(no subject)

I am vaguely worried about my financial situation, but the timing seems to be just right for it. I've juuuust about spent all the money I had when I stopped collecting a salary (a little more than five months ago), and, modulo the then-unexpected new book project, everything is going as I planned it, way back in October: I am coasting (doing odd jobs and collecting advances, which is why I still have money at all) until I hear back from MIT, which should be very soon, and then I will either continue coasting until September, or get a job immediately.

Yes, I am also concerned that when I do hear back from MIT, the letter will be lost under one of the many dynamic piles of kipple that decorate the floors and tables here at Chez Chestnut. My housemates have reacted to my setting up mailboxes by taking theirs and hiding them in their rooms. I guess we sort of have a system now where my mail goes in my box, and then there's a pile on either side for the other two. I really don't like it, despite its apparent logical cleanliness. I must make doubly sure that my information about expecting a reply in early April is correct.

The job thing is tricky in light of the book thing. I'd really like a regular income & benefits again, but I'd hate to lose book-time. Then again, most authors, at least for this publisher, have day jobs... but my current schedule assumes that I won't have one. Mumble. Well, I'll talk to Chuck et al about it if I have to. We'll see.

Note also how I gaily assume that I'll be able to find a job as I might pluck a pear from a tree. Is this realistic? To a certain sort of hackerly-attuned recruiter, my talents and skillset, especially as reflected in my online portfolio, can look very attractive. I have no reason not to believe such recruiters continue to exist in this area. But, even if I can find a job very quickly, I would enter into it with enormous skepticism. I can characterize my last three jobs as being wonderful and energizng for a little while and rapidly becoming boring and tedious as the environment deteriorated, due to the insanity or incompetence of my employers, or the cruelties of an economic downturn.

Eh. Working. I tell you, there's gotta be a better scam out there somewhere, for someone like me.

I am Magneto or some shit

Yesterday I decided to cease using RTF with Macnut. I figured that I would be able to convert it to Word or something later, but, I'm now certain that I won't use Word for this project. I mean, the bloody thing costs $250.00. I could "borrow" a copy of Word X if I really wanted to, but I don't, for at least two layers of reasons. (I don't like software piracy, even when it involves you-know-who, and I don't like what I've seen so far of how MS Office X apps treat my Mac. (This does not extend to all MS apps; MSIE plays nice with the rest of my machine, not spewing daemon processes out like Doom II's endboss.))

So, I hand-converted the sucker into DocBook XML, and now I wonder why I didn't do that in the first place, as I can now convert the book into HTML on the fly, allowing my editor and I to get a handle at any moment as to how the draft is shaping up, just by visiting a website I set up for it.

While copying over the XML from the P&X files, I laughed upon the discovery of an author bio element in that book's meta-information section that Erik had written for me, and which had escaped my attention until now:

Jason McIntosh is a master of games and purveyor of oddities. He lives in a small, steel room, high above the frothing gray ocean. His companions include a sentient vending machine and a tiny fruit fly named Rolf.

Yes, I'm fairly certain that it won't show up in the colophon. (I wrote my own bio. It's different than that.)

Flush

My former(x2) employers continue down their downward spiral.

Arcus, by the way, seems to be doing quite well with their new dialup service, now a couple of weeks old. They've already hit their first customer limit, and are expanding the racks to accomodate more. They've also been receiving fan mail, especially after mailing all their customers with details on a late-night service outage (when Verizon whoopsie-severed Arcus' curcuit) after it happened. People aren't used to getting explanations!

Jim & co. also plan on staying strict to their low customer-to-modem ratio, which is their primary selling point. They're actually turning would-be customers away if their presence would break the ratio. That's something else, I tells ya.

in bed

I awoke in the wee hours of a very recent morning, and my thoughts turned, for some reason, to how my mother sometimes reminds me in all sincerity that she and my father, both in their seventies, are not statistically due to live through this decade, or how she lately hopes that, if one should outlive the other, my father go first, since he would fall apart without her. Normally I nod in agreement at this and feel nothing, but in my dark room and halfway between sleep and wakefulness, I thought that I caught a very brief and terrible glimpse of the cosmic enormity that she is so calmly facing. I said: "Holy shit."

---

Just now, I was taking a break from my writing to lie in bed and begin reading a book I earlier chose from the house library. After working through the first chapter, I turned my head, and peered sideways through my own bookcase, over the lowest shelf where I keep several large books, letting me see their many cover designs. I took special note of the type on each, all the letters and words, promising more, all in easy reach of me. For a tiny moment I wanted to cry in wonder that I existed within of a civilization able make such things. I said: "WOW."