87degrees

My next challenge: solving it without searching for "how to solve a rubix cube" on YouTube.

To be fair, I did get one side solved and all the edge colours lined up properly without having to cheat.

Anyway, I'm back in the country now. My flight was slightly delayed due to fog and winds but otherwise alright. I've been to the supermarket to restock my fridge and caught up on Merlin and Dr Who.

Travelling is good, but I wouldn't want to do it every week.

This weekend was a mix of good, very good and bad from a writing point of view.

The bad was the library reading on Friday. That said, having seen the posters the library had put up, I'm not surprised nobody was particularly interested. I know that if we hadn't had the thing on Saturday, we would have been pushing people to the village to go, so it's probably just a case of two many things together.

Saturday went really well. I think we got between 60 and 70 people and I sold nearly 50 books. Only one wine spillage and it was nowhere near the books. I also spoke to a teacher from a local school who was keen to get me to speak at schools in Nottinghamshire.

On Monday, I spent way too much time on trains which was bad, but I had my laptop with me and could therefore write, which was good. I was able to make firm progress towards my Nano goal. I went to a school in Liverpool as part of their literary week and spoke about being an author, Child and stuff like that. The school bought two books from me and the librarian is going to try and get the girls to write reivews on Amazon.

I have another Amazon review from Other Jen which is very positive. A neighbour said she posted a review but it's not shown up yet.

I worked out that  I need to sell an average of 30 books a day consistently forever in order to earn something close to what I'm earning now. I think I need to write a few more books.

I spent ridiculous amounts of time on Friday and Saturday trying to get two virtual machines to talk to each other and failing miserably. It turns out I did all the hard bit. I then spent ages fiddling around with settings to try and make it work. I then spent ages wanting to beat my head against a brick wall as it still failed to work.

I got a bit of help at work today. I just needed to click a button on each virtual machine to install integration services.

Why can't there just be a visual representation of each virtual machine so that you can drag a virtual network cable between the ones you want to connect? 

Anyway, I've got my imaginary machines talking to each other. Now I need to find time to install SharePoint 2010 on one of them.

Yesterday, I was walking round the local park. There was random guy in front of me. Random guy wandered off the path and picked up a magazine that had been in the bushes. My initial thought was that he'd noticed the magazine and was planning on throwing it in the bin. He started browsing through it as he walked, which was fine. Might as well make use of something someone else has abandoned.

Then he started tearing out pages one at a time and just dropping them.

I was still walking along behind him so there were random pages (mostly showing women half/undressed) lying in the path in front of me. So I picked them up as I walked, screwed them up and threw them in the next bin I passed. By the time we got to the second bin, he'd noticed.

He asked me how I was; I replied that I didn't like to see littering. He didn't apologise. He didn't stop. He did proceed to try and chat me up referring to me as "darling," and "sweet cheeks" and then whistling when I walked off.

I think it's a very good job that I've signed a disclaimer saying that I won't going around hitting people.

I've started posting extracts of Child on YouTube to try and raise interest for the book. I'll be posting one every Saturday between now and the launch party.



Please watch, rate (highly), favourite, embed in your lj posts, link to it from websites, mention it in forum posts, tattoo it on your forehead, anything you can think of to try and get it noticed.

I had a very useful meeting with the readiness team about raising awareness of InfoPath with partners.

I watched a video which included a muppet Steve Balmer.

I met an Olympic gold medalist.

I ate a sandwich with meat from a whole roast pig.

I performed flower stick in front of a couple of hundred people.

And I had a discussion with someone about me writing articles on InfoPath for PC magazine in the lead up to the 2010 release.

Have I mentioned lately that I love my job?

Today I've been to the Space Needle, visited the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, looked round a Jim Henson exhibition, visited a glass blowing shop (but didn't buy anything - there was a gorgeous necklace but $75 is a lot of money for something I don't need), and wandered round a market which includes a famous fish stall where people make a show of throwing fish around.

And it's only 2pm.

The fact that I've got so much done may have something to do with the fact that I gave up trying to get back to sleep at about 6am. We've got a team dinner at 8:30 tonight but I've done my list of touristy things to do today. I'm going to sit down for a bit to rest my aching feet (I walked between all of the morning's activities) and try and figure out what I can do this afternoon.

Sleep seems like a good plan, but it's probably a really bad idea. If I go to sleep now, I'll probably never get my body shifted onto American time.

It's not published yet, but it's for sale.

The publication date is 24th September 2009 but it's listed on Book Guild's website and Amazon and you can pre-order it for £17.99.

Child of the Hive is now listed on Book Guild's website and available on Amazon for pre-order. This should make me happy and excited. But there's a problem.

It's listed as a children's book.

I can almost understand the mistake, since the blurb mentions that Will's still at school (technically, he's in sixth form) at the opening of the book. But you'd think the publishers would know that it's not a kid's book! In the second half of the book, the youngest character is eighteen and you have Drew and Rachel living together and dealing with Rachel's infertility issues! Not to mention the swearing at a couple of points.