My World

Posted on August 3, 2004    Posted by John Scalzi

For those who care (and those who don’t but wandered over here anyway), a status update:

1. Book is coming along fine. Close to the contractually obliged word count, which is nice, and also to the number of pages required for the book, which is even nicer. One of the strange things about doing an Uncle John’s Book is that the page count is often determined before the book is written, and then one writes to length. No one else I know does this (aside, I imagine, from some children’s books: I seem to remember all my scholastic books coming in at 48 or 64 pages). I should be able to wrap everything up tomorrow, Thursday at latest. Then I’ll take off the weekend and then start on Rough Guide to Science Fiction Film. Books! They’re fun.

2. My satellite Internet woes are resolved. I had a technician come out, he tweaked the position of the dish receiver (funny how being off beam by just a few millimeters can propagate into a real error over the several thousand miles to the satellite), and everything turned out fine. For now. In any event, now I’m not in danger of losing my broadband connection (and my mind) when insects cross in front of the dish, and at this point that’s all I can ask.

3. I also upgraded my video card with a minimum of drama (it caused some weird conflict with my satellite modem — don’t ask me why — but I resolved it), and the new card is kickin’ it just fine as far as I can tell. Since I’m picking up Doom III this afternoon, we’ll see. Before you ask, no, I don’t plan on playing Doom III tonight, at least not before I finish all the writing I have alloted to get done tonight. Must. Be. STRONG.

4. kd lang’s Hymns of the 49th Parallel: Muy Excellente. I love kd lang’s voice (not a better torch singer out there at the moment), and I’ve always had a weakness for Canadian songwriters, including many of those who Lang covers here. I can’t conceive of a reason why you shouldn’t own this album. Also, this album is a fine example of why iTunes is very dangerous: I remembered the album was out, I said to myself Damn! I need to own that! and then less than a minute later I was downloading it. Impulse buying, thy name is iTunes.

5. Also, I feel special for being able to appreciate both kd lang and Doom III, although I would not go so far as to say I would appreciate them both simultaneously. It’s just me, but I don’t think Lang’s cover of Jane Siberry’s “Love is Everything” would go well with shotgunning a whole passel of pixellated imps. And Lang’s take on Neil Young’s “Helpless” would be entirely in appropriate in that context.

That’s it for today.