Tommorrow starts NaNoWriMo

Tommorrow is the start of National Novel Writing Month. It is a bunch of writers attempting to hack out 50,000 words in the space of thirty days. I did it last year, and did not succeed in making the word count (I was short the amount of words that got chewed up by my term papers).

And after the end of the month, I never looked at the rough draft ever again. I cringe to think about it; it was not publishable even with the use of a flame-thrower.

Obvivously, I am a glutton for punishment for I am attempting to do it again this year, despite having even bigger research papers to accomplish. So tommorrow, if you hear a fury of typing, it is probably just one of the NaNoWriMo lunatics.

Funny quote: Palin--columnists

Here is a funny quote I read in connection with Sarah Palin be set up as the scapegoat if McCain loses:

And so he chose Palin. Is she really a diva and a whack job? Could be. There are quite a few in politics. (And a few in journalism, too, though in journalism they are called “columnists.”)

Gee, I have been called a diva and a whack job...can I get a column?

Learning by doing

The other night, I was over at a friend's site. She was messing around with her website, which is about the local Denver Capitol Hill Reiki Circle that she is organizing. And as I was watching her, I realized how much I learned about web sites and search engines over the past year.

If I was to make a guess about why I have learned so much, I would have to say that it has been because I have been doing work at it. For me, no amount of reading will do the trick unless I am actually engaged in using the material. Periodically, besides the online writing I am doing, I take a whack at improving the local Golden Dawn lodge's website.

And the site is starting to pick up traction in the search engine results, and the lodge is getting new applicants. The earlier pages, such as the home/index page, badly need to be redone. I know a lot more than I did a couple of years ago when I first started to put the site together.

I suspect that a lot of people learn the same way that I do; we must do before we are capable of improvement. It is true of my writing, my web design, and my Golden Dawn lodge work. It is just my style of learning.

MoraChat follow-up

To anyone curious about my results with MoraChat:

Quite honestly, I gave up on it really quickly. I liked MyLot better. And college homework and regular writing took priority. By now, I presume that they have wiped my account.

So I don't know how MoraChat is. Other than I did not like the setup of their pages: it was hard to find topics to post on, and looked amatuerish.

I probably am not going back to that website ever.

Oh really?! Death row ads

Looking at one of my old entries on another blog, I noticed that the entry had attracted ads about "Facing Death Row---Lawyer in XXX can help."

Now, being a writer, this made my mind start to turn over. (Occuptional hazard.)

How many death row inmates are cruising the internet? How many killers are browsing our web sites? Is there a market writing for these individuals? Is a lawyer that advertises though adsense worth it? And does anyone click on these ads?

Only the last question has an answer that I know: of course, people click on those ads; otherwise people would not be taking them out.

But what type of lawyer takes out an ad on adsense trying to attract killers and murderers (not necessarily the same)?

Makes me wonder what type of weird adsense ads other people get with their blogs.

Semester so far

I have not posted a lot this semester. For that matter, I have not done a lot of writing either. Except for Campus Connections, which is the student ran newspaper for the Community College of Denver.

The reason for the lack of writing this semester is simple: it has been a rough semester for me. There are moments that I wonder if I have not bit off more than I can chew by enrolling at the University of Colorado at Denver.

It is mainly the Ancient Greek history class that is kicking me in the behind. I am reading about two hundred pages a week, and looking for about three terms that might be on the next test (most of which show up in only a single paragraph in those two hundred pages). So far, I have not got better than a C on any assignment or test in that class.

I am doing ok in the Foundations of Physics class (formerly known as Conceptual Physics), and am in a good position in Literature of the City. Heck, I think I did ok on my Economics of Race and Gender midterm; if I am correct, then I am doing better in that class than my Greek history class.

I have never studied so hard for a class and gotten such bad results before.

Even writing for the student newspaper is a better use of my time, and I think that the writers' meetings are way too long and way too disorganized.

So if you were curious why I havent been posting that much, or writing that much, there is your answer: the Greeks are still kicking the rears of barbarians like me.