Thursday, November 29, 2007

Cliffhang that bitch, indeed.

Boom, baby.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Rice vs Vocabularly

While checking out the latest "A Softer World" comic, I noticed a little blurb down the bottom which I just had to share:

Don't you wish there was a way you could feel morally satisfied about your internet time wastage AND make yourself feel smart? Today I discovered the most adorably efficient way to accomplish both goals: Free Rice. It's a multiple choice vocabulary game, and for each word you guess correctly, the advertisers on the site donate 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. Oh, and the competitive, ego-driven side of this? With each 3 correct answers, you go up a level and the words get harder. The maximum level is 50, though according to the FAQ, few get past 48.

Oh yes, this is addictive. Clicking away during a meeting I managed to get up to level 45, though I'm not done yet. Check it out!

Update: I made it to 49! But 50 has remained elusive. Tell you what though, I've donated a shit ton of rice...

Update II: YES! Made it to 50, though I kept on getting stuck on 49, dammit. When I noticed I was on 43 000 grains of rice, which meant I had to get 2150 questions right to hit 50. I am positive that that can be beaten, and soundly. Stupid 49...
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Due to circumstances beyond control (stupid maintenance people) I didn't get any writing done last night, but I'm sitting at 42k. It looks like I'm not going to be done with my plot unless I do some hand-waving and stream-lining, or if I just end on a cliffhanger. Right now I'm leaning towards a cliffhanger, but we'll see how we go...


Monday, November 26, 2007

The Finish Line is in sight...

Well, the Thanksgiving weekend is over. I was hoping to get to at least 35k in my quest to finish NaNoWriMo this year, but unfortunately only got to 34.5k. That leaves me needed just over 3k a day for the next 5 days... but I'm still fairly confident of getting. I'm hoping The Fear kicks in shortly, as the sound of that deadline approaching helps scare the bejesus out of me and gets me to the finish line.

On the poker front I had an up and down time. I ended up playing a few tournaments today, including a $10 KO tournament with Maigrey. I managed to pick up three bounties before busting; Maigrey clipped me, picking up 4, though she needed to get to the final table to catch and then pass me enroute to her 3rd place finish for $900+. Nice work! Naturally I credit my effort as an inspiration, and my railbirding as crucial to her success.

Since I felt fairly energetic I decided to jump into the Daily Double tournaments, and just busted in 21st in B. I sucked out a couple of times to get there, and got my money in good against two callers, but it wasn't to be.

Of course I am now caught up watching the end of Rocky II, a movie which I shamefully have never seen. So I'm stuck.

The rest of the weekend was fantastic, as I spent most of it with Saunter. On Thanksgiving Day we went out for a walk around some parks near my place in DC, and it looked like it was "peak" (which Saunter assures me means the leaves were perfect - I assume). I took a bunch of photos with my snazzy new camera, which I just got to replace my old one, which seemed to crap itself a couple of weeks ago. I thought I'd post a couple here.

All in all, a wonderful weekend.



Monday, November 19, 2007

Great Moments in Coincidences

So, I was hammering away at the keyboard, getting more word count for Nano. Here is what I was writing:

"OK, OK, I'm fucking coming, alright!" Mike angrily got to his feet, grabbing his cell phone. Squinting at the phone's external display, Mike tried to make out who it was. The display said "Unavailable", which meant the

At that point I was interrupted. By my phone vibrating. On my kitchen counter. I went and grabbed it. Who was calling?

"Unavailable".

I am not making this shit up.

Maybe I'll write about the protagonist winning a huge poker tournament next...

Welcome to the RNG

The setting? FT peep sex. Down to 7 people, with 6th getting cash and the rest getting tokens. Two people get it all-in pre-flop. AA vs AA. And then the Full Tilt RNG makes magic happen.


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For those of you wondering out there (hi Mum!) I'm still careening towards my NaNoWriMo target. I was a bit behind where I wanted to be at this stage, but managed to limp over 25k words today. With the upcoming Thanksgiving weekend I'm hopeful that I can get myself to within striking distance so I can make it to 50k by midnight on November 30th.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Welcome to the Malaise

Let me start by saying "Friends don't let friends participate in 7am conference calls, and if they do, don't let them do it two days in a row". It makes for afternoons spent with a 1000 yard stare, hoping that the afternoon comes to a quick close so that one may escape to the safe(r) confines of home.

It's also contributed to my less-than-stellar NaNo output for this week, something that remarkably coincided with my previous post, where I proclaimed my cockiness. And where I also mentioned being snake-bit after proclaiming success. Thank goodness for NaNo Write-Ins (item 3 on my "Tips and Tricks" list), and for Saunter (item 4), which forced me to throw down some words last night, halting my period of writing inactivity.

In somewhat contradictory fashion, I did receive a dose of musical inspiration which may lead me to change my narrative's course quite markedly. Not that I really knew where it was going anyway, but I'm positive it wasn't going where it is now headed.

Now all I have to do is get there.

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On the poker front I have been busy flying too close to the sun on the Triple Draw tables. My current roll on there is not really (and when I say "not really" I mean "not really, without a doubt") deep enough for that limit, but I continue to dabble. So far it's been net positive, but it has been a crazy roller-coaster. All it's going to take is one nightmare session to gut me. I should be spending my time grinding at 2/4 or so, slowly accumulating, with only the occasional shot at 5/10 when the tables look juicy. So let's see how I go about making that happen.

I did note that in a week (not every day, mind) of sporadic play at various limits on the TD tables that I have accumulated 1/8 of my total Stars Frequent Player Points for the year. Hilarious!

Monday, November 05, 2007

So Far, So Far

Things go according to Plan, and, much to my joy, hiding during my lunch hour to type furiously is paying superb dividends. I've racked up just over 6000 words in my latest assault on Literature, all words that I have slapped together while being in the office.

Office words are the sweetest words.

I've discovered that if I go hell-for-leather I can get around 2k down in about an hour... but of course that's right now, at the beginning, when I have plenty of things to talk about. Like my character's hair. I'm not so sure about what I'm going to do in the middle stages, when 10k is just a distant memory. Maybe talk about someone else's hair? I'm not sure - I've already mentioned that my secondary character is balding. Maybe I can get him a wig. Or a gun.

Of course I'm still in my "cocky" stage, and thus felt fine about jumping on my laptop to play some Triple Draw while Saunter was busy writing away. Aiding in my fine feelings about such endeavours was my jumping out to being ahead over $600 within 90 minutes playing 5/10 on Stars... which turned into a horrendous downswing as soon as I deigned to tell someone about my rush.

It's funny - you'd think you would learn, but then you don't.

But hey, as I pointed out to Saunter, Triple Draw paid for dinner on Saturday night... even if it didn't really, and even if I gave back some of it later on Sunday. Feels good to say it, though.

Oh yeah, let's not talk about Sundays with Dr Pauly, OK? At least Betty got something out of it. So to speak.