Sense of Adventure » pet peeves

Better now. I hope.

Victor — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:08:45 +0000

So after many evolutions, and two minutes-burning cell phone calls to SWCP tech support (who were helpful, anyway), we seem to be back in business: connected to DSL via wireless network.

more animals

The cause of my woes, it appears and I’m actively hoping, was interference by Zonealarm free firewall software. It’s served well in the past, at least apparently. It may’ve been that elephant-repellent thing; I’ve no real way of knowing.

The tech I spoke to on my second call, who had me turn ZA off, assured me software firewalls aren’t too necessary anymore. At least in my case, since my DSL modem comes with a hardware firewall.

Also, after I succeeded in connecting yesterday, I DL’d a new-mark “upgrade” of ZA. Since the phone jack on my notebook computer went out several weeks ago I hadn’t been online with that machine for a long time. So I routinely upgraded the everyday stuff: ZA, AVG antivirus, the Fox, T-bird, and Opera, which I use as an alternate browser. It’s entirely possible the older ZA wouldn’t have screwed me up.

Whether or no, this also allows me (briefly, before I get back to writing real stuff!) to ride another favorite hobbyhorse of mine: my aversion to automatic updates. Yes, the ZA update was entirely knowing and deliberate; mea freakin’ culpa.

It still points up a reason I eschew automatic updates, and generally don’t update at all until I get some kind of feedback on whether the update will do something like switch free software to pay, work worse than the older mark (or not at all), or bust the registry and screw up my machine. All of which have happened to me in the past.

One can’t get complacent even with people who’re generally reliable. A few months ago I installed a new download manager from eMusic, whom I like quite a lot. And it a) had less usability for me than the old version; and b) didn’t actually work.

I should’ve known better because a year or so earlier eMusic had put out a mandatory upgrade that was such a total fiasco they made an updated version of their old DL manager available, which I promptly installed and liked. This time they gave me a choice; I DL’d and installed the new one. And bang.

While the new manager might actually work with broadband – on dialup it would not successfully complete a DL – I mean not one – I won’t go to it despite being nagged whenever I open my old DL manager because it doesn’t do what I want it to do as well as the old version. The eMusic development gnomes appear to’ve gotten all entranced by the idea that I need a browser and an MP3 player. Yeah, like I don’t already have those things. Like about five each. (Okay, I think just three browsers, and Internet Exploiter hardly counts because I do not use it.)

Plus they gave an option to install a new toolbar – yeah, that’s what I need, too: something else getting between me and what I’m really trying to do onscreen. They suckered me into trying it by offering a free daily MP3 – without revealing up front it was one of their choosing. Yes, another thing I can’t live without: filling up my dwindling hard drive space with megabytes from the same crappy garage bands whose unrelenting Friending attempts do so much to make the MySpace experience what it is. By which I mean, Hell.

The toolbar itself offered nothing of value. Except a really suave realtime local-weather monitor. I liked that so much I installed a Firefox add-on called Forecastfox which, while not quite as cool as the eMusic one (so far as I’ve ascertained; haven’t had time or inclination to monkey with all the options yet) serves just fine. Off went the toolbar.

Since I’m in pissin’+moanin’ mode, I note their seem to be trends in insufferable arrogance among software developers. At one point it was all the rage to try to plunk their software into the startup menu. Even on a Win95 machine with about the clock speed of my Palm T|X, that tended to shave off, like, oh, 0.5 seconds from the time it took the program to come up. But it sure did eat up RAM, and slow the damned computer wa-a-ay down!

Then the fad was to have a given program jump all the file associations that were even remotely relevant, so you had to go back and prevent your music player from trying to run all your video files incompetently – if you were lucky and it didn’t take over, say, your spreadsheet files.

These days (along with trying to hang browsers and music players on every goddam thing) the burning hotness is those stupid toolbars. If I installed half of them as wanted it, I’d be writing this on a workspace the size of a postage stamp. Of course a lot of sites – this at least is abating some – insist on using a micrometer font that would fit the whole Bible into a space like that. Maybe there’s some kind of symbiosis going on here?

Woof! Rowr! Grr. Arrgh.

Yes, I decided to take some of my pet peeves out for a run today. They’ve been fed so goddam much lately they need the exercise.

I hate puzzles

Victor — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:44:49 +0000

That’s not code or a euphemism or anything. Sorry. I just hate puzzles.

Screw you, Sudoku, and the horse you rode in on.

Why that should be I’ve no damned idea. In general I really love figuring things out. But as for puzzles per se, I suppose my attitude is, Oh, fucking get on with it.

If anyone can offer any suggestions as to why that might be so, I’d love to read them. Other than concluding I’m a pernicious featherhead and not worth bothering with any more. The only thing noteworthy about that being, why did it take you so long?

And remember: I never promised you profound.

On other topics: tonight I hie myself off to the Albuquerque Science Fiction Society monthly meeting at 7:30 PM at Some Stuff by Huff Studio, 5900 Domingo Rd, NE, Turkey-burg. Our feature for this evening will be Albuquerque’s own John Miller, or John Jos. Miller, as he styles himself these days to avoid confusion with all those other John Millers. He’ll be talking about, and if we’re luckier than we deserve reading from, his novel-in-progress, Black Train Coming.

It’s a wonderfully cool and original idea about Depression-era coal miners oppressed by vampires. I believe the vampire mine owners possess, yes, a black train. As naturally they would. Anyway I’m excited about it, and I’m pretty confident it’ll be huge, if he can just get himself to finish the damned thing.

(This isn’t something I’d know anything about – he said to rumbustious laughter from all those many fans and friends who’ve been listening to me promise to finish The Dinosaur Lords Any Day Now for the last six and a half years. Well, you’ll be laughing out the other side of your face soon – warning: don’t actually try to envision this; it’s gross – and I’ll shortly be able to provide a good example to Mr. John Jos. Miller. How’s that for out of character?)

Also, the people are fun, smart, and cool. If you’re in the Burque area you really might give a thought to falling by. If you’re not in the Burque area … well, you gotta sort out your own priorities.

And if you’re in the Burque area and thinking of dropping by my house to rip me off (talk about the game not being worth the candle!) – well, Emma Dog would be really, really happy to see you.

Especially the Chinese Monster Dog half of her.

Catch you tonight or catch you later! Peace out.

Oh – and a Happy Friday the 13^th to all! That’s the kind of holiday we roll with here. Heck with that Hallmark Card thing tomorrow.

Why I Became a Writer in the First Damn Place

Victor — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 07:02:59 +0000

Almost everybody I’ve ever encountered who hasn’t run away fast enough has heard this tale. But these are the Interwebs (which, wise men tell us, are a series of tubes), and they open a whole world of people to me I’ve never met in person. Try to run away faster than light. Hah! Hah!

So now you’re stuck reading it. My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts of how my career began?

When I was a lad there was a TV show called Mannix, which starred Mike Connors, mainly because the network suits thought no one would watch a series starring some Armenian guy named Krekor Ohanian. Imdb (“I am Vic M., and I admit that I have no power over the Internet Movie Database”) calls it, “One of the most violent detective series in TV history.” Wow. I don’t remember it being that cool.

But there must’ve been some reason I kept watching it. And it sure wasn’t the smart, well-crafted action writing. Because each and every week, at least once, we would see our hero, on foot, pursued by bad guys in a car through a parking garage or lot. And he would run right down the middle of the open lanes.

Every frickin’ week. It was even in the opening credits, if I recall correctly.

Leave aside the question of why the car didn’t go faster than he did – granted, this was the heyday of heavy Detroit iron, but it was also the heyday of great big studly six and eight-cylinder engines that sucked gas like an elephant at a Sahara stock tank (yes, if the Sahara had stock tanks. And elephants. And if they drank gasoline. It’s a metaphor, dammit!) I always reckoned, stripling though I was, that what I would do if I found myself in that position was, like, hide behind something heavy.

Indeed, I’ve long envisioned myself putting my back to a yard-thick concrete support pillar, giving the baddies the double-barreled finger (both-handed, not that Dane Cook Virgin Vulcan Herbie thing), and saying, “All right, motherfuckers, drive at me real fast.” And if they were dumb enough to do so, nipping smart-quick around the pillar at the last second, so none of the flying glass and random metal bits would hit me.

As I watched that inevitable scene one evening with my grandmother, I remarked on how astonishingly stupid it was that our hero just kept running down the street like that instead of dodging behind one of dozens of instantly available obstacles. And my grandmother said, “They have to do it that way. Otherwise they wouldn’t have any drama.”

Wait for it … five, four, three … can’t hold it – ARRRRGGGHH!

Yes. It had to be stupid so it could be action. If I wanted action entertainment, I had to turn off my brain.

No! Gods all damn it, a thousand times no! Ich werde nicht! Je refuse! ¡No Pasará!

I had my life’s work laid out abruptly at my feet, and it was this thing: to disprove, a thousandfold and irrefutably, that for an entertainment to be action it must also be stupid.

And there you have it. So have I done. In over 70 novels (not all of my 91 and counting are adventure) and a number of short stories. Have I always succeeded? In honesty, I can’t say I know. Probably not, and anyway, that judgement isn’t mine. It’s each reader’s.

But what I can say is that always – in each and every action scene I write – I have striven, I strive, and I shall strive that you can enjoy it without shorting out your brain.

And that’s how I became a writer.

Movie Pet Peeve

Victor — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:57:05 +0000

(First in an undoubtedly unending series.)

And, mirabile dictu, it doesn’t even involve guns!

First, mea maxima culpa for going dark here for so long. (Nothing like tossing in gratuitous Latin phrases to make you look smarter than you are. And if anybody’s smarter than I am, it sure isn’t me!) Things got on top of me. I’ll try not to let it happen again.

Anyway, one thing that bugs me in movies is when the elevator cable breaks, and the cage falls like an anvil toward Certain Doom. Oh, if only anyone had ever thought to invent an automatic safety brake!

Someone did. Elisha Otis. In 1853.

It’s a fairly simple system, which causes the rollers to lock up if the thing goes too fast. Because it’s mechanically simple it’s highly reliable. It’s not perfect, but what is?

Of course some people, even certain good friends of mine (who, granted, probably never read this blog) will rush in and say, Well, it’s for dramatic effect! Duh! Sorry, enablers; it’s sloppy writing. You can always bother to do it right. If by nothing more than a three-second scene of the rollers catching – and then failing. Even mysteriously. Oh my! Suspense! And without imbecility!

Perhaps oddly, one flick I know that got it right was Speed. Now, I like Speed. (Okay, I know that’s a risky statement to make in our happy police state. To belabor what’s obvious to all but informers and ambitious prosecutors, I mean the movie. As far as stimulants go, caffeine is just all right with me. And then some.)

In general I like Ted, I mean Keanu, as an action star: cope. Die Hard on a Bus was one of your better takes on our definitive modern action flick: not quite as good as Die Hard on a Boat (Under Siege), nor even Die Hard on a Train (Under Siege 2: Dark Territory.) But still pretty good – better than any other Die Hard until the most recent – in spite of that Amazing Flying Bus Sequence. Which as utter goofiness goes was at least highly entertaining. And despite the fact that they enjoyed ending the movie so much they went and did it a second time, to the tune of twenty minutes’ worth.

Anyway, the elevator bit: some good guys (LAPD SWAT buddies Keanu and Jeff Daniels, if I recall correctly – and whoa, only in speaking of fantasy am I ever likely to use the phrases “good guys” and “LAPD SWAT” in the same sentence) were in an elevator. Mad Bomber Dennis Hopper blows the cables with a charge he’s foresightfully placed. The cage falls – about four feet. Then the safety brakes lock up.

And what do you know? Our Evial Villain, who’s actually read a book, rigged them too. Crack-crack! (Again: not a drug reference.) And now our elevator can, in good conscience, plummet toward destruction.

That’s more like it. A minor touch – but it adds not only that element of realism (not to mention “the writer actually gave a fuck”-ism) but adds to the character and menace of the bad guy. He’s meticulous. And he does his research. How do you beat a guy like that?

(It’s been a while since I’ve seen this, as you can probably tell. But I’m pretty sure it involved a fistfight. Heavy sigh. Ah, well: nothing’s perfect. Anyway, if Speed was, I’d be pumping it as the Definitive Modern Action flick, wouldn’t I?)