Friday, August 20, 2004
So, last night my cat, who is elderly in years (15+), but still acts like a kitten about half the time, finally set me straight on this whole silly ADD thing. Well, at least on cat ADD. I was trying to play Crimson Skies, and she was trying to get my attention by flipping the pages of a book on the coffee table (this is a common ploy of hers). Finally, I'd had enough and yelled at her to please frelling stop.
"I can't," she replied.
"Why the hell not!" I growled, gripping the XBox controller tighter.
"I have ADD," she said.
"You do not have ADD."
"Sure I do."
"Sophie, you don't even know what ADD stands for."
"Sure I do."
"Fine. Then tell me."
Now, it's rare that I manage to catch her furry little butt in a full-on lie, but this time, this time I was sure. So I admit I awaited her answer with a certain degree of satisfaction.
"ADD," she began, "stands for Attention Deficit Disorder." (Damn, I snarled silently, foiled again). Or," she continued, "more precisely, its the deficit of attention which causes me to behave disorderly."
And the worst part is, I think she's immortal.
Anyway...
Last night, while I slept, Hinderance (the iBook formerly known as Victoria Regina), completed my 200th SETI@Home data unit. That's a total CPU time of 6,317 hours, 23 minutes in just over a year, which places me in the 86.708 percentile. Only 2,076 other SETI users have this rank, out of a total of 5,101,408. Which is to say, I'm presently ranked at 676,022nd place. I think I may be more excited about finishing my 200th unit than I am about the impending release of Murder of Angels. Oh, I know the odds are stacked against SETI's success, but I also know there is a chance of success, no matter how slim, and, as I may have said before, I think that this serves approximately the same fuction for me that prayer serves for many religious people. It gives me some small hope.
I finally began the new short story yesterday, the one for subpress. Because I like to have titles before I begin (though these titles are free to change should they need to do so), I spent about an hour deciding on "All Tomorrow's Parties." I "typed" it at the "top" of the "page." Perfect! I thought. And then I thought, uhm, wait. I called myself several unpleasant names, cursed William Gibson, erased the title and replaced it with "Bradbury Weather," which was my second choice. I did about 700 words in about three hours, much of which needs reworking today, but at least it's a start. I was relieved. This will be a story set on Mars, a couple hundred years or more from now. I've always wanted to write a story set on Mars, and now I will.
My goal is to have the story completed by Dragon*Con.
Thanks to everyone who's already taken part in the HUGE eBay auction now in progress. And because I think there may have been some confusion, let me reiterate: only those people using the "Buy-It-Now" feature will get a free Nyarlathotep CD. And yes, the CDs will be signed by me. I also want to draw attention to the Dreaming mobile. I only have a very few of these and, to my knowledge, they'll never be available anywhere else. Most of them went out to comic shops for promotional displays and were discarded after a couple of months. Click here for a complete list of that which is being auctioned.
Er. Okay. Gotta go for now. The damn cat's trying to get my attention...
12:36 PM
Comments:
Post a Comment
