Leechblock

If you are a Firefox user (PC) and a Nano-er, Leechblock is an excellent tool for providing a proverbial slap on your hand for wasting time online in all the millions of ways there are to waste time.

All you have to do is install it as an add-on to your Firefox browser and then configure it to block your time-wasting websites for specific hours of specific days or beyond a certain amount of time each of those days - your choice.

I have it blocking Facebook, Phantasy Tour, CNN and other mind-numbing websites and message boards that could prevent me from stacking up 50,000+ words in the next month.

I can override it if necessary but I will use that ability only in the event of a surprise Phish show or terrorist act.

My My My ... How Times Change

Killing some time, waiting for a vendor to show up at one of our satellites. Decide to look up Flunk Day to see if there are any rumors pages I can access and stumble upon The Knox Student website. TKS is a weekly student newspaper for Knox College. They had a couple of articles about Flunk Day but nothing with a link to rumors.

So I clicked around and started reading other articles and came across one entitled ,a href='http://www.theknoxstudent.com/newsroom/article/all-plugged-knoxs-laptop-controversy/'>"All Plugged In: On Knox's Laptop Controversy". My interest piqued, I clicked through.

First off, I was shocked there is a controversy. I thought it was a bygone conclusion that laptops are everywhere and thus belong everywhere. I know in my day, laptops didn't even exist. But then again, neither did color monitors. And our printers were very, very loud. When I went off to college, my dad asked me if I wanted him to buy me a computer for school and it being 1989, I said no thanks, Dad. I'll get a word processor - that's all I need. And I was right. With the exception of a stupid Apple computer that corrupted my floppy disk right before senior finals, I rarely used much more than my word processor.

Had I been born 10 years later and entered Knox the fall of 1999, my answer would have been different, although I doubt the question would have even been asked. By that point, more than likely, I would have gone through an entire junior high and high school career using a computer and my dad would have known that I expected to do the same in college. And by that point, I may have been gifted an IBM Thinkpad 600 with a 300 mHz processor and 5.1 GB of storage. And I would have been on the cutting edge with a machine like that.

When I was a student, the only way to take notes involved ink (or graphite) and paper. Professors spoke fast so it also involved copious amounts of unreadable scribbles stretching across the lined sheets in front of me. The process of going over those notes later for a test inevitably ended in headache.

It seems a little odd that Knox is having this controversy now. Laptops have been in students' hands for over a decade so I have no doubt they have been in the classrooms just as long. Why carry a 4oz notebook when you can haul a 6lb laptop from SMaC to CFA?

Of course, the answer is Facebook. And Twitter. And old fashioned email. “We’re starting to get a generation of students who have always been multitasking ... What a lot of students are weak on now is the ability to focus.” How times change. And how I stay the same. I have always had a problem with focusing - clearly, I was born 20 years too soon. I am of the wrong generation and now know why I have been unable to focus all my life. Facebook. Twitter. Email. It is apparent to me, I have been social networking in my head all of these years, waiting only for a machine that could provide an actual connection to real people rather than the imagined connections to no-doubt the pretend-people in my head. I am so thankful that it has finally caught up with me and given me a forum to truly be my multi-tasking, unfocused, inattentive self.

Thank you Bill Gates! And thank you, Facebook.

Art of the Short Story

When I wrote my 50,000th word during last November's NaNoWriMo, I earned myself a CreateSpace proof copy of my book. In the middle of the month, when I strained to find time and inspiration to continue, this reward kept my feet (or in this case, my fingers) moving ever forward. It won't get me too much closer to The Dream of being a best-selling author but it does - technically - get me part of the way there by being a published author.

The problem is, there is a limited time to receive this reward and despite having written just beyond 50,000 words, the novel was nowhere near an end. My motivation to complete it, however, was ... at its end, that is.

If I haven't mentioned this before, I'm a terrible Closer - a fact that drives those near and dear to me absolutely, insanely bonkers. I'm really good at starting, but that's little consolation when what you've started sits in a closet for two years, waiting to be completed.

I had this idea to make these reusable grocery totes from fabric that had always captivated me when I'd wander the aisles at Joann's or Hancock Fabrics. I didn't need a pattern; I'm actually pretty good at fashioning things like that from scratch. I made a decent amount of money a few years back creating "poster pouches" for the die-hard Phish poster collectors who had to run in and grab the show poster and then worry about its safety for the remainder of the show. So I created these long, slender bags that held poster tubes of various sizes. I lined them with vinyl to help resist water and covered them with cool fabrics like corduroys and interesting patterned cotton and sewed a shoulder strap on so they could be comfortably worn throughout a show for those people who were just too nervous to lay their paper booty on the ground. I created the pattern from scratch on a scratch piece of paper that I've long since lost and went and bought a whole bunch of different kinds of fabric and vinyls and went to town. I created the first one in about four hours and got so I could do one about every three hours.

I don't know exactly how many I made but we sold all but two of them for barely enough money to cover the fabric and supplies, much less labor. It wasn't a very lucrative business given the time it took, the money spent and the limited client base, most of whom only needed to buy one. My husband convinced me to create a wider, longer pouch for tapers but again, limited client base and even more money for more fabric. That may be the one project I started that I actually chose to finish rather than finished without ever making a cognizant choice.

What I'm getting at is I have a short attention span. I'm like a puppy. I jump from thing to thing with a wagging tail and when I grow bored, I jump to the next thing. Or I take a nap. Taking on a novel was a huge thing. My mistake, I think, was making my goal 50,000 words rather than actually finishing the novel. I made my goal, I didn't need to continue. But that's not entirely true. I really did need to continue.

So I have this free proof copy I can use, but I only have till July 1st to claim it. I have an unfinished novel that no longer interests me and a few short stories that keep me happily writing. What to do.

Why not use the proof copy to compile my short stories? I have many. Some will never see the light of day, even with this proof copy - they were practice stories and read as such. Some of them, however, are actually really good. I'm a good writer, better even than I am at creating bags. But I am a short story writer. Besides the 50,000 words I threw together in November, the longest thing I've written before is a 100 page novella that bored me around page 60. Somehow, I persevered and completed the novella but never completed the idea - it was intended to be a series of novellas with a common character.

The beauty of the short story is in its compact nature. I can get in, right in the middle of the action and end it within 25 pages. If I have an afternoon and inspiration (and the ability to block out Facebook and the various other online distractions - the Leechblock add-on for Firefox is great for this), I can write the entire story. Or if not in one day, certainly two or three days is no problem. Because it doesn't drag on, because there are a limited number of words to go from the beginning to the end, the story is all action. There is no need to describe the banister which has been in the family 107 years and polished to a sheen by the sliding asses of generations of rambunctious boys and girls. If a description of a non-essential element of the story goes beyond one medium-length paragraph, it can be edited.

So I started with a story I wrote a couple of years ago. I have no idea where it came from - it evolved from a name that popped into my head. That one is definitely in the proof copy; it just needs a final edit for schlock and it's done. Then a story I wrote a couple of weeks ago inspired by an email I received from myself. That one will need more editing, but it's sitting and I'm forgetting for now. And another story I started a couple of days ago - again, I had a name in mind and wrote a sentence with that name in it and the story began. I found a couple of really old stories on my website that I think I can put in as well; they need a little updating and a lot of editing but they're still really good stories, even from so long ago.

The goal is to get nine stories. I know Salinger already did Nine Stories but nine is my number and I don't have to call it the same thing. But it will be the same thing. Nine stories. I read Salinger so easily because I write a lot like him. So why the hell not.

I just need four more. By July 1st.

Stuck in the 1900s

For being the techie that I am, it is surprising even to myself how little I have actually entered the 21st Century. I mean, sure, I have a cell phone with internet access - that came about more from necessity than mere desire: at my job, much of my internet wanderings are blocked by my own department policy, including personal email and it just wouldn't do for me to be blocked from Facebook all day long.

But when your mom tells you in passing that she has a new HDTV and Blu-Ray disc player and you are still gathering around your 27" tube television and hoping that your $50 DVD player doesn't crap out again, you know you're in danger of dinosaur-hood.

I was reading a friend's blog today about instant gratification in the 21st Century and realizing that I am living the life he fondly remembers before the days of Netflix On-Demand and it really isn't so bad. In a less-is-more kind of way, the pomp and circumstance of my once-yearly viewing of The Wizard of Oz endeared me to the story of Dorothy's strange journey (no, it wasn't just a dream, silly!) and it is still one of my favorite movies.

Of course, less isn't always more but with so many channels, I can choose for myself which needs less and which needs more. I own the DVD for Independence Day, my husband bought it for me for one of my recent birthdays because I have a tendency to watch it whenever it is on television, which is a lot. It and Dazed and Confused and several other movies that tickle me in some retro way (or in my sick fascination with the Apocalypse way) will always have the ability to stop my hand on the remote. And despite the fact that I now own several of those DVDs, I will still stop on those movies whenever they appear on television, even as the DVDs gather dust.

It's a Freebie. Same thing when WXRT plays "Backwards Down the Number Line" on my morning commute. Sure, I could queue up Phish's Joy album when I get to work and hear the same version of the same song but it won't make me nearly as giddy as when it randomly appears on the radio without any intervention of my own. Same thing with movies on TV. How many times have I been in a frustrated, I-just-want-to-kick-back-and-lose-myself-in-Hollywood kind of mood only to find The Day After Tomorrow on FX and - voila! - the destruction of New York is upon me?

And while I can be envious of those of my friends who have TIVO or DVR technology (or working iPods, or iPhones or fast computers or HDTVs and Blu-Rays), I know that I would still stop and watch Independence Day every single time I saw it on TBS and that I would only watch The Wizard of Oz every once in a blue moon when the mood hits me just right. That's just the way I'm built.