Sunday, April 14, 2013

JCCC3 Cruise Journal / Day 8

When I got back from my vacation two months ago, I wanted to write up my experiences and share my journal right away. But I got sick and life sucked me back in and I wasn't able to overcome that and get back to it. Until now. Posted in real-time fashion, I hope you enjoyed reliving JCCC3 with me two months after the fact.

--------

Day 8
[The journey's end.]


Saturday, April 13, 2013

JCCC3 Cruise Journal / Day 7

When I got back from my vacation two months ago, I wanted to write up my experiences and share my journal right away. But I got sick and life sucked me back in and I wasn't able to overcome that and get back to it. Until now. Posted in real-time fashion, I hope you enjoy reliving JCCC3 with me two months after the fact.

--------

Day 7

I'm feeling tired at the moment. Blasé. And I got enough sleep. I just don't feel like doing anything. I feel bad about that. I just want to go home, and rest, and process. And this pen is making me sad. It worked so well yesterday during the talks. It's like it only wants to write tiny, and when you ask it to go big and fast, it can't handle the pressure. [I was writing with the Pentel Energel, by the way.]

I'm looking forward to going home to my friends I am used to seeing every day. My fiercely supportive Jen. My normal Ross. My funny and I get her and not too funny for me Becky.


I have felt less uptight this year about meeting celebrities and new people. Maybe because I am meeting fewer? Maybe because I worry less about embarrassing Jessica than Matt? Or I know what to expect.

Oo, captain just came on to say we have to head to Nassau to drop somebody off. An interesting development on this cloudy, windy, slightly rainy day.

Friday, April 12, 2013

JCCC3 Cruise Journal / Day 6

When I got back from my vacation two months ago, I wanted to write up my experiences and share my journal right away. But I got sick and life sucked me back in and I wasn't able to overcome that and get back to it. Until now. Posted in real-time fashion, I hope you enjoy reliving JCCC3 with me two months after the fact.

--------

Day 6

[On this day at sea, I attended three straight hours of panels and podcast recordings. The following are my notes and quotes.]


Nerdist Writer's Panel
[You can listen to it for yourself here.]

John Roderick: Hard to tell sometimes how you make money as a writer (some things are for profit, some things are not)

Joseph Scrimshaw: Twitter=immediate validation

John Scalzi: Strategy is to say yes to all kinds of genres

John Roderick: At first worried was squandering limited amounts of creative energy on not song writing, but decided any writing was good. Throw out 80% of writing anyway.

Randall Munroe: [I transitioned by] doing less good at my job

John Scalzi: Don't believe in the muse

Bill Corbett: Reminds me that you can start writing like we start exercise, a little bit at a time

Joseph Scrimshaw/John Scalzi: If your first thing is awesome, well, that's the thing that pays your bills, like your day job now. It allows you to do the thing you love.

John Roderick: Argues the lack of struggle by self-publishing keeps us at the level of “good” and keeps us from honing our crafts to be “great”.

Joseph Scrimshaw: We still like finished/polished products, but we also like seeing how they got there in real time (a human thing)

Randall Munroe: There are the same amount of eyeballs out there (same amount of attention). It's divided up more. [implying the internet doesn't change the amount of information we consume, but it does spread our consumption out amongst many different sources]

Adam Bernstein: says not to edit so much, so you don't lose spirit of it

John Roderick: write now, edit later

Joseph Scrimshaw: Writes out crappy list of what he's actually going to do to get through rough patch

John Scalzi: Thinks the really good ideas are the ones you can remember, even if you fall asleep again without writing it down. [I am not so sure I agree with him on this point]


Quitter's Panel

[Angela Brett recorded many things on JCCC3, and has put together a youtube playlist of this panel]

Nicole Dieker: Says she is organized and had charts. If she could keep the line of profit/popularity above a certain point for a certain amount of time, then she could quit.

Joel Watson: You have to do it all wrong so you figure it out.

Recurring theme => Make a business plan. This is a business. Get a CPA, don't be your own lawyer, establish your business early to get credit.

Joel Watson: Phases: 1.) Get people to read it and tell their friends. 2.) Sell something. 3.) Thing X.

Christopher Badell: Worst case scenario, best case scenario, expected scenario => Know what to do in those cases so even good doesn't sink you.


Obsessed Podcast recording

[You can listen to it for yourself here.]

Joseph Scrimshaw: “collecting things inside your body...” (this is funny because eating is like this!)

Joseph Scrimshaw, to Phirman: “Have you ever tried doing the fastest, easiest things and seeing if it works?”

Wil Wheaton: Hard to make the same beer twice. Hate American beers, but have to give it to them for consistency.

Mike Phirman: Why would I use a short cut to do the thing I love to do? I love singing harmonies! Sometimes I sing them twice even though it's good the first time because I love singing it so much!

------

Also got sweet 2nd row seats today because Andrew, Sarah, Kate, and Jim got to the show early. Randall Munroe was cute and told dead-pan stories. His jokes were funny as he told about the ball pit in his house (left many questions unanswered for us) and what would have happened to John Roderick's plane [see reference to John Roderick telling a long story about flying planes on Cruise Day 3] on other planets. The Double Clicks were also so so adorable. Liked their sound. Wil Wheaton was Wil Wheaton-y. Loved his RoboCop bit.

We made it to the game room! Jessica and I played games with Matt and Laura and Blake. We played 2 games of Pandemic and lost [though it turns out we may not have been playing correctly], Ticket to Ride (I won), Tsuro (Blake won), and King of Tokyo (Jessica, the pacifist, won).

Thursday, April 11, 2013

JCCC3 Cruise Journal / Day 5

When I got back from my vacation two months ago, I wanted to write up my experiences and share my journal right away. But I got sick and life sucked me back in and I wasn't able to overcome that and get back to it. Until now. Posted in real-time fashion, I hope you enjoy reliving JCCC3 with me two months after the fact.

--------

Day 5

Should have made this diary read something like “Captain's Log, Cruise Day 5...” Oh well, nothing a little editing couldn't fix!

Belly is much better! Meds + time + sleep = better. Still hurts a little, but I've eaten twice. Last night I was feverish during the JoCo Live Band Karaoke. It was bad.

St. Martin/St. Maarten was so much nicer than St. Thomas yesterday. (I couldn't even write about it at the time because it was so bad.) Nice, air-conditioned bus picked us up at the port and took us to a beach with nice views (even from the back row) and nice lounge chairs (with cushions! The way to go!) and umbrellas for $3 (definitely worth it and necessary). I walked along the beach a little, but mostly sat and read. It was warm and peaceful. We got lunch at a restaurant behind us with little picnic-ish tables under roofs. The ribs and chicken were good, as was the rum punch and french bread. The guy who took our order said “Bonjour” [we were on the French side of the island] and I responded “Bonjour” in the worst French accent ever. As in completely an American accent. My French is a little rusty, what can I say. It rained for a few minutes, but we were under the awning. Our cushions got a little wet, but we found if we flipped them over, it was better. Then we were mostly in the shade at that point.

The lovely beach at St. Martin


The tour guide was friendly and helpful, and was from Nevis. I wanted to ask her if she knew my friend's husband [who is also from Nevis – it's not that big, so it's completely reasonable she may have known him or his family], but I'm too shy and there was never a good time.

I got to finish reading my book on the beach. It was relaxing enough just because I wasn't thinking about work or interpersonal relationships, but I could have stayed there all day walking in the waves or doing nothing at all.

At a gift shop back at the port, the clerk hit on me and when we left, and Jessica was like “sure, you're the pretty one,” teasing me something like that. I told her she was “the Money” since she gave me a quarter to buy my postcards. Then I realized I was showing cleavage and she was not and that probably was why he was all creepy / “don't hide your pretty face behind your glasses”, because I really didn't look that good after being sick and sweating in the sun all day:

Delicious lunch at the beach on St. Martin


Side note: Jessica talks to herself a lot. She says it's because she normally works alone all day.

Today we had the best ~2 hours yet on the ship, wandering around while most people were still on shore. We took pictures of the art, watched the FlowRider being fixed, and watched from the upper deck as the ship left port.

For the evening's entertainment, Joseph Scrimshaw's bit about playing James Bond the video game made me laugh so hard I cried. We got sweet 2nd row seats next to our new friend Andy because we got there early after our afternoon running around the ship.

[At this point, you may be speculating, as I was, about the root cause of my intestinal distress. I've got only one guess, from my Day 2 adventures, when I wanted to be like Anthony Bourdain and eat the native food:
Conch removed from shell, prior to eating
the conch of doom
Anthony Bourdain has had his fair share of eating regrets, though, too.]


Wednesday, April 10, 2013

JCCC3 Cruise Journal / Day 4

When I got back from my vacation two months ago, I wanted to write up my experiences and share my journal right away. But I got sick and life sucked me back in and I wasn't able to overcome that and get back to it. Until now. Posted in real-time fashion, I hope you enjoy reliving JCCC3 with me two months after the fact.

--------

Cruise Day 4

It's no wonder I can't really get myself to talk to “celebrities” if I can't really get myself to talk to my new friends. I would rather have the opportunity to write out our communications and chose words carefully, until everything flips, and that becomes too slow to communicate all I want to share with you.

Tour on St. Thomas was insupportable. “Here's a K-Mart”, “Here's a golf course.”

My belly still hurts, which is unfortunate.

Got to talk to Matt and check email and twitter. Hope hope hope I'm not wrong about AT&T coverage here... [I wasn't] Matt misses me, too. And that's nice. I hope he's not having too bad a time.

[Sick Rachel wasn't very journal-y. St. Thomas was super hot, smelled of exhaust, and had really bumpy roads for a sick person riding in a trolley. I was very grateful for phone access, though, so at least there was that.]

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

JCCC3 Cruise Journal / Day 3

When I got back from my vacation two months ago, I wanted to write up my experiences and share my journal right away. But I got sick and life sucked me back in and I wasn't able to overcome that and get back to it. Until now. Posted in real-time fashion, I hope you enjoy reliving JCCC3 with me two months after the fact.

--------
Day 3
  • Feel terrible, and lots of waves, but getting by.
  • Calf muscles still sore
  • But 100% not sunburnt, so there's that!

Again, thought some things I wanted to write this morning while lying in bed, but didn't move because deemed sleep more important. Now regret it, as don't remember.

It bugs me that sometimes I can't figure out what I want to do. I have all these things in my head that are things I should do, and I suggest them to the “Want to do” calculation committee, but I'm never sure if that's what I want to do. A lot of times I know I want to write, but what? I know I want the results to be blog posts or neat things, but writing generally happens best when you have the idea and then choose to write to deal with the idea.

Ah, two things come to mind: 1.) Writing because you have to vs. because you want to, and 2.) the idea of a color-changing temperature guide that you put in hot drinks to determine if you can drink it or you will burn your tongue.

On the latter, Jessica says I should write a blog post on it. I can see the video in my head now: “Always burning your mouth on coffee that's way too hot?” (Insert clip of person drinking then pulling back with burnt mouth, hand comes up.) “Tired of not being able to taste for a week because your tongue is burnt?” (People nodding with wrinkled noses.) “Did your over-eagerness to eat cause you to shovel risotto into your mouth before it cooled?” (Person spitting risotto back onto their plate.) “Then you need Mouth Savers (or other name, perhaps one that is cooler-sounding)! The tool to take the temperature of your food and drink before you dig in! Mouth Savers' unique color-changing technology allows you to know when your food is just right. (Goldilocks! That's what we'll call it!) The patent-pending design changes colors to let you know when your food goes from 'Too Hot!' to 'Just Right!'”

On the former, I had a thought last week about how I know what that means now, and I can see examples of it in my life. [With this I'm referring to the idea that I've heard a lot of professional writers bring up, which is that to really be a writer is to write because you have to, not because it sounds fun to do. Not to write for the money, or the notoriety, but because you have to get that stuff out of your head. And only after you're going to be doing it anyway, to care about the other stuff. That's all highly paraphrased of course.]

Mike Phirman was fun in concert, I might look into a few of his songs. John Roderick gave the best performance of his I'd seen yet. He started off with a long story about flying planes. He also played a new song for us, saying he wanted to for all we've done for him. It was great because he told us that a few of the performers had taken a pledge to work up some new material for the cruise, and he himself had been in a bit of a writing drought for awhile now. Zoe Keating was great, but unfortunately many of us were sleepy. I wish that sounded like more of a compliment, because really, bad music doesn't put you to sleep, it puts you on edge. Great string music relaxes me and makes me peacefully sleepy. She must have a complicated set up for her looping.

Zoe Keating working wonderous melodies on her cello and laptop



Had a belly ache all day today, so took a lot of down time. Did a lot of reading, so that was nice. Maybe it's best since start time is 8am tomorrow, plus excursion on St. Thomas. Our towel animal today was unidentifiable. Small head, two tails.

Not sure what towel animal this is...


Monday, April 8, 2013

JCCC3 Cruise Journal / Day 2

When I got back from my vacation two months ago, I wanted to write up my experiences and share my journal right away. But I got sick and life sucked me back in and I wasn't able to overcome that and get back to it. Until now. Posted in real-time fashion, I hope you enjoy reliving JCCC3 with me two months after the fact.

--------

Day 2

  • Cocoa Cay
  • Paul & Storm concert

On today's glass-bottom boat excursion on the Bahamas, I held a sea urchin, 2 star fish, some conchs, etc. Ate a piece of fresh conch.

Sea Urchin
Sea urchin--it moved in your hand!


Yesterday Jim walked 7 round trip miles to get a shovel and some buckets so today he could make 3 chess pieces in the sand. He received many comments, compliments, and questions even though the official sand castle building contest judging never took place.

Jim begins work on the Rook


Overheard at the Beach:
Dude 1: Spray paint my back again.
Dude 2, spraying friend's back with sun screen: I signed my name. Is that okay?

Overheard at Dinner:
Jim: Are you making fun of my lack of self-confidence?
Me: You can easily figure out all of my social anxieties to make fun of me for.
Kate: It's all on her blog!

My calf muscles are so sore! Mostly from the stairs, but I suspect the beach didn't help much, either. [I feel like I should mention that my sister had joined the Elevator Temperance Brigade, so we were exclusively taking the stairs on the ship.]

Not so sure about Hodgman's music choices during the dance party. Kate, Sarah, and I wanted to dance, but we weren't feeling it.

The key to wanting your vacation to end is leaving someone at home you miss.

Boat is very rocky today. So far we haven't felt seasick, but it's so bad, I wouldn't be surprised if we did. Jessica claims it feels fun. I told her it was what it felt like to be drunk and she said something like, “Now I understand!” [because she doesn't drink].

Wish we had more friends here. Like, more of the people who are already friends. They would like it here and it would be fun.

When we met and were talking to Andy, and I said I looked him up to see if he currently worked at the genome lab in which he was standing in the picture I saw, he asked what I found out. I said that he didn't now, but may have in the past, and he said I was correct, but didn't say more. It was fun of him to ask what I'd found out as opposed to just telling me, but also a very tricksy way to avoid saying more. Maybe he didn't want to talk about work on vacation. I guess I didn't really either, I was just nerdily excited to point out that my new company makes the fancy science machine I'd seen in his picture. I only sort of get the classic nerdy programmer jokes that abound at these things, so it was nice to have a science nerd connection. Although, who am I kidding? I'm just a science nerd poser, too! Where are the metadata nerds on this ship?

Sunday, April 7, 2013

JCCC3 Cruise Journal / Day 1

When I got back from my vacation two months ago, I wanted to write up my experiences and share my journal right away. But I got sick and life sucked me back in and I wasn't able to overcome that and get back to it. Until now. Posted in real-time fashion, I hope you enjoy reliving JCCC3 with me two months after the fact.

--------

Day 1

[A few last tweets before we left Florida:]




  • JoCo Rock concert!
  • unpacking; scurrying about the ship, checking it out 

The concert was great, as always. Watching JoCo makes my heart so joyous that I want to cry. He is genuine, funny, at ease, welcoming – a marvelous combination in a performer. Everyone is happy to be there, and sing and/or dance and/or just sit and watch, whatever their preference. There are so many “things”: Christian getting sweaty and needing to change his shirts, jokes about Glee, “Arrr” jokes, not needing to tell the crowd how to sing Re: Your Brains (or, from this morning, “Burn!”).

JoCo and the band rockin' out on the first night of the cruise.

I like being familiar with Kate and Jim already. It makes me happy to be with them again. I have so many people and experiences in my life that make me happy, that it feels like I need very special circumstances to remind me how that actually feels.

So far this boat feels as rocky as the last. [Spoiler alert: I never did get seasick, though!]

It's weird to have the window and the balcony this time. I wonder if we'll be able to see the sky out there at night, or if the ship will be too bright. I'd go out now but I'm tired and lazy. [Another spoiler alert: I never found out, because sadly tiredness/laziness won out every night!]

My cares of last week seem so far away. But they always drive down when I fly, so they get here later.

JoCo: “This is the last song.”
Crowd: “Awwww!”
JoCo: “We've got all week together!”

Saturday, April 6, 2013

JCCC3 Cruise Journal / Day 0


When I got back from my vacation two months ago, I wanted to write up my experiences and share my journal right away. But I got sick and life sucked me back in and I wasn't able to overcome that and get back to it. Until now. Posted in real-time fashion, I hope you enjoy reliving JCCC3 with me two months after the fact.

--------
Day 0 (Cruise departs tomorrow; Took a plane to Florida today.)

[Vacation officially begins with the following tweet:]


[Sometimes you have to journal in bullet points because you're so tired that you can't think in complete sentences.]
  • At hotel: Cobblestone sidewalks + rolling suitcases = :(
  • Not sure when to give out those business cards I made [see below]. Should have brought a small book for gathering other people's information, too.
  • Thought I had a thought about “meeting people strategies”, but I can't remember. :(


[Also of note, during a terrible and terribly slow dinner at the hotel restaurant, my sister and I started chatting with a friendly couple at the next table, Matt and Laura. After my brain nudged me for a while, I finally say to Matt “You look so familiar...” and he says, “Did we meet at that JoCo Concert in Ann Arbor?” Yes! They turned out to be really cool, and we enjoyed spending time with them over the next week.]

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Pen of the Month Club / Pen #5 / Pentel Energel


(Each square represents one person.)


(I didn't want the right side to look as long as the left side when the list of criticisms was actually shorter, so I colored some of the lesser worst aspects blue because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.)




(No significance to blue or black text.)

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Sign Off

It amuses me to consider the changes of meanings provoked by signs with burned out letters. Below is the start of a collection that I culled from my pictures of the last 5 or so years. I made a set on Flickr where you can join me in re-imagining the meanings of these signs.

Monday, April 1, 2013

¿ais, caramba?

In elementary school, my friend Leslie's family got the “call waiting” feature on their telephone line. The benefit of “call waiting” remains obvious, but the downside at that time was that if you didn't answer the second call, your second caller would neither get you nor your answering machine to leave you a message. Unfortunately, the panic Leslie experienced when she heard the double beep in her ear prevented her from mastering the switching-between-calls functionality, resulting in many dropped calls. Frustrated, her mother insisted Leslie hang up her first call in order to answer the waiting call successfully. Fearful of being banned from the phone altogether unless she complied, Leslie invented a code word she would invoke any time she needed to hang up immediately to answer another call. “Tootie!” she'd yell in the middle of our conversation, and I wouldn't even get a chance to say “bye” before the line would go dead. I could fault her for choosing to unceremoniously hang up on people instead of learning how to properly use “call waiting”, but we were just kids, so I give her full marks for ingenuity in work-around problem solving.

Recently I've been wondering if a code word might be the solution I seek for a few recurring situations in which much wants to be conveyed very quickly. For instance, when you're IMing or texting with a friend, sometimes the situation arises in which you must abruptly leave the conversation. There are some common abbreviations at your disposal, such as “brb”, “bbl”, or “afk”, but what if you won't “be right back”, don't know if you'll “be back later”, or it isn't strictly true that you are “away from keyboard”? Maybe what you really want to say is “I know we've been having a nice conversation in the slow, stilted way that modern people communicate, but something has arisen beyond my control and I must attend to it. I'm very sorry! Would that I could dispatch this intrusion forthwith, but alas my lot is not as such. Parting is such sweet sorrow, etc., etc., Your friend always, X,” but the abbreviation for that is far too long. May I suggest “ais”? It's a twofer, as I'll explain! First, it's an acronym for “Ack! Interrupted! Sorry!” which means practically the same thing as the mouthful above. And second, an ai is a three-toed sloth of South America (I learned that by playing Scrabble—very handy word) which dictionary.com says sounds a high-pitched cry when disturbed. By typing “ais!”, you're not only saying “Ack! Interrupted! Sorry!” but you're also declaring that you have been disturbed, and like the ais you are sounding your cry.

Tell me if you can that you do not have a use for “ais” in your chat-speak! Sure, using it might take you a little extra time explaining what you mean to the uninitiated, but

ais!