Life saving restrictions reduce us by more than we hoped

Before we start, an Announcement:

Nerd Party!

Join us for our Infinite Improbability Party

14 October 2023 at Casa Blanca

Doors at 6pm. Food at 7pm.

107 E Thunderbird trail – Phoenix.

This will follow our Open House Trunk Show for UnObtanium Bazaar which will feature costumes and garb.

We have refreshments but you are encouraged to bring your own and share. Cheryl is organizing a friendship salad.

I am organizing Pan-Galactic Gargle-Blaster mix-off for those interested. If you don’t know what that is, or imagine that you might drive yourself home – you are not interested. Warning: there may be no survivors.

Fire outside – weather permitting.

[You do not have to be a nerd to be welcome. We are very tolerant…]

If you read this blog – you’re invited.

The Phoenix Suns did what they had to do, and likely closed their championship window by doing so. And  I did what I had to do about nine months ago, and I am measurably diminished for it.

About nine months ago, the Suns changed ownership and almost before the ink dried, new owner, Matt Ishbia, pulled the trigger on a standing trade offer that previous ownership had balked over: they traded two starters and almost all of their worthwhile draft picks for Kevin Durant.

Ten years ago, Kevin Durant was an MVP candidate, a fixture to go deep in the playoffs, and reliably the guy pretending to guard Lebron James in the All Star game.

The current Kevin Durant literally limped into the Suns locker room – he came with an ankle injury – which he re-injured during warm-up on his first game back. Warm ups.

Ten months ago, the Suns were a likely second round playoff casualty with no cap space, but the normal ration of draft picks. A month later, they became a likely second round casualty (as they turned out to be) disastrously over the cap and with no draft picks. And everybody blamed…

DeAndre Ayton.

Let’s get this straight: is DeAndre Ayton the best player he could possibly be? Almost certainly not. But even with his goofy, soft touch, occasionally pouty approach to the game, he was the second best pure center the Suns had ever put on the court.

(Alvan Adams – if you’re wondering.)

We traded that guy for a center who would not start on most contending teams.

Not the problem, but too expensive to not be the solution.

Jusuf Nurkic was the starting center for the lottery-bound Portland Trailblazers, but other than perhaps interior passing, his game is inferior in every way to Ayton’s – including his reputation for checking out of games. And he’s older. And he’s had a lot of injuries.

But he comes at half the cost, and that was the real reason. The Suns were into double-jeopardy with the salary cap. They can’t move Booker – who IS the franchise at this point, and they can’t move either of their shiny new expensive trades (Durant and all-star guard Bradley Beal) so that left Ayton, who everybody whined about anyway.

This same logic sent Chris Paul packing. But unlike CP3, Ayton has been consistently healthy – even late into the playoffs. And we essentially got Bradley Beal, who, redundant as he might be with Booker, is a legit all-star.

It is likely true that they will not miss Ayton UNTIL the fourth quarter of a close game when they absolutely have to have that rebound. Ayton could get those in a way we haven’t had since Amare’ Stoudamire. Nurkic is going to be the other guy in the poster.

Had to be done, I suppose. Deep Sigh.

But the championship window has closed.

About ten months ago, we decided we were going to treat my prostate cancer with radiation. (More about this in the previous post). The worst part of that, long term, has turned out to be the Lupan injections.

Prostate cancer visualized

Prostate cancer feeds off testosterone. So, the theory, in addition to radiation, is to starve the cancer of testosterone. That’s what Lupan does – it suppresses my ability to make testosterone.

As a practical matter, that ahs aged me twenty years in terms of muscle recovery. I also get hot flashes. The effect on my sex life is predictable. Deeper Sigh.

Unlike the Suns, I will be out from under this in about 18 months.

The Suns will still be crippled by the contracts of their shiny sportscars. And likely remain second round play-off casualties.

Happily, the metrics for my success are not as stark. I do not need a whole lot of testosterone to program architectural lighting systems. The most physically aggressive thing I am likely to do on a jobsite is move a ladder down a hallway because the electricians have abandoned me, but I think I can solve this without them. And I’m not supposed to do that stuff anyway. Because our insurance thinks we are consultants.

An it hasn’t hurt word-count at all.

Through September I challenged myself to make word count for 30 days, and then didn’t actually keep good track. But I feel like I made my quota.

Yes- this counts towards word count. Okinushi and Xinji discover that Hippos are mean.

BEHOLD:

I have combined the Go Action Fun Time Basic Rules and the GAFT Setting Bible into a single document the Go Action Fun Time Show Bible, and I am on pace to have it available in PDF at least by Christmas.

It stands at just under 70k words, and with editing counting 1/10 that means 7k words.

 I got two playtests of GAFT in [1k each].

Two chapters of the 2^nd 64 book, which is likely titled the Secret history of the Lesser Ragnarok, so 5k for those .

I blogged about TV heroes trying to fight the future in Curious Continuity. [1k]

I made writer’s Group four times at 5oo words each [2k]

I drew and formatted four illustrations for the Show Bible. At 1k each [4k]

I learned some about Blender modeling at 1k.

That’s 21k. (this blog counts towards next week.)

My goal is 5k word/week.

Whiskey.

Notes while waiting for a call that might not happen

I’m up a little later than I want to be hoping my wife will “call” (via FB messenger). I can’t call her.

My dear wife jumped out of a van at Sky Harbor to rush to make her flight. She left her phone in that van. We could not get it back to her before she had to get on a plane, fly to New Jersey, check into a hotel without a credit card (which she keeps with her phone, and then, as far as I know, board a cruise ship for a pair of back-to-back cruises around the Caribbean.

There are computers onboard. If she can get to one, she can Facebook Messenger me – if I’m awake.

Meanwhile, her phone, which does not work reliably as a phone at seas anyway,  is dutifully charging in our living room.

So that’s why she hasn’t returned your call.

Now, she was a functional adult 25 years ago when we all got along without cell phones. But the infrastructure that made that practical has long since evaporated. Not just the disappearing pay phones (or land lines of any sort) but the increasing dependence upon websites and QR codes that used to be printed hand-outs.

I used to have an index card in my wallet covered with phone numbers, and a day planner in my fanny pack wherein I recorded all my appointments. I’ve replaced all that with a several hundred dollar plastic brick. And so have you.

Are we more efficient?

The pause before you answer that is telling.

The past, present and future past of the Suns

A few other thoughts that are not quite whole posts:

• My Beloved Suns would have been second round casualties with or without the Durant trade. But now they have no draft picks for like the next four years. That’s a lot to give up for a guy who isn’t much younger than Chris Paul.
• Both the regular news guys at KTAR and every sports talk show on the radio were flummoxed that Tempe voted down the Coyotes arena. What none of them seem to remember is that they were terrible tenants in Glendale, so much so that Glendale decided they’d rather have the place empty than put up with the Coyotes for one more season.
  • Yes – there is a perfectly fine hockey arena in the valley, already built. Tempe gazed upon it and decided – not in our landfill.
• Comparing the debt ceiling to … Wait. If I have to explain to you why that situation is stupid and wrong, I am going to be unable to take you seriously as an adult. So do us both a favor and pretend you understand.

Cheryl comes back June 9^th. We’ll probably have an economy that still staggers forward, or it will be collapsing due to a completely self-created crisis. Either way, she’ll have a lot of phone calls to return.

While we all wait:

My child has a website: https://fearlessfractalpadegimas.wordpress.com/

And two links people e-mailed me that I now share with you:

Your Brain Is Shaped Like Nobody Else’s

How to Add More Categories for Your Book in KDP

Now we know.

[She still hasn’t called…]

Refelections on accountability, radiation and defense with your feet.

We’ll get to all that, but first some announcements:

UnObtanium Bazaar will be at the Las Vegas Pirate fest this weekend!

We will be at London Bridge Ren Faire (in Lake Havasu City) next weekend.

I am watching the Suns with the sound off partly so I can write, but mostly because I am tired of the local commentators whining about the fouls. In basketball, the accountability is fairly straightforward for playing defense with your arms instead of your feet. You can make a case that the Suns have been unevenly targeted by officials, but that’s not why they are losing to the Lakers.

That is all tangential to what I want to write about.

There is a peculiar challenge when running an organization of human beings in balancing accountability with accurate feedback.

Long ago, when I was a theatrical rigger, a building TD recounted for me an event that happened on a previous show: a curtain had been fouled up in the neighboring lineset and was left that way for the next operator to find.

“If I ever find out who did that,” the TD told me, “He’s fired.”

Which guaranteed he’d never discover which of several possible operators was responsible.

The natural impulse to punish the stupid or the careless can actually be counter-productive if it drives the focus from preventing errors to hiding errors. What this impulse demonstrates is a lack of trust in the workers.

In my lengthy but unscientific experience, workplace errors are evenly divided among three causes: lack of training , lack of resources, lack of attention.  The first two are totally on management. It is the boss’s job to see that the worker knows what to do and has the means to do it. The third is 50/50 management worker, though that starts to tilt towards the worker the higher you go on the food-chain.

I could not, in my current job, credibly blame my lack of attention on my basically non-existent supervision. But it took me a long time to get there, including long stints as a supervisor.

I reflect upon this because I finally got around to watching the HBO miniseries Chernobyl.

Let us recall Hanlon’s Razor:

“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.”

Now consider Fred Clark’s corollary:

“Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.”

Chernobyl is three episodes of straight horror, one episode of post-apocalyptic horror and one episode of courtroom drama.

I leave it to others to summarize the events, or debate the show’s accuracy. You can find many other sites like these.

The show makes the case, among many other accomplishments, that the inability to take responsibility for disastrous decisions – at any level – destroyed the Soviet Union.

It will also full-on give you nightmares.

The Suns have now lost. The whining continues. I turn it off.

An update on useful radiation: I have a standing appointment in the late afternoon of every weekday from next week until the endo of fucking May for radiation treatments.

I am told the treatments do not last long: 20-30 minutes depending on how close I manage to park.

Many have it worse. But people ask so I answer.

Now we know.

Briefly examining unpleasant things

Human society has a surplus of whining, and I do not want to add to that, but some unpleasant things need to be spoken aloud for the record.

If you have 300+ yards of offense, five sacks, and still lose by more than a touchdown, as the Cardinals did Sunday, you have to start looking at the coach. And the quarterback. And the GM.

Kliff Kingsbury running in the shadows. Not foreshadowing at all…

Since all three of those people, GM Steve Kiem, Head-coach Kliff Kingsbury and quarterback Kyler Murray got lengthy contract extensions this summer, the team’s performance has nosedived in most measurable categories.

Ah, but for the Bidwell family, who have long owned a football franchise that has not won a championship since 1947, this is depressingly consistent.

Katie Hobbs explaining why she settled for a field goal.

Katie Hobbs refusing to debate has become the defining issue in her campaign, and that’s not going to win it. You can’t play not to lose. That’s how you get 300 yards of offense and no offensive touchdowns.

Not worried.

The Phoenix Suns did not extend forward Cam Johnson’s rookie contract, thus guaranteeing they will pay more for him at the end of next year. Yes – they will, because barring a career ending injury, he will get at least one whopping offer that the Suns will have to match. And that is why Johnson is not likely to pout over this.

Has Suns season started yet?

There’s nothing going on in House of the Dragon that we didn’t see in Game of Thrones.

Speaking of blood in all the wrong places, I’m higher mileage and past my warranty, and every trip to the doctor feels like driving an old car into the muffler shop: you’re come away with a list of things that must be fixed, a list of things that should be fixed, and a list of things that can be ignored, until they get on one of the other two lists.

At the top of my list was a colon biopsy, which I have had, and it was not as much fun as it sounds.

This is NOT the colonoscopy that I also have to look forward to. It is a different but equally expensive procedure.

 Yes, it is an outpatient procedure that I drove home from and was able to get to work the next day, but we are a week past the procedure at this writing and functions are just now returning to normal.

You want details? No- you do not.

Rule 6, corollary 1: This can’t be stressed strongly enough: No one wants to hear about your last bowel movement.

WORD COUNT:

In the past 7 days:

I have edited 10 Sample Cast treatments for Go Action Fun Time. These were already written. I am counting them at 250 words each. = 2500

I started a chapter of the next 64 novel. I didn’t finish, but I am 1000 words in = 1000

Writer’s group = 500 words.

That’s 4000 words, short of my 5k goal. I have some artwork I could throw in, or I could just accept that I did not feel well and that cost me a thousand words, or I could blame it on TV, namely sports and  House of the Dragon, which for all my whining, I am almost caught with.

UPDATE: Between drafting this and posting it, I have finished both the chapter and the remaining cast treatments.

Just in time for Suns season.

Whiskey.

Now we know.

GAFT Cast members – and the reason I didn’t make word count last week either.

What They Are Made Of

Pro sports may not be the most important endeavor we engage in, but it has its purpose. Besides giving strangers something to argue about without anyone getting actually angry, it offers some moral lessons. Teamwork, sportmanship, effort, preparation, all the things we value in productive citizens on display in coloring-book clarity by millionaires running around in shorts.

I speak, of course, of my Beloved Suns, who are demonstrating for the world what they are made of this week.

Let me catch you up on what’s been happening with my Beloved Suns over the past 50+ years.

Beloved millionaires in shorts

Robertson is lower right. You know who 33 is.

The Phoenix Suns and Milwaukie Bucks both entered the NBA in 1968 as expansion teams. Both have had two finals appearances since then. The Bucks are 1-1, winning it all in 1971 thanks to a dominant center (Kareem Abdul Jabbar) they took with their #1 pick (after winning a coin toss with Phoenix for it) (The league was very different in the 70’s) and trading for a legendary point guard (Oscar Robertson).

Robertson was also head of the NBA Player’s Association at the time.

They returned in 1974 to push the Celtics to 7 games including a double OT. The Celtics prevailed, wearing the Bucks out in game 7.  Notable on that Boston team: a young guard named Paul Westphal.

The Bucks have not been to the Finals since – until now.

Phoenix, meanwhile, made an improbable appearance in 1976. The Suns, led by rookie of the year Alvan Adams and a hot-shooting Paul Westphal upset both the Seattle Supersonics and the defending champion Golden state warriors to face the basically same Hondo/Cowens Celtics – who beat them in 6 games including he 3OT Game 5 – which Suns fans forget they actually lost.

Paul Westphal

I was 9 years old and even I noticed how thew small city of Phoenix had shut down for a week during these finals.

Joe Proski, the Suns’ longtime trainer, told me that the best chance the Suns ever had at a championship was in 1979, when they lost the Western Conference Finals in 7 games to the Sonics. The Suns, who had added Walter Davis, lost the last two games in that series by a total of 5 points. The Sonics went on the beat the injury-riddled Bullets in 5 games.

The Suns would appear in the Western Conference Finals 10 years later with Tom Chambers and KJ and the Cotton Express. They traded half their starters for Charles Barkley, and that team, led by rookie head coach Paul Westphal,  made the finals, even winning their 3OT game, but lost to Jordans Bulls in 6 games.

Phoenix felt like Metropolis after Superman died.

Charels Barkley after Superman died.

The Nash-era, 7 seconds-or-less Suns made three appearances in the Western Conference Finals, but never won out.  They had the best offense in the league, but never had the defense or the rebounding to beat the best teams 4 out of 7.

Eleven years after that, here we are: the Suns are back in the finals with a veteran and legendary point guard (who is also head of the NBA Player’s Association) and a #1 draft pick center who is not as dominating as Jabbar was but is getting it done over and around league MVP’s.  

And My Beloved Suns are one more Milwaukie defensive collapse from overtaking the Warrior’s record for most productive back-court in the Finals.

We’ll see. I don’t think Milwaukie can be swept. But I thought Game 2 would be much closer than it was.

While we wait for game 3 some more thoughts about what we are made of:

At Fantastical History we explore weight ratios of golems.

And more solemly, at Are We Lost Yet we remember the Granite Mountain Hotshots as we visit that memorial.

How persistence might bend the Skill to Luck Ratio

Taliesin’s Last Apprentice comes out next November. Unobtanium Bazar has achieved a preliminary goal of becoming lucrative enough to pose a tax concern.  My Beloved Suns are bound for the playoffs.  I am actually on pace with external and internal deadlines for Go Action Fun Time.  It’s almost enough to make you believe in hard work and persistence.

https://www.nba.com/suns/were-back# “Which way do we go to get to the Playoffs?”

Teams that consider themselves contenders do not worry about who they play in the first round.

If you follow the NBA, you already know the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers have had their two big stars benched most of the season due to injuries, and have barely qualified for the playoffs. In fact, they have to win a play-in game Wednesday against Golden State for the right to face the #2 seed – My Beloved Suns.

This has caused wailing among the partisans, for after 11 years out of the play-offs we had nearly forgotten how to hope. At the beginning of the season, the Lakers were figured to finish no worse than #2, and we were pencilled to possibly win a play-in game. In reality, those fortunes are reversed – but not our advantage, the reasoning goes, because now we face the full strength Lebron-era Lakers in round one. There might no be a round two.

Now, put aside the fact that if any lower seed can beat the Lakers in one high-stakes game, it’s Golden State. If the Lakers come through the door first, I am not worried about Lebron James or Anthony Davis dunking at will. The Suns are actually a match for them offensively.

https://www.lineups.com/nba/team-rankings

The Lakers have one of the best defenses in the league, and rebound well, which is how they stayed in contention. The Suns defend well (5^th-8^th best in the NBA depending on what metric you use) and rebound decently. So if you need to worry about something, worry about D’Andre Ayton trying to box out Anthony Davis. If Ayton can at least hold his own, and he has the tools to do that, the Suns will be OK.

My Beloved Suns are one of the few teams enjoying a top 10 offense and a top 10 defense. Of course, so do the Jazz, Clippers, Sixers, Nets and Nuggets. Those are your contenders.

Among them, it will come down to who wants it the most, and who gets that little bit of luck at the right time.

Ball sports are compelling because that ratio of skill to luck is actually the exception in human endeavors.

Capitalism is like solitaire, in that there is a little bit of skill to it, but it is, in the sober daylight, mostly luck.

I play a lot of solitaire on my laptop[s] because it requires sufficient concentration to be distracting, but I can also end it abruptly without consequence when the firmware is updated, or the client finally calls me back with an answer.  The Random Salad version I run on my home machine has Vegas rules which is a cumulative score, but you can only go three times through the deck.

Now the math: there’s a $50 buy-in per hand. A full win pays like $250. My winning percentage stands at 11%. So if you need to win every five hands to break even, but you realistically only win once every 10 hands, this is a losing formula, right?

So I give myself $500 or about 10 hands if I fail to score with any of them.  (I can’t do this in the software, I just have to keep track). If I go below -$500, I lose and have to clear the stats and start over. If I clear over $1000 I declare that I am not going to go broke after that, and also clear the stats.

I lose about 30% of the time – which is the first year failure rate for small businesses. I’ve played easily a thousand games, and my win rate persists at 11%. I’ve maxed out the skill bonus. What makes the difference is the persistence to wait out the bad luck and pounce upon the good fortune.

Now, news:

Go Action Fun Time will resume at my house or by Discord next Tuesday, May 18, 2021 when we will Alpha Test “Dungeon of Darkest Doom”. Meaning I will at least dry run random Sample Cast characters through it, whether any of you show up or not.

I have completed the edits for Taliesin’s Last Apprentice, the sequel to Beanstalk and Beyond. It has a tentative November 2021 release date.

This is a big image because I am announcing a release date.

My version of a Sea Devil

UnObtanium Bazaar has some indoor appearances in August, and some outdoor appearances in September, which we will announce when everything is 100%.

Over on Fantastical History I muse about Sea Devils, or Sahaugin, or Makara, or… its murky.

Over on Are We Lost Yet? We hike up West Pinto Creek in the eastern Superstitions.

Bongo on West Pinto Trail

Now we know.

Some scattered notes between festivals

Some short doses of things we have learned over the past couple of weeks, mostly without context. But first, we are between events. So…

UnObtanium Bazaar will be at the Las Vegas Pirate Fest this weekend!

And Cheryl will be dancing with Shifting Sands.

Feb 29, 2020; Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports

I’ll admit it: I groaned when My Beloved Suns traded Ricky Rubio for Chris Paul. After all, in the shortened 2020 season Rubio was averaging more assists than Paul (who then playing for the Thunder) while scoring only 3 fewer PPG on a Suns team that really didn’t need him to score anymore.  And they went 8-0 in the Bubble with Rubio running the point.

The difference is defense and a culture of defense. Rubio is a good defender, but not the legend that Chris Paul is (6 time steals leader, 9 time All-Defensive team).  And while Rubio was an established veteran who had won championships in Europe, he did not have the credibility or personality to herd a bunch of young wildcats into playing team defense.

Chris Paul is on those boys All The Time, and they are responding.  Sometimes I wonder if Monty Williams’s true role is to attend meeting with management and do the paperwork.

You still feel for Rubio – who was doing a good job, and looking forward to a near-certain playoff run with the Suns this year, instead of maybe playing into the playoffs with his final destination, the Minnesota Timberwolves. But then I reflect that he’s still a millionaire, and the Suns are legit contenders now.

The little mountain range that separates Yuma from the rest of the damn desert is called the Fortuna Foothills. The Border Patrol no longer regularly operates the checkpoint going east into the pass, but it has become a favorite haunt of the Arizona Highway Patrol.

The speed limit on the winding, splitting I-8 through that portion is 55. Not 65.

Just east of the pass there is a safety pull-out and the Az state trooper will be happy to follow you into it, if, for some reason, you are pulled over coming down the pass.

Sometimes its good to be 54, with papers in order.

There are a ridiculous number of online traffic schools listed with azdrive.com.

I got my first vaccination shot. The day after, I came down with what passes – for me- as COVID symptoms: achy with no temperature, but likely elevated blood pressure. (I did not check). This might have been compounded by my thinking “Nah, my arm doesn’t hurt enough to stop me from finishing this yard work”.  Two hours later I’m putting away the tools because it has become clear I will not have the energy to do anything else. I was laid up the rest of the day.

I have to bury that story in my blog instead of telling it on Facebook, because I don’t want to hear about from the crazies. Two days after the shot, I was able to go to work, and the only pain I have is clearly from yardwork.

Over on Are We Lost Yet?, I learned how steep Picacho Peak really is.

After next weekend, I do not have a scheduled author or UnObtanium event until July. You know what that means…

Go Action Fun Time! Every other week.

Also, I am officially in the editing phase of Taliesin’s Last Apprentice (the sequel to the Beanstalk and Beyond) and we are hoping for a November release date.

Now we know.

The Sun Shines Brightly on distant shores – and other notes.

First, some announcements:

 

Go Action Fun Time returns:

Go Action Fun Time info.

[For perspective, for the last game session, I drove like a madman from Vegas to make the game on time, and one person showed up. If that pattern continues, I have a back-load of other projects that need attention.]

My artwork. 

Episode 2 – The Fox Who Hunted Back

In the far future, an uplifted fox holds an ancient grudge.

Saturday, November 9, 2019

1:00 PM

Scale & Feather Meadery

1050 N Fairway Dr, Building E, Suite 112

This is part of the regular Crit Hit event. You do not have to be part of that group to participate.

Scale & Feather has excellent mead, but limited food. 

Not my artwork. 

Episode 3 – The Blistering Death

A mysterious disease threatens to wipe out the pygmies in the prehistoric Congo. You will find a cure. 

Sunday, November 10, 2019

4:00pm

My house.

If I have no players on Saturday, we might play Fox Hunt on Sunday. 

There will be a third episode – Likely Silk Road Part 1 – over the 3rd weekend in November. It will be the Friday night, unless I have to travel, in which case it will be the Sunday. 

 

Now to content:

I will admit it freely: I predicted, to myself mostly, that with an actual starting point guard, and with any improvement from DeAndre Ayton, and with any production from whoever plays power forward, the My Beloved Suns had a shot at 30 wins, and a ceiling of maybe 38 – which would be double their win total from last year.

They just beat the previously unbeaten Philadelphia 76’ers in a game they would have been blown out of a year ago. 

Now we are all thinking play-offs – even in the brutal, brutal Western Conference.

Even if they fall short, they will be in the hunt until the last few games, and it is awesome to have basketball that is not painful to watch again.

 

Regular readers will recall that I go back and forth from Las Vegas for reasons. Last week I learned about the Inescapable Resort Fee, but on the plus side, I discovered a Brit bar (The Crown and Anchor)  that serves Scotch eggs. Those are the dish of choice to go with your Guiness for brunch. 

Consequently, I get a lot of ads across my social media about Vegas things. And I ignore them. I have other sources I consult. 

No resort fee…

Now, I am getting ads about Iceland.

Events in the Jack sequel I am writing  (to Beanstalk and Beyond) take place on the Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland, which, I know from research, is home to like 90 species of birds at various times (none of them puffins) and three species of land mammals, one of which is technically invasive. 

I have no idea how the name would be pronounced.

It has also seen a good amount of volcanic activity since 498 ce (when the action takes place) so I feel free to make up some details about the coastal features. 

I have lost track of word count, but we have been going good the last few weeks, in spite of the travels. I do not normally play Nanowrimo, but I am committing myself here to finish this manuscript by the end of the month. 

Google maps is also keeping track of Jack’s journey:

 

Now we know.

Winning for Losing

You can’t win them all. In fact, most of us lose about half the time. It’s how you respond to losing that determines the cost of the loss. We’ll get into some examples, but first,  a self-serving announcement:

 

There is a new version of Are We Lost Yet? With content. Right now.

 

And more to come.

Anyone who feels sorry for poor Brett Kavanaugh should reflect that he is now on the Supreme Court anyway despite his poor performance in the worst, surreall, contrived job interview ever seen on non-fiction television. He won. Don’t feel sorry for the losers. That defeats the point of that sentiment.

The Suns fired Ryan McDuh a year too late. (Did you really need to keep him around to draft DeAndre Ayton at #1? My daughter could have made that pick, and she uses words likes “sportsball”.) The Suns went from having four starting quality point guards under cintract to having zero under contract – and no prospects of acquiring one. They have run out of time to rebuild. They must at least flirt with .500 THIS SEASON or even guys like me are lost to them.

As it stands, they have a 30 win season at most.

Our old friend Neil Patel blogs about his blog failures.

 

The big lesson I learned was that knowing SEO isn’t enough. Even if you can build links, write content, and climb to the top of Google fast, you won’t stay if people hate your content (or product/service).

 

On a more personal note:

Last Saturday [10/6/18] I wrenched my back but good trying to wrestle an 80 lb chain hoist back into its box. The box in question was above my knees, but below my waist, so I really had nothing to work with but my arms and my back, and despite what we may have learned watching the Six Million Dollar Man in the 1970’s ou can’t do much with your arms without involving your [crunch!]… OWWW Dammit!

I swear I heard a crunch sound.

Before anyone panics, it is my opinion that I strained one muscle, and aggravated my arthritis. It’s arthritis. It’s not a bulge or a rupture or anything of the sort.

One of my rules of this blog is that it is not for whining, but there are some aspects of dealing with lower back pain that are less obvious, and perhaps instructive.

A good night’s sleep is about the worst thing I can do for my aggravated back. It stiffens up to wrought iron, and every move hurts. I have to psych myself up to put on socks. Worse, getting ready for work involves standing for 30-40 minutes, and bending slightly to deal with this or that on the dresser or counter or desk.

But Ibuprofen, and an ice-pack for the drive in help a lot, and by the time I get to the job-site, I have been able to get out of the car with less drama than it took getting into it.

This situation, and the single malt scotch I bought to “medicate” it with, not house guests have helped the word count. Low level pain will absolutely compound exhaustion. Leading to that good night’s sleep that is nearly the death of me every morning.

Can’t win for losing.

I don’t know what that says about my character, but that is how I’m dealing with it. It has been getting a little better every day – so I continue.

Now we know.

 

 

Briefly resurrecting old jokes.

I have recreated my dead(ish) hiking blog Are We Lost Yet?. Sometimes I can access the ghost of it’s presence on my publisher’s site. Sometimes I can’t. I have yet, after six mnths of promises, been able to add to or modify the site, so I am pulling the plug on my end as well.

New hiking content (as well as some old retreads) will appear at Arewelostyet.blog.

Who knows? I might even make a dollar or two.

Old Suns joke:

Why haven’t the Suns ever won a championship?

Because Alvan Adams is still the best center they have ever had.

But I saw the Suns preseason opener tonight, and I believe DeAndre Ayton could get there. As a raw rookie, I yet disbelieve he’s going to be the 20/10 all star he has been projected to become, but he is already starting quality.

Wasted, of course on a team that is still painfully young, and has a 30 win ceiling, despite any of Ayton’s heroics, because they neglected to trade for or sign a starting quality point guard.

In other news, I need a pirate costume by October 12th because of my girlfriend. I just like having that sentence not be random gibberish in relation to my life.

In particular I need a shirt.

Worcestershire sauce, spilled all over the floor, is disturbingly like blood.

Word count is 3000, mostly on the new blog, which is remarkable given my distractions of late.

But … oh my lookit the time.

Now we know.