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elfsIt has been exactly two weeks since I wrote anything in my stories collection. I can make some excuses: for one thing, I was visiting my family for a week last week and had no time to write at all, and this weeks has been crammed full of recovery. When I got back, Omaha had her radio show (which was cancelled, but I had scheduled my evening around that), work has been overwhelming (I've been eating at my desk or snipping out for real short things), I had a lecture to give on Wednesday so Yamaarashi-chan came over Tuesday, both of which hammered my schedule, Omaha had her panic attack Wednesday so we both awoke late Thursday and I drove, and then today... I finally pulled away from the office on time so that I could stop at my favorite cafe', have a drink of cold coffee, and write something.
And I can't think of what to write. Oh, there's plenty to write. I have over 300 files in my "pending" or "working" directories, with 730,000 words or so in them. It's just that when I look at them, I don't feel all that inspired.
Maybe it's stress. Work has been unbearable recently; long hours, relentless pressure. The product is really good, but by all the Gods it must be perfect before it goes out the door, and now that crunch time is here the niceties are being cut. I made a swell configuration wizard for Windows networking under Unix, and now it becomes obvious that a parallel configuration wizard for Unix networking needs to be done, but there's just no time. I've reached the point where the "moved to next release" feature list is growing, and it's disappointing to see so many things I thought we'd have time for this in release disappear into the next one.
By the way, we can all thank Microsoft for breaking a standard again. Under glob-style regular expressions (those things you use for searching text strings, among other things), the splat (the asterisk, you know, this thing: *) means "zero or more characters". So, for example, if you have two files, "A" and "AA", the expression "A*" will find both, and "AA*" will only find the latter. The "*" means "zero or more characters."
EXCEPT in Microsoft's LDAP server for Windows 2003. When searching the LDAP database for users by name or description, the expression "A*" will match "A" and "AA". That's correct. "AA*" will match "AA". That's correct. Since the splat means "zero or more characters," the empty string (zero characters) should be matched by the expression "*", right?
IT DOESN'T! It's flaming broken! Arrrrrrrrrgh!
Near as we can figure out, when we pass the command find Name in Users where Desc='*', the server throws out all rows of the search which lack a description field. (Since LDAP is closer to an OMG database than a relational, it is possible for OMG objects to actually lack fields, rather than have empty ones).
That's just so wrong I can't tell you how wrong this behavior is. It's capsicum-in-your-anal-lubricant wrong. It's moose-spittle-flavored-ice-cream wrong. It's Al-Sharpton-for-president wrong. It's probably some exception handler problem, where some lazy ass programmer decided that a reference to a missing field should throw an exception (and thus be excluded) rather than do the right thing and generate a null object to populate the field and do the comparison. Hell, he could have generated one before entering the loop and use a reference to it for all comparisons. It would have been more efficient and faster! So what if it's an extra ten lines of code? So what if it's the right thing to do?
Anyway, now that that's out of my system, I have to figure out what to write next. The really sad part is that I have a new story series idea (I'm just a freakin' idea hamster, aren't I? Always on my little wheel, runnin' and runnin' and runnin'). I've almost never seen High Fantasy, the kind with wizards and so on, set it Ancient Rome. So, I sez to myself, "Self, why don't you write some?" I mean, isn't that why I started out writing? To generate interest in smut that was grammatically correct and properly spell-checked? (Few things gratify me more hitting Meta-$ and seeing it say 'GRAMMATICALLY is correct' the first time)
Anyway, I've got a keen protagonist, and Rome is always ready to supply base villains. I've got a scope set out for somewhere between thirty and sixty episodes; I figure each episode will be between 6,000 and 10,000 words. I've even got a five-year story arch with five smaller arches: hey, look, it's Babylon 5 with magic, Romans, and porn!
Now all I have to do is find the energy to write.
1. Do you eat breakfast? What did you have today?
Same thing I have every morning: a grapefruit and a cup of coffee. Sometimes I add a bagel. When grapefruits are out of season, I usually have an apple instead.
2. What beverages do you usually have in a typical day?
Water, Coke, coffee. On the weekends I usually drink a lot of iced tea and orange juice, since it's what we have around the house. On very rare ocassions, I have beer with dinner.
3. White bread or wheat bread?
Wheat. Or home-made.
4. What's your favorite kind (potato/tortilla/corn) and flavor of chip?
Tom's Sea salt and Vinegar.
5. How do you plan to spend your weekend?
Oh, grief. Friday, I'm not doing anything. Saturday, I'll be at home watching the kids since Omaha has something to do way up in Everett. Sunday, I'll be taking the kids to a birthday party with one of Yamaarashi's friends.
And I can't think of what to write. Oh, there's plenty to write. I have over 300 files in my "pending" or "working" directories, with 730,000 words or so in them. It's just that when I look at them, I don't feel all that inspired.
Maybe it's stress. Work has been unbearable recently; long hours, relentless pressure. The product is really good, but by all the Gods it must be perfect before it goes out the door, and now that crunch time is here the niceties are being cut. I made a swell configuration wizard for Windows networking under Unix, and now it becomes obvious that a parallel configuration wizard for Unix networking needs to be done, but there's just no time. I've reached the point where the "moved to next release" feature list is growing, and it's disappointing to see so many things I thought we'd have time for this in release disappear into the next one.
By the way, we can all thank Microsoft for breaking a standard again. Under glob-style regular expressions (those things you use for searching text strings, among other things), the splat (the asterisk, you know, this thing: *) means "zero or more characters". So, for example, if you have two files, "A" and "AA", the expression "A*" will find both, and "AA*" will only find the latter. The "*" means "zero or more characters."
EXCEPT in Microsoft's LDAP server for Windows 2003. When searching the LDAP database for users by name or description, the expression "A*" will match "A" and "AA". That's correct. "AA*" will match "AA". That's correct. Since the splat means "zero or more characters," the empty string (zero characters) should be matched by the expression "*", right?
IT DOESN'T! It's flaming broken! Arrrrrrrrrgh!
Near as we can figure out, when we pass the command find Name in Users where Desc='*', the server throws out all rows of the search which lack a description field. (Since LDAP is closer to an OMG database than a relational, it is possible for OMG objects to actually lack fields, rather than have empty ones).
That's just so wrong I can't tell you how wrong this behavior is. It's capsicum-in-your-anal-lubricant wrong. It's moose-spittle-flavored-ice-cream wrong. It's Al-Sharpton-for-president wrong. It's probably some exception handler problem, where some lazy ass programmer decided that a reference to a missing field should throw an exception (and thus be excluded) rather than do the right thing and generate a null object to populate the field and do the comparison. Hell, he could have generated one before entering the loop and use a reference to it for all comparisons. It would have been more efficient and faster! So what if it's an extra ten lines of code? So what if it's the right thing to do?
Anyway, now that that's out of my system, I have to figure out what to write next. The really sad part is that I have a new story series idea (I'm just a freakin' idea hamster, aren't I? Always on my little wheel, runnin' and runnin' and runnin'). I've almost never seen High Fantasy, the kind with wizards and so on, set it Ancient Rome. So, I sez to myself, "Self, why don't you write some?" I mean, isn't that why I started out writing? To generate interest in smut that was grammatically correct and properly spell-checked? (Few things gratify me more hitting Meta-$ and seeing it say 'GRAMMATICALLY is correct' the first time)
Anyway, I've got a keen protagonist, and Rome is always ready to supply base villains. I've got a scope set out for somewhere between thirty and sixty episodes; I figure each episode will be between 6,000 and 10,000 words. I've even got a five-year story arch with five smaller arches: hey, look, it's Babylon 5 with magic, Romans, and porn!
Now all I have to do is find the energy to write.
1. Do you eat breakfast? What did you have today?
Same thing I have every morning: a grapefruit and a cup of coffee. Sometimes I add a bagel. When grapefruits are out of season, I usually have an apple instead.
2. What beverages do you usually have in a typical day?
Water, Coke, coffee. On the weekends I usually drink a lot of iced tea and orange juice, since it's what we have around the house. On very rare ocassions, I have beer with dinner.
3. White bread or wheat bread?
Wheat. Or home-made.
4. What's your favorite kind (potato/tortilla/corn) and flavor of chip?
Tom's Sea salt and Vinegar.
5. How do you plan to spend your weekend?
Oh, grief. Friday, I'm not doing anything. Saturday, I'll be at home watching the kids since Omaha has something to do way up in Everett. Sunday, I'll be taking the kids to a birthday party with one of Yamaarashi's friends.
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For a stress reliever...
Date: 2003-07-26 02:04 am (UTC)I'd be happy to pass along my recipes if it interests you, though from general review, you don't seem all that into the sugary end of things.
gramatically correct porn
Date: 2003-07-26 02:59 am (UTC)Re: gramatically correct porn
Date: 2003-07-26 06:15 am (UTC)I've seen attempts at porn written by adolescent males who do their research in Penthouse, and there's stuff being put on the net which isn't much different.
Elf, finding yours, many years ago, was a great relief.
But I've read too much about Rome to feel entirely comfortable about your idea... More than I've read about Pirates, and Bloody Beth didn't really work for me as a setting.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-26 04:10 am (UTC)All subjects (mostly)
Date: 2003-07-27 11:00 pm (UTC)Isn't this about par for MS? Remember, the other definition of MS is Multiple Sclerosis, and Microsoft obeys that definition every time. What other company in the world would change or reinvent rules just so they could put a copywrong stamp on it?
Can't help you with LDAP. I don't even know what it is. I frankly can't wait to learn to program, just to be able to write my own software.
I don't know about you, Elf, but I have an environment that helps me get going. Usually it's outside in the fresh air, or at midnight in the bathroom, scribbling away madly in longhand. Where do you write best? Is there a best time for it? What if you went and did some remedial stuff, just for fun and exercise?
Fantasy Rome
Date: 2003-07-29 04:17 pm (UTC)Fantasy Rome
Date: 2003-07-30 09:08 pm (UTC)-Malthus