Dog Poop and Hummingbirds

On the way back from Aldi’s (I love saving money on groceries so I can continue to live the life of a starving writer), I saw two people picking up dog poop. I got angry, contemplative, and amused within microseconds of each emotion. How many times in my life have I had to scrape dog poop off of my shoes, flip-flops, or bare feet? Too many. And yet, while I find the legal duty of dog owners to be on poop patrol to be a blessing for the obvious reason, poop picking is the number one reason aliens don’t attack us–and you know they are watching. Trailing behind a four-legged animal and picking up their waste in plastic baggies must really confuse them as to who is the dominant species on the planet with whom to make contact. The cows must have been a giant disappointment to the aliens. Cows are poor communicators. My funny-bone was tweaked by the diminutive Asian woman being torn in half by two, large, black bear imitations of dogs (mastiffs?) while attempting to bag their quarter-pounders with stink. And the reason for the dogs attempting to tear her in half was the 6’7″, 300+ pound mountain man across the street restraining his teacup, attack Chihuahua while also bagging the dog’s poop.

On a separate but related note, I put up four hummingbird feeders this Sunday morning after Saturday evening’s near disaster of 31-degree temperatures and 2-4 a.m. snowfall, which caused me to rise in the middle of the night and cover dozens of plants. And damn if I didn’t step in some rabbit scat. I didn’t bag it. It is fertilizer for the flowers the hummers love and more evidence to the observing aliens that dogs must be the real Earth rulers, because it is the only crap the bipeds stoop to collect. Clever dogs. Patient aliens. Happy hummers. Obedient humans.

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Day Nine

Overwhelming describes the number of things you could build into a webpage versus what you should include while cluttering the site. It again brings to mind the amount of time you want to designate being a semi-expert (amateur who thinks he knows something) to the scope of jobs necessary to be successful in the self-publishing world versus concentrating on what you do best–in my case, I think it’s the writing. But I find these other elements so intriguing that the widget universe and other oddly named web design aspects kept me up to two in the morning last night, throwing today’s game plan out the window, further delaying the web page launch, which is now launch+1. But I do see the beginning of the end for what I want on the webpage, and a webpage that doesn’t dominate my life after it is launched. I’ll leave that to the voices in my head.

 

Day Eight

Just spent three exhausting hours trying to figure out how to put up a blog roll on the website. While the specific instructions are good enough, what is missing for all the instructions is tying the seven or eight major steps (and each major has two to thirteen minor steps) together to get the end product done. In my case, getting up a blog roll. And now that I look at the results, I wonder what real value it has for me. So, I miss my Monday deadline–yep, there’s always Tuesday.

Day Seven

It’s killing me that I can’t figure out why links to Amazon, links for my books, won’t show up. Everything else links up–just not Amazon. The call is in to the professionals at WordPress. On the other front, I will be done with absolutely all final edits to “Kill All Cats” by tomorrow, if not tonight. Holding me up for publication: graphics, a few more blurbs, and some additional marketing plans to get done. It’s never done, and that’s okay, but I confess, I am itching to get back to the finish push for “Don’t Fear the Reaper” to get some quality feedback.

Day Six

Ever so slowly the pieces of the puzzle comes together. However, I see many new and potential goodies to put onto this website so that it informs, entertains, and gets me book sales. Yeah, I want books sales. I admit it. Still not sure why Amazon links are hit-and-miss, but have discovered columns and tables that must be done in HTML. Fortunately, I wrote come HTML-based websites back in the late 1990s when you had to do them from scratch. The effort is messy, but doable.

Day Four

Ugh! Despite a tutorial I found online, my links still seem to have a mind of their own, especially back to Amazon; however, I think I should be able to go live in my seven day deadline despite the learning curve and all the other chores related to publishing a book: final blue-line edits, marketing, and running the gauntlet of the process of publishing through Smashwords, CreateSpace, and Kindle.

Day Three

It’s now day three of building this website, and I’m finally getting the hang of most things although a few still elude me. Figuring out what is import to anyone that comes to my site is very important to me. I want it informative, quick to get around, and not full of junk that is not necessary. Now, if I can only figure out the difference between Home and Blog.

Day One

If you’ve wandered here, thanks for showing up; however, the site is under construction. And since I’m just messing around and learning, you can come back on June 1, laugh, or suffer through all the changes as I pour information into the website. Or, you can just click on a link and by my latest book.