Originally published at Durosia.com. You can comment here or there.

Right now, there's a lot of buzz going around about a whole lot of issues with the data being presented over at Recovery.gov, the site that's in place to let We The People know where all that stimulus money is going.

ABC News reported last week that there were some serious accounting errors being found in the job creation numbers. That was followed over the weekend by some adjustments to the numbers. And that's lead to cries of "foul!" from both sides of the floor.

Needless to say, the anti-Obama faction is pointing to this and calling conspiracy. The pro-Obama faction is... well... not doing all that much (comparatively speaking). Democrats and Republicans alike are calling for a closer look at the numbers.

That closer has already turned up some problematic things. Most notably is that a lot of the fictional jobs reported came from fictional congressional districts. Things like this only fuel the conspiracy end of things and get the media machine oozing with vitriolic joy as there's some sort of paranoia to draw people into their stories.

Here's the thing: This is exactly how the process is supposed to

I'll bet you dollars to donuts that some of the errors being found are truly accidents--data entry and transfer issues--that, if all of this wasn't being dumped to the public, wouldn't be caught for years. And, if it was, it would be corrected quietly and no one would ever notice how the number of jobs created/saved drops.

Then there's the "business as usual" habit of places getting money from the government (or anyone else) trying to make it look like they performed miracles with that money. It's a sub-set of the "If we don't spend it all, we won't get the same budget next year" mentality that I think causes half of the waste in this country. No matter who's in charge.

Conspiracy rears its head when interested people don't have access to all the facts. It is fueled when more questions are raised than answered.

Transparency attempts to cut through the fog and let everyone see all the way down to the bones of the matter.

Problem here is, the bones are buried deep under lots of thick skin, purposely obfuscated process, and just plain old red tape.

What we're seeing right now is just the tip of the iceberg. We're right to be a little worried about it, but we shouldn't be calling for blood and we most definitely shouldn't be pre-supposing it's a case of the people in charge trying to put one over on us.

At least not yet.

This is just the usual stuff that's been happening behind closed doors for decades (that's right, not just in the previous administration). It's because those doors were closed that it's gotten as bad as it has.

At its best, the press took the initiative to pry those doors open. That doesn't happen half as much as it should any more. Now the 24-hour news cycle is too concerned with keeping people glued to their coverage of scandal, panic, and general fluff that the real investigative reporting that makes The Fourth Estate worthwhile and keeps the rest of the power structure in check (and the public informed) has become a comparative rarity.

The good news is, a lot of organizations have sprung up to keep a watchful eye on the government. (Check out a listing of some over at the Sunshine Week site and the work that OpenTheGovernment.org is doing.) Sites like Recovery.gov make it easier for all of us to do so. And we should. It's our responsibility to watch out for ourselves these days.

There's a big mess to clean up and some of it has been around so long it's become part of the system. It's only with determination and clear heads that we'll be able to clean it up and reinstate some sensibility in our government.

Originally published at Durosia.com. You can comment here or there.

OK... now that I have this shiny Droid phone (which has a nice keyboard on it, both physically and on-screen, when needed), I no longer have an excuse for avoiding text-message-based things. Gods know I was sending enough texts using the old phone, though doing so grudgingly.

Now you can find me on that Twitter thing: http://twitter.com/kierduros

I've started to go through and add people, but feel free to beat me to the punch. :)

Can't promise that I'll tweet much. It's not like a do a whole lot of fascinating things. But it is another way of keeping in touch, and that's not a bad thing at all.

Originally published at A Tarot Experiment. You can comment here or there.

Every step of the way, each new card spread is pointing directions for the story and revealing the plot. Little by little I get more ideas for who these characters are and what they've done before, are doing now, and will be doing as the plot progresses.

As usual, though, sometimes it's tricky to tell exactly what character is supposed to appear in a scene.

At first glance, this chapter's spread appears to be one of those times.

1. Seven of Swords (inverted)
2. The Hanged Man
3. Strength
4. The Sun (Inverted)
5. Wheel of Fortune (inverted)
6. Knight of Swords
7. King of Shields (inverted)
8. The Universe
9. King of Swords
10. Six of Shields (inverted)

No matter what, there's some interesting progressions--especially since I'm using the Celtic Cross and Staff spread (which, as time goes on, I'm thinking may not be the best spread to use for this sort of exercise... at least not in the general chapter plotting area).

( Read More... )

Originally published at A Tarot Experiment. You can comment here or there.

OK, finally got to just over my minimum for Chapter 4. That only leaves me about, oh, 10,000 words behind (give or take a thousand). Still better than previous years, though. I'm up to just over 7,000--which puts me not too far away from the most I think I ever managed to crank out during a NaNoWriMo.

So, not bad at all, actually, when put in context. :)

Counting these blog entries, I'm over 10K words.

Anyway...

In this past word dump, I seem to have introduced one of my "go to" background groups: a still kind of mysterious terrorist organization. They first appeared in my writing years ago in a story set in the far-flung future where they were greatly opposed to humans leaving the planet (or something along those lines... never did finish that story).

Based on some other bits that have come to light as the words pour from my fingers, it seems they may know about some things that most people in the world do not... and things that our main characters are going to be discovering (or, in at least two cases, re-discovering).

Only two chapters left in this section of the book. Which should work out pretty well as I've got one more main character to introduce and then I have to bring them all together so the real story can get started.

( Read More... )

My Droid showed up Monday afternoon.

Of course I couldn't play with it right then, work and all, y'know.

I did go through the basic setup and get a little playing done before I left. Then I hit Best Buy to scope out some headset and earphone options. Picked up a set that seemed to be good (wired, not Bluetooth). Going to have to return those... don't like they way the sit in my ears at all.

Got home, realized I'd left the Droid charger plugged in next to my desk at the office. That put a bit of a damper on futher playing with the new phone. Did get some apps loaded, still getting the feel for it all.

This post? Written on the new phone.

Not sure how long it's going to take me to get used to the tiny keyboard. Definitely better than a phone keypad, though. ;)

Originally published at A Tarot Experiment. You can comment here or there.

OK, not even 800 words for the weekend. This is bad. But I acomplished some other things, so that is good.

I did let myself be distracted by an interesting idea. See, this year I'm writing this more or less post by post in a quick Drupal site I set up. (I set up Drupal sites all the damn time for work, so it's no problem to throw together something quick for personal use.) At least, the original idea was for it to be a quick and simple site. Just a blog and the story.

That idea lasted until I got sick of flipping back through the blog or story posts to find character, business and other names and facts. So I've come up with a set of content types that will interrelate and keep track of a number of things.

First and foremost, I'm going to have a full listing of every character that gets introduced and reference the story posts they appear in. Same for businesses or organizations.

Then there will be a running list of annotated reference links that will generate both from blog posts and in-story citations (a real benefit of writing in a "live" environment is the ability to link what may be esoteric information--like acronyms or historical references--to deeper information on other parts of the Web, giving the reader a chance to gain a deeper understanding of the writing).

( Read More... )

Originally published at A Tarot Experiment. You can comment here or there.

Yeah, didn't get anything new cranked out today. Was more than a little preoccupied with other things... like queezing enough space into the budget for a spiffy new Droid phone. That should show up on Monday. I'll be able to write during my commute again! And read.

This is good.

The next spread for the coming chapter has been drawn. Behold!

1. King of Shields
2. Ace of Swords
3. Two of Cups
4. The Sun
5. Five of Shields
6. Four of Swords
7. Six of Cups
8. Death
9. Six of Spears (inverted)
10. Eight of Swords

Again, I'm not sure right off the top what characters are involved in this chapter, but I'm suspecting (once I further inspect the cards) that we may finally see Solomon Mercado (our Knight of Shields) or Kristy Roth (our Queen of Swords) make an appearance... there certainly is the space for them here.

( Read More... )

Originally published at A Tarot Experiment. You can comment here or there.

That was kind of unexpected.

Looks like we have another two characters that just showed up, neither of which I was expecting.

Oliver Coffee is a former employee of Diversified Research Engineering, the company that just merged with British Implementations.

Adolfo Demetrius is a gregarious stranger that came knocking on his door with a strange story and promise of destiny.

We also now  know there's some sort of movement afoot based around a sacred text of some sort. Could this be what the Seven of Cups keeps hinting at in the story spreads? It just may be.

I've also decided that I really need to make some changes to a section of Chapter 2... the whole justification for why BI starts a new division is a bit too doom and gloomy to be sellable, even in the reality of this story. They're more likely attempting to record and preserve endangered cultures than to be trying to save the world by total information management or something... going to have to figure out how best to do that.

Anyway, that's another 1900 words or so. Not quite caught up, but closer.

Can't wait to see what happens next.

Also, note the change in the URL of the site: it's now fiction.durosia.com. I figured that opens up a few more possibilities than just NaNoWriMo.

Originally published at A Tarot Experiment. You can comment here or there.

It's amazing the difference a day makes.

Went out after work with some coworkers, had a great time. Got home a little before midnight and sat down to spread the cards and write a bit... and promptly crashed out on the couch.

I may be able to crank out 3K words on Wednesday, but I'm thinking the catchup may have to wait for the weekend.

Either way, here's the spread for the next chapter:

1. Two of Shields (inverted)
2. The Tower
3. Ace of Swords (inverted)
4. King of Swords
5. Eight of Cups
6. The Horned One (inverted)
7. The Moon (inverted)
8. Seven of Cups
9. Knight of Spears (inverted)
10. The Hierophant (inverted)

Well... it looks like someone is having a particularly rough time in this chapter. Figuring out who is one of the real challenges of doing "readings" this way.

In a typical reading, it's very clear who the subject of the reading is. Using the spread the way I am for this work of fiction, I have to kind of work backwards to figure out which character the cards are talking about. At least at this early point, where I'm still introducing the characters.

Definitely a challenge.

But fun. And a good mental and creative workout.

Now if I just didn't have to sleep or go to work, I could really make this happen tonight. ;)

Originally published at A Tarot Experiment. You can comment here or there.

Well, there's another 1700+ words down.

Next trick is to get around to doing that before it gets near 3 a.m. (Of course, it doesn't help that I totally crashed out when I sat down to start writing at 10 p.m., after being barely awake enough to make dinner when I got home... )

This time around, we've got one new character (who was mentioned in passing in the original setup), a new company mentioned and the "I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with it" insertion of an MMORPG... it just seemed like the kind of thing Trent would be working on.

Noreen (who's name was generated in the standard method) fits a bit with both the queen's that showed up in the spread for this chapter. We'll be getting to know her better as time goes on, I think. The company she works for, Firedrake Consulting, was inspired by the last card in the layout.

Everything else... well... we'll see how that all plays out.

I was "accused" of being organized in all this by a friend. The truth is, I'm totally flying by the seat of my pants. Aside from the simple arithmetic used to divide everything up into 30 parts (one per day) and those parts into sensible chunks, I'm just going by what the cards lay out.

This is, by far, the least structured and planned NaNoWriMo I've done yet.

And I think I already topped my word count of the last two years...

Originally published at A Tarot Experiment. You can comment here or there.

Looking at my schedule, I already see problems with getting one of these "chapters" done per day. I foresee weekend where I'm going to have to crank out three or four in order to make up for losing evenings to meetings, time with friends or, y'know, sleep.

Looking back on Day One's copy, I can't say I'm exceptionally happy with it. But, since it's all the way over there in another post, I can resist the urge to go and re-write when I go to work on tonight's installment. I may have finally found a way to not constantly re-edit things as I write or add to them...

Now, on to the next spread:

1. The Lovers
2. Queen of Spears
3. Queen of Cups
4. Five of Swords (inverted)
5. Wheel of Fortune
6. The Emperor (inverted)
7. Two of Swords
8. Two of Spears
9. The Fool
10. The Star

Another big bunch of Major Arcana cards... kind of appropriate for the beginning of a story, I guess--numerous external forces conspiring to make the lives of the characters more interesting than "normal" people and such.

Onward toward more typing...

Originally published at A Tarot Experiment. You can comment here or there.

I just finished banging out over 1700 words for the first chapter of my NaNoWriMo story. I want to write more. There are so many more nuances hinted at by the spread it's based on that I'd need at least another thousand to do it justice. But they'd also have to be shoe horned into the scene something fierce. Go read it, if you have some time, and let me know what you think.

For the names of the companies (British Implimentations and Diversified Research Engineering), I once again turned to Seventh Sanctum's generators. I'll be using them a lot.

( Read More... )

Originally published at A Tarot Experiment. You can comment here or there.

Welcome to NaNoWriMo 2009!

Jumping right in to the experiment using Tarot as the main guide to, well, everything in the story.

We start out with the main characters, drawn from just the court cards of the Minor Arcana:

• Queen of Swords
• King of Spears (Wands)
• Knight of Shields (Pentacles)
• Page of Cups

Well, that's an interesting spread. One from each of the suits.

Because it fits my normal literary tastes, I'm going to use our Knight as the main character. Turning to the wonderful name generator over at Seventh Sanctum, we find that he is called Solomon Mercado. I think I can work with that.

I'm going to go and do the same for everyone else. I'm also going to do a single card draw for each from the rest of the deck that will come into play in a second. Note that I've also decided to set the story in a more contemporary time than the Arthurian cards project, so there's going to be some translation and twisting going on.

( Read More... )

After going to bed way later than expected between Friday and Saturday, I got up a bit later than planned and didn't get to the ZipCar until around 2:30 in the afternoon.

Then I decided to fight the traffic up and down Rockville Pike. Why? Because I realized very late Thursday (like, technically, Friday, long after I should have been asleep) that all the makeup I thought I had... I'd thrown out a couple of years ago because it was either dried up or gooey in bad ways. That, of course, would make putting together the planned costume for this year problematic.

And so, I finally got around to hitting the places I'd normally hit, just about three weeks later than I should have. Most places were picked clean. (Though I did find a nice leather motorcycle jacket at Ranger Surplus in Rockville that I may have to go back and get... I need one that actually fits right.) But, over the course of a few hours, I did manage to get everything I thought I'd need.

"Everything I thought I'd need" turned out to be too much, as usual. Good news is, if I ever got some of the projects I have in mind off the ground, some of it will definitely come in handy.

Due to traffic and weather, I got home a bit later than I expected... and apparently (yet again) missed the large group of trick-or-treaters at my apartment. I'll be eating candy for a few weeks. Aw, shucks. :)

I forgot how long it took some liquid latex to dry enough so I could put makeup on it. That slowed down the costume putting together. I ended up rushing on the last bits of application... finally got out of the apartment just after 8:30-ish (about half an hour after I wanted to be at the party).

As always, Jeff's party was fun. He puts out a good spread and lots of fun people show up. My costume went over well, there will be pictures sometime soon. I got sucked in and totally lost track of time... so I didn't make it to Spellbound as I had planned.

But what I did do was have good conversations with interesting people who I really do want to spend more time with.

Overall, Halloween was full of win.

Got home earlier than planned... removed the makeup and then wondered what I should do with my "extra" time. Then I remembered that after Halloween comes NaNoWriMo. So, off I go to start the story... Feel Free to follow it here. :)

...quite the successful little night of metaphysical meanderings.

This will have to happen again, with a little more planning. For something that was just kind of let to happen, though, I think it went pretty well. We all learned something or other, had some good times and tasty treats, and I did two Tarot readings.

I've also now been up for over 22 hours on less than 4 hours of sleep (and some odd minutes of not-quite-a-nap zoned out-ness during the day at work).

My ZipCar reservation starts at noon... and I realized today that I still lack a couple of important (and hopefully easily procurable) things for my costume.

Should probably sleep now...

Originally published at Durosia.com. You can comment here or there.

Churches can look really creepy with the right lighting and background. :)

That's the National Cathedral, shot at about 5 a.m. with my little point and shoot camera... with a little help from Photoshop to bring things up to about the level I was seeing them.

I like it.

Having a small get together at my place tonight (Friday), not exactly Halloween-related, but definitely seasonal in spookyness. Anyone who's interested should let me know. No official invites have gone out as it's kind of last minute and ad hoc. No agenda other than it being metaphysical flavored. All are welcome.

Saturday night is going to be a howling good time. Planning on bouncing to two different parties--one is the annual shindig my buddy Jeff throws, the other is the Halloween party at the club I normally go to. We'll see if I actually make it to both... I'm notoriously bad at party hopping.

Got just about all the books back on the shelves (though sooo far from the order I originally put them up... I swear, once upon a time there was a more organized arrangement!) and boxes put away.

I'm more or less on track for the metaphysical get together on Friday (which you are, of course, invited to).

Work has, thankfully, been a little less insane lately. We'll see how long that lasts.

Now that the apartment is back in some form of shape, I should be able to get my non-work schedule back on track... and get some of the lingering freelance/personal projects tied up. Just as importantly (if not more so, because it's been one of the main stumbling points), I'll be able to get my head back in the right place to regain some seriously lost forward momentum.

I am distinctly behind on my holiday posting of things.

So, in honor of the new icon I stumbled across today, here's what my first exposure to Tim Burton was. Needless to say, I was hooked from the start. :)

Looking back to this post about NaNoWriMo 2009 and my plans to have a Tarot-fueled story, I decided to get a little more creative and make it into a full-on project.

So now there's a website (nothing fancy, just an sub-site at my Durosia.com Drupal site and a theme downloaded from the bunches available for free).

If all goes as planned, there'll be two types of writing going on there: the actual story and the documentation of the readings that feed into the story. Feel free to play along at home, writing your own interpretations of the spreads. Heck, if people really want to do it, I'll set you up with an account on the site and all the interpretations can live together.

Also, still planning on having that get together on Friday, mentioned here.

If you work on the web and are looking to meet more people with similar interests, you should come out to the DC Media Makers meeting tonight. Full info here.

To quote the promo stuff:

This month's "conversation starter" at DC Media Makers has so many fantastic projects in the works, I can't wait for him to spend some time with us in a few weeks.

He's Aram Zucker-Scharff.

As technology manager, Aram is galvanizing digital projects online at George Mason University's Office of Student Media.

6:30 p.m.
National Public Radio offices
635 Massachusetts Ave NW
Washington, DC 20001

So it appears that the drywall work has been done as promised. By Friday, I should have the place back in some semblance of order. Which means I'm on track to actually pull off a hastily planned, short notice get together on Friday after work.

This get together will be metaphysically flavored. It's been a long time since I've done one of those in my own space. Too long. Previous ones have been very good. And way back in college, I used to do stuff like them all the time (some for specific reasons, others just to see who else was interested in certain topics).

I have no real agenda for this. What goes on will be mostly spontaneous and depend heavily on who and how many show up. Possibilities include a seasonal ritual type thing, discussion of various aspects of spirituality, sharing of personal stories and practices, conjuring things that go bump in the night, and any other number of potentially freaky/enlightening things.

All who are interested in "strange and unusual" things are welcome to show up. As long as you're willing to play nice, I'm willing to have you participate.

If you want food and drink, bring it (and bring enough to share)... I can't lay out a spread like I'd like, so it's going to have to be communal. Food-wise, lighter fare, perhaps with a seasonal twist, would be best. Chocolate is always welcome. Since I don't drink alcohol, any left over libations go home with whoever wants them.

I'm usually home from work by 7 p.m., so things could start as early as 7:30-ish. Target more for 8 p.m., but don't show up too late if you want to be in on everything. I'd link to a map of where my apartment (3213 Whispering Pines Drive, Apt 11, Silver Spring, MD 20906) is, but apparently it no longer exists in Google maps. That's a bit strange and kind of puts me in a very Twilight Zone state of mind.

Apparently I'm living in a place not of this world. A space between spaces. A time between times.

Screwy.

Anyway, hope to see some of you Friday.