Just what I needed...

Yeah, something else to waste time online. The Rockstar INXS rockers have blogs. I haven't previewed many of them; just those of the rockers I like.

It's hard to believe that next week INXS will be a whole band again. If Marty wins, I'll buy their new CD unheard; otherwise I'll have to hear some of their tuneage on the radio before I shell out my tip money.

I can't figure out why I like Marty. He's a screamer; I don't like screamers. He's not the cutest guy I've ever seen. I don't even like large doses of rock music. Maybe I'll be able to put my finger on it sooner or later.

Inmates running the asylum

When my kids were little I taught them that rules are made to keep everyone safe. I believed that until I realized that rules are made for stupid people. OK, we all have stupid days, so there are times when they apply to everyone, but would we need rules if people didn't do stupid things?

I sometimes read the blog of another military wife stationed in Hawaii. She commented today on how they have dress codes on their base, and it got me thinking about how many rules we've had over the years. They vary from base to base, and some have more than others, but there are more rules at any military base than there are in almost any civilian sector job I've had. (And I've had a lot of them.)

It all clicked this morning. This is a little convoluted, so bear with me.

The military is a government agency. As such, it is over-run with politics. Because of political correctness, we can't just have rules for stupid people; that would be discrimination. We'll make more rules (some of them stupid) so that that non-stupid people will be equally inconvenienced.

I could put up with that except for one thing: The people making local policy are stupid.

Hmm...

The internet is fixed again. It looks like Tess may have been a mitigating factor but not the only one. It's been very sporadic the last few days, running like wildfire one minute, like molasses then next, sometimes dropping off for hours with no warning. That doesn't sound kitty chews to me, and the tech did say that the wiring wasn't secured the way it should be. He also said they've had some trouble with the access point. Honestly, I think they tried to launch their service before they worked out the bugs. I hope they get it together post haste so we don't have to change providers.

I've got the first edit and type-in changes done on Rogue Pawn. I've put the two pieces together and formatted it to get rid of extra page breaks, etc. It shook out to just shy of 134,000 words, about 20,000 less than The Dragon's Lady. I'm glad to have made progress, and I'm hoping that Scott will be able to help me identify weak spots.

On a related note, Holly made reference in her blog to notecarding. I think I read that workshop once before, but it hadn't sunk in. I think I might get some index cards and start something new in preparation for National Novel Writing Month in November. I'm also struggling with Marissa's part of DR2 and may use this to get me going. She's not a main character, but she is important to the story. I could knock that part out if I could figure out exactly what her plan is, but she's pretty secretive. I have to work today so hopefully I can get some cards while I'm out and let the plot ruminate over the dishwater.

Cat-astrophe

We've been having a little trouble with our internet connection lately. Sometimes we can get on, other times we can't. Our neighbors who have the same service have had intermittent trouble, so we didn't think too much about it. When it wouldn't connect, we pulled the power cord on the modem, plugged it back in, and it was sometimes fine and sometimes not.

Long story short, we checked the cables. All three have kitty teeth marks. Tess has been munching.

I called our provider last night. They'll come out tomorrow afternoon and replace the one that goes to their box, after which I'll crawl under the desk and wrap the part that comes into the house with double-stick tape. That oughta fix her!

If it's especially quiet around here for the next few days, that's why.

Oh, yeah, and thanks for telling me to try the connection, honey. You saved me from having to go to the library terminals.