Archives for February 2005

I decided to double post the entries for this story here and on the
Fragments of Fiction blog. It will be interspersed with normal posts here, but on the other blog it should be the only thing I post there, or so I anticipate. Who knows, the journey is what it is all about.

I still don’t know the characters or where this is going, just kind of rambling along.

Years ago her mother had warned her that if she spent too much time with the guys she would never find the guy. At the time she had blown it off, attributed it to a woman who had never known a man besides her husband. Married at 19, pregnant by 20 and the mother of three children by 24 she couldn’t possibly understand why it was important to experience life and to live a little. So she wrote it off to motherly advice and went about her business.

She had always liked men and they had always liked her. She appreciated all the things that made them different from women, strong masculine hands, rough hewn features, broad backs, thick hair and more. There were so many little things about men that attracted her and so many different men to choose from.

So she set off to prove herself right and her mother wrong. She dated a lot, but was very selective in who she gave herself too. Not everyone made the cut. She wouldn’t talk herself into liking a man strictly to have a boyfriend, she’d rather be alone than settle. Besides, those relationships never worked, they were train wrecks waiting to happen.

Her thoughts were momentarily interrupted by the bright lights inside the bus station. With the exception of a man sleeping on a bench and the woman at the ticket counter it was empty. The fluorescent lights made the faded yellow paint look even more washed out than it was.

The checkerboard laminate floor was raised in places, sticky substances pulled at her shoes. In a different time and place she might have taken that as a sign that she was supposed to stay, but for now it was just gross. She choked back her thoughts of what made the floor so sticky and headed for the ticket counter.

It was 9:30, the next bus didn’t leave until almost midnight. Five hours after departure it would reach Durham. Then it would be a matter of finding transportation out to the lodge.

That gave her seven hours of downtime. Seven hours of being with herself. Some people had trouble being alone, they couldn’t take the silence, couldn’t handle the lack of contact with others. That had never been a problem for her. Her brother had locked her in a closet and left her there in the dark for hours. He thought that he was punishing her. She merely closed her eyes and went to sleep.

The harder part of the trip would be contending with the other passengers. She wasn’t unsocial, but she was not inclined to spend the rest of the night sharing recipes, stories of home or being mauled by some guy who thought that he had found an easy way to pass the time.

For a moment she considered turning around. She could walk back and step right into the life that she had left. It was almost comical to her. He had no idea that she was about to run off into the night, no clue that she had decided that their relationship was dead.

And for a moment she felt badly about it. Men were not real observant. He would not have noticed that they hadn’t had a real conversation for weeks, would not have noticed that she hadn’t initiated any sexual encounters and even if he had, he would certainly not have realized that she was no longer present.

He wasn’t a mind reader, she couldn’t expect him to fix something that he didn’t know was broken. It would be easy to come back like nothing was wrong and to just pick up where she left off, but it wasn’t honest and she couldn’t have that, couldn’t live with herself.

About two weeks ago I wrote about an email I had received in which one of the readers had asked if you could request that I write about a particular topic.

I received a number of requests for fiction, which is in a sense how the story I have been writing came about and I have been steady at pumping out bits and pieces. But I wanted to check in again to see if there were any other requests. I do have a few that I haven’t followed up on yet, but it is always good to be thorough and check back in with you.

So, have at it folks, if there is something you want to see just let me know and we’ll add it to the list. It can be anything at all, can’t guarantee that I will write about it, but if you don’t ask it might never happen. So ask away.

The possibility that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
– Abraham Lincoln

Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.

– Thomas Edison

When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this. You haven’t.
– Thomas Edison

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
– Albert Einstein

If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.
– Gen. George S. Patton

I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.
– Wayne Gretzky

If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time-a tremendous whack.
– Winston Churchill

GENEVA – World airlines spend as much as $1.6 billion a year on mishandled baggage, a company that provides computer-tracking technology to the industry said Tuesday.

The main factors causing a bag to fail to arrive with its owner at the intended destination are growing passenger numbers and tighter security, said SITA Inc., a Geneva-based company owned by the air transport industry.

“Keeping track of the billions of pieces of baggage transported around the world annually has become a major challenge,” the company said.

SITA estimates that it costs the industry an average of $87.50 when a bag fails to show up on time. Even though the percentage of mishandled bags is only 0.7 percent, the total cost mounts quickly.”

What would be interesting to know is how much is spent on purchasing airfare so that we could look at the cost of lost luggage relative to that. My gut instinct is irritation because it is safe to assume that they are passing the costs on to the consumer, but I am curious just how much that is, $1, $5, or $25, it makes a difference.

A blogger who shall remain nameless asked me about the three different stat counters I use. Said blogger is a smart fellow and had his own diagnosis for why, and as a true sci-fi buff was concerned with how I navigate the space time continuum. BTW, he is a good guy and if he wants to identify himself he is welcome to.

It is an excellent question, but before I answer that allow me to mention something that has been nagging at me. I really enjoy using Answers.com, just a ton of information there. I was playing around with providing you non-geeks with a definition of the space time continuum and it made me remember that I wanted to point out the utility of this service.

So check this out and be sure to read down the entire page, there is a lot there. You have to love the translations. With a little work I could start publishing in 13 different languages, imagine how many more people I could bore. 😉

I started using G0stats because I was curious to see how many people were coming to my blog. I found it to be helpful, but I still had more questions. Someone else suggested that I try Sitemeter, so I installed that and found it to be similar to Gostats, not all that pleasing.

And then I installed Statcounter and I have found that to be the most interesting and most comprehensive. I check in periodically to see if the numbers go up or down and to see what the most popular stuff is. I find it interesting, but I don’t write more or less because of what it shows me.

I still blog for me, this is so cathartic. It is an easy, healthy method of blowing off steam. And it is still one of finest methods I have of getting to the meat of my thoughts and feelings on various topics.

The keyboard provides an easy method of transcribing my thoughts down. Sometimes it takes having the words in print for me to realize what my thoughts really are.

Anyway, one of the things I have noticed about the three different meters is that they are not uniform in their tracking of visitors to the blog. I don’t know what metrics they use to define a visit, but since they are different there is a discrepancy among the totals.

Hope that helps answer the question a little.