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The Gate of Hell

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So we’re back in the Rockies for a week, enjoying the crisp air and long vistas of snowy mountainsides under rich blue skies. It’s marvelous.

The one downside is that I’m reminded once again how I’ve acclimated. While not feeling the effects of the high altitude yet — at Charleston we tend to spend our days at around 7 or 8 feet above sea level, whereas here we’re staying between 7 and 8 thousand — I am feeling quite a bit colder than I think I ought to feel given the temperature. So I’ve apparently turned into a warm-clime pansy.

We had the ultrasound on Tuesday. Everything seems to be good. And look! She waved!*

* Aye, looks like Daddy’s getting a little girl. Pity the would be boyfriends, for I will not.

Okay, well not quite completely done. I’m still waiting on material from one graduate student. But, seriously, that’s really close. Good enough for government work, as they say (though one suspects Mr. Obama might well be changing that kind of thinking).

Anyway, almost all the grades are in, and I’m quite glad for the break, which will last for … um … tonight? There’s a busy day scheduled for tomorrow, and after that we’re flying to Colorado for a busy week of visiting relatives — which will be fun (of course) but inevitably quite tiring.

After that, though, I’m seriously taking a break.

For a day. Maybe even two.

The finish line is in sight, though. Just a few more days until their all in and we’re jetting off to Colorado for a week or so with family. I can’t wait, though it’ll be strange to need a coat to go outside. It’s currently 57 here.

Yesterday was my last actual set of class meetings. We’ve still got finals yet to go — so the grading is far from over — but at least the class-time is down. As usual, I really enjoyed the teaching and the students especially, but I’m glad for the break. Just wish it was longer!

The new computer is up and running, and I’m quite pleased with it so far. Fast and silent and small. That’s a good combination right there.

Vista has some interesting quirks, but I’m liking it overall. I installed Word 2003 so as not to fiddle with the horrid redesign of 2007. Most “old” programs are working like champs. In fact, the only really bad issues were with the installation of Vista itself, which locked-up in mid-install and wouldn’t let anything happen when it rebooted, instead giving me a blank, black screen of death. Quite strange. Via the internet, though, I came across some terrific guidelines on how to fix the problem by some kind geeks. I was able to solve the problems, therefore, but I must say that I’m disappointed that a clean install on a brand-new machine forced me to go into the BIOS to temporarily whack things to get into a DOS device manager to temporarily whack all the video drivers so that Windows could finish its install. Luckily I still know how to do these sorts of things given some rudimentary guidelines, but how many people can say the same? Not enough to warrant the existence of the errors, I suspect.

Microsoft’s help, naturally, was of no real help in solving what seems to be a common problem.

Anyway, the computer is working. I’m pleased. Now if I could just finish all the grading…

Interesting day today.

Since the Hobbit’s facial accident yesterday pushed me so far off my schedule, I was up until 2 in the morning grading and …

Oh. Okay. Let me backtrack.

Read more

We’ve been wanting to get a new desktop for quite some time, as our ol’ Dell has been increasingly slowing down and showing its 8-year age. Add in our new love of the digital homelife — photos, music, videos, etc — and the urgency was getting high. So, on Sunday eve, we broke down and took the plunge on a new desktop, justifying it as a stimulus package for the economy. ‘Tis a small thing, but if the markets start recovering this week you’ll know who to thank.

Once we made the decision to upgrade, the question naturally became what computer to get. And, in my case, that question boiled down to whether I should get one pre-built or buy all the various computer bits and build it myself. While pre-built is a lot easier, a build-it-yourself job tends to result in more bang for the buck — and better quality components overall — plus it ought to be a lot of fun. So that was my first impulse.

I’ve built a couple computers from scratch in my years, but I confess the last time was as an undergraduate. I was shocked at how much easier a build is these days. Things are much more plug and go than they once were. Not nearly so much jumper judging and what-not, which was a pleasant surprise. It took me a couple days, but eventually I settled on the components and price I was looking for, piecing a little beast together via NewEgg.com. It was awfully tempting.

In the end, though, I opted for a pre-built machine. It’s a bit disappointing — I really love playing with electronics — but in the end the self-built rig wasn’t going to be a lot cheaper, and the time I’d need to devote to the build cannot be spared. Our new computer, therefore, will be an Acer Aspire AX3200-EF9100A (why can’t electronics be more simply named?).

It will be here soon.

So I took the past two days off from official work — I’m on vacation, right? — in order to make some real headway on my next novel. I’m now about 5% into it (as seen in the progress meter at left), and I have to say it’s been an interesting experience so far.

I’ve never written a “sequel” before, and I’m finding that it raises thorny problems. None bigger, of course, than the question of how much I can take for granted. That is, can I count on the fact that readers will read Book 1 before hitting Book 2? And even if they have read Book 1, how much can I count on them remembering?

I knew that this problem existed in a theoretical way, but until I sat down to start up this book I didn’t know it in a practical way.

My prologue to Book 1 was 3,830 words long, which is fairly massive for a prologue — though in my defense it operates in a much different way than most traditional prologues. The longest chapter in Book 1 was one of the climactic ones, at 4,924 words, and the average length was probably around 3,100 words.

The prologue to Book 2, the first draft of which I just finished? 5,399 words.

Some of that is taken up with action and basic character development — though it’s a character that we grew to know pretty well in Book 1 — but I fear that far too much of it is giving recap of basic plot data from the first book. I’ve tried to parcel it out, tried to be subtle, but I found it much more of a problem than I thought it would be. I’m longing now to take Tolkien’s approach and just assume that the reader will slog straight through the whole series, giving no help at all to anyone joining the show part way along.

Am I over-thinking this? How much can I trust you readers? Any advice for the Tolkien approach versus the give-some-background approach?

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