Emptyeye

Writing this while I watch UltraJMan play La-Mulana Wii.

Writing-wise, I’ve finished a revision of my Machine of Death story that, I think, is stronger than my original concept. As I mentioned before, I changed the concept a bit to focus less on the original main character and more on the reactions to her calling. I’ll have to run this by a few people to see if they agree with what I’m saying, but I personally like the new version better despite it running about 600 words longer.

We’re less than two weeks away from Connecticon, and suffice to say that my subconscious knows it. I feel like Trevor Horn (Yeah, that Trevor Horn) when he was in Yes. That’s all I’ll say on the subject for now.

How about all of you out there? Anything fun/exciting/stressful going on?

-EE

I’ve been working on my submission for the second Machine of Death book (If you’ve never heard of the first one, you can read about the concept here), figuring I may as well aim high as I prepare for the inevitable stream of rejections for my short stories. This one’s had an interesting road so far, and it’s something a lot of writers can identify with, I think.

Right now, it’s actually two separate stories. Without giving too much away, the first story was about a woman named Jackie who receives their death prediction and, rather than running from their fate, decides to seek it out, becoming the best in the world in her chosen field in the process. Thinking about this, and reading suggestions posted by the Machine of Death editors, I decided to tackle the same basic concept from another angle, focusing on people’s reactions to how Jackie responds to the question “so how did you arrive at your calling?” with “Oh, the Death Machine told me how I was going to die, and I decided to embrace it rather than run from it”. This seemed more interesting to me in the wake of the fact that Jackie’s tiny nation is the only one in my world with a Death Machine, causing people to regard her as somewhat crazy if brilliant in her field.

While I was writing this second version of the story, something interesting happened. Jackie stopped being the main character about halfway through, giving way to her publicist, Alan. This particular version is still in the first draft stage, meaning I’ll have to revise it heavily to more accurately reflect that, but it’s fascinating to me to witness firsthand all these things that more high-profile writers say happens to their stories, where they start one place and end up something completely different.

How about you? Anyone else have something like this happen to them with anything creative–writing, music, whatever?

-EE

Over the last five months or so, I’ve been hitting the gym. More specifically, I’ve been going to the Planet Fitness locations in Waterbury and Meriden; which one I go to depends on what I happen to be working out that day.

Despite the fact that I’ve been going for the last five months, working out something different each day of the week, I have to confess I don’t actually like exercising. I like the results, don’t get me wrong. I like being 13 pounds lighter than I was at Awesome Games Done Quick (As my cousin would say, “that’s close to an entire bowling ball’s worth of weight you lost!”). I like how I feel at the end of workouts. The actual process of working out, not so much. I read an interview with Jack LaLanne (He of berating a much younger man for not being active enough…at age 94) where he, surprisingly, said pretty much the same thing–that he liked the results of working out, but wasn’t a big fan of the actual process.

That said, cardio work is probably my favorite out of any of the routines I do. Part of it is that I’m not aiming for raw muscle mass (Preferring to be more lean and agile), but part of it is the easily trackable progress. From the cardio machines at the gym, my current target heart rate for the “cardio” range is 154 beats per minute. Depending on what machine I’m on, I can either work from there (On the bike, where my legs as opposed to my cardio system are the weak link), or go up into the 170-175 BPM range (On the Arc Trainer, or “The Beast” as my mom calls it). There’s something about watching my heart rate climb that makes me feel good, I guess.

How about everyone else? Anyone out there have a favorite workout routine?

-EE

Today was the last Connecticon Member Appreciation Day before the convention itself. Today was spent both playing Rock Band and preparing for the tournament. Dan came up with a scoring spreadsheet that, after a bit of experimentation, we decided seemed to be fair, which primarily takes technical ability into account, but with a performance element in it as well (The formula is currently about 80% technical ability to 20% performance). We also discovered that, while it isn’t directly stated, there does seem to be a “hidden” Band Difficulty for each song in Rock Band 3. This makes things a lot easier in terms of having to tell bands what their choices are.

Honestly, I’m more nervous about running this than I ever was participating in it. First of all, despite what happened last year, I’m working from a pretty solid foundation that I don’t want to have come crashing down. Secondly, prize support for the tournament was not cheap–while I’ll ultimately end up being reimbursed for it, for the con to fully reimburse me and still hit the break even point for it, I have to attract a total of sixteen qualifying bands somehow. I made a post on Score Hero about it, and I’ll have Dan post on the Rock Band forums as well (His 2 posts there is an infinite number more than my 0). After that, I’ll have to do some Internet searching for places to promote it.

So, I’m still here, and still being productive.

-EE

Saturday night, my friend Brian and I went to Mohegan Sun. My purpose for this trip was two-fold. First, it was to meet Nick Houser, one of my Skype friends and a fellow SDA member, who had turned 21 last week. The other was to play in one of the casino’s midnight poker tournaments.

At about 10 o clock, I briefly ran into Nick, who was actually winning for the night thanks to his choice of slot machine (I’ll withhold that here for his sake). Then it was time for some limit hold ‘em before the midnight tournament. My money-hemorrhaging skills were on full display, as I lost $70 in just under two hours. After that, it was no-limit hold-em tournament time.

The basic rules of the tournament were that it was a turbo tournament, meaning blinds and, eventually, antes increased every twelve minutes. This is slightly quicker than the average online tournament, but in a live tournament, what it means is that you’ll get maybe one round around the table before the blinds and antes go up. What it also means is that, given enough time, even the chip leaders have either “All-in” or “fold” as their only two options.

Suffice to say that while Brian gets knocked out somewhere around tenth place out of 31 entrants, I manage, through a combination of (Mostly) luck and (Maybe some) skill, to make it to 4th place, when 5 positions paid. Dan Harrington writes in Harrington on Hold ‘Em that you need some luck to get deep into a poker tourney, and while a 31-person midnight tournament is not the main event of the World Series of Poker, I found Harrington’s thoughts to be accurate. Multiple times, I either had a worse hand suck out, or actually had a very good hand against an opponent who had no choice but to move with a worse hand.

In all, my fourth-place finish earned me $122, which after the tournament entry fee was enough to basically make up for my losses earlier. It was a fun time, and I don’t know if I’d do it regularly just because it starts so late, but I might have to make it an occasional thing I do there.

As you know, I got married in January. Since January is not a very good time to hold outdoor parties, and since both Silver and I have pretty big families, our parents decided to hold our wedding celebration (One of the things I was adamant on is that it was not a reception, per se) yesterday, at the Italian-American Club in Waterbury, CT.

I have to say that in all honesty, I enjoyed the more casual picnic/celebration a lot more than I would have enjoyed a formal reception–greeting anyone and everyone is not something that appeals to me, especially since our parents made up most of the guest list, so I wasn’t even sure who a few of the people there were (This is almost inevitable when the guest list is at ~120 people). Talking to Silver afterward, she felt the same way–that not having to be, as she put it, “all formal” helped her relax and have fun talking to people.

We, of course, got presents. These included a Ninja Blender, a saladware set, and a wine glass set. The big thing, though, is that we are no longer stuck in standard-definition land when it comes to television. We are now the owners of a 32-inch Sony BRAVIA HD TV. Despite the fact that we don’t currently subscribe to any HD channels, this is a huge step up in a few ways. For one, it’s a lot thinner and lighter than the TV we had in the living room previously. For another, said previous TV is now back in my little lair in the apartment, representing a 7-inch upgrade in that room on my speedrunning TV. For a third, the TV that was in that back room is now going to college with my sister-in-law. So everybody wins!

Overall, the party was a lot of fun, and the gifts didn’t hurt either. If I could find a way to do it again that didn’t involve divorce and re-marrying, I definitely would.

-EE