Kalbzayn's Writing World - News

Help a NaNo Writer out

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 12:39:38 -0700

Struggling Writer is trying to write his NaNoWriMo book. He is at an important juncture in the story and is asking for our help.

Here is what he wants us to do:

My plot involves a 23 something guy who visits his parents looking for one of his favorite books of his childhood. He doesnt find the one he is looking for, but does find one that looks interesting that he didnt remember. As he opens the front cover he sees something written inside. It is a note to himself he wrote when he was eight years old urging him to do or remember something.

Here is my problem: what does the message say? What is it urging him?

Now, I happen to know that he is a full time worker with a young baby. He needs to get over this hump quickly because NaNo is a cruel taskmaster. I'll try to come up with something tonight, but I know some of you will have some better ideas than anything I could come up with. Some of you are published after all.

So get over there and help him out. If he chooses your message, you can even be a character in the book. And, I bet when it gets published, he'd be willing to send you an email telling you when you can go buy the book.

I haven't asked you slackers to do anything for a long time because I still owe somebody a bookmark for the last writing project I held way back in another lifetime.

Go. Suggest. And mention it on your blog to get some of your many-more-readers-than-I-get to go suggest their great messages, too.

James Frey and my new get rich quick scheme.

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 07:29:41 -0700

Random House has settled a lawsuit concerning James Frey's "autobiography" "A Million Little Pieces."

No matter what you paid, you can recover the retail price of the book as long as you bought it on or before Jan 26th, 2006, the day they acknowledged that the book was probably more fiction the "memoir."

To collect, you need to either have the receipt (which we all keep for 9 months after we buy the book) or page 163 from the Hardcover or the front cover of the paperback. You "will also need to sign a sworn statement that they bought the book because they believed it was a memoir."

I wonder how many page 163s of the hardcovers and front covers of the paperbacks will go missing on any copies in bookstores or libraries across the country.

I'm also thinking of starting a new financial get rich scheme. I'm going to buy, at discount, all of the copies of the "memoirs" that seem a little fishy. Then when the lawsuit settles, I'm going to return them for retail price.

What a bizarre end to a stupid bit of publishing history.

Technorati Tags: James Frey, Random House, A Million Little Pieces

Free Books From Google

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 13:14:16 -0700

Google is now giving books away for free. Kind of. They are providing a way to download PDFs of Public Domain books. The books have been scanned by Google.

I downloaded Huckleberry Finn that LifeHacer points to. It looks good. Definitely readable.

Bookstores are probably not going to like this. Huckleberry Finn may be Public Domain, but I'm pretty sure I can still pay for a copy in any bookstore. When it gets assigned for school, I bet a lot of people start downloading the free copy instead.

Google needs to add a flag in their search to make it easy to find the books that are Public Domain. I coudn't figure it out without doing more research than I am willing to do. I'm sure if I wanted to I could use Google to get a good list of Public Domain books.

Or Project Gutenberg is probably another easy place to find titles. Project Gutenberg is another great resource, in fact, for getting free electronic copies of books. But, they do not offer PDF's. They do offer audio copies of a lot of books. Project Gutenberg scans the books into a text format and then asks volunteer proofreaders to edit where the text gets clobbered. The copies are nice for reading on a Palm type device. I used to be addicted to doing the proofreading during lunch. There are some weird old books out there that are fun to read after society has changed so much over the years.

Best Tasting Potentially Endangered Monkey

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 06:08:06 -0700

I love good food. Well, actually, I like Macaroni and Cheese, frozen beef pot pies, and Tombstone Pizzas. Maybe I'm not qualified to be a food critic but I do love to eat.

I just read about a newly discovered monkey that is supposed to be delicious. I can't wait until this little critter shows up at Taco Bell.

Which makes me wonder, if we did start to enjoy snacking on the animals of the rain forest, would that go a long way toward saving that entire ecosystem? Right now, about the only thing the rain forest is good for is tree wood and a semi-permanent bed and breakfast for geeks who like Birkenstocks and infrequent bathing.

If we could get Walmart to start carrying some of the meat of the rainforest in their grocery aisles, there might be some interest in protecting the environment. I see you staring at me like I'm just being silly but I think I'm on to something.

For it to work, we would need to encourage dining on the vegetation of the rain forest, too. If it is just the animals that made their way to our dinner plates, we could just capture a few and breed them in captivity in tiny cages to be slaughtered when they are ready. Like cows.

That would not protect the rain forest.

For that we would need some new fad diet consisting on the mushrooms, fruit, legumes and seeds of the rain forest as well as the lean monkey meat. These would be much harder to grow outside of their native environment. When was the last time you saw a coffee tree in Indiana or Texas. Once the suburban soccer moms toss South Beach aside for the new South Rain Forest diet, billions of dollars would flood into companies who would be forced to protect the rain forest in order to protect the cash flow.

The diet would be part sensible life style and part tree hugging goodness. What self-respecting American could possibly not participate in the diet?

Technorati Tags: rain forest, monkey, South Beach Diet, funny

Important message about health care

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 08:12:24 -0700

I received an important phone call last week. It is so important that I think I need to share with all of you so that it can help you, too.

The phone rang the other day. I checked the caller ID because I don't answer the phone unless I think the person at the other end has a reason to be calling me that I will be happy about. My boss often finds that he is able to reach me on the rare occasion that I work from home, but can never seem to get through during dinner.

The phone number read 040-462-0334. I didn't recognize the number, but it looked important to me. I've never seen the 040 area code so I figured that must be an important special use only area code.

I answered and said "Hello."

The important voice at the other end paused to gather his composure before delivering his important message. Finally he was ready, and said, "This is an important message for those without health care...." The enormity of his message got the better of him at this point and he hung up.

I don't blame him. People without health care can run into some serious problems. I'd probably fold under that kind of pressure, too.

I breathed a sigh of relief realizing that I already have health care for myself and my family. A few moments later, I broke out in a cold sweat. What if my readers don't have health care? They must be notified.

Anybody in my reading network without health care, please call 040-462-0334. I'm not sure if they only help U.S.A. residents or if they are helping solve the problem globally, so please call regardless of where you live.

Please don't wait until it is too late.

If you have any other information about this organization or what area the 040 area code covers, please let me know in the comments below.

Thank you.

Technorati tags: health care

Dick Vitale on ESPN

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 08:25:32 -0700

Dick Vitale was talking on ESPN Radio this morning. I was getting ready to tune out his constant name dropping and weird lingo when he started talking about the V Foundation fund raiser he is working with.

The V Foundation is a cancer research foundation started by Jim Valvano before he died of cancer.

Vitale said something very inspiration during his rambling. He was talking about the millions of dollars the V Foundation has raised for cancer research over the years and he said something like, "Cancer is in for the fight of its life because we're not going anywhere. We're going to continue fighting."

I love it. He flipped cancer from the big bad bully into the disease under attack. He turned the scary monster into something that can be tamed and beaten as long as people are willing to put the effort and money into it.

That kind of thinking can apply to nearly anything. Instead of letting things take control of our lives, we should look at them and say, "Shut up, big mean scary situation. I'm taking charge now. You might get a few good punches in along the way, but I'm not quitting until you are taken care of."

I remember watching some Vitale speeches when I was playing basketball in high school. I forgot how good of a speaker he really is when he's not talking about real life instead of sports details. He really can get right in under your skin in a good way.

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Technorati tags: Dick Vitale, Jim Valvanoe, ESPN, cancer, inspiration

Protecting Me From My Online Self

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 07:35:01 -0700

In an effort to help make us better people, our various levels of government are really starting to keep us in check.

No gay marriages - Check
Big taxes on cigarettes - Check
Seatbelt laws - Check

Somebody has to do something to prevent us from harming ourselves, right. We're not capable of doing that on our own.

Now Washington, the state not DC the mecca for all crazy politicians, has decided to do something about online gambling. That stuff sure is addictive and since you don't even have to put on clothes and leave your house, well that's just a little to accessible. Washington State has passed a law:

barring online wagering or using the Internet to transmit "gambling information."

Well, thank you Washington. We wouldn't want the people that can gamble online without causing themselves any problem to be able to participate in that hobby online.

Let's protect the people that can't control their gambling because those people probably aren't going to find another way to gamble if we can just get them offline.

It's not like they could fly to Vegas or go to a horse track or visit their local Bingo hall or head down to the corner Quikee-Mart to buy a lottery ticket.

If you have a problem with people wasting their money gambling, get over it. If the concern is protecting people from bogus websites, the answer isn't to ban innocent people from using legitimate sites. Maybe we should ban credit card and bank websites and online activity because of the number of phishing sites that are popping up.

Spend your time going after the websites that are causing the problem or setting up a list of gambling websites known to do shady business so that people know which ones to stay away from.

Quit taking away my freedoms to protect me from other bad people. And quit taking away my freedoms to protect me from myself.

Full disclosure: I do not gamble online or have any interest in doing so in the future. Likewise, I intend to continue wearing my seatbelt even if the law is removed, I do not plan on smoking, and I do not plan on ever marrying another man (my wife would get mad).

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Technorati tags: online gambling, gambling, Washington, government

Save the Innocent Children From Myspace

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 09:57:23 -0700

The government wants to get involved with helping protect children from the bad things that some Myspace users do.

There have been a number of incidents of kids getting contacted or even initiating the contact with adults and ending with the adult abducting or doing some other bad things to the kids.

One proposed bill would prevent students from accessing websites in schools and libraries that let users create a public profile or offer a discussion board, chat room or e-mail service. That would pretty much take away most of the internet.

I was at the public library a couple days ago. I saw no fewer than ten kids in the late junior high/early high school age group working on various computers throughout the building. EVERY SINGLE KID was on Myspace.

Myspace has become the new Dungeons and Dragons. A social interaction group that "grown ups" don't understand. When bad things happened to a few kids playing D&D, parents everywhere were outraged and started banning their kids from playing role playing games. I had to sneak around for years to play Bard's Tale and other RPG's on the computer.

Myspace is gaining much more attention because there are over 90 million accounts. I don't know what the odds of really bad things happening to people in the wild but .01% seems like a pretty small number. Let's say .01% of people using Myspace have something really bad happen to them. That's 9000 people a year. That's a pretty alarming number. That's the kind of thing that will attract politicians and lawyers attention.

"If we could save one child, then it's worth it--that one child, that innocent child who may fall prey during the school hours because the legislation wasn't enacted," said David Zellis, an assistant district attorney in Bucks County, Penn., who testified at the hearing.

That's the kind of statement that tugs at the heart strings. That one innocent child. Everybody always says they want to save that one innocent child.

I don't really have much of a problem with schools shutting down access to sites in the school. I think it should be a school district decision and not really something mandated by the federal government, but whatever.

But, they are suggesting that sites like Myspace should be shut down at public libraries, too. That's crossing the line. Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick said:

"When children leave the home and go to school or the public library and have access to social-networking sites, we have reason to be concerned."

So my kids would be able to come home log onto Myspace and hang out online with their friends, but would not be allowed to do it at the library. That doesn't sound so evil. Annoying, but not evil.

What about the kids that don't have computers with internet access at home? According to PCWorld.com 73% of kids 12-17 have access to the internet. That's a pretty big percentage, but nowhere near 100%. Later in the article, the numbers get a little more skewed:

Furthermore, 82 percent of families with a household income of over $75,000 per year had Internet access by the end of last year, while 38 percent of households with incomes below $30,000 per year were online, Pew says. The study pointed out that a greater percentage of lower-income households gained access to the Internet in the second half of 2000, up from 28 percent by June 2000.

Apparently it is okay for kids from families making more than $75K a year to access sites like Myspace, but the kids under that $30K line, well at least we'll be protecting them.

We'll be drawing yet another line in the class divide in order to save kids from bad people. While Myspace might be annoying, millions of kids are learning how to type, write, make friends, and even program html because they use Myspace.

People don't even think about dumping their kids at a movie theater, mall, amusement park or any variety of places where bad things happen to kids all the time, but for some reason it's not okay for them to hang out at the library and play on Myspace. I'm not sure I get it.

Technorati tags: Myspace

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Fighting Child Pornography

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 10:10:22 -0700

Technology is such a cool thing sometimes.

I read an article yesterday about a bunch of big companies (Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and a couple others) building a giant database of child pornography images that they could use to determine when these images pass through their network.

I was outraged. I did not like the idea that these companies would be allowed to store these images somewhere where they would undoubtedly eventually be hacked. I started to blog about how upset I was by this, but when I hit save my browser crashed and I didn't get a chance to rewrite the entry.

Today I found a different article about the topic.

This article clearly states that they will not be storing any actual images but rather an electronic signature that can be used to identify the image. That's a lot more reasonable.

The discussion about how much access and control the government should have over what we do on the internet, over phone lines, or even what books we check out from the library is a topic for another day. But, at least technology has managed to take away my first and strongest objection to the proposal.

Condemned by the Vatican

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 07:27:23 -0700

I am not a big fan of the Catholic church. I just found out that they are not very big fans of me either.

They just reaffirmend their condemnation of contraception, abortion, in-vitro fertilization and same-sex marriage and declared that the "traditional family has never been so threatened".

I have actively participated in contraception which is funny in retrospect. I'm incapable of producing children.

I have actively participated in IVF and have two amazing children as a result.

Sometimes I wonder where they come up with their decisions. I can't imagine that the Bible has much to say about IVF. I don't remember anything about contraception in the parts that I have read, but maybe it's there.

Why can't they find something important to condemn like potato chips and Pepsi? Those have to be a bigger threat to the traditional family these days then my little family.

NCAA Rules and Regulations

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 08:02:35 -0700

The NCAA is a strange monster that likes to eat a lot of money and make sure that none of the athletes in the system make any money until they go pro.

Tom Zbikowski is a football player for Notre Dame. He is also successful amateur boxer. He will be participating in his first professional fight a few months from now at Madison Square Garden. According to ESPN Radio this morning, Zbikowski will get paid about $25,000 for the fight.

The NCAA has a rule stating that atheletes can compete as professionals in sports other than sports they play for the college. This rule came about primarily to allow atheletes to sign minor league baseball contracts and still play another sport in college.

Zbikowski has been boxing forever and the opportunity is a great one for him. I'm glad the NCAA is going to allow him to do it.

Drew Tate is a football player for Iowa. He was in a golf outing recently where he hit a hole-in-one where the prize is $25,000 to be used for the purchase of a new car. Tate is not going to be able to accept the prize money. Apparently, the NCAA is worried that accepting prizes at events like that could be used as recruiting tools for some schools.

This isn't really free money, though, since you still have to be able to hit a hole-in-one to win the money. Since Tate is not playing golf for Iowa, it seems strange that he can't accept the prize.

I wonder what would happen if Tate won a raffle at the Iowa state fair, or hit a big lottery on a ticket that he bought on campus.

I also wonder how many amateur atheletes get to fight their first pro fight at Madison Square Garden. That's a pretty big boxing venue. I can't help but wonder if Zbikowski would have never gone to a major university like Notre Dame if he would have received that opportunity to start his pro career there.

In the end, I'm glad Tate can't accept his prize money. He was planning on buying a Harley Davidson. I would prefer if he would stay away from the motorcycles until his time at Iowa is done.

Pat Robertson is one strong dude

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Sun, 28 May 2006 08:03:34 -0700

This is almost so amazing as to be not believable. Maybe I should start my own Pat Robertson website to keep track of all the amazing things he does.

Pat Robertson shake helps him with leg press
The news about Pat Robertson's incredible feat of strength

Things writers are doing

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Sat, 20 May 2006 18:08:34 -0700

Here's a couple links that might be interesting for all of you writers.

Jack Slyde is setting up a central location where writers can post short stories and novel extracts, etc. Interested readers would be able to go and cherry pick whichever pieces they want to read. I'm not really sure how much benefit a writer would actually get out of posting to something like that, but I might just be dense. Go read what Jack has to say about it on his blog and see if it might be something you are interested in.

Benjamin Solah is going to be hosting a horror flash fiction carnival on his site. The theme is "isolation." This sounds interesting. Apparently, the carnival will rotate from blog to blog with every theme giving anybody interested in doing the work the opportunity to get the audience to visit your site.

It's interesting to see people trying to use the internet to help themselves and other writers expand their audience.

I'm waiting for somebody to set up something like digg or reddit for writers. One central site for the readers. The authors get to keep the content on their own site. And the most popular stories pop to the top. If each individual author could figure out how to make money with the visitors they get to their site, a lot of authors that don't get the big break in print could still have a way to make some money.

Technorati tags: writing, fiction, authors, carnival

Pat Robertson in the news again

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Thu, 18 May 2006 11:40:41 -0700

Pat Robertson really bums me out. I complained about him before. And, I'll probably do it again in the future.

Today he is doomsday prophesizing again.

And people complain about Howard Stern and all the other shock jocks on the radio. At least everybody knows better than to look up to them as role models.

Infant mortality rate - are your apples the same as my apples

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Wed, 10 May 2006 09:19:08 -0700

I read this article about the U.S. having the second worst newborn death rate in the developed world.

I thought it sounded odd at the time. I know we like to complain about our medical care in the U.S., but is it really that bad?
Continue reading "Infant mortality rate - are your apples the same as my apples"