I got more done that I'd expected, but I need to do more. I have a bad habit of being passive, and while that's not exactly a bad thing, it can lead to a lot of frustration. I need to ramp up my determination to get things done.

In short...while I thought 2008 was a vast improvement over 2007, I'm hoping that 2009 becomes more of a banner year. We'll see....

-------------------

[Music]

You were warned: I'm most likely going to be doing a very large music post in the next few days/weeks as the year ends. I have a few ideas that I'm working with, including working on yet another end-of-year best-of list. This being another year ending in 8, there were a lot of good albums...although I'm surprising myself by realizing it didn't stand out nearly as much as 1988 and 1998 did. Then again, my connection with music isn't nearly as intense as it was over the last few decades (sad but true), so I wasn't as involved.

That said, though, there were some great albums that came out, and I'll be going over them in a later post. :)

------------------

Okay, time to make most of my day and get stuff done! How was your weekend? :)
jon_chaisson: (Default)
Wow...looks like a light day today, emailwise! O_o...

*knocks on wood*

Here's to hoping it remains this quiet today...!!

Hmm...maybe I can sneak in a few words on one of my WIPs during the day... ;)

WAH!

Jun. 4th, 2008 08:52 am
jon_chaisson: (Default)
That is, Working At Home!

--Yes, I made a pot of coffee.
--Yes, I am listening to music. Best of Radiohead to be exact (to be more exact, the track listing was culled from all the Radiohead I already have, so don't need to buy it :p )
--No, I am not in my jammies. I was good and showered and dressed.
--Yes, I am being sidetracked by LJ. This is not a good thing.
--Yes, I am thrilled that it's a GORGEOUS day out today.
--No, I am not thrilled that I'll be inside through most of it. But what can ya do...?

Fun fun!
jon_chaisson: (Groucho Marx)
(Coworker walking by with a coffee cup over each ear)

ME: Okay, dare I ask?

COWORKER: I'm trying to hear the Pacific and the Atlantic at the same time.

ME: ... *headdesk*

FINALLY.

Mar. 3rd, 2008 08:27 am
jon_chaisson: (Gendo from Evangelion)
ATTENTION:

As of today, I am officially NO LONGER WORKING ON THE PHONES. I am now officially part of the email team, which means two good things: A)No need to worry about the OMGMUSTHAVEANANSWERNOW feeling that creeps up in my subconscious every time I get a call (shades of downstairs...it's hard to shake off), and B)that wonderful detached feeling where I don't have to deal with people directly anymore (yes, as a matter of fact I am too old to deal with customer service-type calls, what of it?? :p ).

Of course, this means that I'd better get more training soon, because there are a good and constant number of emails and I don't know how to do half of them yet. The positive side of this is the number of people I work with who DO know how to do the stuff and can point me in the right direction. And my trainer will be starting us up with Round III of training next week. :)

*breathes BIG sigh of relief* :D

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