I have some new neighbors. Newlyweds, in fact. They can be a bit noisy, but it’s mostly during the daylight hours while they move in, so that’s OK. I blame it more on the thin walls of the townhouse than anything else. The building isn’t exactly old, but the walls are thin:

Over the last week, they have been moving in rather slowly. The wife usually stays and sorts everything out at home while the husband, I assume, is off being the breadwinner. She’s a pretty little thing, as you can see in the above picture. Wait… what? You can’t see her there? Here I’ll move a little closer for you:

Yes, my new neighbors are ducks. Over the past few days, the male has arrived and kept constant vigil while the female sits atop the nest, a surprising 20 or so inches from my front door:

After talking to folks more knowledgeable about ducks than myself, it’s evidently not terribly uncommon, as the mulch and wood chips retain heat for when the two of them disappear. Usually, when they do head off on a date, or wherever it is they go, they move the chips and mulch and bury the eggs beneath. Another male duck arrived the other day, however, and there was a big ol’ row. I opened up the front door to see what the heck was going on with my new neighbors to discover the newlyweds chasing the intruder around the little open space that leads out to the driveway. Then they all disappeared, leaving the nest uncovered:

Nine. Nine? My new neighbors may be quiet right now, but I have a sinking feeling that the silence may not last much longer.

I don’t twitter. I don’t even have a desire to twitter. If I did, I’d sign up and do it.

There is a trend running through a few of the blogs I read where the authors are blogging their conversations on Twitter. I don’t really get this. Blog is blog… Twitter is… well honestly I don’t know what the hell it is… seems to me that it’s kind of like a group text message session.

Regardless, if I wanted to read/follow these twitterings, I’d do that. I don’t want to waste my time reading conversations that have already taken place.

I suppose the upside is that I now have two less blogs to follow now. Perhaps my Reader list will shrink down to three digits.

My birthday came and went, and then Christmas, and, finally, 2008 closed with a whimper. Or maybe that was me whimpering, I can’t be sure. By most accounts, 2008 wasn’t all that great a year. Our domestic problems have seeped out into international channels and things are looking as if they will get a whole lot worse before they get any better. But I am no economist, and my foreign relations ability is admittedly surpassed by any high school junior with a B or better in Global Studies. So that’s all I’ll say about that.

Instead, I think I’ll address something much more frivolous: The New Year Resolution.

Over on my Facebook page, my January 3rd (ish) status cracked that I had already broken 90% of my resolutions. And while it may not be entirely accurate for 2009, there have certainly been times where they fell by the wayside that fast (or faster, in the event of the numerous “I vow to quit smoking” manifestos I declared over the years). This year, however, I only made one resolution, and I do, indeed, vow to keep it. I actually think it will be, if not easy, then at the very least convenient, but more on that a little later.

I used to take the whole Resolution thing much more serious than I do now. I even formed resolution groups, and together we made lists and support channels in an effort to keep our silly little vows. Vows like:

1- I will lose/gain/rearrange weight
2- I will quit/cut back smoking
3- I will/won’t do some other thing that is really really good/bad for me

In and of themselves, these are all really important promises. Smoking, specifically, was on my various lists for probably 20 years before I finally managed to kick the habit (without promising a damn thing to anyone, not even myself). Tying them together is simply inviting failure not just for one of them, but for ALL of them. By lumping them all together they in essence become a single thing. Slipping up on one equates to slipping up on all of them, and totally blowing one gives you the mental excuse/justification that they are now all blown. Big huge things like this need to be tackled singly.

This is the first year since I moved back to Rochester that I actually have made a resolution. For some time now, I have been trying to cut back on my dependence upon technology (he says with a wry grin as he cuts and pastes text from an OpenOffice document to a WordPress blog running on a private server with his own domain name). As a writer, I am pretty much tied to my computer, but I still takes certain steps to get away from it each and every day. The obvious first step was to spend a minimum of two hours reading each day. Most often I read in the evening before bed, but I am also starting to work in a reading break in the afternoon and I am finding that it recharges me for the evening hours.

My next step, beginning this week, is to start writing letters. You know, actual letters with stamps. I won’t be writing a ton of them, maybe one a week or every other week to start, and I’ll see how it goes from there. I find I tend to slow my thinking down and focus more when I write long hand. Even now, as I type this, I am thinking not just a few words ahead, but a sentence, even two sentences ahead to where this whole thing will lead. How much longer will it be? I answered that before I started typing “Even now, as I type this” a couple sentences back (the answer, by the way, is too long). My hopes for this little resolution are these:

Hope #1: Due to years at the keyboard, my handwriting has deteriorated to the point of near illegibility. Hopefully some dedicated practice will help me get it back to its former sloppiness.

Hope #2: A slower pace of thought will lead to much more precise writing not only in the letters, but in my fiction. My first drafts tend to ramble and wander until they find themselves and I would love to rein that tendency in much earlier in my writing process.

Hope #3: Get myself away from the computer for an hour or so. There’s both a coffee shop and a bar right across the street. I could sit, enjoy a beverage of my choice, write a letter, and perhaps even meet someone interesting.

Hope #4: Maybe, just maybe my effort will lead to the recipient stepping away from the bustle of their day and relax for a minute or 5 and read. Maybe even take another twenty minutes and write a letter back.

That last one is, to me, the most attractive. We all have so much information bombarding us every single day, I think we could all use a moment like that. Where everything just kind of slips away and we are focused not just on a single thing, but on a single person, with an intimacy that you just can’t get with an email or text message or even a phone call.

So there you have it. My resolution. Hopefully I’ll stick to it, and one of these days you, yes you, may enjoy a real letter from me. And won’t that be something to tell the grandkids?

Just a quick shout out to my riding buddies around town who glance at rfdc every now and again.

I took my leathers in to the above mentioned store for some repair (and some luggage as well). It’s a little mom-and-pop type shop tucked away in Jefferson Plaza over by Southtown, and they just rock. My 13 yr old pants and jacket look like new and they reinforced the torn pockets with kevlar. Kevlar! They did a ton of work for a price that wasn’t just reasonable, it was downright cheap.

It’s tough to find folks to do custom work on motorcycle leathers, and these guys are great. The have also worked on boots for me with the same awesome results. Great service, and great folks who understand the needs of motorcyclers. Find them here:

Cobbler’s Corner Shoe Repair
376 Jefferson Rd Ste 9
Rochester, NY 14623-2439
Phone: (585) 475-1951

Now all I need is for spring to hurry up and get here…

Grad school has started back up, so posting will be irregular for the next few months. This semester looks to be quite reading-intensive, and I’ll likely be averaging anywhere from 500-700 pages a week. That will taper off as the semester goes on and the writing increases however. Keep an eye on the sidebar for what I am Currently Reading, as I’ll try to at least keep that updated. There also may be a writing excerpt from my WIP thrown in every now and then, as there will be little prep needed for a post like that.

Speaking of my WIP (Work in Progress), one of the last things I was working on this summer was a plugin/widget that would display an updatable progress bar for everything I am currently writing. It was kind of fun teaching myself PHP in order to try and get this done, but, alas, I broke more stuff than I actually created. Such is life. Perhaps I’ll be able to revisit it over the Winter break and see where I went astray. If anyone knows PHP and wants a little project, drop me a line via email or in the comments and I’ll go into more detail about what I am looking to do.

Simon Haynes, author of the best-selling Hal Spacejock series and creator of some awesome freeware that I use, recently posted this meme. I can honestly say I have never, ever posted a meme response, but I figure a post about video games is as good a time as any to begin. After all, I did at one time, you know, make them. Or, rather, played a smallish part in their creation. Those of you with blogs of your own, feel free to consider yourself tagged.

Here are the rules:

1- Look at the list and bold those games you have played.

2- Go one step further and underline those games you loved.

Please note that these are not my rankings, and there are absolutely changes I would make if they were. Actually, I don’t know what the rankings actually represent. But that may well be another post for another day.

My comments will appear [like this].

100: River City Ransom (aka Street Gangs)

99: Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss

98: Battle Toads

97: F-Zero

96: Mafia

95: Herzog Zwei

94: Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six [This and "Ghost Recon" are two of my faves from Red Storm]

93: Quake II

92: Dragon Warrior (aka Dragon Quest)

91: Virtua Tennis

90: Master of Orion [I wish I still had this game rather than the travesty that was Master of Orion 3]

89: Alone in the Dark

88: Final Fantasy VII

87: Thief II: The Metal Age [preferred its predecessor, but still a damn good game]

86: Final Fantasy X

85: Prince of Persia

84: Ultima VII: The Black Gate

83: Contra [perhaps the single greatest 2-player game ever made. I'd even put it up against Halo for sheer killing enjoyment]

82: Gunstar Heroes

81: Freedom Force

80: Baseball Stars

79: Shining Force II

78: Star Wars (arcade)

77: Archon: The Light and the Dark

76: Tetris Attack

75: Crimson Skies

74: Syndicate

73: Return Fire

72: Galaga

71: Half-Life: Counter-Strike [aka Half-Life: Crack – what exactly did I do with my life again?]

70: Pokemon Red/Blue

69: Lakers vs. Celtics and the NBA Playoffs

68: Starsiege: Tribes

67: Rayman 2: The Great Escape

66: Homeworld [I mourn the hours... no, days lost playing this one]

65: Mechwarrior 2: 31^st Century Combat

64: Advance Wars

63: Sonic the Hedgehog [sooo much better than that Mario dude!]

62: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

61: Sam & Max Hit the Road

60: Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle

59: Bionic Commando

58: Super Smash Bros. Melee

57: Mike Tyson’s Punchout!

56: Final Fantasy III (VI)

55: Fallout [all hail the dystopic greatness!]

54: Panzer Dragoon Saga

53: Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings [just replayed this a month or so ago, actually]

52: Metroid Prime

51: Grand Theft Auto III

50: Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi

49: Grim Fandango [there is nothing about this game that isn't brilliant]

48: The Secret of Mana

47: NHL 94 [in all fairness, I don't know if it was this one or one of the other years. '94 is around the time I had a Sega Genesis though, so I'll go ahead and bold it]

46: Super Mario World

45: Battlefield 1942

44: Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island

43: Soul Caliber

42: Gran Tourismo 3: A-Spec

41: System Shock 2

40: Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution

39: Doom [I still say that Bungie's “Pathways Into Darkness” (Mac only) was a better game]

38: Madden NFL 2004

37: Wave Race 64

36: Command and Conquer: Red Alert [after hours gaming goodness when at Disney Interactive. I think I was the worst player on the team]

35: Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty

34: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2

33: God of War

32: Resident Evil 4

31: Sim City 2000

30: Halo

29: GoldenEye 007

28: Half-Life 2

27: Burnout 3: Takedown

26: Final Fantasy II (IV)

25: Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn

24: Tecmo Super Bowl

23: Super Mario Bros. 3

22: Half Life

21: Deus Ex

20: Ms. Pac Man

19: Metal Gear Solid

18: ICO

17: Star Control 2

16: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

15: Super Mario Kart

14: Rome: Total War

13: Chrono Trigger [stunningly mesmerizing game]

12: X-Com: UFO Defense

11: Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

10: Super Metroid

9: Star Wars: TIE Fighter Collector’s CD-ROM [have this somewhere... should break it out again some rainy day]

8: Street Fighter II

7: StarCraft [Not a huge RTS fan, but this one I really liked, regardless of how terrible I was at it]

6: Sid Meier’s Pirates!

5: Super Mario 64

5a: Lego Star Wars

5b: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind [just installed one of the add-on packs and am playing it again]

4: Sid Meier’s Civilization II [long since retired in favor of first Civ III, and now Civ IV]

3: Tetris

2: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

1: Super Mario Bros.

Spread the word!

]]> http://www.robbflynn.com/2008/06/30/confronting-the-geekery-in-me/feed/ 0 http://www.robbflynn.com/2008/05/24/a-solid-dozen/ http://www.robbflynn.com/2008/05/24/a-solid-dozen/#comments Sat, 24 May 2008 12:27:08 +0000 Robb http://www.robbflynn.com/?p=58

That’s how many days of High School are left. There’s still finals, and graduation, and all the accompanying hoopla, but only 12 days of classes. I think I am as excited for the year to be over as my students. I keep thinking of all the things I have let slip while maintaining the schedule of Grad School and High School. I haven’t picked up the guitar since last August. My posting here slacked off to once or twice a month. I haven’t built even a tenth of the additions to the website that I have planned out in my head (and now I have the itch to redesign the whole thing again!). I haven’t really had the time to read much of anything outside schoolwork or stuff that pertains to my thesis. So yes, I am just as happy as summer to get here as my students are.

It was a bit of a surprise how time consuming teaching turned out to be. I have been told that it becomes less intensive in the second year, which makes sense assuming that the same courses are being taught, but I was unprepared for what was going to be required of me just to be prepared for class. Add in the time required to grade 150+ essays two or more times a month (50 graded yesterday, 100 more in the cue for the rest of the weekend) and it would be an understatement to say that my expectations were naive.

Regardless, I discovered I really enjoy the time spent inside the classroom. Sure, there are times where the kids drive me nuts (just as, I am sure, there are times when I drive them nuts), but at the end of the day, I actually feel pretty good about myself and what I am doing. And that’s a sentiment I haven’t had about a job in a very, very long time. I think I’ll even miss it a little next year, as I am going to be going to grad school full time to finish the Masters in one fell swoop. At least now I know I have yet another employment option when I finish the degree.

And that is what I look for most in almost all my decisions… options. The ability to always have a choice, and the courage to take responsibility for those choices… that, I think, is the key to happiness. Or, rather, it is the key to my happiness. The key to your happiness may well be a seven layer burrito for I know. I can’t help you there, unfortunately. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself.

=====

On the turntable: Dave Matthews Band, Blues Traveler, Velvet Revolver, Prince

And I blame Hotmail.

I have had a Hotmail account(s) for well over ten years now. In fact, I think the only communication tools I use that are older are ICQ and the US Postal Service. I used to use the hotmail address specifically as a gaming account. Whenever I registered for a game, online or otherwise, I would use that email. By the time I stopped using it, about 8 or so years ago, it had become utterly useless as an email account due to the vast amount of spam it collected. I haven’t been to the in-box there in I don’t know how long and, unless they recycle inactive accounts, I shudder to think of what the spam box must look like.

Still, though, I used their IM service to keep in touch with some friends, so I didn’t turn it off completely, regardless of how much the MSN Messenger application sucks tiny brown dust bunnies. Interestingly, to this day, I have friends who use only MSN Messenger. I also have friends that use only ICQ, and others that use only Yahoo, so, naturally, I switched to solutions that allowed me to run a single app. Currently, I use Pidgin (thanks Nick!), and I find it more than suitable for my minimal needs (not to mention it has a very active dev community). But, alas, I digress… back to Messenger.

I am not sure how I am suddenly such a popular fellow to the IM Spam artists out there. I don’t publish my hotmail address anywhere. I don’t publish my MSN handle anywhere. Somehow, though, I have landed on some porn site’s list, and I am getting flooded with adverts for webcams bimbos and other assorted nonsense. I just received my fifth since starting this post, actually.

The reason I blame Hotmail? They are easy to blame, and they won’t care anyway. And they are owned by MS, so what other reason do I really need? Most likely it has nothing to do with Hotmail at all, though. Most likely someone mined MSN addresses from somewhere and mine got sold to some crazy blast IM service not too different from the blast email services that fill up our in-boxes with Cialis ads.

Needless to say, I am a bit irked. But, there is a solution to my irkness. Those of you whom I chat with on MSN, you have about a week (or less, depending on my mood) to contact me about my handles on other services (ICQ, GTalk, Yahoo, AOL). After that, I am going to disappear from MSN, most likely for good. In the world of IM, there are other options, and one less app to load at startup makes me happy.

Not altogether surprising, I have started off 2008 much the same as the last half of 2007… playing catch-up. Already I seem to have fallen behind and have more on my plate than I can possibly get done in the “required” time. Ahh, well. It is what it is, and I will, as always, get everything done. I may well lose some sleep in the process, but that’s ok. If there is one thing that my insomnia has taught me, it is that sleep is, most often, over-rated.

It was quite the diverse year, with unsuspected opportunities causing me to veer in a direction I was not, I realize now, altogether prepared for. I started out the year an unemployed graduate student. Having been laid off in 2006, I decided to go back to school full time and take advantage of my severance and unemployment insurance. Even through all my struggling actor days, I never spent more than a month or two at a time living off the government. This time, I took everything I could, doing the occasional odd job and some contract work along the way, all the while taking as many grad classes as I could handle.

Then something interesting happened… Through a series of coincidental events, I was offered a job teaching High School English. Not having a clue what I was actually in for, I jumped at the opportunity, cutting my graduate school load back to 1 class for the fall. To say it is more difficult an time consuming than I had imagined would be an understatement of monumental proportions. It is also the strangest mix of frustrating and satisfying I have ever encountered.

I was happy to discover that I really enjoy teaching, and I don’t think I am all that terrible at it. I have a lot to learn, to be sure, but I certainly don’t think I am actually doing the kids a disservice, which I can’t say for more than a few teachers I remember from my high school days. But as much as I enjoy it, it can be amazingly frustrating as well. Often times I find myself at a loss when trying to understand the attitude of quite a few of my students. It’s as if they expect me to pass along whatever it is they need to know, and they will just somehow absorb it through their skin and walk out of the room knowing all there is to know about whatever the topic of the day is. They just seem… lazy. Maybe it’s been too long, but I don’t remember being that way in high school. I wanted to understand. Simply puking information back at the teacher wasn’t an option for me, or for my teachers, for that matter. That’s where my largest area of improvement lies, understanding the expectations of the students. Well, that and time management. I really need some help there.

Grad School is still taking top priority in my life, as I really want to finish my thesis by the end of 2010. It’s very difficult with the teaching, but so far I have made it work, and that’s the most important thing. I am absolutely loving being a grad student. If I could find a way to be a full time student for the rest of my life, I would die a happy, happy man.

As a last note, because I enjoy keeping track of it, and also because I have undoubtedly ruffled the feathers of a few of my students by calling them lazy, I thought I would post a summary of my reading in 2007. It is on my (ever expanding) To Do list to implement a Library section to the web site, but for now here are the numbers:

Novels Read: 32 (11,583 pages)

Non-Fiction Books read: 6 (1,683 pages)

Short Stories/Essays/Poetry Read: 173 (2,738 pages)

Total Pages Read: 15,959

I would like to have gotten some additional Non-Fiction in there, but I ran significantly short on reading time during the last 3-4 months of the year. All in all, there are still far, far too many unread books on my bookshelves, and my list of books to buy grows daily.

That said, here’s wishing us all more time to read (and write!) in the year ahead.

A few people have asked what books currently make up my bedside* stack. Before I let you all in on the big secret of what’s next in the ol’ reading queue, it’s important to note that it isn’t a matter of if this list will change, it’s a matter of when it will change. That said, as of 11:19am on Sunday, November 25, this is the current stack of What’s Up Next (once I finish Lisey’s Story tonight):

1. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

This is a re-read of one of my top 10 favorite books of all time. I get to teach it to my sophomores next month and want to re-familiarize myself with it. I also need to figure out a project for them to do based on the novel, and I think I have the beginnings of an idea, but I won’t know for sure until I double check some of my facts.

2. Common Errors in English Usage by Paul Brains

Should be fun to see how many of these errors I blunder through on a daily basis.

3. Aesop’s Fables

A long time ago I received this gorgeous leather-bound, embossed, illustrated edition and it is high time I actually read it.

4. Whitman: Leaves of Grass and Other Pros by Walt Whitman

Somewhere along the way I picked up this old paperback and it has been resting at or near the top of my stack for over a year already. I swear that this time, when it rises majestically to the top of The Stack ™ I will not push it back down!

5. Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades, and The Last Colony by John Scalzi

I enjoyed The Android’s Dream enough to go out and buy the whole OMW series. I am really looking forward to starting this, and if anything is going to change, it will be this series moving towards the top of the list.

6. Mixed in there somewhere will likely be some titles I need to read for teaching, including:

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

Lord of the Flies by William Golding (re-read)

Night by Elie Wiesel

Julius Caesar by The Bard

The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman

And there you have it. That’s the current list, subject to change within 3 minutes of this being posted.

* I don’t really have a bedside stack. I have a favorite chair, with a shelf right next to it containing these titles. On the other side of the room are two bookcases filled with books I haven’t read yet. You’d think eventually I would whittle down this collection, but for some reason I keep buying more and more books. The good news is, this means I will always have a book to read. The bad news is, I invariably read the new books before the unread books I have owned for, oh, 10 years or more.