First Cup of Coffee - June 26, 2019

Exciting news on the New Shiny, plus treadmill woes asked and answered. Also, how I'm transcribing the podcasts now, and putting a donation button out there. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Good morning everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. Oh well I can go through the passage way of doom here. Go out to the secret garden. It's very nice. Under the grape Arbor double airlock through here. It's so pretty., today is Wednesday, June 26th. We'll get a few more days with June. So it goes, so the summer goes soon, it will be 4th of July. I know a 4th of July in the US. It's always funny because we tend to think of it as being the middle of the summer, but you know, it's really not because Duh, the 4th of July, you know, it's really the beginning of July. It's, and especially in the rocky mountain west here, we're often just really hitting full, warm summer. So it's just something to keep in mind if for those feeling like summer is fleeting, time is fleeting. Madness takes its toll. A little rocky horror there for those who didn't recognize like my mom. Um, so I am doing well. We took yesterday off and went fishing, which was really nice., it was down at was a lucky day. It was a lucky day overall. So we went down to Cochiti, which is really our closest lake, about a 30 minute drive, not bad at all. And we got there and the gate, there's two sides to Cochiti the west side and the east side and the west side is open year round and that's where like the big swim beach is at. It's where the town of Cochiti is, which is all tribal lands. Cochiti tribe. And on the other side is that the east side, it's much more, it's much swampier. Um, much the roads are not nearly so nice. There's not so much concrete so that we like it much better. And much better fishing on that side. But that side's only open from like April through October. And there's a big great big boat ramp., that's quite steep. And at the very bottom of the boat ramp, if you keep going, you can turn left and it's like right before you hit water. So the first time we did this, it took us forever to figure it out. Cause you keep thinking, no that's was driving into the water and I don't want to do that. Um, but there's a road that goes off to the left and that leads you into a number of great spots for like fishing and camping and hanging out. All undeveloped stuff and a pretty rough dirt road, but then again across it, because it's for day use only. And so we got there at about a quarter to nine and we were arguing that arguing where I asked David, I said, does that road open at seven or eight? And he said, why? I think maybe it's nine and I said, really? Not Til nine that can't be right. He said, well maybe I'm wrong. So we get there at eight 30/45 and the gate's closed and the water's pretty high right now cause we're finally getting run off. So we went from very low water to very high water. Well welcome to the rocky mountain west and the spring springtime in the Rockies. So we were afraid that they might not open it at all. And so we were kind of sitting there, we decided, well, we'll wait til nine and see what happens. And so we were sitting there debating what we would do, you know, should we drive up to Abiquiu or drive to Concha or to Santa Rosa. And David's like, oh, I don't want to go to Santa Rosa again. I'm like, okay, I don't have to go to Santa Rosa. But any of those places would have taken us a good probably two hours from where we were because unless we went to Santa Rosa. Um, so we, we're debating and we had not, and I finally said, let's, let's not decide until we see what happens. But then the, the ranger showed up at nine and she unlocked the gate and then David got to get his very favorite fishing spot, which also happens to be where the best places to put it in my paddleboard. So that was all awesome. And the water was just glassy, glossy and it almost got too hot for a little while there. I did my paddlel board and I read in my floatie chair and the floatie chair being out on the water on the sun, I started to feel a little hot. I didn't burn. No, I did my sunscreen well. So all of that went great., David did not catch any fish, but it was still fun. Yeah, ideal day. So then I got a, I'm trying to decide what order to tell you things. Well, I got on my phone, I checked it after coming back from a couple of hours on the floaty chair and I got an email from Sarah and she says, well, I DM'd you but I don't have twitter on my phone. I turned in the second version of the new shiny, you know, she'd asked me to start a different place and make some changes and she said my intern read it and she thinks it's amazing and she loved it in all caps and the intern had a couple of notes for me, a few things that then she went and read the first version. She said the second she liked the second one much better. So she has a couple of things for me to incorporate and Sarah's going to read today. So I said, sure, I could do that in the morning. No problem. But I'm super excited. I'm so happy., not just because of getting the past, which is great, but I'm really happy that the intern loved it because,, the intern is undoubtedly younger or she would not be an intern. And so this is the audience I want to hit. And I guess she was just super excited about the concept and I was thought it was a good concept. So I'm, I'm really, I'm really revved about this. So that was great news. Great News. Yay. And so now I can keep working on that while Sarah goes on vacation starting. Um, well she's in the office through tomorrow and then she's going on vacation for a long week, which is good along week being like a Friday through both weekends and she's going home. That's good. And she needs to break. So the other thing that had happened that I hadn't mentioned on the podcast, because it happened some on Sunday and I thought maybe it was a fluke and then Monday I tried to work the problem after I finished the second version of the new shiny and sent it to Sarah, the new treadmill was acting up and I was like, no, please don't. It was, it worked just fine. Unless I start walking over 2.3 miles an hour, I can walk at, well actually I can walk up 2.3 and it does fine. As soon as I go up to 2.4 2.5 which are two of the speeds I like it,, would stop abruptly, which was a little bit bone jarring and kind of startling. You can imagine. And, and I would get this DC-4 error. And so I looked it up like a good kitty cat. I looked it up in the book and the DC-4 error says that it's could be a lubrication problem. Well I just lubricated it and I'm trying to be, you know, for those steady listeners, you know that this was a thing before. So I'm lubricating every 200 miles that I walk. So I thought, okay, well I'll lubricate again. And it felt like there was enough lubrication but I thought, well I'll try it. And I kept, I got the error again and I really tried to extra lubrication on Monday and working it through and it said it then. If that doesn't work, you know, contact customer service. So Monday afternoon I sent an email to customer service and I was fully braced for this to be like the first salvo in a long argument and I thought, I really do not want to pay a technician to come up here again. Hello Hummer. I must be coming up on my one year anniversary of the podcast because I think that was, I know it was right before RWA and it was some time in late June, early July. And here's the Hummer coming to visit me in the grape Arbor. There's a nice cycle for you. She's sitting on a feeder.

Speaker 2: 9:24

Hmm.

Speaker 1: 9:24

Almost tame. So I really didn't want to have to pay for a technician to come again. And this treadmill is only two months old. So I fired off the email and we went fishing and I got the good news, Sarah. And then when I, when we got home, we stopped at Harry's and had a late lunch, early dinner. And so then when I got home around, Oh, I think it was around four 30 or five, I had an email from them and they said, hi, we're sending you a new drive belt and a technician will install it for you. Be prepared for them to contact you. So I was like, Yay. Hooray, no battle necessary. No dispute either, it's because the speed with which they acknowledged that means that this was not a surprising problem to them, but you know for that to go bad in the first couple of months, um, maybe that they had a bad lot of drive belts or something like that. So, so there was much rejoicing here in Mudville. Things are coming right along. So I'm excited to go work on the new shiny, no, just a little bit of tweaking on that. I did talk with Sarah on Monday afternoon about some of the projects I could work on and for now I'm going to try working on a few of these nonfiction projects, putting a few of these things together. But if she reads this today, which it sounded like she wanted to then I might be writing more pages on the new shiny. Okay. There's the bluebirds blue bird. We have little bluebird nestlings I think I mentioned that. So Dad was just going by with the of beak full of insect. Those bluebirds are little hunters. I've had no idea they could catch insects the way they do. You know, when the Environmentalists and Ecologists Tell You,, how birds take out so much of the insect population and bats too, it's really amazing to sit here and watch these, you know, the sheer tonnage of insects that these bluebird parents are very into their young, it's a lot of insects. Can just imagine what the world would be like. We'd be overrun without these birds. Yeah, i t's okay daddy bluebird wondering why I'm sitting here though we should be used to seeing me by now c ause I come out here and read i n the afternoons especially so nice and cool out here this morning with l eaves r ustling. Just ideal. It's tempting and bring my laptop out here, but then I can't walk. I might do it anyway. Contemplation. So the other thing that I've done is I've transcribed, um, Monday's podcast, which costs me 10 cents per minute of podcast. So since my podcasts are blessedly short,, it's about$2 a podcast to do that. And I did it because my friend, Minerva Spencer asked me to, cause she said sometimes only sometimes she supposed to arise. I talk about interesting things that she would like to read, but she doesn't want to have to listen to this stuff, which I totally get. I'm, I'm not much of a listener either. So she asked if I could transcribe it and so I can, this was the other thing that I spent Monday after I finished my, my writing and sent it off to Sarah, I tried to transcribe it. I, I looked at the transcription because it requires editing and it might get better as it gets used to me. And as I get used to talking for it, I do have to relinquish the idea that the transcript will somehow be perfect because I apparently speak and run on sentences, so I have to resist to tweaking that. It took me 40 minutes to edit the transcript and that was like even towards the end I started bailing on doing it. Exactly right. So that's way too much time investment for the transcripting. But if I do the transcript and do a very quick pass for just, it does highlight where it's not sure what word I'm using very often I think it's my western drawl, which I didn't think I have, but apparently I do and I sort of elide words together. I bet it won't get that word. So I might keep trying to do that because I do think it's important for accessibility for the hearing impaired, they could use the transcription. So I have put a donate button on the podcast. It's at the bottom with like the play and so forth. There's a little donate button and if you donate it comes direct to my paypal. And if you would like to help cover the costs of the podcast, that would be, that would be very welcome. Right now the podcast costs me$18 a month and that's for the buzzsprout hosting. If I do$2 per episode and let's see, what would that be? Cause I usually do four or five episodes a week at most. So 20 a month. So that would be like another$40 so not monumental, but it would be nice to cover the costs and all money goes to appropriate uses and I will not squander it on things like wine. Well I might squander it on wine but you would know that I was happy. You guys want me to be happy, don't you?

Speaker 2: 15:53

Okay.

Speaker 1: 15:54

At any rate, if you feel so moved to donate that would be awesome. And I will let me know what you think of the transcriptions. I think I have to grab the link and put it on the post or something. I don't think it automatically shows up. I can't really tell. This female Hummer is really pretty. She's, I can tell she's female cause she's mostly kind of a dun gray color. Dove gray with some darker grays on her wings. Very black, long beak. And then just this iridescent scatter of um, green, a very bright green just down the back of her head and on the tips and sort of what the ridges of her wings. She's, she's very pretty. Yes. I'm sorry. I lifted my hand to scratch my nose and she flew off. Now she's sitting in the tree looking at me. Last year we got to see the hummingbird nest with the eggs in it. That was pretty cool, wasn't it? But I don't think that nest was in a good spot. I don't think it did well, it wasn't very sheltered. I can't tell if this is the same hummingbird or not. So anyway, that's, that's where my life stands. I may still do dark wizard. For those of you rooting heavily for dark wizard, I know you're out there. Sarah's caution is as she wants me to be careful of doing anything that's too fantasy so that I don't violate my noncompete because Saint Martins really is being awesome to me and we don't want to upset them in any way. So right now I'm going to take the easy paths and put together some of these, um, nonfiction books on writing. I'm going to put together a book on writing sex scenes and building sexual tension for the writers out there, mostly converting materials I already have. So that'll pretty easy. I'm pretty aware of my looming deadlines of travel., July 18th I had to comic con. It's going to be kind of crazy. I think I've talked about this on here before, but I'm going to go to San Diego comic con then. I'll be home for a day. I go to RWA in New York City. I'm home for a day. Then I go for a week on the lake at Coeur'Alene with my family for birthdays. And that's going to be, you know, a lot of traveling and I'm not going to get any writing done. So I'm sort of looking at what I can conceivably complete and not leave hanging in these next few weeks. And the nonfiction projects or more pages for Sarah on the new shiny are definitely doable. This new shiny is so good, you guys. I'm really excited about this concept. Orchid Throne, of course, was wonderful, but like I said, that's in the past for me, so. Alright, I will talk to you all tomorrow probably. You all have a good one. Take care. Bye Bye.