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Posts tagged as “We Call It Living”

Before the dawn of the dawn of time…

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Continuing my attempts at computational archaeology: before the dawn of the dawn of time ... or at least the dawn of the Internet ... computer people had .plan ("dot plan") files, chunks of text you could read from the command line using the finger protocol. This protocol is often deactivated nowadays, but it was Facebook at graduate school at Georgia Tech in the early nineties. The following was mine, from apparently late 1995. Like my attempt to find my first web page, this obviously isn't the earliest version of my .plan file, but at ~15 years it's the oldest bit of online presence I've found about myself yet. Obviously, some things have changed ... the "love of my life" died (the love itself part, not the person) shortly after writing this, as evident from the editor's note. I then went on to marry the lovely Sandi Billingsley, the real love of my life. Some of the other friends listed are no longer with us, or no longer with me and my friends. For the rest, well, read on - this is a completely unfiltered snapshot of me fifteen years ago:
The Centaur's Bio (his Old .plan File) Hi. This is the personal page of the Centaur, otherwise known as Anthony Francis. I'm ostensibly a graduate student in Artificial Intelligence at the College of Computing, but that's just a hobby. For the past eight years, I've been a science fiction writer, a vocation that became professional when I published my first short story, "Sibling Rivalry," in the February 1995 issue of _The Leading Edge_ magazine. The love of my life is a redheaded historian, Shannon Duffy. When I'm not with her I spend time with my best friends in the Edge Group, which consists of Michael Boyd, David Cater, Anthony Francis, Derek Reubish, David Stephens, and Fred Zust in the core Edge franchise as well as William Morse, and Stuart Myerburg in our recently opened Atlanta branch. [Editor's note: Sad to say, Shannon and I are no longer together; we simply had different ideas about where we wanted to take our lives. We're still friends, though, and hope to keep it that way.] I'm sorry, I can't tell you what we at the Edge Group do; we'd have to kill you (we do bad movies, good software, and great times, in no particular order). When I'm not hanging with the Edge Group I'm jamming with my other best friends Steve Arnold, Eric Christian and his fiancee Chalie, Joe Goldenburg, Kenny Moorman and his wife Carla, Ruth Oldaker, Mark Pharo and his wife Yvette, Patsy Voigt, and Fred's girlfriend Marina. The weekend tradition is to jam with William, Stuart, Mallory and sometimes Joe at Anis, Huey's, Oxford at Pharr, Phipps and wherever else we can get into trouble. (Occasionally, you can find me at the Cedar Tree or Yakitori Den-Chan with Mark & Yvette). If not, I'm either hanging with Fred & Marina, Eric & Chalie and Dave & Ruth up in ole Greenvile, South Carolina, watching (or filming) movies at my house, eating dinner with my loving parents Tony and Susan Francis, perforating the odd target with musket fire at Eric's or just noshing on late-night food at Stax' Omega or IHOP. If I'm not doing any of the above, I'm liable to be curled up with Shanny in O'Flaherty's Irish Channel Pub in the French Quarter in New Orleans, listening to Irish ballads and soaking up each other's company over an Irish Coffee (her) and a diet Coke (me). Since people have asked, my favorite authors are H.P. Lovecraft, Larry Niven, C.J. Cherryh and Douglas Hofstadter, in that order. My favorite TV show is Dr.Who, followed neck-and-neck by Babylon 5 and Star Trek (TOS TNG TMS DS9 VOY ANI, in that order) and nipped at the heels by the Tripods and the Six Million Dollar Man. My favorite comic book is Elfquest, followed closely by Albedo Anthropomorphics, Superman, Cerebus, and Usagi Yojimbo. My favorite band is Tangerine Dream, although I do listen to Rush, Yes, Vangelis, and Genesis. My favorite style of music is now called "New Age" (uuugh) but used to be called electronic music, minimalist, or just electronic rock. My second favorite style of music is soundtrack music (music for the visual image). I can stand rock. I hate disco. Rap held my interest for a while, but it officially lost me with "Whoomp(t) there it is." My favorite cuisine is Lebanese, a gift from my parents and my family, the best damn extended family in the whole wide world. I shock my parents and family by also appreciating Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Cajun, Mexican, Italian, Korean, Vietnamese, Spanish and Indian cuisine; I also have a great appreciation for the foods of the South, a culture which I find to be both vastly underrated and overdiscussed abroad. When I'm not dining out or curled up with a good book or laptop computer at Captain D's at Corporate Square in Atlanta drinking inordinate amounts of iced tea, I'm at home honing my patented personal tabbouleh (Lebanese salad) recipe, slowly learning to cook Chinese, and honing the art of grilling steaks and microwaving potatoes so that they both finish at the same time. My favorite form of literary expression is science fiction; my preferred style is flashbacks within a framing story, usually in third-person limited, although I've begun to experiment with a more liberal third-person style derived from the narrative structure of contemporary motion pictures. My primary means of plotting and expression are visual images. My favorite fictional creature is, of course, the centaur; however, the genetically engineered spaceborne professionals of *my* fiction bear little resemblance to the bearded primitves that stalk the wooded glades of your average fantasy novel (unfair though that may be to my inspirations, which include the very nice halfhorse folk of the Giesenthal valley dreamed up by Donna Barr, the ambiguous Titanides from _Titan, Wizard, Demon_ by John Varley, and Timoth the warrior sage of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons comic. Just don't call my Porsche St.George a halfhorse too; she'll be liable to pummel a fictionalized version of you in a story sooner or later if you do). My favorite style of AI is symbolic AI with a situated/behaviorist twist. I play around with memory, agents, case-based reasoning, natural language understanding, and semiotics; I have nothing against genetic algorithms or connectionist systems other than the fact that I don't have time to pursue them as avidly. I also fiddle around with animal cognition, and can talk your ear off about chimpanzee culture and dolphin language if given the chance. My favorite style of science is Kuhnian with a cognitive flair. I have no respect for positivism or any of the horrible things it's done for science. My philosophy is somewhere between Kant, Plato and something no-one has a name for yet. To sum: the universe is real; deal, but don't assume you have the answers and *don't* assume that a single level of description can capture all of reality. My religion is theist; I believe in the tripartite single God at the heart of mainstream Christianity, and accept the messiah aspect as my savior. My theology is liberal Episcopalian with a strong theological background in my Catholic upbringing. My disagreements with the Catholic Church are primarily theological and only partially pragmatic; I gave up on waiting for them to catch up with Jesus, but they're still mostly good people. The religious right, on the other hand, is a bipartite oxymoron: neither religious nor right, and certainly not in keeping with the anti-Phariseean radical I follow. Genteel religious discussions are welcome; rude evangelizers will be biblically and theologically diced *before* I turn you over to Shannon, Joe, William, and Eric. Bring references to authorities, but don't expect me to respect them. Arguments against evolution will either be summarily flushed or buried underneath my copies of Eldredge's _Time Frames_, A.G. Cairns-Smith's _Genetic Takeover_, Dawkin's _The Selfish Gene_, _The Saint Paul Family Catechism_ and my copy of the New American Bible, flipped to the part of the preface discussing evolution. Read the gospel of Thomas; it's an eye opener, and you haven't even seen the Dead Sea Scrolls yet... Politically, I am a Goldwater liberal. I believe in war, gays in the military, religious freedom, no state-mandated prayer in schools, free ownership of automatic weapons, licensing of gun owners, aid to the Contras, prosecution of IranContra, investigation of Whitewater, and support and respect for the president regardless of party. I voted for George *and* Bill once each, don't regret it, and would do the same knowing what I know now. I believe in AIDS spending, military spending, research spending, and the space program; I also believe in welfare reform, cutting waste, a line item veto, and perhaps even some kind of budget amendment if I could be convinced it wouldn't get us into trouble in wartime. I don't believe in "school choice", "political correctness", "multiculturalism", "Rush as Equal Time", "the liberal media", "the conservative media", or "anti-special-rights amendments". I don't think we should take "In God We Trust" off of our coins and I don't think we should picket funerals of people who had AIDS. I don't believe acceptance of homosexuals as equal citizens has anything to do with the disintegration of the American family. I don't believe in hobbling industry with overregulation nor do I believe in letting them cut down trees holding endangered species just because they planned our logging programs poorly. My political heroes are Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Margaret Thatcher.
Interesting. Well, that is what it was. There are definitely opinions I would tweak, things I now think I got wrong, and snapshots of relationships that no longer hold. But the Edge is still here, I'm still here, I'm still writing, I'm still a Christian, and still a scientist. SO, all things considered, I think I'll have to stand by my dot plan file after all. -the Centaur

Before the dawn of time…

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...there was my ORIGINAL home page at the Georgia Institute of Technology: Amazing, yes, the frames, the under construction sign, the 'bouncer look' photo, etc. What amazes me even more? It's still up, as of 2010-07-16. Wow. But wait! This just in ... according to the Wayback Machine, this wasn't even the first version of the page; this is the first version of my home page: Actually I can tell this isn't the actual first version of my page - there are some links missing from it that were in the very earliest version of the page, and it has frames, which I don't think were in the very first page I put up - but this is the oldest recorded version, from almost 14 years ago. Aeons in Internet time ... especially considering the very first web page was only six years earlier, about 20 years ago: How things have changed in two short decades. -the Centaur

At last, my Inbox is Empty again…

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... leaving only 2083 messages in my "1. Active" pile and 460 in my "5. Blog It!" pile. Sigh. Expect a large number of stale, no-longer topical posts over the next six months as I reduce the above numbers to something manageable. -the Centaur

It’s finally happened…

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... in one of those instances which exposes really how shallow you are, I find myself gratified that it, indeed, has finally happened. What is it?

Professional recognition.

Since I was a child I always wanted to be a "real science fiction writer". For some reason, I got it in my head that this meant membership in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Not sure how that happened, but it did: the external approval of that group of strangers somehow came to matter to me. So I tried to join.

First I wrote a science fiction short story that got published in 1995 in The Leading Edge magazine, but when I checked I found that the Leading Edge was not eligible for SFWA.

Then I wrote an urban fantasy novel that got published in 2010 by Bell Bridge Books, but when I checked I found that Bell Bridge was not eligible for SFWA.

Then, I missed the deadline to register for Comic-Con this year, and decided, what the heck, I'll try to register as a professional. After all, I've written an urban fantasy novel, drawn its frontispiece, and even created a webcomic. And for years I've felt that comics are my future as a creator. So, what the heck, why not?

Ding:

Dear Comic-Con Creative Creative Professional Attendee,

Thank you for registering for Comic-Con International 2010: San Diego

Please take a few moments to review your registration information...

Well. Allrighty then.

Yes, it's shallow of me to base some part of my evaluation of my personal self worth on the approval of others. Yes, this shows a deep-seated insecurity that needs to be addressed by a deep increase in maturity. Yes, yes, yes, I'll work on that. But still ...

... it's finally happened.
Well, enough basking. Back to work on Blood Rock. But wait - it is indeed working.

Boo-yah.
-the Centaur

Playing Hooky from GDC 2010

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two laptops for two jobs

Today I'm playing "hooky" from GDC 2010. I look forward to GDC every year, where I see friends, catch glimpses of new games, and learn more and more about artificial intelligence and games. But for various reasons (cost, cats) I don't have a hotel this year, and have been driving up to San Francisco from my house in the South Bay.

It's fun seeing the gang, especially the always engaging Neil Kirby, and fun watching the speakers, especially the entertaining R.A. Salvatore. But yesterday I spent four hours in the car - two there, two back - a grueling experience in the morning in which I not only missed breakfast, missed the Starcraft talk but almost missed the NEXT talk, and an equally grueling experience in the evening racing home to the Saint Stephen's in-the-Field Vestry meeting.

I'd have lot more time in my life if I didn't work two jobs - one by day at the Search Engine That Starts With A G, and one by night as a science fiction author - and so things pile up. By the time GDC rolled around I was already worn thin working and prepping my novel, and then after the drive up and back each day I was totally exhausted, so at the end of each day I'd just feed the cats and crash.

So this morning, I got up, earlier this time, in more than enough time to make the first talk ... and said, "screw it."

What a relieved feeling! Felt like the best decision that I'd made in a long time. I cleaned house, did laundry, played with the cats ... and then popped open the work laptop around the time I'd normally LEAVE for work and worked for a few hours. Yes, that's right ... I took a break from my vacation to work. Not that I want to, but there are things that need to get done that take a lot of "wall clock" time but not lots of programming time, so I answered some email, submitted a changelist, fired off a Mapreduce ...

... and then took a two hour nap on the futon in the library with a cat on my chest.

It was a pretty good day ... so far. And it isn't over yet.

-the Centaur

ok i decide to go out now u wait for me ok

Pictured: the two-laptop setup I use to keep my work and writing life distinct (just change the cables to give a different computer the main monitor) and Gabby, my very most computer literate cat.

Compline: iPad Edition

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Well, evening has come and the day has passed, and I have tossed as many Mapreduces into the Great Cloud as the Great Cloud will take - time to go to bed. I leave you with these thoughts, overheard in the wild today:
Woman #1: And did you hear about the iPad?
Woman #2: Oh. My. God. That has to be the stupidest name.
Woman #1: I know. Don't they know what it sounds like?
Woman #2: I think their brains must have been off for the entire development process.
Woman #1: And what gets me, there was a Mad TV skit about the "iPad" like two years ago.
Woman #2: Don't they know people are making fun of it? Don't they care?
Woman #1: Maybe they think at least someone's talking about it.
Woman #2: I dunno. It seems so ... useless. Who's going to carry that?
Woman #1: It's like a giant iPod you can't talk on.
Woman #2: Might be good for some people. At $499, maybe for my nephew?
For the record, I know a lot of people interested in an iPad, I'm very impressed by the drawing features ... and I'm not going to get one as I do not buy closed platforms. (My Mac has a UNIX command line, thank you very much, and no dang App Store is needed to put software on this thing).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQnT0zp8Ya4]

I'll be buying a Spring Design Alex to help my favorite bookstore Borders and my favorite phone OS Android ... assuming that Steve Jobs doesn't crush his enemies, drive their tablets before them, and hear the lamentations of their programmers.

Good night.
-the Centaur

This … this is WORKING …

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revised version of dakotas face

Oh ... oh my goodness. I'm working on a revised version of Dakota's face for the frontispiece of Frost Moon and ... and ... "working" is not just a metaphor. This is actual work. I'm sketching, and soon after that I will be writing again on Liquid Fire or Jeremiah Willstone. As part of real work, and not just some crazy hobby anymore.

Too cool.

-the Centaur
Pictured: the revised face of Dakota Frost for the frontispiece, pre-cleanup and compositing into the original drawing.

I got teary-eyed

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU]

Yes, it's an ad. So sue me.
-the Centaur

Just found a short between the keyboard and monitor…

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... otherwise known as an ID10t error in the operator component.

Trying to install a new device, wasn't working, and the reason was I never applied the firmware upgrade that the instructions clearly said had to be required. Anthony's nth (7th?) law:
If you don't follow all of the instructions, you won't finish in the goal state.(*)
(*) Except through dumb luck, or just possibly deep knowledge. Did I have deep knowledge in this case? No. So if you're doing voodoo, try, perhaps, following the complete recipe before you complain your zombie isn't coming back to life as advertised.

-the Centaur

3:30am – pager duty suuuuuuuucks EOM

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PS: For those not in the know, EOM stands for "End of Message" - generally used for a subject-only email without a body, like sending someone an url:
Here's the presentation: http://short/url EOM
Technically I guess that means the EOM in the header is not an EOM, and also by corollary the PS is not a PostScript since it introduces the body of the message.

Well, then, in that case: Hello, Internets!

The Year of Blogging Dangerously

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So, last year I had an extraordinarily complicated series of New Year's Resolutions which almost completely failed. Looking back, I succeeded at my major goals for the year, but the complex plan of weekly / monthly things completely failed.

So, here's a simpler set of New Year's resolutions, goals, what have you:
  • Establish a weekly pattern of exercise, including some karate
  • Set aside some time each month to do art in addition to writing
  • Post to this blog on the average once a day, measured each week
The last one is the hard one, of course; I'm already 4 posts behind. But I have such a huge backlog of articles and ideas in folders that I shouldn't find this too hard ... if I can just change my habits.

In other news, Warren Ellis has already blogged 365 times since January 1st. Damn him.

-the Centaur

The Uncommon Common Cold

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From Wikipedia:
Common symptoms are cough, sore throat, runny nose, nasal congestion, and sneezing; sometimes accompanied by 'pink eye', muscle aches, fatigue, malaise, headaches, muscle weakness, uncontrollable shivering, loss of appetite, and rarely extreme exhaustion. Fever is more commonly a symptom of influenza ... The symptoms of a cold usually resolve after about one week; however, it is not rare that symptoms last up to three weeks.
Aw, $@%#!!!, I'm in the "not rare" it-sucks-for-a-long-time category.

For more information:
Still, probably time to see a doctor at T+3 weeks....

Worst. Vacation. Ever. – Till now.

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Ten days off to write! No trips, no vacations, no distractions. Just me and writing ... but: The "Terminator" version of the common cold. Car repairing turned car totaling and car shopping during hard raining. Cat fights and cat urine. And a desperate scramble to catch up in National Novel Writing Month turning what I love ... writing ... into a chore.

And then my wife came back Saturday night.

That was great, but things didn't get better right away. See #3 above, cat urine: our incompletely housetrained Gabby the Cat decided to urinate on a big soft squishy pillow to either
  • (a) reduce his insecurity by marking his protector's stuff with his scent (the official story as told by everybody's favorite cat books)
  • (b) show his irritation at his protector locking him in a room (what I strongly suspect based on my study of animal cognition, which might be summed up as saying "just because they can't talk doesn't mean they're completely unaware idiots")
... just as I had run a full load of laundry in the washer and thus couldn't wash it right away, just as I had to run to the airport so I had no time to dispose of it properly, and just in time for the heater to kick in and propagate the smell through the entire house by the time we got back.

Stepping through the door was ... an unpleasant moment.

But we persevered. We went out for a late dinner and talked about ... hell, everything. We crashed early, I got up at the ass-crack of dawn, fed the cats, went to church, put everything in the hands of God, and went back and slept till noon. By the time we awoke, it was clear that the pillow was the source of the smell and the tarps-plus-blankets wash-immediately-if-soiled solution was working to protect our home as we transition street cat to house-and-yard cat. We had a lovely lunch at our favorite restaurant (Aqui) and test-drove a hybrid (a Prius). Everything, once again, became OK, and it seemed like all the nastiness of that awful ten days rattling around the house mostly with myself, a virus and three irritated cats was at last over.

So: yesterday: 2094 words. Today: 2583 words. As of this moment, I am officially caught up on where I "should have been" for Nano, and I'm on track to finish by tomorrow. And we even have a plan to save our obstraperous little cat, who is mellowing out now that he has two people to entertain him (and to separate the cats from each other so they have time to mellow).

Best of all, my best friend is home.

-the Centaur
P.S. Thanks, God.

Why I’m Working From Home Tomorrow

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So I've been sick this week, last Friday evening up until now, with what appears to be a severe common cold. I was actually working from home, at 50% power, for Monday and Tuesday, and came in late Wednesday; so today I was actually glad to get in. But I was coughing so badly that my boss at the Search Engine that Starts With a G (who was suffering from a similar cold with a similar time course) recommended I go home early.

If only I'd taken him up on that, rather than waiting to come home in rush hour:

side impact to a nissan pathfinder rear driver side door

In case you're wondering, I'm fine, the lady who hit me and spun off 360 degrees is fine, and the guy in the other car she caromed off of is also fine. But, I feel like crap. I wonder why?

side impact airbag deployed inside a nissan pathfinder

No, that's not a pillowcase stuffed into my "B" bar: that's a "Thank God for Side Impact" Airbag, post-deployment. And Thank God for SUV's: the Pathfinder took the brunt of the impact and didn't even get knocked out of its lane. I was rattled, my Bluetooth headpiece was knocked off and bounced off the other side of the car, and my Mom on the other end nearly had a heart attack as she heard a screech and then I got cut off ... but the Pathfinder didn't even get knocked out of its lane. Didn't swerve. Didn't stop. Didn't even slow down. Hell, it took me a half a mile before I could pull over.

Oh, drat, am I doing this out of order? I was southbound on the middle lane of California 85 in a clot of rush-hour traffic, talking to my mother with my Bluetooth headpiece, when I heard a screech then a bang and felt a jolt. I said, "hey, Mom, did you hear that?" and noticed that the Bluetooth headpiece was gone, my side was in pain, and a car was spinning off behind me in my left rearview mirror. I blinked, realized, "oh, shit, I'm in a vehicle that's just been hit" and quickly started to pull over in case there was a fuel leak or other catastrophic damage to the vehicle. But I was just past the join of 87 and 85, and none of the merging traffic would let me over for near half a mile. Finally, just as twilight turned to dark, I pulled over, scrambled out of the car, and waited for it not to catch on fire.

wider view of the side impact

When I was sure it was safe, I called Mom back, then began the long trudge back to the accident site, where three cars were stuck in the middle lane. I called out to make sure everyone was OK, and they called back to verify I had been in the truck. After fifteen minutes, traffic finally thinned enough for me to cross, by which time the first car (the witness) had disappeared. We discussed what happened, and as best as the three of us could determine, the lady who struck me hit her brakes too hard as traffic was knotting up, lost control, then rammed me, spun off, then hit him.

incomplete accident report

Miraculously, none of us were hurt, even after her 360 degree spin, and all three cars were drivable. A DMV truck arrived, stopped traffic so we could move their cars off to the side and take stock; after the other two cars drove off, he took me to my car and made sure I could drive off as well. The Pathfinder rode a little rough ... but she rode.

However, at 185,000 miles and four (4!) someone-rammed-into-me-for-no-good-reason accidents, the heroically-protective Nissan Pathfinder is probably going to be counted as totaled by the insurance company (call scheduled for sometime around 8-10am tomorrow, hence the "coming in late or working from home entirely" email to my boss and team at work).

Ah, Pathfinder, you did a good job, my friend...

the heroic nissan pathfinder


My next car? An SUV. A hybrid, of course...

-the Centaur

Shameless Filler

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Yes, I'm trying to fill out those 1-blog-posts-a-day I promised at the beginning of the month. But there is a serious topic: I realized today, for reasons which will become clear shortly, that I'm just plain awful about blogging stuff that happens in my life. So that's going to change, shortly; however, it wasn't appropriate to put this message in that article. Go about your blogrolling business; nothing to see here.

It is amazing how mentally freeing it is…

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... to have just one more thing off your todo list. Really, I have just about as much to do now as I did before I finished the edits of _Frost Moon_. It's just that I feel much better about what I have left.

Completion. A wonderful feeling.
-the Centaur

Of course, be real…

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...the idea you can make something happen if you "prioritize" it works only if you have enough time with which to make the time. Editing two novels and writing a third - all on deadlines, some of them tight - while working late many nights AND taking care of a new and extremely needy cat can lead to you crashing out repeatedly before blogging, and sometimes it's only after you've crashed early several nights but have been sniffling and coughing enough that only way you can sleep is on Nyquil that you realize, maybe, just maybe, you're fighting off a bug.

Meanwhile, Warren Ellis is fighting as many deadlines as I am while also writing a seven-volume epic mashup called War and Peace of the Worlds featuring the entire cast of Archie Comics turned gritty postmodern superheroes, is doing it all one handed on his Palm Pilot while using the other to lean on his cane as he climbs Mount Everest after having coughed up a lung ... and is still blogging three times a day.

@!$%##?!
-the Centaur