All the Billion Other Moments

Here we see Florida having more troubles with the election. Luckily there is something for them to recount.

Electronic voting is being rolled out as a great step forward, and it could have been. Unfortunately, numerous flaws have been just sort of “accepted” as the price we pay for progress. It is vital that a paper trail exist to verify the votes if need be.

You can learn more at verifiedvoting.org and the Electronic Freedom Foundation.

If you’re in the US and of voting age, go vote! You may want to check your local paper (or local paper web site) and see what’s going to be on the ballot. No, it’s not just "Who do you want for President?", there are other things going on out there.

Now get outta here!

Rather than wait until after the election to have ballot troubles, Florida decided to get an early start this time around.

The gang at The Secret Monkey are running another contest. This one looks like a lot of fun. They’ve provided a photo-comic with empty word baloons. Funniest entry wins.

Check it out!

It’s not much, but I hadn’t updated the V6Lib page in a long time, and I just did.

Things are slowly but surely moving along with the novel. I have 16,694 words completed in the first draft so far. I’ve been using a graph to track my progress through the outline vs my progress through my word count goal.

I thought some people might find it interesting so read more if you want to see it.

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If you know me, you know I love TiVo. It’s with that in mind that I ask everyone to take a few minutes and please check out the Save Betamax site. It has almost nothing to do with the long failed video format, and a whole lot to do with your living room.

Here’s my short version of what’s going on: Legislation is being passed to stifle innovation in this country to help protect business models that have failed to keep up with the times.

Please take a moment and check it out. Decide for yourself.

This year had to be one of my all time greatest birthdays. It started simply enough. I woke up in a hotel room next to my wife, with my daughter sleeping nearby in the hotel crib. We rose early, ate free breakfast and hit the hotel pool. I love to swim. I can not remeber a time in my life when I could not swim, and I really don’t get to do it very often. It still makes me feel like I’m four years old without a care in the world. Playing in the pool with my daughter is even more fun that just swimming around. She smiles, says silly things, and tries not to get too wet.

After that we went back to our room, showered and got ready to head on out for the day’s activities. Then my cell phone rang. It was my friend, Brom. I have to be honest, my first thought was "What’s wrong with his website.".

I answered it anyway. "Hello."

"Hey man, how’s it going?"

"Ok…"

"Can you hold on a minute, actually."

"Yeah."

The next thing I knew I heard singing. It wasn’t just Brom (who is quite an excellent singer when he wants to be), but also my good friend Dursin. They sang the traditional birthday song, and it was quite amazing. It’s great to have two such wonderful friends in the world. I’ve known Dursin since we were 5 and Brom since we were 10 or 11. Thank you both so much.

After that, the family and I headed off to the Third Annual National Buffalo Wing Festival. We ate a lot of chicken, and had an all around great time. If you like Buffalo Chicken, and you can get there, I recommend it.

Then we went to the Walden Galleria Mall, wandered around amongst masses of shoppers (it was "Tax Free" week) and Rachel had her first McDonalds cheeseburger. She asked for a cheeseburger out of the blue, so I bought a couple. We each had one, and we ate them together. Rachel then terrorized people by pushing her own stroller around. I good time was had by us.

Returning to the room after a long day I had "Happy Birthday" emails from my Mom, my Dad, and my Kung-Fu Instructors (which was a surprise). What could be better? Rachel was too excited to go to bed for quite a while, but that’s ok.

There wasn’t a moment of the day that I wasn’t having a good time (even when the two year old melted down). Thanks to everyone who made it so special.

My total word count on the novel passed 10,000 yesterday. That’s about 7%. Hopefully I can write every day this week, because we have a busy weekend coming up.

Update: The contest has been extended to next Friday!

My friends over at SecretMonkey.net are running a contest this weekend. You can win a free signed copy of The Secret Monkey #1. The contest runs through Sunday, so hurry on over and check it out!