Today is Grump and Bitch day.

I find myself self-censoring a lot lately (trust me, if you've been following me on Facebook or elsewhere, that's really dialed back compared to the 'old' days), and it annoys me. I don't like seeing people conned, I don't like seeing people abused, I don't like seeing people doing incredibly stupid stuff, and I sure as shit hate listening to idiots who don't know what in the hell they're talking about while claiming to be 'experts.' Especially the smug self-satisfied ones that you really just want to punch in the face.

And lately? Lately I've been seeing a lot of stupid. And a lot of people who should know better getting taken advantage of. I see the most incredibly stupid statements being issued by people who should know better, and who if they spent ten minutes looking up just how that worked out the last time, would realize that they're being stupid. Or being taken advantage of. Or just plain being used.

History repeats folks. Especially for those too dumb to learn from it the last time around. Everyone has an agenda (mine is to sell more books so I can write more books). Everyone does EVERYTHING in their life because they get something for it. Even if it's just a 'good feeling about themselves'. No one does something for nothing. We're opportunists, it's in our DNA and you can put all the lipstick you want on that pig, but it's still a pig.

Government is not here to help you. Ever. Government is here to help the people in power, period. That's why you want to keep it small.

People who run 'rescues' or 'sanctuaries' are nine times out of ten just trying to get you to pay for their hobby. And if they throw out a line about how only THEY should be able to do this one thing, they're tying to get your government to also pay for their hobby while they con stupid people out of their money. Look at every occupation that requires a license. Yes, some of them should, but most of them? No, not really.

Look at most charities these days. They exist to pay the people who run them lots of money. There are so few charities that actually engage in real charity anymore, that it's pathetic. And the same can be said for a lot of these 'new' churches and religions. Yeah, say what you will about the Catholic church, but I didn't see anyone else out there taking care of all the AIDS patients in SF and other cities, without asking them for money! Same for lepers and a lot of other diseases. And I can make that same statement for a lot of other big organize religions that have been around for a good while. I've seen the Mormon Church shell out some serious money to help its people. Same for a lot of the Lutheran Churches.

But these rich multi-millionaire pastors in their fancy churches and fancy cars? These TV people? Yeah, don't see them spending all that much.

And then there are the people who brand something, with a particular fad or religion and prey on those who wish to better follow their beliefs.

Or a political party that says the most inane and provably incorrect things if you could only remember back more than the last month. Or who claim to only be watching out for -insertgrouphere- yet they're always ignoring or jettisoning those people when the time to represent comes around.

Or rich and famous rock bands and actors! They'll tell you one thing, but they sure as hell won't do it themselves while they're taking your money. Al Gore is perhaps the world's biggest hypocrite, he's got a carbon footprint equal to large town, yet he rails at the rest of us to do that which he refuses to. (I wonder if he still owns that oil company his daddy left him?)

Ever seen the movie 'Little Big Man?' Those scenes where they're doing the whole snake-oil sales routine? Yeah, millions of people are STILL falling for that shit. STILL!! We got quacks telling you to do stuff that in any righteous society would be getting them tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail! Just because you saw it on TV or read it on the internet, it doesn't make it true folks.

Whenever someone tells you something, the first thing you should ask is "What's in it for HIM?" That'll give you a good idea as to why they're telling you it in the first place. Everyone has an agenda, and some people are just plain nuts or stupid or psychotic. Some folks get joy out of seeing you get harmed. So the last thing you should be doing is listening to what these people are saying without a little critical thinking first. And again, just because the government says it or backs it, doesn't mean it's smart, right, ethical, or healthy.

Remember, that whenever anyone asks for your money, to help others, or for power over you, that they're probably evil. Because they're not doing it to help YOU. They're doing it to help THEMSELVES, and they really couldn't care less about what happens to you. Or the children.

If it looks too good to be true, it probably isn't.

So yea! The old house is done

I have one minor ten minute thing left, after the parts show up tomorrow, but otherwise, it's finished. All of the fence work is done, I replaced an 8th of the wooden fence that surrounds the entire property (great dog property, it's all fenced), the house as I mentioned earlier is now painted. And numerous other tasks have been taken care of.

In two weeks (!?) the town (ie the garbage collection I pay taxes for) will show up to take away the pile of wooden refuse. If I don't haul it off myself first. They make it incredibly damn hard to schedule a pickup, you have to do it online, you can't call in, because they won't talk to you, ever (damn 311 system is a waste of taxpayer's dollars), and when you finally do find the well hidden place to schedule a pickup, it takes two weeks! Which is insane, it should be 4 days max. Glad I won't be having anything to do with the useful entity known as the city of Sacramento after this.

I did take the time to write my city council rep there and give him a piece of my mind over his complete failure as a councilman. Told him he was lucky I was selling or I'd be down at his office bitching him out in person, like I did with his predecessor over the crap job -they- had been doing. Kind of sad that downtown gets all the money and attention, and the people who represent the outlying areas are all okay with that. But grab a bunch of people and go and have a little talk with them, and suddenly they realize that their plum of a job is on the line if they don't perform for he people who vote for them. I doubt I'll hear from him however. He knows I'm leaving, so why would he care?

On the writing front I need to bust my butt and get Future Tense finished. Just need to do the re-write, then engage my Beta readers (if I still have them) and commission the cover. It's possible I could have it ready to go out next week. I'll just have to see. Dealing with the house took about a week longer than I originally thought it would, so I'm behind schedule.

I just hope it sells fast, and I don't end up owing anyone money after the sale (like the Feds with all their new taxes). Doing all the work on the house was not cheap, even if I did most of the labor myself. If only I was one of those rich authors we always see on TV and in the movies! Then I could have just hired someone else to do all the work.

So what have I been doing? Painting (and other manual labor)

So last week was paint the old house and get it ready for sale. As well as replace half of the back fence. Painting of course is never easy, first you have to clean off the house, then mask off everything. Then paint it, then remove the masking so you can paint all the trim.
Fixing the back fence required dropping a tree first, then tearing down most of the ruined fence and putting up a new one.

Then there were various sundry tasks inside the house that had to be done. The last major house task was finished today, when the door between the house and the garage was replaced (I needed a code approved firedoor, and this being california, they're super special here with super special extras that serve no purpose at all beyond making them more expensive). Tomorrow I have to paint it and the trim, but once that's done, all I have left to do is fix/rebuild/replace sixty-eight feet of fence along the north side of the house.

The house is already on the market (went on yesterday), but it's not open for people to come inside until Friday. As the door showed up sooner than expected, I'll probably let the realtor know people can start going in on Thursday, but I don't think that's really all that big of a deal. But I've been spending almost every day from 9AM to whenever I get tired working outside on the house in hundred degree weather since the 7th. By the time I get home it's usually dinner time and after a shower I pretty much just want to veg out.

But damn if it doesn't look nice.

I'm hoping to have all the fence work done by Thursday, I need to see about renting a nailgun. I'd buy one, but the good ones are like three hundred dollars and this would probably be the only job it ever got used for. Sixty-eight feet of fence in the summer is a seriously pain in the butt job, as well as expensive. I'm already afraid to add up all the bills from this project. It hasn't been at all cheap.
I just hope it sells quickly and that I actually make some money on the deal, so I can pay off all the bills incurred fixing the house up to sell it!

And I think I'm starting to get too old for this kind of stuff. Definitely starting to feel it in the mornings. That never used to happen.

Future Tense, First Draft Complete

Well, I finished the first draft of Future Tense, the last book in the Days of Future Past trilogy. It came in about a thousand words short of where I wanted it too, however I'm still thinking of redoing the final chapter, then of course there are some things I need to add during the re-write, so I'm expecting it to pick up some more size. I don't know if it will hit 70K on word length, but we'll just have to see.

I'm going to be spending most of this week outside cleaning and painting a house, as well as rebuilding a section of fence, cutting down a few trees, and getting those cut up and disposed of (along with the old pieces of fence) and all in 100 degree weather. So not sure just how much re-writing will get done this week. Might not be up to it when I get home.

Giving lots of thought to what comes next, as always.

After several months Amazon got back to me on that DRM thing

So, after almost two months (or was it three? I have to go look) I finally got an answer from Kindle as to why my books have DRM on them, even though I have never selected it.

Their answer?

'It happens when you upload in certain formats.'

Note that they did not tell me -which- formats.

So this weekend I'll be reuploading all of my books in an attempt to get DRM removed from them. We will see what happens.

My Tenant Moved Out Today

My Tenant moved out of my rental house today, after three years of being an excellent tenant. He finally bought a house for his family in an area which he thinks will be a lot better place to raise his children. Also I think it's closer to work for him.

Now my Tenant was very thankful for my taking a chance on him, and renting to him, because when he came to me, his credit was completely shot. He had run up a bunch of debt, and the company he had started working for to clear that up went out of business leaving him in a bad position, and with a family to support. So what did he do?

He joined the military. Full time California Army National Guard.

Now, all things being equal, I was ALWAYS rent to a member of the military before I rent to anyone else, for two reasons: The first is because I know how the military works, if there is ever a problem, I just have to call his first sergeant, and they will take care of it immediately. The second is because I'm ex-military. True I never got deployed overseas, and I never saw any combat (though I did draw hazardous duty pay for a few years), but I still have a lot of respect for my brothers in arms and will always help them out if I'm able.

Now that he and his family have moved out, I'm going to sell the place. The market has come back enough that I can do that and not end up owing anybody anything, even if I'm taking a loss in the process. Honestly I do not enjoy being a landlord, even though my last three tenants have all been good and responsible people (the first one was a gang-banger. Moral of the story, property management firms suck - fired their ass when all was said and done).

Last of all, he is deploying to Afghanistan this fall. So if you are the type that prays, please say a prayer for my now former tenant, and his company. May they all come home safe and healthy when their tour is done.

LibertyCon

Well, I got back from LibertyCon late last night. The travel was a royal pain, with layovers and delays, but the convention itself was wonderful. I'm really glad I went, and I had a really great time. I haven't been to a convention where writers aren't treated like 3rd class citizens in way too long.
At LibertyCon, which is a literary convention, it's all about the writing, and there are a lot of name authors there, as well as the mid-listers and the independents like myself.

It's also nice getting a little recognition from others in my industry. I've never gotten that before, but I got that this weekend, and yes, it felt good.

There were a lot of learning opportunities as well for me, because I did get the chance to talk to some of the more famous and successful published authors. I also got to talk to the head editor for one of the big five publishing companies, and that was incredibly worthwhile for me.

Had a lot of good food, made a lot of new friends while off having lunch or dinner with people I'd only just met, and really just enjoyed the hell out of being there, meeting people, meeting fans, and talking business. Definitely want to go back next year.

Tomorrow I'm flying off to LibertyCon

And the airlines are of course going to do everything they can to make this trip less than enjoyable.
I leave the house here at noon, I arrive in Nashville at midnight, then drive a couple of hours to get to the con.

Why am I doing this again?

Anyways, I hope to make some new friends and maybe meet a few old ones. Time will tell. I just hope as trips go that the traveling part of it doesn't suck. I remember when flying used to be fun. Sadly everyone has done everything they can to wring the joy out of it.

Apparently no one makes actual maps of the Moon.

Because actual maps have a -scale- on them to measure distances.

Sometimes it slips by you

So, I was reading Kaiju, book number seven in the Portals of Infinity series and I realized I'd made something of a blunder with the first chapter. You see, the first chapter is what I think of as a 'throw away chapter', it's not exactly important to the story, it's more of a setup chapter to bring the reader into the story, without going into anything too important, and it allows me to drop a few hints and made a little foreshadowing before I actually start to hit them with the story and the plot.

What I missed however is that there are some things in that chapter that I should have explained for those readers who haven't read the previous books. I missed it because I wrote that chapter when I was about halfway through the book and I realized I needed a different opening than I had, because it didn't 'flow' the way I wanted it to. I wasn't thinking 'new reader' at that point, and I should have been.

So I think I'm going to go back and re-write the first chapter. Oh, not a major rewrite, I suspect I'll add less than two hundred words to the entire chapter. It won't change any of the story, however I think there are a few things that I should have Will or Nikki make comments or asides to, so new readers aren't left dangling about certain aspects of the story, the characters, and especially the world.

Another little thing on the list of a thousand little things, to keep in mind for the future.

Whose Bright Idea was that?

It used to be, when the power light was on, the device was on. When the power light was off, the device was off.

Now, it's the opposite. I really want to know what 'genius' came up with that idea?

It really is 'your own fault' - You are the Master of your own Destiny

I was thinking back today to an incident that happened almost six years ago, when I was among the first to arrive at an airplane crash, right along with the pilot. You may have seen it on the news, some college prof from a lefty school made a lot of money selling footage of it to the media (yeah, that always struck me as funny, a socialist making money off of other people's misery. But do they really know of any other way?)

The aircraft impacted the ground a bit more than a hundred feet from where I was standing, with my friends, at supersonic speed. At one point as it was about to auger in, it had actually been pointed at us and I had everyone ready to run. Instead we just hit the ground and hoped that none of the debris would hit us. Fortunately for us, it didn't. But ten other people weren't so lucky, and of course the pilot was killed instantly as well.

Now I was a fan of the pilot and the airplane (though I'd never really met the pilot personally) and that year I was cheering him on, after he'd been robbed of the championship the year before because of an idiot in a thunder mustang and a bunch of officials who really weren't up to snuff (in short, they canceled the last race and gave the award to the winner of the previous heat). On the previous lap before the crash, I had noticed something that wasn't quite right, which I now know was the aircraft starting to deform and break up. I suspect my report on this behavior to the NTSB probably clued them into a number of things (yes, I made a report, I used to be a flight test engineer for Grumman Aerospace, trained to observe and all that crap). But of course none of us knew what really happened at the time.

Then the report came out, and while there is still one question that they were never able to answer - why wasn't there a fireball when the aircraft hit the ground, they were able to answer why it hit the ground.

The pilot screwed up, like a big dog, and he killed not only himself, but ten other people and wounded dozens more (some horrendously). It wasn't the extreme modifications he made to his airplane, no, it was a lack of proper maintenance and a refusal to stop as his airplane started to show signs of exceeding its design limitations.

The bad maintenance had to do with the trim flap that caused the accident. It came off the aircraft because the bolts holding it on were older than many of the spectators, they were way too old to have been used on that aircraft anymore, and they hadn't been properly fastened.

Also, the plane was obviously starting to break up as he flew it, because the canopy no longer sat flush on the canopy rail. That would have been glaringly obvious in the cockpit that his aircraft was in the process of coming apart. There was no way he could have possibly missed that. He should have knocked it off at that point. But he chose not to. So yes, he caused the crash and he bears full responsibility for everything that happened.

But even if he hadn't been aware of all of that, he still would have borne complete responsibility.

You see, I learned in the Air Force that you, the pilot in command, are responsible for whatever happens to your airplane. No matter what it is. Even if one of the guys in maintenance messes up something that was their job, it's still your responsibility, your fault. Because you own that airplane while you're in it and you should have found that problem or known better. It's your butt on the line after all. You don't just kick the tires and light the fires, you're supposed to do a walk around, look at important parts, and read the maintenance logs.

Now I want you to think about that previous paragraph a moment.

We were taught that if anything goes wrong, if anything bad happens, we own it. It's our fault. Period. No excuses, not ever. It's our responsibility.

Now compare that to what people today are taught, what you've been taught. I was brought up to take responsibility for my actions, but the USAF taught me that I'm responsible for everything that goes on around me, and if something bad happens to me, it's my fault. Not someone else's, mine. That might sound extreme to you, or bizarre, or perhaps even abusive. But you quickly come to realize that they're right.

You are the master of your own destiny and you are the one that controls what happens to you. If something goes wrong that you didn't think of, well then damnit, you should have thought about that, shouldn't you? This whole owning of your own destiny, of taking responsibility, leads you to start looking at things more carefully, of choosing your actions with a little more care to your own personal wellbeing and survival. Of being aware of things around you, and stopping to take care of that little annoying issue instead of putting it off until later, because there just might not be a later and just how stupid will you feel when it bites you on the ass?

So if you get robbed, for example, it's your fault. How come? Simple: Why didn't you see it coming? Why were you in a place where thieves hangout? Why didn't you have a contingency to deal with it? Why did you attract their attention?

You get in a car accident: Why weren't you watching out for that guy? Why didn't you have someplace to go when they made that mistake? Why didn't you know what to do when 'X' broke on your car? Why wasn't your car properly maintained?

You start applying that logic to your life and when things go bad, or wrong, as they invariably do, you don't sit there and blame others, (well okay, maybe you do a bit to your friends and others in public - we're only human after all), but instead, when you sit down to think about what happened, the first thought to go through your head is: Where did I go wrong? Followed by: What did I do wrong? And you usually end up with: How do I keep this from happening again? No, instead you're most likely the person with a plan, and the person who does something to either stop what's happening, avoid what's happening, or minimize what's happening.

You've seen those people who have bad things happening to them again and again, right? They make all sorts of excuses, telling us how it's not their fault! But the truth is, they're the ones doing it to themselves. I know, I've been there; we've all probably been there at one point or another. But after the second time I made changes to myself to make sure that there wasn't going to be a third time. Because I knew it was my fault, because  I've decided that I'm the master of my own destiny.

I've seen too many people locked into cycles of bad circumstances as they just keep telling everyone how it's not their fault, and so they never take ownership of the situation, they never try to fix what's broken or what's wrong, or do something about the thing that is constantly ruining their life. They never find a solution.

Now let's go back to that September day in 2011 when someone tried to drop an airplane on me and my friends. I supposed a lot of you are saying 'well what the hell are you going to do about that?'

Simple, pay attention, weigh your options, and act on them. For several seconds that sucker was literally lined up to hit us, so we all got ready to run. But before we could it changed its target (P-factor) and so we hit the ground instead. When you're only a couple of inches above the ground and there are coolers everywhere, as well as other low level obstructions, that's the best option you have. And because there wasn't a fireball, we all survived without injury.

Now most problems in life do not come at us with the speed of a P-51 mustang in a supersonic dive at full throttle. However that doesn't exclude you from thinking about just what might happen. Did I think someone might drop an airplane on me that day before I went? Of course I did, I was heading to an event where accidents are expected and people do die. It even says on the ticket that you can be injured or killed and they take no responsibility. So I owned it before I even set foot there.

Well life really isn't any different, is it? The stakes are high, it's your life after all, and things are going to happen to you, good and bad, throughout it. So once you become an adult, once you've been handed the responsibility for your own life, you need to own both the good and the bad that will come your way.

Because until you do that you'll never avoid so many of the bad things that can, and do, happen to people everyday. And no, I'm not saying that bad things will never visit you, there will always be those few things that truly are beyond your control. But so much of it is, and until you admit to understanding that the person in the mirror is the one that makes things happen both for you and to you, you'll never be the master of your own destiny.