Category: writing

General update

Quick general update, although I still think only my family reads this and I saw most of them at Thanksgiving:

I have an interview on Thursday for a contract programming position. I’m excited about that for obvious reasons. I still have 3 applications in at MSU, which would be great because it’s closer. The interview this week is for the other side of Lansing, but still sounds like a great job. Also, MSU is more flexible with taking classes during the day, and I don’t know yet on this place I’m interviewing this week. But they know I am in school, and seem to be really eager and moving fast, which I am all for. So we’ll see.

Got our foreclosure meeting scheduled in a few weeks, so I am hoping I will have a job lined up before that. It would certainly help.

I did have a 4th application at MSU, but they selected a candidate the day after the posting closed. So it was probably an internal hire, but had to go through the process anyway. It happens.

In other fun news, the van blew a coolant leak. It happened this past summer when we were crazy busy with the county fair, so I just kept topping it off, and it suddenly stopped. So, being cheap, I left it. Lasted almost four months, so that’s good. I’m really hoping it will stop again at least for a few weeks, but it’s not looking likely. Ah well, I get paid in a couple days and we can see about getting it looked at unless I can find something to duct tape. 🙂

We are pretty close to moving Samantha down to the basement. She started scrubbing out that bathroom and was amazed to find a shower in it. I think she will be transitioning from the childhood “Do I have to take a shower?!” to the “I can’t wake up in the morning without a shower” mindset pretty soon now that she has her own bathroom and shower.

Not much else going on – I just saw that I hadn’t added anything in almost a month, and I can also trick myself into thinking that it is productive procrastination. Looking at the list of things I need to get done in the next few weeks for school/teaching, it’s pretty crazy. Several papers, my chapter in “Superman and Philosophy”, proposals for “Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy”, a paper and an abstract for possible conference presentations, a computer science final exam, and a looming stack of term papers to grade. Plus talking to my professors about possibly leaving the program and asking them to write letters of recommendation, and fitting in the GRE. Fun times!

Filtering my discussions

I’m hoping to find some time to talk more about teaching, writing, and other topics, partly just as a “notes to my future self” but maybe for use to others who stumble across them. However, I also know that most of the current readers are family who just likes to know what is happening with us.

Thankfully, you can use the categories to just see what you are interested in. Unfortunately, for the email alerts, I’m not sure how to filter those. But hopefully titles will help. Basically, I don’t expect you to necessarily be interested in my thoughts on writing academic material for mainstream audiences, or the combining of characters in adaptations… although maybe talking about my Lecture Fail that happened a few weeks back might be embarrassingly fun.

Anyway, the categories are (currently) linked at the top of the page, or you can bookmark the following links.

Life – http://kenmarable.info/category/life/ – This is updates on Diana, the kids, and I on what we we’re doing. Mostly just applicable to my family. (RSS feed – http://kenmarable.info/category/life/feed/ )

School – http://kenmarable.info/category/school/ – All the exciting news and ideas from my teaching and grad studenting. (RSS feed – http://kenmarable.info/category/school/feed/ )

Writing – http://kenmarable.info/category/writing/ – Here especially is a lot of “notes to my future self”, but I’ll probably ramble about some of the issues I have come across in my writing, what my current projects are, and so on. (RSS feed – http://kenmarable.info/category/writing/feed/ )

Weight Loss – http://kenmarable.info/category/weight-loss/ – Nothing really new to report there, and not a whole lot on the horizon. I suppose with the nicer weather I’ll be walking more and might start losing again. We’ll see. But there’s the link in case ya want it. Usually anything will also be in the category Life, so you can most likely ignore this one. (RSS feed – http://kenmarable.info/category/weight-loss/feed/ )

Writing Project 11A is a go!

In 2011, I hesitate to say I will have more “free” time since I’m sure I will be busy, but I will have more time not spent sitting in an office working on stuff I don’t want to do, and will instead sit at home and work on stuff I do want to do. With that, I am working on getting my writing going again (especially since I still need to fix that summer budget shortfall).

Well, with 2010 trying to get a couple more jabs in on the way out I did get some exciting news this afternoon. I have been accepted to write an article in a book to be published next year! I’m still waiting to get the details, and I don’t know how much non-disclosure stuff there is. I don’t think anyone but my family actually reads this right now, but once it’s on the internet and Google finds it, it is potentially everywhere. So to avoid getting caught by search engines, I’ll just say it involves a recent “dreamy” movie And Philosophy. (And of course I can go into more detail at Christmas.)

I’m very excited about it since not only do I REALLY love that movie (unanswered ending and all), but I am working to involve myself more with mainstream philosophy and not just the ivory-tower academics. Sometime in the next month I am hoping to start another blog on philosophy of mind and cognitive science issues that is more mainstream and accessible (don’t worry, I don’t expect you all to be readers). Although far from that scale, the basic vibe and guiding vision I’m aiming for is like what Carl Sagan’s Cosmos was to astronomy, but turned inward towards our minds, as well as other minds – from non-human animals to theoretical AI and ETs. But that is another blog.

For now I’m excited to be accepted for this book and need to start researching and outlining how to turn my abstract into a full article. Yay!

P.S. “Writing Project 11A??” Since a lot of the writing projects I hope to work on this year might be things publishers don’t want talked about before they make announcements, I figure it’ll be easier to just label everything simply so that I can talk generally about them. So this is “A” the first first project of 2011. Hence, 11A. Seemed simple at least to my brain.

December Marathon

Alright, let’s do this.

I will write a complete paragon tier 4e D&D adventure (approximately 25,000 words) complete with GSL-compliant game stats. (I’ll Pathfinder it in January. Looks clearer to my mind to convert in that direction and I want to do both.)

Everyday I do not make significant progress toward it, I will spend 60 minutes cleaning the basement.

Ok, it’s official and I start tomorrow. Good luck to the other December Marathoners!