quick notes before bedtime

[wombat_socho]

Stayed late at the office tonight, but not because I was working - had to bash out the latest contribution to StippleAPA, which is being collated this Saturday. Got it composed and printed and will stop by a post office on the way to work in the morning...ah, who am I kidding? It'll probably get dumped in a USPS robot tomorrow night. Speaking of things fannish, I finally remembered to follow up with marainsanity and geekboyonline about some Detour stuff.

Doing the APA at work reminded me of why I don't like writing on Cowzilla. I'm too used to the normal 101-key keyboard (with a Y key that functions consistently to boot) and the laptop's kibo is laid out "wrong". It's okay for doing short pieces for LJ, but anything longer is a pain in the butt. Yeah, it's an excuse, not a reason, but any distraction from writing will keep you from it. This is why Jerry Pournelle has a "monk's cell" that contains a computer with nothing on it but word processing software and a printer; otherwise it's too easy to let your mind wander off down the Intertubes on a random walk or get stuck into playing Civ IV or EVE-Online or some damn thing. I suspect this is why most of Blood Red Skies was done during slack time at the Evil Banking Neighbor.

Comments

[materia-indigo.livejournal.com]

What was Blood Red Skies?

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

It's the Great American Anime-Based SF Novel referred to in my bio. It originally started out as Utena fanfic (crossed awkwardly with some Traveller elements) but got to a point where it didn't work as a fanfic any more. The original ending, with some edits, is here (http://www.geocities.com/ktrain9003/global_replacement.txt).

[digex.livejournal.com]

the monks cell is a great idea - i used to think that
the internet was a real plus in terms of productivity,
and in specific I am sure that it is, but overall, I am
not sure that the bad has not matched, or even
overwhelmed, the good in terms of work productivity.

see, I am doing this when I should be doing something
else!

Saw RLB and Dutch today, RLB is getting around pretty
well with a walker, he barely needs it; Dutch is of course
completely disgusting with newly found health and slim
svelte figure ;-)

doug

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

Mr. Dunham is indeed a sterling examplar of what can be accomplished with time and effort. Sod that for a game of soldiers. I'm glad to hear Mr. B is better as well; he was like a bear with a root canal last time I saw him, which was understandable.

There are things that the Internet can definitely help with when it comes to productivity, but you'd better have a pretty good game plan in place to make sure everyone is using the interwebs productively and not just surfing pr0n or updating their LJ. God, sometimes just getting people to make maximum use of their computer networks in lieu of printers and faxes can be a major effort.