Ah, the Internet. Or internet. I’m not sure any longer if we’re supposed to capitalize it or not, but I don’t think it really matters. Of course, I’m not a grammar and spelling Nazi – by now any of the three people reading this blog will have noticed my many editing errors – and so am not bothered by how folks choose to capitalize the word. Your mileage may vary, and more power to you if it does. I’ve got more important fish to fry. Metaphors done. I hope.
Our internet is repaired. After a couple of months of worse and worse connectivity with a signal that would suddenly drop off without warning several times (dozens really) each evening, the cable folks came by and found the problems. It wasn’t really on their end as I had hoped, it was more general age and degradation of the some of the connectors leading into our home that was the issue. Replace the connectors, and remove an old line splitter the previous occupant had added to share out the cable signal to multiple rooms and which also had degraded, and suddenly we’re rocking better speeds and zero drops (at least for one night). I tested early this morning when everyone was asleep and it looks like we’ve doubled our line speeds over previous such tests, so that makes me happy.
I’ve really come to rely a huge amount on the internet over the past 25 years. I’ve used portions of it longer than that (Archie, Wais and Gopher, as well as internet-connected bulletin board services), so I’m really referring to the World Wide Web part of it that is ubiquitous now. I need good, reliable service both for my writing efforts (lots of research to do) as well as for my actual career as an IT manager so I can have solid connectivity to the office if I need to work from home.
On the writing side of things I’m plugging away at a new comic fantasy novel I’ve started. The WWI novel is still being worked on as well, albeit more slowly. I find the themes of it intriguing, but they are very heavy at times, and there’s a fair amount of lifting to be done in terms of research to make an “accurate” depiction of a world at war, but with the addition of magic. I also have to stop and spend time thinking “would the magic countries – the green nations of my novel – have that piece of technology, or would magic have precluded the development of it? Would the technology nations – I call them steel nations – have that thing I just mentioned, or did lack of motivation or scientific breakthroughs in what are green countries in my novel stop that from having happened?” It’s a lot to think about, so the writing is going slowly there.
And I’ve been a ton of research on writer’s workshops. I’m very interested in attending one of the Clarion workshops if I can swing the time off and save the money for it, but that might be out of my reach for now. I’ll be weighing it very carefully over the coming months and will come to some decision late this year after many talks with my loving wife, whom it would obviously impact as well (not to mention my sons, who would miss out on some time with me). It may be I have to wait a few more years, but I’m really excited about the possibility and prefer to do it as soon as its feasible.
Now back to the internet, where Things await. With or without capitalization.