Bryce Moore's Blog, page 98
December 6, 2019
Heavy Meta #24: Author/Professor Shana Youngdahl
This week, Kelly and I sit down to talk with Shana Youngdahl, Assistant Professor of English at UMF. She teaches creative writing here at the university, and she also just had a book come out: As Many Nows as I Can Get. It got a starred review in Kirkus and has appeared on multiple “best of” lists, which is all pretty awesome. Oh. Did I mention one of those lists was “New York Public Library Top 10 Best Books of the Year?”
Yeah. Kind of a big deal.
So it was great to have her on the show and talk about her book, her writing, UMF, and publishing in general. Definitely worth a listen, and check out her book while you’re at it!
December 5, 2019
The Wonders of the Apple Pencil
A year ago, I got myself an Apple Pencil and a new iPad for Christmas, because I love myself very much. The idea of the Apple Pencil seemed great. I’d be able to use my iPad as a notebook. Drawing! Notes! What wasn’t to like? Except when I got it and had it all set up, I walked away disappointed. The note taking apps I found left me sadly wanting more, and my iPad started seeing less and less use. Instead, I’d turn to my phone to thumb down some notes. It was far from perfect, but it was convenient, so I made do.
While I was down in San Antonio, I saw my sister using her Apple Pencil all. The. Time. It baffled me, really, because like I said, I hadn’t had much luck with mine. So I had her show me how she uses it. For her, it all came down to one simple app: GoodNotes. It let her make to do lists, organize her thoughts down on virtual paper, and keep track of her life. I was intrigued enough I grabbed my iPad (which I’d brought along to watch movies on the plane) and bought the app right away.
It made an enormous difference in how I use my iPad.
Suddenly, I’m taking it with me everywhere. I’ve always written down To Do lists in a notebook or on tiny scraps of paper. GoodNotes lets me write on my iPad, instead. It lets me import work documents and then take notes on those documents in meetings. And then(!) I don’t need to worry about losing those notes after I take them. No need to hold onto the pieces of paper, because I never had any paper to begin with.
But the biggest sign that this has really impacted my life? I’ve started using GoodNotes instead of Google Sheets or Excel for certain tasks.
I know. Crazy, right? For years, a spreadsheet has been my go-to solution for just about everything. Need to organize Christmas purchases? Spreadsheet. Need to keep track of bits of information. Spreadsheet. Need to work on a budget? Spreadsheet. It’s not like GoodNotes has totally replaced my need/love for Excel, but it’s made it so some things are more convenient in the app than in Excel. Take my Christmas purchasing plans, for example.
Before, I’d keep track of all of it in a spreadsheet. Who’s getting what, how much I spent, what I have left to buy. The biggest problem with this is interacting with the information is a beast. You have to find the cell, click into it, type notes down, then go elsewhere to keep it going. But it was better than a list, because I could spread the information across the page anyway I liked.
Kind of like a piece of paper.
GoodNotes lets me do all of that on a piece of electronic paper. I can add more pages to the note, change the layout, copy and paste information from what spot to another, all using the Apple Pencil. Does it all come down to the app? I don’t know. Maybe I just didn’t catch the right vision when I first used the Pencil, but I’ve caught it now. The less physical paper I can have in my life, the better. I’m looking forward to seeing what I can do with it and plotting a story . . .
Which is good, because my sister owed me something after that Bodypump debacle. All is forgiven, Susie. 
December 4, 2019
Adventures in Wisdom Teeth
I know what you’re probably expecting to read in this post. Something about how Tomas has gotten to the age when he needs to head to the dentist for the ol’ wisdom tooth removal. He’s well past 15, after all. It wouldn’t be stunning for that to happen at his age. He probably started to have his teeth hurt, and we had to go to see what the problem was, yada yada yada.
Well, you’d be partially right. The whole “pain in the mouth” thing did start happening about a month and a half ago. It’s just it didn’t happen to Tomas. It happened to DC.
If you know DC, you know she looks extremely grown up for her age. She’s still just 11. But when her tooth started hurting in October, “wisdom teeth” was about the furthest thing in my mind for what might be wrong with her. But a trip to the dentist and an x-ray later, and we knew that’s actually what was going on. So today I took her to the oral surgeon to get her lower wisdom teeth out.
It was quite the ordeal.
It’s stressful enough when you’re in high school and you have to deal with it. (I myself never had my wisdom teeth out. What can I say? I’ve got an enormous mouth.) But when you’re in sixth grade? I felt so bad for her, especially since she’s not that good with needles. (Remind me to tell you sometime the ordeal that we had when we had to get her blood drawn . . .)
Still, she managed it wonderfully. She faced her fears and pushed through, and I was very proud of her. I know some people video their kids when they wake up after being put under. Having seen someone dealing with it firsthand, I can’t imagine doing that to a kid. They’ve just been essentially traumatized. They’re still out of it. It’s not the time to make jokes at someone’s expense. (DC was still in tears even when she woke up, the poor thing.)
Anyway. It’s rare when your second child breaks the ice for something, especially something that normally is so age bound. Either way, now I know what it’s like, and I should be better positioned to help the other kids when they face the same experience.
For now, DC is watching Studio C and eating ice cream. There are worse after effects . . .
All well wishes for her are welcome!
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
December 3, 2019
Bodypump for the Body Lump
Denisa and I went down to San Antonio to visit my sister and her family for Thanksgiving. I don’t see her more than once a year (San Antonio is far away), but like most people, we keep in touch through social media and the like. She started working as a trainer at the local YMCA a while ago, and so there’s been a number of “Come work out with me!” posts in her feed. I tend to gloss over those posts, because exercise, far away, and why. But when we got to San Antonio, she mentioned that she was teaching a class one of the mornings we were there.
“You should both come!”
I laughed it off. Like I was going to go to a gym while I was on vacation. I don’t even go to the gym when I’m at home. Why would I be crazy enough to put my body through anything remotely strenuous while I was supposed to be relaxing?
Except my kids talked to her kids, and they become convinced they wanted to try out the class. So I told Denisa, “You should go with them,” because . . . I can’t honestly remember the reason I gave. Just to see what it was like? Denisa decided to give it a shot, mainly because she likes trying new things. And then all the kids decided they’d rather sleep past 9am than get up, so they all bailed.
Which left me feeling kind of responsible. I was sending Denisa off to a class on her own. (As far as being a newbie is concerned. My sister was going to be there (obviously) and her husband. But still.) So on the spur of the moment, I agreed to go too. It was just a single class. 55 minutes. How bad could it be? I had no idea what kind of class it was or what we’d be doing. But surely I could do anything for 55 minutes.
[Narrator’s voice: He couldn’t.]
We got there, and I discovered the class is called “Bodypump,” and it had a whole bunch of equipment. Barbells, weights, mats, and some kind of step thing you had to assemble yourself. This led me to the immediate problem of one of my kryptonites: making decisions in the heat of the moment. I was supposed to choose what weights I was going to use. Since I still had no idea what exactly I was going to be doing with those weights, I picked 20 pounds for the bar and something like 12 pounds for the barbells. It was me, my brother in law, and a bunch of women of varying ages. Social pressure might have gotten to me a bit. Some of those women were loading on the weights. Did I really want to be prancing around with like 2 pounds of weight when some people were using 15 or 20?
[Narrator’s voice: Yes.]
So I committed. I grabbed the weights, and got all situated, and we began. I discovered a number of things in quick succession.
First of all, I believe someone secretly replaced my normal sister with a cyborg model. Seriously. She was churning through the exercises like she was using balloons for weight, and she was using much more weight than I was. Arm curls! Triceps! Squats! Abs! She ran the class through each muscle group one at a time, and I’m not sure she broke a sweat.
Second, I realized I was in trouble as soon as she said, “We’re going to start off with some light warm ups.” And I was already struggling in the warmups. I began to look over to those lighter weights with envy. Why had I thought heavier weights made sense? But hey. 55 minutes, right?
About 20 minutes into the routine, my legs were completely shot. I’ve done some weight lifting over the years, but I’ve always just assumed my legs were doing fine without the need for weight training. They take me everywhere I need to go, after all. Why do anything mean to them in response. And who cares about having fit legs of all things?
That morning, my legs decided to tell me just what they thought of this idea. For a while, I forced them to keep going. I didn’t want to be the idiot new guy who just sat down in the middle of the class, did I?
[Narrator’s voice: Yes, he did.]
Five minutes after that, I just plopped down and stared at my sister. Denisa was behind me, still going strong because she had made better weight decisions. My brother in law took me to a water fountain. The rest of the class was a series of “me making attempts to start exercising, because surely I was feeling better by now, only to discover that no, I wasn’t.”
The good news is that I’d gotten to the point where I didn’t care what anyone in that room thought of me, so I didn’t feel that bad about any social stigmas. And sure, some of them were probably in their sixties, and one of them was pregnant, but why in the world had I assumed I would be as strong as any of them? Muscles aren’t measured in beard length, after all.
It was a kinder, humbler Bryce who hobbled out of the YMCA that morning.
Except the lessons didn’t stop there. Apparently I’d pushed my body well past its limits. I had trouble walking for the rest of the day, with my legs randomly giving out on my whenever I tried anything too strenuous, like walking or stepping up on a curb. The next day, the strength was there, but the pain set in. It hurt to sit. Hurt to stand. Hurt to lift my arms. Hurt to do just about anything for the next three days.
Will I be doing Bodypump ever again? Honestly, I’d consider it if I could do it for free. The experience has made me wonder what sort of classes my university’s gym offers. It was a really fast way to work out all my muscles, I’ll say that much. And the fact that I folded so easily is a sign to me that I need to be doing more with weight than just keeping it off.
Now if I can only find the time . . .
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
December 2, 2019
The Hero’s Journey and Travel
I jetted down to San Antonio for Thanksgiving last week, taking some time away from the frigid tundra this November seems to be like in Maine to go enjoy some sun and 85 degree weather with family. Of course, that also meant I had to get on a plane to get there, and faithful readers know just how I feel about planes. (Hint: it’s not a fond relationship.)
But today’s post isn’t about my hatred of planes. Instead, I’d like to focus on a positive aspect of travel. I love being at different places: exploring and discovering things I haven’t seen or done before. This trip had plenty of that. We went to a number of delicious restaurants. (Mi Tierra, The Magnolia Pancake Haus, Torchy’s*, Duck Donuts, and we explored the vastness of HEB (pronounced H. E. B., as opposed to “heb”), a San Antonio grocery store named after Howard Edward Butt. I tried to argue he should have called it “Howard’s End.” Talk about a missed opportunity.) We checked out the River Walk and the Alamo. We did a scavenger hunt downtown. We ate guacamole by the bucketful. San Antonio is a lovely city (though I was glad to get back to some winter and snow when we returned. Because Christmas.)
But instead of focusing on all the things we did on the vacation, I want to center in on the act of returning after the vacation is done. I know that’s often the saddest part of the trip, but in many ways, it sometimes feels like the most interesting to me.
Whenever I leave home, there’s a fair bit of stress that goes into it. The packing and the plane, but also the process of learning the ropes in the new city where you arrive. Where do you get the rental car? How do you get to where you’re going? Where can you eat?
When you’re on your way home, you’ve got that all figured out. You know the area. You pass stores you recognize. Places you’ve been. Maybe I did one too many papers in college on the Hero’s Journey, but that’s what it always reminds me of. You come back to the place you left, but you’re different than you were before you left it. Wiser? Who knows. But definitely more experienced.
A trip changes everyone on it in different ways. Seeing new places and new people opens your mind up to ways of thinking that might have been closed to you if you hadn’t seen or met. And that’s one of the biggest reasons I continue to travel as much as I do, even with my intense loathing of airplanes.
Anyone else out there do any traveling over vacation? Got any cool stories to share?
*Torchy’s Tacos did lead MC to proclaim it “the worst dinner ever” after she had an unfortunate run in with some jalapenos that led to her spitting her food out faster than Regan in the Exorcist can spew out pea soup. The rest of the family found it quite spicy. I loved it.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
November 22, 2019
Bryce’s Handy Guide to Car Cleaning
Cleaning your car. Such a pain, right? I mean, washing the outside is pretty easy these days. You can just drive it through one of those automatic washes, and you get the side bonus of either entertaining any children you have in the backseat, or traumatizing them for life. Either way, it’ll make for a memorable ten minutes.
But cleaning the inside? That’s a real chore. You’ve got to get your vacuum out there somehow, and even then, that car isn’t getting clean-clean. It’s just getting cleaner. The dashboard’s still going to be dusty, the nooks and crannies really need washing, and don’t even think about looking in the trunk.
To thoroughly clean a car, you almost need to devote hours of work, or you need to get it detailed. But a good detailing service can cost a hundred dollars or more. Once you’ve paid all that money, how are you going to afford to even eat that month? What’s a penny pincher to do?
Friends, I’m here with the answer. It’s a lifehack that takes the money you’re almost definitely already paying anyway for that car, and turns all of it into a time saving cheat code.
Step one: Make sure your car insurance is up to date. This is critical.
Step two: Go out and find a deer. Ram into it at speeds of at least . . . 40mph.
Step three: ???
Step four: profit.
I mean, sure. There are some less than ideal phases of that plan. Some things that are painful to you and painful to the deer. But this is car cleanliness we’re talking about. You’ve got to make some sacrifices, and there are too many deer out there anyway.
Once you’ve hit the deer, you’ve likely incurred thousands of dollars of damage to your car. But if your insurance is good, you’re only going to be on the hook for $100 of that. A really good detailing package (that includes a rental car) will cost like $200. Imagine this ad in the newspaper:
Complete car detailing package. Half off! Buy NOW and get 50 lbs of venison and FREE car rental for TWO WEEKS!
Tell me you wouldn’t be tempted.
In other news, my Prius is already fixed and I’m back in business. And Hilltop Collision does an excellent cleaning job on your vehicle whenever they work on it. We’re talking top notch. (And I should know, having now taken my car there after hitting two deer, a turkey, and a lawn tractor . . .)
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
November 21, 2019
Kitchen Planning Continues: Decision Overload
When I approach a problem, I like to break it down into its fundamentals. Don’t look at writing a book as tackling a 100,000 word problem. Look at it as 100 different 1,000 word goals, and suddenly it’s much more attainable. That’s a process that has served me well over the years, but it’s one that’s being severely tested by my plans to renovate the kitchen.
The basic problem is that there are just too many decisions for me to process at once, especially since I like to find The One Best Answer to each problem. If I want to fly to Orlando, I do research to find the best flight to take me there, accommodating for price, time, comfort, and convenience. That’s a problem with a solution. Kitchens are problems with solutions as well. But there are so many of those individual problems . . .
Case in point: Denisa and I want new cabinets, but we don’t want to break the bank to get them. So to figure out what the “best cabinets” for us are, we have to balance cost, materials, colors, design, and construction. But each one of those breaks down into further decisions. I could have someone come and make custom cabinets. It would be expensive. But even then, I’d have to decide what I want them to look like, where they should go, what should be inside them, etc.
Right now, I’m looking at using Barker Cabinets. They’re a company out of Oregon that makes ready-to-assemble (RTA) cabinets out of really solid materials. I’ll know exactly what I’m getting with them, and the cost is cheaper than custom made, but more expensive than other RTA cabinets (of questionable quality). But even having made that decision, I still need to tackle color, size, function, and the like.
It’s tempting to just throw my hands up and say, “I want cabinets. I don’t care what they look like. I just want ones that work.” But that’s not going to get me what I really want in the long run, so instead I just have to bite the bullet and take the time to churn through the decisions, one by one. Still, some of the decisions get to be so nitty gritty. There are options for what sort of hinges your cabinets have. Soft close? Do I want the doors to be pure maple, or maple frames with MDF centers? Do I want toe kicks that are recessed or flush?
And this is just for cabinets! I have to do the same process for countertops, appliances, electrical outlay, flooring, and more?
Thank goodness I’m starting this well in advance . . .
Anyone else out there handle a kitchen renovation on your own? How did you wrangle all the countless details into something manageable?
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
November 20, 2019
Ranked Choice Voting and Sour Grapes
Last year, you’ll recall Maine became the first state in the nation to experiment with ranked choice voting. Full disclaimer: I’m in complete favor of the approach. All the arguments against it that I’ve seen so far are nothing more than hot air spoken by people who either don’t fully understand the concept (and choose not to enlighten themselves) or seem to be doing their best to make other people unable to fully understand the concept.
To illustrate, I present to you Exhibit A: Bruce Poliquin, the Republican Congressman who lost his seat last year because of Ranked Choice Voting. He’s making the rounds now, decrying the format because it “robbed” him of the election. Oh wait. I mean, because it robbed the voters of the election.
In Poliquin’s account to the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Election Laws, “on Election Day 2018, I won my second re-election by receiving 2,200 more votes than any of my three liberal opponents, one Democrat and two Independents.”
Poliquin, though, didn’t win.
That initial, first-round count on Election Night wasn’t the final word, because Maine voters in 2016 and again in June 2018 adopted ranked-choice voting. The process requires election officials to add in the second- or third-place choices of voters whose first pick came up short.
Poliquin said the backers of independents Tiffany Bond and Will Hoar essentially “got another bite of the apple” when their votes were redistributed between the two leaders in the race, as the law mandates.
In effect, he said, “those voters who cast their primary ballots for the two candidates who least represent” the values of the district “ended up choosing the rank-vote winner. Very misguided and unfair.”
To me, this is like a football team being upset because they were ahead at halftime, and yet the other team was allowed to come out and play in the second half. That team “got another bite of the apple” when their points were counted in the second half.
Ranked Choice Voting was decided by the voters. (Multiple times!) The rules were plain as day well in advance of the election. The election then ran according to those rules. And then suddenly when it didn’t go the way he wanted to, it’s a travesty?
Let’s try basketball, instead. Up until 1979, the NBA didn’t have 3 pointers. All shots counted for 2 points. In 1979, that rule changed. Suddenly, shots a certain distance from the basket counted for more points. That was the new rule of the game. If a team were to object to losing by a few points “because those three point shots shouldn’t count for three points,” what are you supposed to tell them?
The rules changed, buddy. Move on. It doesn’t make anyone’s vote more powerful than anyone else’s. It makes it so that you can vote for who you want to vote for and not have to worry that your vote is ultimately wasted in a political climate dominated by two parties. It makes it so independents can more effectively woo voters, who know they can vote for them without making it so the person they want least to be elected gets elected because that person’s opponents split the vote.
Poliquin’s out there trying to paint it like this was such chaos. Like the entire thing was a disaster, and Mainers are all up in arms about it. It’s true that I’ve talked to about three people (total) out of all of my friends who didn’t like it. But (though this may be hard to believe) I’ve got way more than three friends. It wasn’t chaos. It ran as expected. If you really wanted Poliquin elected, you maybe object because the person you wanted to win, didn’t.
Sour grapes, people. Ranked choice voting was wonderful. I hope the whole country follows suit.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
November 19, 2019
“OK, Boomer” is Not OK
I’ve been following the “OK, Boomer” trend happening online at the moment, and it’s gotten to the point that I feel like I have something to say about it, even at the risk of sounding like an old man shaking his cane at the young whippersnappers.
For those of you who haven’t been following along, allow me to sum up. First, you need to understand the general generational breakdown of America.
The Silent Generation (1925-1945)Baby Boomers (1946-1964)Generation X (1965-1980)Millennials (1981-2000)Gen Z (2001-present)
Next, you have to acknowledge that some have done their best to classify the members of these generations by very broad strokes. “Baby Boomers are racist” or “Millennials only care about avocado toast.” And this is where it all breaks down for me.
I fail to understand why it’s frowned on these days to stereotype a person based on their skin, sex, or orientation, but stereotyping based on age (or (some) religions) isn’t just allowed, it’s often humorously encouraged. (Religion is a separate issue which could really derail this conversation, but succinctly put, I think the test should be, “What if I were to make this same comment about a Muslim or a Jew? Would it still be funny/appropriate?” Yes, you can start splitting hairs about which religions you personally think are valid or which you think are harmful, but I think that misses the point. Just because you personally see no value in a thing doesn’t mean it has no value, and doesn’t give you the right to mock it.)
But back to my point.
Every “Ok, Boomer,” and “Millennials are killing” statement made does nothing to contribute to a constructive conversation. It only isolates us by putting us into silos. Ageism is not okay, and that’s what this whole trend is all about on both sides of the argument. You’ve got generations of people dismissing other generations of people based on nothing more than preconceived notions about how that generation thinks and behaves. There’s a cognitive dissonance there, and I think it’s wrong not to acknowledge it and try to correct it.
“But the Boomers were here first, and they messed up our country and elected Donald Trump.”
“But the Millennials have a terrible work ethic and need to be taught how the real world works.”
Those objections? They might apply to individuals, but they’re far from 100% fact. And when someone you’ve painted with that oh-so-broad brush objects to the coating you gave them? They get hurt, and another little wedge is driven between us.
Of course, as I write this, I begin to wonder if this isn’t just the ageist equivalent of me saying “All ages matter.” I understand the anxiety and fear many Millennials and Gen Z-ers are feeling. The lack of real jobs, the bleak future, the feeling that they’re underrepresented in the halls of power, where decisions are made that have very real impacts on them. I don’t mean to dismiss those feelings. But instead of using a misguided ageist approach, why not band together with the people who agree with the things you’re trying to get done?
There’s as many Millennials as there are Boomers this year in America. Next year, there will be more. Get out and vote and start doing what you can to change the country for the better, as opposed to posting witty memes that exacerbate the problem.
Sigh. This came out much preachier than I wanted it to. All I wanted to do was explain why I haven’t been posting or liking any of the “OK, Boomer” comments that I’ve been seeing everywhere. I’m not a Boomer, and I’m not a Millennial, so maybe it’s not on me to try and solve the problem.
Doesn’t make this Gen Xer not want to try, though . . .
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
November 18, 2019
Heavy Meta #23: MakerSpaces with Matt Jacobson
In this episode, Kelly and I are joined by Matt Jacobson, IT Support Services Manager, to talk about the relatively new MakerSpace on campus. Have questions about what a MakerSpace is and why you might want to use one? Here are your answers. And a friendly reminder that if you’re a UMF student, staff, or faculty member, you’ve got access to free 3D printing in the library. Check it out!
