OK, now I remember why I don't write for a living.

Actually, that's selling the process short, and I really shouldn't do that. Today is the first day I've really been able to focus on writing on the book, but that hasn't come without its distractions. Like e-mail. The dogs. The cats. The air. The UPS truck that hasn't arrived yet. The customers. The marketing. The internet. The fact that I didn't mention in my post announcing the book deal that the book title will be Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 SP1 Unleashed.

What I really mean is now I remember what my least favorite part of the writing process is: getting started. Developing the pattern that will become my life for the next 3 months. Focusing in on tuning out the distraction. Getting into the writing zone and staying there.

Yeah, I'll get there, but this is my least favorite part of the process. At least this time, I'll have large blocks of time to write that aren't on the weekend, which will make my wife very happy.

So here's the breakdown: I've got 65 days left to write around 1000 pages, not counting weekends. That comes out to about 15 pages/day to meet the deadline. That's not too bad, actually. Plus, I'm already farming out a couple of chapters at least to other authors, so that will cut down on the average output needed as well. Then when you consider that I'm a big fan of picture books, well, that reduces my word count even further.

So, here's to book progress! And keeping my sanity in the meantime!

Sunday afternoon, we put up a fence. This was not the first fence we've put up, nor will it be the last, I'm sure. This particular fence was a seven foot section that stretches from the edge of the deck to the main yard boundary fence. It stands about 4.5 feet tall and has a gate in it.

Why did we put up this particular fence? To keep the dogs out of the area behind the deck. In fact, of the three fences we've put up at this location, all of them have been dog related. The first one was to set aside a section of the yard as a dog run. It stretches from the edge of the house to the yard boundary fence, and it is about 4 feet tall. We built it New Year's Eve 2001, the first month we were in the house. We put the dogs back there (it's a fairly large area - 9 feet wide by about 25 feet long) and while they complained, we thought we had a good solution to having the dogs outside while we had company over. That thought lasted about 4 hours until Rolf decided he could jump the fence, and did. Now we use it as a "cat run" instead.

Our second fence was the fence that set off Anna's garden area from the rest of the back yard. It's a much longer stretch, about 80 feet of fence, and the width of the garden varies along the fence line. That fence, too, was set up to keep the dogs out of Anna's garden. But since we wanted to still be able to see the garden from the yard, we build that fence about 4.5 feet tall and spaced the pickets apart on picket width between pickets. It keeps the dogs out and doesn't look too ugly in the process.

When I decided to create a blog post on fences, I thought about all kinds of barriers, not just wooden slat fences tied to steel fence posts planted in concrete. All this thinking about barriers reminds me of my favorite barrier - the railing. What memories...

But the best part about putting up the fence Sunday afternoon was that the weather permitted it. Not only was the warm sunny day perfect for building a fence, but it was also ideal for a backyard cookout on the deck. Which we did, inviting several of our neighbors to join us. That's one of the things I love about living in Texas. It's the middle of February, and while a large portion of the rest of the country can barely look outside without seeing frozen water all around, I'm in a t-shirt and shorts grilling steak, chicken, Italian sausage, pork chops, hamburgers, and hot dogs. Yum yum yum!

My Mac Mini finally arrived yesterday, and I've already learned a number of things about it.

1. It's tiny!
   I had seen these things in the displays at Fry's and the Apple Store, so I knew they were small, but good grief! I stacked 4 standard-sized CD cases next to it, and it practically disappeared!
   
2. It's quiet!
   They say there's a fan inside the thing to help with cooling, and I was a little concerned about noise level, but I can barely hear it. Ahhhh!
   
3. It recognized my 21" Trinitron display without a hiccup.
   Need I say more?
   
4. It didn't boot when I first turned it on.

What???

This can't be right! Every Mac I've ever purchased (and there have been many over the years, more if you include all the Newtons) has always worked right out of the box. But not this one. I connected the keyboard and mouse, network, display, and power, hit the power button, and got three beeps and nothing else. Panic set in. Did I get a lemon? Did Apple fail me and send a unit that was DOA?

Then I recalled that I asked the vendor (not Apple) who sold me the unit to install a RAM upgrade. That has to be it, right? Sure, it makes sense. I've seen similar problems with PCs when a bad RAM chip is installed, so that must be it. Only now I've got two problems facing me:

1. All the pre-press of the Mini says that there are "No user-serviceable parts inside." Which translates to "you need to pay someone a lot of money to work on this." Well, I knew that up front, which is why I had my vendor, who has never done me wrong, to install the RAM for me, as they're an Apple-authorized service center. No problem. I just call them and discuss the situation and get a resolution.

2. They're not in Texas (where I live) and they're not open on the weekends.

What to do, what to do. Well, I bite the bullett and start looking on the web for sites that talk about how to open the Mac Mini case and get to the "non-user-servicable parts" inside. It doesn't take me long to not only find a site demonstrating how to do it (it's actually not too bad), and a number of sites that indicate that Apple has softened their stance on the Mac Mini not being user-upgradable. So, feeling bolstereed by my newfound net knowledge, I tear into the Mini. Figuratively, of course.

Sure enough, once you know what you're doing, it's not hard to get into the case, and even though it looks like a sealed design, Apple did have the smarts to make it easy for technicians to get into, becuase they will need to get into these things. 256MB of RAM for the initial model is just not enough for these systems. Anyway, I get in and pull out the RAM that was installed (there's only one RAM slot) and replace it with the stick that the vendor pulled out. That's when I notice the big difference between the two:

The original RAM is PC3200, the "upgrade" RAM is PC2700.

Hmmmm.

I stick in the 256MB stick of PC3200 RAM, and it boots. Hmmmm.

I look back at my invoice, sure enough, the invoice shows a RAM upgrade using PC2700 memory. I look back at my original order. Sure enough, I requested a RAM upgrade using PC2700 memory. I go back and look at the memory specs from Apple's site again, and it says that the Mac Mini will use PC2700 or PC3200 SDRAM. Crap. Looks like I got a bad stick from my vendor. Well, I'll deal with them on Monday.

So, since I've got to deal with replacing the RAM again anyway, I took a look to see what it would cost me to go from 512MB to 1GB. Can someone please tell me why it costs 3 times as much to go from 512MB to 1GB in a single stick? Maybe I'll just stick with 512MB for the time being, assuming I can get the RAM issue worked out with my vendor. In the short term, I'm sticking with 256MB and will limp along in the meantime.

Oh, and one other observation. This thing is fast! Beats the hell out of the 333MHz iMac I've been using the past 6 months. Now I can relegate the iMac back to being a nice OS 9 machine used for testing and documentation for the book. Or, since it only cost me $75, I could turn it into an iMacTank.

Since today is the official first day of Spring (pitchers and catchers report to the various major league camps) I thought it was high time I recounted our trip to the Texas Rangers Winter Carnival. Oh, wait, I forgot. They don't call it that any more. That was one of the items that Ranger GM John Hart tried to do away with when he got here, but through the miracle of fan and marketing support, it has stayed around at least in some semblance of its former self. Fortunately o unfortunately, depending on how you look at it,it's now become an event targeted at rewarding season ticket holders and trying to get more groups to purchase season ticket packages.

Unlike last year, the weather was much more cooperative this year. Sure, it was cool, but it was the first weekend in freakin' February, so what would you expect, even in Texas? We signed up for the first tour of the three being offered, which took us into the bowels of the Ballpark (yes, I still refuse to refer to it as "Ameriquest Field" - bah) to get autographs of players and coaches. Last year, we got there late and missed our chance to get through the first tour, so we missed getting a few key autographs, but this year the first tour got to meet and get signatures from Buck Showalter, Orel Hershiser, and a couple of players. Like last year, we took pictures of us standing in front of the signers while getting the autographs, but this yea was the best of all, because as we went through and got Orel's autographs in the last station on the tour, one of the guards saw that Anna was trying to get a good shot of me standing across the table from one of my childhood baseball heroes and told us that we could step around the table and get a picture WITH Orel, not just across from him.

You didn't have to tell me twice! Fortunately, I remembered my manners and didn't make an ass of myself, but I did get to stand next to one of the greatest pitchers from my youth and have the event recorded forever in digital bits. I'll post a link to the picture later.

So we then left the tour, and I was thinking to myself, "Man, it can't get any better than this!" And then it did. We found out that season ticket holders could get on the waiting list for the next tour and go again if there was space available. Since each tour had a different set of players/coaches signing autographs, we jumped at the chance. And got in. This tour featured Michael Young and Chad Allen among others. I mention those two specifically because Michael Young is probably my current favorite Ranger (Kenny Rogers is a really really close second) and Anna went to high school with Chad Allen. She struck up a conversation with him, actually, mentioning that she graduated the year before he did, and they spent a couple of minutes reminiscing about the school and their time there. You could tell from the look on Chad's face that his conversation with Anna was the highlight of his day. I mean, come on, let's face it. Doing these autograph sessions is a chore for everyone involved. But there's just something about the high school connection that somehow forms a common bond between people that attended the same institution, and even when they're in completely different social circles, you start talking about your alma mater, and all those social walls come crumbling down.

So we wrapped up the second tour, thrilled that we got the extra set of autographs and that Anna had a chance to have a really cool chat with a major league player. Can't get any better, right? Wrong. We go to go on the third tour as well!

Now, I'll admit, by the time we started the third tour, we were tired, my legs hurt, and the lines were much, much longer than the first two tours, so it took twice as long to complete the last tour than it did the first. But we ended the day with autographs from 13 players and coaches, and that ain't half bad!

Then we got to go visit our new seats for this season, and they're not half bad. We got the weekender package, which has all our games on Fridays and Saturdays. Couldn't be more perfect for us.

So here's looking forward to another fun year of baseball, starting today. Will we go undefeated in our ticket package this year? Stay tuned to find out!

Just got the word this morning - my book proposal with Sams Publishing has been approved and they're ready to move forward! This news is both exhilarating and horrifying at the same time. Wonderful, because I love writing and this is the first time I've done a complete book myself from start to finish. Terrifying, because this is the first time I've done a complete book myself from start to finish, and I've just lost every second of free time I thought I might have had between now and the first of August.

So.....

Wish me luck, and if you're in the area, stop by and force me to leave the house once in a while. I might start looking like a dead vampire if I don't see the sun at least a little...

I would have hoped that a Valentine's Day post would be something completely unrelated to today's topic, but that's not the way it worked out. So, Happy Valentine's Day to those of you who will celebrate it later (or earlier, depending on your time zone).

Today, I lost a great deal of my worldly innocence. No, not that way. As in my view of the world as a whole and my relation to it. Early this morning, I learned that the former Prime Minister of Lebanon was killed in a bomb attack in downtown Beirut. I only learned of this so quickly because my uncle, who is a professor at the American University of Beirut, sent me an IM to tell me about the bombing and that he was nowhere near the attach, so he was not injured and not in immediate danger. He wanted me to make a couple of phone calls to family and let them know that he's OK before they heard about the bombing on the morning (here) news.

in the hours since, I have learned more about the history and the politics of the area than I ever imagined I would want to know. Why? Because this incident has hit close to home - a family member lives very close to where Mr. Hariri made his residence, and not only am I playing the "what if" games concerning the location of the bombing (downtown vs. at his home) and my uncle's well-being, but I'm also concerned that there may be other attacks or retaliations or, God forbid, a resurgence of the civil war that divided Lebanon for so long. While I've always been a bit concerned about his being in Beirut, mostly out of my complete ignorance of the area and its history, now I'm hoping he can leave as soon as possible.

Up until today, I've been able to wrap myself in my arrogant, western-minded thinking that what goes on in the rest of the world has no direct impact on my daily life. I think most Americans probably find it easy to go through life with those blinders on, comfortable in knowing only their immediate surroundings. Even after 9-11, when I realized that "it can happen here," my world view only expanded slightly, and in the last year or so, I've gone back to my arrogant viewpoint that I'm OK and my world will continue on as it always has.

Not so much any more. This bombing was a real eye-opener for me. But only because I have a direct connection to the region now - my uncle. When he stayed with us just a couple of weeks ago, I was fascinated by his tales of travels to Damascus and the Christian history he experienced while he walked the streets where the Apostle Paul traveled after his conversion. He explained a little of the recent history of the area, but mostly to assure us that living in Beirut was safer that living in many urban cities in the US.

But now that I've read some of the news reports and dug a little deeper into the current politics of the area, I realize that the events there may definitely have a bigger global impact than just the health and safety of my uncle. I still don't know enough to have anything other than a knee-jerk reaction at this point, but I've quickly learned that I need to be more aware of world events so that I can make informed decisions and not half-baked schemes.

Who knows what the next few days will bring. Fortunately, my uncle has already contacted me several times today via IM to keep me apprised so I can relay information to the rest of the family when e-mail isn't quick enough. I just have to hope that I'll keep hearing from him on a daily basis, or at least when there's news that might cause the family to worry, until he leaves later this summer. In the meantime, I'll just keep my eyes on the world developments and hope he'll be safe while he's still there.

So I had an interesting if not surreal experience for me today. I met with a reference who may be able to send some business my way, and we met at a Starbucks that was mostly midway between where we're both based. I got there about 15 minutes early, ordered my caramel apple cider (don't drink coffee, don't do chocolate, don't do caffeine, so my Starbucks choices are limited, but damn if that cider isn't good!), took a seat in a poofy purple chair near the entrance, pulled out my laptop, and proceeded to check e-mail.

That was when I looked around the joint.

There I was, surrounded by guys in suits and ties, sitting at tables sipping their hot beverages while chatting with other guys in suits, and at least 80% of the customers had their laptops out and powered on, whether they were sitting by themselves or with others.

Then my contact came in, wearing a shirt and tie, and we sat down at a table, sipped at our hot beverages, and looked over the laptop to discuss our business.

Yes, I attended my very first power coffee break today. And as unusual as it might seem to those who know me, I actually fit in with this crowd and didn't stand out like a sore thumb.

How very surreal...

I'm not the most financially gifted human being in the world. In fact, I like to say that since my uncle is a professor of international accounting and my mother is part owner of a business that manages pension plans, all the finance genes were used up in their generation and not passed down to mine.

But every once in a while, I pull off something completely genius, and I just have to toot my own horn. You see, I made an investment in a stock that has increased in value over 430% in the two years I've owned it (as of the date of this post). When I made the purchase, I told other people to buy what they could of this stock, because the value would surely go up.

The stock is Apple Computer, and I bought it at $15/share. Today it's trading at nearly $80/share.

So why am I not completely overjoyed about this? Why, instead, am I brooding and melancholy? Because, dear reader, when I purchased stock in Apple Computer two years ago, I purchased exactly one share. Yes, you read that right. Not 1000 shares, not 100 shares, not even 10 shares - 1 share.

Still, for those nay-sayers who didn't listen to me a couple of years ago, the laugh is on you. Instead of taking my advice and seeing you investment grow over 400%, you're still sitting with your paltry whatever it is that's probably floating around the market average right now. So I'll take my $65 and just sit back and chuckle at you.