I recently had the urge to share some information I had acquired through trial and error. That information being how to use the "lists" feature on Facebook. So with a little poking around, I discovered the eHow website and wrote my first article.
How To Use Facebook's "Lists" Feature If You Game
It all started when I stumbled upon the Mafia Wars game on Facebook and began playing just to pass the time. Then Vampire Wars. Then Farmville. Soon enough, I was taking time out of my day to play them all. Or rather, using time that should have been spent doing other things. Like, laundry or dinner. Okay, so I got a little addicted to them. There. I said it.
I have since grown somewhat bored of them. But during the time that these games were consuming me (it was entirely their fault! I swear!), I learned a few tricks about using Facebook itself, that the other four million players of these games might be able to use. Please have a look. I get a small amount of money (like two cents or less) for every view.
Let me know if you have any suggestions for the article. Even suggestions for small grammatical items that you think might make it better, would be welcome.
Since it's been two years (really?) since I've posted, I thought I put some recent information to me on here.
I have:
- Starting writing a book
- Cut my hair short (pictures forthcoming)
- Bought a motorcycle ("99 Ninja ZX6R) and painted it white (pictures also forthcoming)
- Started working part time in a bookstore (which I LOVE)
- Got myself an office (really just a shed of the rubbermaid variety and, wired it for technology)
- Lost 25 pounds
- Completely changed my outlook on life for the better.
Not too bad.
I recently spent the better part of a week trying out writing programs. This was prompted by the building frustration I began feeling with the limitations of my word processing software. Where did I put notes? How could I rearrange scenes easily? etc. My criteria was simple.
- Have a simple to use interface
- Allow me to rearrange my scenes easily
- Keep track of my notes
- Develop my characters personalities via a database
- Be able to format my text
Programs I tried:
Writer's Blocks
New Novelist
Dramatica Pro
yWriter
Here's my reviews:
Writer's Blocks
Pro's
- Great visualization tool
- Reformats idea "blocks" onto your writing space. What that means is that you can rearrange your ideas how you like then click a button and they appear as headers on a blank page.
- Fairly simple interface.
- Color coding boxes to help with idea arrangement
- The arrange box features proved more confusing then helpful (they kept overlapping)
- No place for notes
- No place for character development
- Expensive at $149
Gets 2 out of 5 on my helpful meter. One you have all your ideas this might be a useful program to use to arrange everything.
New Novelist v.1.0
Pro's
- Very simple interface
- Good idea base if you have never written a novel before (complete simple story outlines)
- Notes area
- Good (not great) character development area
- No text formatting (I want to be able to double space for hard copy editing later)
- Scene rearrangement is not built in
- Authored in UK English (not a huge draw back)
- Less expensive at $59 but more than I was hoping to spend.
Gets 3 out of 5 on my helpful meter. I think v 2.0 might be more helpful but I did not try it.
Dramatic Pro v4.0
Pro's
- Very in-depth plot line development. Asks you lots and lots of questions.
- Extremely, and I mean extremely, in depth character development
- Lots and lots of help guides to explain all the terminology (I think it assumes you have a degree in writing)
- Never-ending possibilities for creating character depth. (I'm not kidding. You could spend months on it.)
- Could not figure out where to actually write.
- If there is a scene arrangement area, I couldn't find it
- Super complicated. It would take a month of Sundays to learn how to use it. (I just want to write! Is that too much to ask!)
- All the pro's above are also con's in that you spend so much time thinking about your story you never actually get around to writing it.
- Out of my budget at $255
Gets 1 out of 5 on my helpful meter. The only reason I even gave it a 1 is that it asked me some leading questions that provoked me to flesh out my story more. That was only after I stumbled upon that particular feature which I could not begin to tell you how to get back to.
yWriter4
Pro's
- Very simple interface
- Easily rearrange scenes with drag and drop
- Very good notes area
- Perfect amount of character development
- Great price FREE!
- Developed by a writer who happens to also be a programmer
- Word count targeting
- No text formatting
Gets 4.5 out of 5 on my helpful meter. Again, the text formatting thing kept it from a 5. But the author Simon Haynes has a discussion group where you can input your ideas, which I guess he may consider putting into his program. If you want to check out yWriter, you may do so here. Needless to say, this will be the one I use. I am still writing in my Word Processor and pasting my work into the program, but maybe he'll update it later so I don't have to.
One last note:
I was going to try Thoughtline Software until I read this review of the software in the New York Times. The review looks dated (1987?) but given that I had already tried the other four mentioned above, I decided not to give a spin. If you have tried the latest version, I would love to hear your comments about it.
Hope this helps someone.
Aloha, Laura
Rufus was found by my friends Kim & Charles in 2000, wandering around in Bellevue on the North Side of Richmond. He was so covered in fleas and ticks that when they put Frontline on him, his face turned black from all the fleeing bugs. When they took him to the vet, he was diagnosed with heartworms and every intestinal parasite the vet had seen. The vet actually said, "I have never seen this many parasites in a living animal before." But Kim & Charles were getting married and going on their honeymoon, and they didn't have the resources to keep him, so they asked me if I'd foster him and take him to the AARF adoption stands on Sundays. So I did that. He had never seen stairs before, so I had to teach him how to walk up and down my apartment stairs to get in and out of the house. He immediately walked off a leash and knew how to sit and shake. He never barked, begged or got up in anybody's grill about anything. He was instantly the best dog I'd ever known, and he did it all on his own. He didn't get adopted at the adoption stands, because he was older---the vet said between 5 & 8 years old. Nobody wanted an older dog. But he fit so well into my lifestyle that I just finally adopted him and that arrangement worked great for both of us.
That was 8 years ago. We've had a million adventures, a ton of car rides, camping trips, dog park visits, walks with friends, thousands of bowls of kibble, hundreds of chewey treats, and an immeasurable amount of love. Everybody who meets Rufus loves him instantly. He is just a really fantastic dog.
Over the last 8 years, he has slowly gotten more arthritic. He got cataracts and lost his sight, and then his hearing started to fail. He slowed down more and more, and finally one day about 2 years ago on a walk, he had a series of strokes, and we had to stop going on long walks. Within the last year, he stopped letting me trim his nails---he would YALP any time I got near him with nail clippers, even though I'd only nipped him once, many years ago. So between his arthritis and his dracula nails, he has a hard time getting up to a standing position on hardwood floors. And within the last few months, he has stopped being able to negotiate the front steps, four concrete steps up to the door. More recently, he is having trouble with the back steps, only 2 steps up. And then he started to have accidents in the house, which he's never done. He had more and more trouble getting into the car, until finally we would have to pick him up and put him in the back seat. And then two weeks ago, he couldn't get out of the car, he fell out and smashed his face on the curb and bit his tongue. That was the end of the car rides.
It's been hard watching my best friend lose the ability to get around. He's got a growth on his side that started off the size of an egg, and it's now about twice the size of a softball. Like a cereal bowl growing under his fur. The vet said he was too old to biopsy it, and anyway, what are we going to do, chemo? she joked. No, she's right, no chemo. He started getting skin growths everywhere. One on his eyelid growing in towards his eye that is about the size of my pinkie nail, that constantly grows and bleeds and causes an infection. We have to clean his eye constantly, wiping the scabs out of his fur and keeping the infection down. The cataract in that eye has gotten much worse because of the constant irritation, I think. He's got another bleeding growth on his head, and a sore on his back just above his tail that bleeds and heals, bleeds and heals.
So last week I asked my mom to get her neighbor with the backhoe to dig us a spot at the farm, and I made an appointment with the vet for Monday morning at 9:15. I'm not sure you can ever be "ready" for losing a friend like this, even when it's so obvious that they are suffering and having a hard time. But I think about how close he was to death when my friends found him, 8 years ago, and how much Roof and I have been through together... He's a great dog. He's a once-in-a-lifetime dog, a legendary dog. We'll tell stories about him until we die. He's that kind of dog. That good. That smart. That funny.
I love you, Roof. You're my best buddy. I hope I did right by you.
Rufus: ? -- Nov. 24, 2008
Tonight for dinner, I made Aloo Gobi and Garlic Naan. I highly recommend both of these recipes:
Aloo Gobi
Garlic Naan
It was DELICIOUS. I served the Aloo Gobi over jasmine rice, and after mixing together all the ingredients in the Aloo Gobi, I let it stew in the crock pot for an hour to really blend the flavors and soften up the veggies.
It was SO GOOD. We are super psyched to have leftovers. We froze the extra naan so that we can toss it in the toaster and heat it up again quickly, brush with fresh butter. YUM.
I just spent an hour in the attic. It's hot in the attic, and dirty, and dusty, and dark. There's one bare bulb in the middle of the 700 square foot space, and it's only 60 watts. Even at 9am, with the sun up and shining, there are only four small windows. It's dim, at best. And hot.
The attic is sort of our only storage space. It's seven hundred square feet of junk storage right now. Don't know what to do with something? Cram it in the attic. We've been doing this for years, so it's understandably ... messy up there. Messy is an understatement, actually. It's piles of junk. Teetering towers of trash. Lamps, a bed frame, a rug, two broken vacuum cleaners, christmas lights, all my sewing equipment, all of our tools, cans of paint, boxes that we moved from Allen's old apartment and never unpacked, shoe boxes stuffed with bank statements, piles of magazines, three full sleeves of R-30 fiberglass insulation, holloween costumes, all the boxes from every electronic anything we've ever bought, ever.
It's a lot of stuff.
I just spent an hour in the attic. I rolled up the rug neatly and taped it into the rolled form. I started a huge YARD SALE pile. I threw out a giant box filled with garbage, stuff that's broken or useless or that we're never going to use. I put things away in groups: suitcases here, pet stuff over there, yard sale pile here, tools there, paint supplies over there, holiday stuff in bins over here. Trying to wrap my head around the madness. I was finally able to see the floor, and I thought, holy fuck. We need to have a yard sale, STAT. I'm just going to put my foot down about some of the chaos. It's too much. It's too much STORAGE. We don't need that much stuff. We aren't using it, so why are we keeping it? We need to call Clean House to come do the "keep, toss, sell" treatment to our own house. I think I need to stage an intervention on my soon-to-be husband, before the junk overwhelms us and the ceiling collapses on our heads.
...now what?
For the first time in years, I do not have to go to work today. Or tomorrow. Or any time in the foreseeable future.
I'm going to take a few weeks off before I go back to work, because I haven't done that... ever.
I actually don't even know where to start today. Like, there is a bunch of stuff to be done around the house, but Allen is like, "Fuck that, why don't you stay in your PJs and watch movies all day?" I don't even know how to do that. I don't know how to not do anything all day. I'm already planning to vacuum, mow the lawn, clean up the back yard, do laundry, etc. Maybe make a trip to the farm! Maybe I will make salsa! Maybe I will work out! And scrub the cabinets! And give Rufus a bath! And take care of the car accident stuff! And renew my driver's license! And and and and and......
The world unfurls out in front of me, filled with possibility. So many choices! So little time! I kind of feeling like jumping up in the air and high-fiving myself. I am kind of freaked out by not having a schedule for the next few weeks, but I am also kind of fucking psyched about it.
Good: Our self-destructive friend who went to Mexico for his last hurrah and amazingly survived it unscathed, has finally been diagnosed as schizophrenic, and is finally on good meds and is back in school and receiving disability checks, and is apparently doing quite well. It is sort of a miracle that a man that determined to end his life would not only survive his best attempts, but then recover to the point that he has, and so quickly. It is hard to get too excited, though, as the drugs always seem to work... at first. At least now he is court-mandated to take his meds, and his parents can have him medicated by force if necessary. So, there's that.
Bad: I was in a 9-car pile up on I-95 at the Susquehanna bridge in Cecil County Maryland this weekend, where the 7 cars in front of me all slammed into one another, I stopped and then the guy behind me ran into me. Every single car in front of mine was towed, and half of those people went to the hospital. I have some light whiplash, my car is going to need some body work, and the dude who hit me is going to need a good lawyer, because the last time I got hit, it ruined the resale value of my car from being reported on the CarFax report, so they're going to pay me for that loss up front. Sorry dudes, life sucks, you should not follow people so closely on the interstate.
Ugly: One of Allen's friends has been suffering from brain cancer, and he passed away this morning. We all knew he did not have long, but it never fails to shock you how stunningly fast it all happens. We are grateful that he is finally finished with his surgeries and no longer in pain, but he will be so deeply missed. He was ridiculously creative and brilliant and young and smart and good looking and everything that people are when they are young and die too soon. He is loved, and missed.
Today is my 35th birthday! So far it is pretty awesome. Allen bought me this tight little laptop so that I can get on the intarwebs without borrowing his computer. That dude is awesome to me. I am excited to get married to him. He rules it!
