Home of the Soul Cookie

Creatures crawl in search of blood to terrorize y’all’s neighborhood: http://www.fridayfive.org/

1. What was your first Halloween costume?
The first one I can remember is Tweety Bird. I think it was originally supposed to be my sister’s, but I ended up wearing it for some reason.

2. What was your best costume and why?
Robot. Silver boxy body, dryer ducting arms, googly antennas. And the pièce de résistance: An “insert candy here” opening in the front that was connected to an inner candy resevoir.

3. Did you ever play a trick on someone who didn’t give you a treat?
Nope. Not sure that I’ve ever had someone not give me a treat. Hmm… That might explain a lot.

4. Do you have any Halloween traditions? (ie: Family pumpkin carving, special dinner before trick or treating, etc.)
The last few years, it’s been running the shop while Jay and Kris take the munchkin trick-or-treating. That and kicking myself for not doing a super-cool costume on my favorite holiday.

5. Share your favorite scary story…real or legend!
Can’t think of a favorite right now. There are some spooky stories about people being buried alive you can read about until I think of something better to say here…

After talking to Zak about National Novel Writing Month and checking out their site, I decided to take the plunge and sign up.

So what’s the deal? From their site:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over talent and craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to share the work-in-progress, particularly given that it’s going to be rushed crap.

Would anyone even be interested in reading it? Comment and let me know.

From ICv2.com:

Wallace & Gromit Feature Set For 2005
$50 Million Budget For ‘Curse of the Wererabbit’
Aardman Animations has announced that it is beginning production this week on The Wallace & Gromit Movie: Curse of the Wererabbit. The production of the stop-motion animated feature is expected to take 18 months, and the $50 million film is set for a debut in 2005. The film’s storyline finds Wallace & Gromit hunting down a mysterious beast, which has been destroying the local farmers’ and gardeners’ prize vegetables on the eve of a giant vegetable growing contest. Two Oscar-nominated actors, Helena Bonham-Carter and Ralph Fiennes, will voice characters from the local nobility. [more]

Cracking news!

I’m talking of course about that digital lifeblood otherwise known as my Internet connection.

The wildfires in San Diego have been playing havoc with my office’s connectivity, which also interrupts my dial-up connection at home. It was down Monday night and most of yesterday, except for a brief interval yesterday afternoon, and then down again all evening. It appears to be up now, but I don’t know how long it’ll last this time.

I would’ve gone totally mad had I not been able to use Jason and Kris’ AOL dialup connection to respond to email yesterday.

The F5 maintainer is taking a week (or two) off.

I made it here to the Bay Area safe and sound. The flights were totally pleasant; the renting of the car was not.

Let it suffice to say that I hate stupid car rental companies and my credit card company that froze available funds on my card because I had the audacity to pay it off! It must be fraud! [grumble, grumble]

[Edited to add:]

See what I’m having to deal with?

The negative balance is there because I intentionally overpaid my bill to the limit the card company set. Even with that, I’ve got less than a Jackson available. Grr.

…until I get to leave work and get on a plane bound for the Bay Area.

Stayed up late packing for the trip, and then couldn’t for the life of me get to sleep. I know that I finally entered dreamland between 3:30 and 4:00 this morning - and then had to be here at my desk by 8am.

As sleep-deprived as I am, I’ve no doubt that excitement and adrenaline will keep me going today. Woo hoo!

From Sci Fi Wire:

Producer Mark Burnett (Survivor) has sold The WB a pilot script for Global Frequency, an hourlong superhero show based on the DC Comics series by Warren Ellis, Variety reported. Frequency deals with a shadowy figure named Miranda Zero who starts a top-secret worldwide independent defense intelligence organization, the trade paper reported.

John Rogers (The Core) has been tapped to write Global Frequency.

Could be cool - Global Frequency was a very cool 12-issue series (each standalone issue tells a different tale of the GF).

For more info, visit the site of Warren Ellis, writer of GF. A link on his GF info page (which has a much better synopsis of what GF is about than the blurb above) points to http://www.globalfrequency.org/, which looks pretty darn cool.

Or head over to your friendly local comic book shop and pick up what you can. Since each issue tells its own story, you can still enjoy it if you can only track down, say, numbers 1, 4, 5, and 10.

Went out to a birthday celebration in honor of my roommates’ daughter’s sixth birthday. Her birthday isn’t actually until Friday, but since I won’t be around, my roomies very, very considerately moved it up. (Thanks, guys!)

We went to a local place called Dudley’s for the shindig - think a scaled-down Chuck E. Cheese with big-screen TVs in place of the animatronics and you’re pretty close to reality. There’s a game room with a buttload of ticket-winning machines, some air hockey tables (one of my faves - coughIbeatTrolltwicecough), and some video games.

Including Dance Dance Revolution. Clearly, I’ve not learned my lesson from past DDR adventures because I got right up on that dance platform and began shaking my groove thang.

Or tried to, anyway. I’m quite sure (especially given some of the comments my friends gave me afterward) that it came out as quasi-rythmic flailing rather than sweet choreography; far more Jim Carrey than Fred Astaire. But that’s okay: I had fun, and everyone else was too chicken to step up onto the platform and gyrate themselves a game.

The munchkin had a blast. A bunch of her friends from school and gymnastics came and showered her with gifts. The big theme this year? Barbie.

The grub was good, too; I’d decided to not worry about the diet-thing for the evening and so enjoyed partaking of the pizza and chocolate cake. Mmmmm.

After the party wrapped up (we were there for almost three hours), Jason, Kris, Troll, the munchkin, and I reconvened at the shop where we spent the next several hours cranking out our monthly comic book order. Got home just a short while ago.

I’m all wired right now - partly because of the sugar, partly because I’ve got a bunch of things running around my head about the trip this weekend. I don’t think I’ll be getting to sleep anytime soon.