Author: Teel

What’s up, people? Am I going to have to reduce the Most Recent posts list on the Modern Evil homepage to 20 now, or are posts going to pick up again? There are so many people out there with access to post who simply aren’t using it… It’s sortof sad, really.

I know, I know, I haven’t been posting much myself lately. I blame … umm… President Bush. He kept calling me up and asking for my advice. And then doing precisely the opposite. Of course then the people who really wanted control over the President arranged to have my phone made useless so he couldn’t call me anymore. I guess we’ll just have to see what he does without my advice. Maybe he’ll call you next.

Hey! How about that war? I heard that as soon as it was over, people would start spending money again! Except … less people are coming up to Pine, less of those are coming into the store, and still fewer of those are spending any money. And when they do spend money it is in smaller amounts. Less and fewer and smaller, not just than last year, but than winter (considered a time of year not really worth bothering to open to many locals) this year, and than during the war. Sure, closing the forest might have something to do with it, but considering it was 113 degrees in Phoenix today, there should at least have been more traffic in town today than we saw. Yeah, well, I heard Bush was working up to a new war, with Iran this time. Which is specifically what I’ve been advising him not to do, right up until he stopped calling me. Because maybe if there’s a war on, people will come spend their money. Maybe if we go to war with North Korea (I’ve been telling him not to battle them since he first called) there can be a thermonuclear exchange and people will really start to open up their pocketbooks, maybe even buy some ‘fine art’. Just like the 34th Rule of Acquisition says, “War is good for business.”

Did I mention I finally got properly spurred to actually begin the work of re-writing my novel? Yeah. Nothing to do with Bush. See, like I said a couple of weeks ago, I was invited into Cafepress’ Print-On-Demand Book Beta. That is, I submitted to them an electronic copy of Forlon, plus a front and back cover, and they sent me a free copy in exchange for my feedback about the product. Fantastic. Partially because it means they’ll have the finished service available soon and I can start using it in a variety of ways. Plus, when I finally got my ‘professionally printed’ copy of Forlorn in my hot little hands, it became a real thing for me that I hadn’t got it re-written yet. Did I mention that Cafepress if ‘featuring’ me at their booth at the Comicon this year? They’re thinking about having several copies of my novel available for purchase at the con. Which scares the bejezzus out of me. (Not that bad, really. Have you ever had a bejezzus take up lodging in your abdomen? They’re pretty annoying.) This isn’t a finished novel, ready for mass consumption. I put it online to try to get myself to edit it sooner, not because I thought it was wonderful. Except then everyone who read it told me they thought it was wonderful, and everyone who didn’t read it said they didn’t like it because nothing bad ever happened to anyone in it. The worst of it was in the first chapter, and even that began after the bad things had happened. Which was fine when I was trying to get a novel written in a week, but … even I knew right away that it wasn’t a very satisfying read. I’ve been working on ideas for the re-write since the moment I stopped writing, November 30th, but I didn’t get started on the rewrite until several weeks ago, when I finally figured out what I wanted to do, made up index cards for blocking out the major story arcs and how they fit together, and managed to get eleven pages re-written to fit the new structure. And then I stopped again. Things just kept getting in the way. Until I had Forlorn in my hands and realised that if I don’t have it totally re-written in time for them to produce it for the con, this feeble first draft may end up in unwitting consumers’ hands. So a couple of days ago I got all my resources together and started re-writing. I’m just over ten thousand words into a novel that should prove to be between 120,000 and 165,000 words long based on the story I’ve developed. Yes, it will not be less than twice as long as Forlorn. Here’s a problem though: unless something strange happens around here in the next week or two I simply will not have enough hours to type it in before the con. Either way, I’m working on it.

I finished reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix this afternoon. I checked it out from the library and took it in slowly, only reading a couple hundred pages a day. Actually, a big reason for this is because of the time I’ve been putting into my novel. I’ve been reading Harry Potter while I wait for people to show up in the store. I can’t really work on my novel in that environment, though. So at night, when it IS possible to work on the novel, I’ve chosen to do that. Anyway, Zoe and I should be having a MEVBC about it soon, probably laden with all sorts of spoilers. If you’ve already read it or are about to be done reading it, let me know right away so we can try to include you in what may be the last MEVBC meeting ever. Briefly: It was a good book, and much like Harry, I don’t believe that that character is dead for good. I also want to say that if I had access to the classes and teachers and materials that Harry and his schoolmates have, there’s no way I would slack, fall behind, or have trouble paying attention. Oh my gosh. I would probably get all O’s, and take double classes like Hermione. What an opportunity! That is all.

Also, just added to the list of things I don’t like anymore, but used to: jonathan rosenberg. He’s welcome to refer himself to the name of this blog.

Okay, I’ve blathered here long enough. I’m going to go back to work on my novel now. I’ll let you know when I get to 25,000 words. Probably Tuesday night. We’ll see. Depends on whether Bush figures out how to email me, I guess.

So, I was looking around at various phone models offered by various companies, reading reviews and comparing battery life and price and features, and I had just about determined that my choices for Verizon-compatible (ie: CDMA-compatible) mobile phones were between phones so ugly they appear to have been carved out of the branch of an ugly tree by the act of already-hideously-ugly people hitting them with their faces, and too-expensive flip-style phones. Before today, it never occurred to me that “lesser of the evils” would be a flip-phone, one of the worst ideas to come from the damned souls of Man.

Even Nokia, who does have two phones they claim work with Verizon, is forcing my hand. The two phones in question? Remnants of when the bulk of Nokia’s American phones were ugly and cheaply built. Luckily, Zoe pointed me to the Nokia 3586i, a gesture in futility.

For while the phone IS a CDMA phone which based on every word of its technical description should be fully compatible with all of Verizon’s service offerings, it is not listed as being compatible with Verizon. Now, the last Verizon rep I spoke to about phone models advised me that any CDMA-compatible phone not hard-wired for another mobile service provider could be used with their service. So, theoretically if I just went ahead and purchased this phone, I could call Verizon up and get it working. Except that Nokia won’t let me buy it through their site and there does not appear to be any way to order it online through any other company. I even tried figuring out what zip codes US Cellular, the service provider they say supports the phone, provides said service in and plugging that into the Nokia site to at least get a price on the thing, but no US Cellular-supported zip code seemed to do the trick.

There are ZERO Nokia 3586i phones on eBay.

If anyone is aware of a purchase-able mobile phone, compatible with CDMA, which does not appear to have been born in a nightmare, please let me know. Thank you.

“The sweet’s not as sweet without the sour.” – Vanilla Sky

So, yeah. I may not have mentioned this, but a little over a month ago, right after I went way overboard on my minutes, I agreed to an additional year of service with AT&T to get a plan with more minutes. Which meant that I actually agreed to an actual contract with AT&T, as opposed to the one they were trying to hold me to. I hadn’t had any real problems with them or with my service or any of the rest of it (except for the using almost double my minutes in April, which cost WAY too much) since the first week after I moved up here and got my phone set up, so I figured that as long as I wasn’t trying to move even further out of their network in the next year, it shouldn’t be a problem. At most, I might move to Mesa, which would actually be moving into AT&T’s actual networked area.

As you may or may not know, the original problem had to do with the fact that AT&T has no antenna within almost 100 miles of me in any direction. Once we got past that, convinced them to give me a plan and a phone that would roam in a ‘home calling area’ (AZ, Nevada, CA, maybe more… ) for no extra charge, AT&T and I seemed to get along fine. I live in an area that is ONLY serviced by Verizon Wireless. They have the ONLY towers in Pine, and I believe the only ones in Payson, as well.

So … today I was trying to make a call or two and I kept getting a Verizon message telling me to get my credit card ready if I wanted to complete my call. I have heard this message in the past, during prime time hours on holiday weekends, and I assummed it was because too many Verizon (or non-Verizon) callers were using the network. It hasn’t been too big a problem. Except today is not a holiday, and I was trying to call at lunchtime. I tried again an hour later, a couple hours later. I tried calling other numbers, my voicemail, local numbers, long distance numbers, 800-numbers, I tried dialing 611 to get customer service, and got Verizon customer service. I tried talking to them about it and they insisted it couldn’t possibly be their fault and I should call AT&T. I told them the truth; I had tried calling AT&T’s 800 number and got the Verizon ‘get your credit card out’ message. They were sure it was something wrong with my AT&T account, there couldn’t be anything wrong with their network or with the fact that I’m an AT&T customer roaming on their network. Fine. While I was talking to him, my modem hung up anyway.

So I called AT&T on the landline. And the guy went throgh the basic stuff, is my phone on, does it say ‘ROAM’, then he looked up my phone model and walked me through telling it it was a phone, it was with AT&T, and please play nice when roaming… well, you know… I punched in a code or two. And my phone ‘rebooted’ and I tried making a call and still got the Verizon message. And he was sure I needed to get to Flagstaff or Phoenix to get my phone reset, and I explained that first, I’m 100 miles from there, second, I couldn’t possibly get my phone to Phoenix before Monday (my dad is coming up Monday, and I could go with him and/or send it down with him when he goes home), and third, when I first set it up here, there was something they did to get it temporarily recognized up here before I could get to an official AT&T area. The AT&T rep offered to call technical assistance (level 2, really, since I’d punched the technical assistance button on the incoming phone tree to get to this guy) if I didn’t mind waiting. Waiting? No problem.

After a while he came back on the line. He explained that the reason I couldn’t make a call today was that the agreement between AT&T and Verizon was no longer in effect, and that he had no information indicating that it would go back into effect. He couldn’t say for sure it wouldn’t, but he couldn’t say for sure it would, either. This is the sour. I just agreed to a year-long contract with an early termination fee and everything with AT&T, which it did not occur to me at the time was really contingent on AT&T and Verizon playing nice with each other for the remainder of my time in Pine. Sour.

And the sweet, which wouldn’t have been sweet without the sour? Which actually would have been frankly irrelevent without the sour? The AT&T rep offered to let me cancel my AT&T contract and he would waive the early termination fee. The contract I just agreed to no longer held me, and I didn’t have to worry about paying a big fee just because AT&T and Verizon can’t share like good children. Sweet. And he said I didn’t have to decide tonight, he would notate my account that if I decided to terminate my contract for this reason, my early termination fee would be waived. This is sweet.

That is, sweet except that if these two big boys can’t get along I’ll really have to switch to Verizon. And buy a new phone. And agree to a new contract. And get a new phone number. Damnit. Fuck! Okay, I just made a couple of calls to Verizon (no problem, since no matter what number I dail, it goes to Verizon) and found that I can get an equivalent plan to what I have now except with 100 less minutes. Same price, just about the same roaming area, Unlimited nights and weekends, unlimited long distance, but 700 minutes instead of 800 minutes. Which should be plenty, but in light of having to buy a new phone and deal with distributing a new phone number, it seems like a bad value to me. Did I mention that unless I agree to a two-year contract, I have to pay a sign-up fee? Damnit, more sour.

And all their phones suck. Kyocera, LG, Samsung, Motorola? I think it was probably these ugly phones that kept me away from Verizon in the first place. Not one phone without that dumb antenna nub sticking up, waiting to get broken off. More than half of them are ‘flip-phones’ which is an idea I believe should have been nipped in the bud, years ago. Who wants to have to unfold their phone?

And I definitely can’t move my phone number over. And 2/3 of the Verizon people I spoke with today were unhelpful and one of them was downright rude. If this is how they treat someone thinking of signing up for service, how do they act once they win you over?

Sigh. I’m going to take closer looks at the phones they have available, see what I can find out. Maybe take a look and see if Nokia or SonyEricsson is producing a CDMA-compatible phone; one of the Verizon reps I spoke to assured me that as long as the phone wasn’t pre-branded to a particular company and was capable of CDMA, they could work with it. I’ll see. I’m also going to talk to my father about his plan, though I believe I use far too many minutes to join their shared minutes plan.

So … yeah, if you try to call me and just get my voicemail, it’s because AT&T and Verizon are spoiled brats who can’t play nice together. Oh, and depending on how things go, I may never get back to you. Email me instead. I should be able to get email … well, until copper and data stop cooperating, after which point I guess I’ll have to look into getting sattelite internet access.

As you may have noticed, the Save Modern Evil meter has recently reached its goal. Modern Evil has been saved! This is primarily due to the sale of original paintings, as shown in the simple list below:

Income from direct donations: $11 (less ~$1 in Paypal fees)
Comissions from Cafepress sales: $23.23
Revenue from the sale of paintings: $270
Total revenue generated from 2/1 to 7/1: ~$303

I made a huge post about this last night right before my browser inexplicably locked up trying to find me a definition at dictionary.com and I lost the whole thing. The gist of it was that clearly I should work more on marketing my paintings and worry less about Cafepress.

Last night I updated all the paintings in the ‘Art‘ section of Modern Evil to reflect their serial numbers, as well as their new pricing structure. Now every painting’s price is based on the price you’d pay if you walked into my antiques shop/gallery here in Pine (The Old Settlers Shops, 3972 N Highway 87, Pine, AZ), although all internet sales are 50% off regular prices. Every painting has a ‘Buy Now’ button that will allow you to instantly purchase the painting via Paypal, though if you are an Arizona resident we can cunduct the transaction in person and not have to worry about shipping costs and bank processing fees. If you come to the shop/gallery to buy paintings and mention the website, I’ll give you the 50% discount in person.

A certain amount of merchandise will remain available through Cafepress. Their response to my closing over two dozen stores was positive, and they offered to make one of my shops a ‘premium’ shop for a complimentary period – I have not heard back about this, but if they do, you may see some improvements in the ease-of-use of the shop. Also, I am working on re-writing my novel and … probably even if their prices seem a little high, I’ll offer them for sale directly via Cafepress when that service becomes available. I am also researching some other options for generating revenue for Modern Evil.

We’ve tackled one goal, but remember; hosting is an ongoing cost. We need to raise another $300 by this same time next year. I’m going to be updating the banner ads soon to reflect this change; instead of ‘SaveME’ it will be ‘Support Modern Evil’, and instead of a meter that goes to $300 for hosting, $300 for hosting will be the halfway mark. If we can earn more than that in the next year, we can look into adding some exciting new things into production. I’m also looking into offering anyone who gives $20 or more in direct donations an original character sketch of any character from any medium, and anyone who gives $35 or more an original 8″x10″ painting, and anyone who gives $50 or more an original 9″x12″ painting.

Oh, and Modern Evil contributors: I’d like to put together a compilation of work by Modern Evil creators, not just of work that has been on the site necessarily, but just different work by the people who write at Modern Evil. Short stories, poetry, poignant personal prose, interesting memoir-like segments of your blogs or diaries, maybe some black and white drawings and … well, if you think of something else, let me know. Then I’ll put the stuff together as a book and we can sell it through Cafepress’s POD service. I don’t know what the pricing structure they’re planning on for their final book service will be, but depending on what sort of commission can be reasonably made on such a thing we may want the proceeds to go directly towards paying hosting costs, and only look into dividing up proceeds after hosting costs have been met. Or something else. I don’t know, maybe 50% to hosting directly and the rest divided up… It could come out to pennies a copy for each author, but your work would be out there. Just an idea I had.

I’ll stop blathering now.

Oh, wait. One more little thing. I’ve just rounded up all the prices on Modern Evil’s Cafepress merchandise to the nearest $10. Which means most of it is $20 an item. Remember, these prices as well as these items will stop being available after July 16th, so act now!

Do you remember that episode of ST:TNG where a hyperintelligent life modified Barkley to be not only increasingly and ridiculously intelligent, but to drive the Enterprise to the other side of space, so the hyperintelligent life never had to go anywhere themselves? I don’t really, either, but past a certain point, Barkley begins spending time in the holodeck trying to get some of the increasingly complicated and intricate ideas out of his head and he talks the computer through putting together a system that will allow the ship to access his mind directly … you know, because having to speak everything out is just too slow and troublesome … anyway, he’s not quite got it together yet, and he’s listing off the components that will need to be incorporated, and their configuration, and the computer says something dumb like ‘that is an unknown component’ because he’s asked the computer to put something in (something with a ridiculously future-sounding-in-that-star-trek-way name) that had not yet been invented, and his response was something along the lines of “well here’s how you build one…” and he begins to describe the construction of the ridiculous thingamajig before the shot cuts away.

Relatively often I find myself confronted with something where I can either wait for the world to catch up with what I want to do, or say “here’s how you build one…” and create it from scratch myself. Like, I was looking for a web-based (PHP, CGI, whatever) RSS aggregator… and I guess there are a couple of ‘services’ that are web-based that do that sort of thing, but … well, they’re basically running the same sort of desktop RSS aggregator that everyone else is using and outputting the feed data to customized web pages. There are a few people who have had the idea and said they are going to build one… generally who gave up after a month or two with no results. And I was about ready to just go ahead and wait again…

Except that I guess that while I was searching my brain was working out what a PHP-based RSS aggregator would need to do, exactly, and … I found myself saying “Here’s how you build one…” So, for the last couple of days (on and off – I’ve been doing a lot of reading, too) I’ve roughed out some code on paper and … well, I’m going to be doing two things. I’m going to write a custom PHP application that parses XML from RSS files in a way that is useful to me, and… I’m going to create a new XML namespace to extend RSS with additional information I’d like. When this goes operational, it will mean that every section and blog of Modern Evil (and sites on the Modern Evil Network) will have a useable RSS 2.0 feed that any desktop RSS aggregator that can interpret RSS 2.0 will be able to read, plus if the other part of my plan works the way I expect the little pop-ups that posters see every time they post will no longer be necessary.

Yeah. And … uhh… I’ll probably also be extending the RSS XML to have special tags for online comics feeds, and maybe provide some sort of easy-to-use front end for accessing them … like magic. yes. magic.