eBag!

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I got a new bag for lugging my stuff to and from work: an eBags Professional Slim Junior Laptop Bag.  I figured I’d give you guys my impressions on it, just for funsies.

First, it’s a sturdy, well-made bag.  The zippers and stitching all appear to be high quality, and it’s well-padded in all the right spots.  It had one of those across-the-chest clips connecting the shoulder straps, which I hate, but that was easy to remove.  The straps themselves sit comfortably on the shoulder and slip or slide around.  The back of the backpack has a similar cushioning/ventilation setup as most Swiss Gear backpacks, which is nice.

The bag is laid out very well.  There’s a separate, padded laptop compartment that easily holds a 15″ laptop (could probably do a 17″ laptop if you really wanted to), has a dedicated tablet pocket, and a main pocket that holds several sketchbooks/notebooks/etc.  There’s a bottle pocket on one side that can be zipped closed when not in use, and a hard-walled compartment at the bottom of the bag for your laptop’s power cable.

The bag rides well and is comfortable even over prolonged periods with a heavy laptop in it.   This particular backpack doesn’t hold as much as my old Swiss Gear backpack, but it’s more compact and convenient for school.

This bag would also be great for travel.  The shoulder straps can be disconnected and hidden away, and the bag has a slot so it can be attached to a wheeled suitcase.  There are also two handles, one at the top and one on the side, making it easy to carry even when you don’t have the shoulder straps hooked up.

There’s another compartment on the bag with mesh organizer pockets, perfect for storing headphones, writing utensils, and other odds and ends.

The bag also looks great.  I got the heathered gray, which has an orange interior that contrasts nicely.  It looks very mature, and is perfectly acceptable and appropriate for professionals who don’t want to lug around a briefcase or briefcase-style laptop bag.

My biggest complaint is the balance of the bag.  Because it has the hollow, hard-shell compartment at the bottom for your power cable, the bag ends up being top heavy and falling over easily.  You can remove the hard compartment from the bag, making the main pocket deeper if you want, but then where do you put your power cable?  But it’s a small problem, considering I usually lay the bag down and slide it under my desk while I’m at work.

Overall, I’m really pleased with the bag.  It’ll hold up well over time and it looks great.  And it’s damn comfortable to use.  The different compartments are easy to access and cleverly-designed, and you can carry everything you need and nothing you don’t.  They usually retail for around $100, but the site often has sales and coupons (I got mine for considerably less than $100).  Plus, I got a coupon when I bought the bag good for $25 towards another purchase from the site.  That’s pretty sweet.

Budget Green/Red Commander Deck Tech

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I am, as anyone who knows me is well aware, a gigantic geek.  Star Wars, Doctor Who, music, comic books, and so on.

One of my joys going back to high school is the card game Magic: The Gathering.  My friends group would sit around on the stage of the little theater and sling spells back and forth at each other.  I wasn’t the best player, nor was I the worst.

I kinda fell out of playing during college and graduate school.  Lack of players and funds made it tricky to keep up.  Fast forward about a decade, and some of my students wanted to learn to play, and I jumped at the opportunity to get back in.

I also learned about a new (to me) format: Commander, or EDH (which stands for the tremendously nerdy Elder Dragon Highland).  Apparently it’s a format almost as old as the game itself, using a legendary creature (traditionally one of the three-color legendary named dragons, but there are literally dozens of commanders in a variety of color combinations available now) to command a deck of 100 cards with no duplicates (except for basic lands).  There are some other ways in which Commander differs from a traditional game of Magic, but we’re not really going to concentrate on that.

The biggest challenge of Commander is the price tag.  Good Commanders can be pricey, and the best cards that create the best synergies with your Commander can break the bank.  I was looking at a pretty impressive Black/White Commander decklist the other day that came up around $1,700.  No, I didn’t forget a decimal in there or anything.  That’s seventeen hundred dollars.  And that’s madness to me.  Cost is always a barrier to getting into a game like Magic, but it is possible to set up a playable Commander deck for under $30.

For this deck, I tried to stick to cards that were commons.  There are a few uncommons as well, and the single rare is your Commander.  I also tried to stick to cards that were cheap as all get-out.  I used Card Kingdom for my prices; it’s the website where I tend to buy all my singles anyway.  On average, their commons cost $0.25.  The vast majority of the cards on this list cost that.  The most expensive card, amazingly, is not the Commander.  It’s Groundswell, a common that costs a whopping $0.79.

mina-and-denn-wildborn-47213-medium.jpgSo, the deck.  For the Commander, I went with Mina and Denn, Wildborn, a Red/Green 4/4 Legendary Elf Ally creature for two mana of any kind, one red, and one green.  When it’s in play, you get to play an additional land each turn.  You can also pay a red and a green and return a creature card to your hand to give another creature trample until end of turn.

There’s a couple of different synergies to play with here: first, Mina and Denn, Wildborn is an Ally creature, which gives you all sorts of Enters the Battlefield effects whenever another Ally drops.  I’ve included a dozen or so other Allies that boost and buff each other in various ways.

The other thing we can do with this Commander is give creatures trample, so I’ve included a host of big creatures and cheap pump spells to take advantage of that.  I also made sure to include some creatures that have Reach or Flying so you don’t get taken down by cheap fliers.

I also tossed in a handful of burn spells, Red’s specialty.  There’s something to be said for tossing two or three damage at a creature and removing them from the equation before having to decide how you’re going to block, or taking out a potential blocker and letting one of your creatures get through.

Finally, there’s mana ramp: spells and creatures that help you get your land out there faster so you can play your Commander and your big creatures.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the deck list.  Again, I found everything through Card Kingdom, and – even assuming you need to buy the basic lands as well – the total cost for the deck was $27.46, a bargain.

Commander
Mina and Denn, Wildborn

Creatures (31)
Akoum Battlesinger
Beastcaller Savant
Firemantle Mage
Graypelt Hunter
Highland Berserker
Joraga Bard
Oran-Rief Survivalist
Akroan Crusader
Arbor Elf
Basking Rootwalla
Belows Lizard
Anurid Scavenger
Baloth Woodcrasher
Fangren Pathcutter
Garruk’s Packleader
Kiln Fiend
Krosan War Chief
Makindi Sliderunner
Nessian Game Warden
Terra Ravager
Archers of Qarsi
Battle Squadron
Chandra’s Spitfire
Crocanura
Deadly Recluse
Death-Hood Cobra
Destructor Dragon
Ember Weaver
Geist Trappers
Yavimaya Elder
Sakura-Tribe Elder

Sorceries (9)
Rampant Growth
Hull Breach
Explosive Vegetation
Flame Slash
Firebolt
Blessings of Nature
Arc Lightning
Jagged Lightning
Skyreaping

Instants (16)
Aspect of Hydra
Feed the Clan
Electrickery
Temur Battle Rage
Titan’s Strength
Fiery Impulse
Expedite
Titanic Growth
Giant Growth
Groundswell
Naturalize
Plummet
Barbed Lightning
Lightning Blast
Lightning Strike
Shattering Pulse

Enchantments (4)
Khalni Heart Expedition
Forced Adaptation
Snake Umbra
Fire Whip

Artifacts (6)
Swiftfoot Boots
Gruul Cluestone
Gruul Keyrune
Gruul Signet
Ring of Kalonia
Darksteel Ingot

Lands (33)
Dormant Volcano
Dwarven Ruins
Fertile Thicket
Forgotten Cave
Gruul Guildgate
Gruul Turf
Havenwood Battleground
Temple of the False God
Opal Palace
Mountain x12
Forest x12

Book 2 Complete!

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The edits for Book 2 (The Hidden Throne) are complete!  The manuscript was sent off to my publisher yesterday.

I’m glad to have this book finally done and sent off.  Granted, it doesn’t come out until December 2017, but that just means there’s lots of time for polishing and prepping.

What’s up next?  Well, lots of things.  I need to make edits to Book 3 and Book 4.  I need to continue (and complete) Book 5.  I’ve got lots of short stories I want to tweak and polish up and set up in the publishing queue (there’s already one lined up to be published in April 2017).

All in all, I’m very excited to have this project done, and it’s got me fired up to move on to others.

The Beatles – Live at the Hollywood Bowl

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As with most right-thinking individuals, I love the Beatles.  I’ve been listening to them since I was a small child, sitting in the living room with my father, reverentially placing the vinyl records on the turntable and dropping the needle.  I remember that the copy my dad owned of the Hey Jude collection had a skip in “Old Brown Shoe” after second verse, where the record would get stuck in an infinite loop and you had to gently nudge the needle to continue the song.

I never really thought much about their live work.  I mean, they stopped touring in, like, ’65, focusing all their time and energy on creating some of the most revolutionary studio albums of the decade.  And yeah, audiences cheered like mad when the Lads from Liverpool took the stage, but that in and of itself was a problem: there’s the old story that they couldn’t even hear themselves playing on stage at the height of Beatlemania, and there was even a legend that they sometimes didn’t actually bother even playing, since no one could hear.  You could shake your head for the “ooooh” at the right time and drive everyone nuts.

And then this album appeared.  I have a vague awareness that it’s related to a Ron Howard film, Eight Days a Week, about the Beatles during their touring years, and I was at first a bit hesitant to grab it.  I’m a little leery of releases like this; they whiff of cash grab.  But I picked it up anyway, and I’m pretty damn glad I did.

See, the thing I forgot – the thing I’m sure a lot of people forget in the wake of the years the Beatles spent not touring and performing shows – is that these guys could tear it up.  They cut their teeth playing dive bars in Hamburg; if you think they couldn’t still cut loose and barnstorm through a set just because they got matching suits and new haircuts, you don’t know these four musicians.

What strikes me the most about this particular set – aside from the fact that the Beatles still sound like they’re just having a helluva lot of fun playing music – is how breathless it all feels.  The album is 17 tracks long, and very few of them (only four) break the three-minute mark.  The rest are all considerably shorter.  They play these familiar songs, songs we’ve heard hundreds or even thousands of times, at a breakneck pace, as if they’re trying to reach the end of the song ahead of everyone else.  And there’s not much banter or piddling around between songs: someone (usually John or Paul) introduces the next song, usually saying what album it came off of, and then it’s off to the races.  They rip through “Things We Said Today” in 2:18, the Ringo-led “Boys” in a mere 2:08.  On several occasions, John and Paul actually sound literally out of breath at the end of the song, or maybe it’s a sprint.

The song selection is about what you’d expect from 1964-era Beatles: a mix of covers (such as “Dizzy Miss Lizzie,” “Long Tall Sally,” or “Roll Over Beethoven”) and well-known singles (“A Hard Day’s Night,” “Help,” “Twist and Shout,” and “Ticket to Ride”) and a few less-obvious choices (the aforementioned “Things We Said Today” or the actually slowed-down “Baby’s In Black”).  The band themselves are in fine form: everyone’s voices sound good, though John sounds like he’s holding in a laugh for most of “Help.”  Paul’s bass is a deep, melodic rumble, Ringo is clearly pounding the hell out of those drums, and the guitar interplay between John and George feels both well-practiced and loose.  This is music that’s vital and fun, and you just can’t help but sing along.  By the end of the 17-track collection’s 40-odd minutes, you’re as breathless and exhilarated as the band.

Is Live at the Hollywood Bowl a necessary Beatles album?  No, not really.  The studio versions of all these songs are almost uniformly superior in terms of quality of recording and performance.  It’s not a bad introduction, though it’s not going to do much to explain to a neophyte or an unbeliever why the Beatles were such a thing or why Beatlemania was happening.  It is a good time, though, a fun record that creates a snapshot of the Beatles as they strained against the earlier constraints of their sound and the limitations of trying to reproduce it on the stage in a live setting.  If you have any love or appreciation for the Beatles, you’ll definitely find something here worthwhile.

Progress Notes

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Just thought I’d give you guys an update on Book #2.  I’m about halfway through the manuscript, plugging right along a few pages at a time.  There’s a couple of spots I want to go back and completely rewrite now, but I want to get through the basic edits first.

My current goal is to have Book #2 done and sent off by the end of September.  Yeah, it’s not my original goal (which was the end of July), but it still gives my editor plenty of time to go through it (the book won’t be released until next December, after all).

I’m still waiting to hear back from said editor on Book #1.  I’m starting to get anxious about it all, since the book release is only three months out (!).  I’m still not sure what the metrics are for me to consider the release a success; I guess if folks other than my parents read it, I’ll be happy.  I want to try to go to some conventions next year to try to sell it, but we’ll have to see if that’s feasible or not.

In other news, I’ve started another short story set in the Hazzard universe, only this one is told from the perspective of his always-capable assistant, Ellen Typewell.  I’m pretty excited about it, even if I don’t have the thing fully plotted just yet.  I guess we’ll see where it goes.

Favoites: Hamilton, An American Musical

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I did a lot of theater in high school: Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Mousetrap, Wizard of Oz…it was a lot of fun, and helped me break out of my introverted shell.  I was a quiet kid, surprise surprise.

I never did well in any of the singing stuff (I had one of the few non-singing parts in Oz, as the ol’ wizard himself), but I always kind of enjoyed musicals.  Sure, they’re kinda ridiculous, but in my own experience it’s not uncommon for folks to break out into random song and dance.

All that said, I really haven’t ever paid much attention to musical theater.  It’s not that I have anything against most musicals, just that they never really seemed my style.  Rent was okay, Sweeny Todd was pretty excellent, but none of them ever grabbed me the way that so many of my theater friends were grabbed by musicals.

Then I heard Hamilton.

I’d heard a bunch of buzz about it late last year, seen people talking it up and heard everyone who had heard/seen it raving.  So I gave it a listen over Winter Break 2015.

First listen through didn’t really grab me, but I wasn’t paying very close attention.  Then I listened again.  And again.  And again.

And again and again and again.  Over and over.  I was hooked, and bad.  The last half-dozen songs put me in tears every time.  I drew several comics about the show.  Obsessed over it.  Started following Lin-Maneul Miranda (the writer and star of the show) on Twitter.

And then, in Februrary, I got to see it.

A dear friend – my musical partner, Emily – won free tickets (!) to see the show, with all of the original cast.  Sure, it was standing-room-only spots, deep under the balcony and behind a couple of posts, but we were there.  And we sang along, and I cried during the last several songs like I always do, and it was a perfect moment.

And, for every couple of weeks since then, I listen to the soundtrack a couple of times in a row.  I can get through most of the songs without crying now (still not the last couple, ’cause they’re so good and emotional), but it still fills a part of me that I hadn’t even known was empty.  While I’m not really a big fan of hip-hop, generally speaking, these songs speak to me in a way nothing else had before.

The show reminds me of what’s important: family.  Legacy.  Keeping to my principles.  Not throwing away my shot.  Writing like I’m running out of time.  I don’t know if history quite has its eyes on me (not the way I have my eyes on history in my day job, anyway), but that’s okay.

The Summer of ’02 and the Birth of Eddie Hazzard

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I’m going to tell you a story.  A story about mountains, and hiking, and storytelling, and the search for some sort of direction.  It’s the story of how I spent a summer in Yellowstone National Park and wrote a short story about a down-on-his-luck private detective with a serious drinking problem.

The summer of 2002 followed my graduation from college.  My younger brother and I got jobs working for Xanterra, the concessions company that operates food service and gift shops in a bunch of the national parks.  We were working as table bussers in the dining hall at Mammoth Hot Springs, at the north end of the park.  It wasn’t a particularly difficult job; we had difficult shifts sometimes, and were often very busy, but it was simple and straightforward and didn’t require much in the way of thinking.  In our downtime, we hiked, played basketball and soccer, and worked on writing songs.  I also spent a significant amount of time reading; that was the summer I got into Terry Pratchett, reading almost a dozen of his Discworld novels over those few months.

When I was between books, I’d spend time writing.  I had a Mead 5-Star five-subject spiral notebook, in which I wrote poems, songs, and a short story idea I’d come up with.  The story, which I eventually called “Missing Person,” is barely recognizable as the same story that will be published in December as the full-fledged novel The Invisible Crown.  The basic bones were the same: woman comes into the detective’s office, hires him to track down her missing husband, he goes through a series of misadventures until he discovers the missing man’s fate, and…well, telling anything more would be giving away the story.  Eddie was still Eddie Hazzard, though he was less snarky and more a misogynist jackass.  The story itself was more of a pastiche of noir cliches and was set in some undefined time in the past.  The story wasn’t great, but there was something in it that I must have liked, because I kept coming back to it over the next decade.

I don’t know where that spiral notebook is now, which is kind of sad.  I’d like to go back and re-read the original story, the handwritten kernel of a larger, more elaborate work that will finally see the light of day before the end of the year.  Things have changed, but Eddie is still around, and he has lots of new adventures ahead of him in the coming years.

Handwriting vs. Typing

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According to research, there’s a huge difference in the way our brain processes handwritten things versus typed.  I know lots of authors prefer to handwrite their first drafts, then type up the edited and revised story.

Not me.  I always type my stories.  Part of it is that I type much faster than I write.  When I handwrite things, I have a difficult time keeping up with my thoughts.  Words tend to pour out of me in quick bursts, and trying to write it all down by hand only ends in things left unwritten and lots of hand cramps.

On the other hand (no pun intended), when I write poetry or songs, I always write them out by hand.  The few times I’ve tired typing a song instead of handwriting it, the lyrics have turned out absolute crap.  Of course, this means I end up with snatches of lyrics and ideas for choruses written on random pieces of paper and stuffed into pockets or my backpack.  But that’s the price I have to pay to chase my muse, I guess.

Back in the Saddle

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As of this moment (Friday, August 26, about 10:30 in the morning), I’ve been back at work for a little over two and a half hours.  I know what classes I’m teaching for the coming school year (team-taught World History II and Government), what classrooms I’ll be in (I’m a nomad this year, bouncing from room to room like a man without a homeroom), and who I’m teaching with (one veteran teacher and one fresh-faced second year).  It looks – admittedly, from what little information I have so far – like it will be a pretty good year.  I’m feeling re-energized after my summer off, ready to tackle new topics and get down in the trenches, as it were.

Of course, that means we should probably review the summer’s activities and assess my performance, yes?

I had three primary goals this summer:

  1. Start exercising again so I don’t die of a heart attack or something similar before I hit the age of 40.
  2. Drive for Uber to make some extra cash.
  3. Edit book 2 and maybe even finish writing book 5.

I can say item #1 has been going pretty well.  I’ve been exercising consistently, and I’m up to running a mile most every day.  Should be up to two miles by the end of September.

I did a bit of driving for Uber, but it wasn’t as productive or profitable as I’d imagined it would be.  Part of it was because I was usually busy chauffeuring my wife to and from school during the times when I’d have been able to make the most money, part of it was I didn’t really want to drive in DC much (where the demand and thus pay were usually higher than out in the ‘burbs), and part of it is just the flaws inherent in the ridesharing app and business.  I’ll probably continue to drive for Uber once in a while during the school year, but I don’t see it being something I do as a steady source of income.

I edited a grand total of 11 (eleven) pages of book 2 this summer!  That’s…not great.  However, I did do a lot of plotting in my head for book 5 and beyond, and came up with a couple of short story ideas in the Hazzard universe, so it wasn’t completely wasted time.  And I tend to do better when I’ve got a full schedule anyway.  My ADD brain just works more efficiently when there’s the pressure of lots of external deadlines, so I’m sure I’ll get the edits done on book 2 pretty fast now that the school year is upon us.  Heck, since my classroom is already set up, I may even be able to get some editing done today.

Kicking Television

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See the image at the top of this post? Yeah, that’s what my tv screen currently looks like. It is not supposed to look like that. It’s this tv’s version of the blue screen of death, basically.

Someday, years from now when consumer goods aren’t made with planned obsolescence built in as a feature (so, like, never), I will be able to make it through an entire summer without something needing catastrophic repairs or replacement. Last summer, the Wife’s car needed $1400 in repairs and one of the cats needed almost twice that in dental work. This summer, it’s just the tv, but it’s still a source of frustration.

That being said, did you know I have a Patreon page? It’s more set up for folks who follow the comic, but anyone can support me on it. Anyone, including you fine folks! You get rewards and stuff, I get some extra cash to support my comic and novel and music pursuits. Maybe consider it, huh? Even a dollar or two a month will add up eventually.