Timewaster's Guide Archive

If anyone is interested...

CALL FOR ENTRIES
Utah Speculative Fiction Awards 2004

The Utah Center for the Book and CONduit, Utah's Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention, call for entries for the 2004 Utah Speculative Fiction Award and the 2004 Utah Speculative Fiction Short Story Award.

The Utah Speculative Fiction Award honors a book judged to best represent the literary culture of the state in speculative fiction, which refers to science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and horror. The competition is open to Utah authors and authors of books or stories with a Utah theme or setting. L.E. Modesitt won the 2002 award for the novel Archform: Beauty (Tor) and the 2003 Award went to Shannon Hale for The Goose Girl (Bloomsbury).

The deadline for entries is January 31, 2005. Award winners will be announced at the Utah Book Awards presentation on April 23, 2005 at the Salt Lake City Public Library. To be eligible, the book must be published between January 1, 2004 and December 31, 2004 as indicated by the copyright date. An eligible book must be published professionally and assigned an ISBN. Books must be bound (no looseleaf materials, books-on-tape or CDs).

Deadlines and requirements for the 2004 Utah Speculative Fiction Short Story Award are similar to those outlined above with one exception: rather than bound and assigned an ISBN, short stories must appear in a professional publication as defined by the Science Fiction Writer's of America (www.sfwa.org).

Entry forms for both awards are available from the Utah Center for the Book, www.slcpl.lib.ut.us and from CONduit, conduit.sfcon.org. For more information, or to have an entry form mailed or faxed to you, please contact Julie Bartel at The City Library, 801-322-8133 or
jbartel@s...
#####

11/22/2004

Julie Bartel
Teen Librarian & Zine Collection Coordinator
The City Library
210 East 400 South
Salt Lake City, UT 84111
801-322-8133 * jbartel@s...

Hey Jeffe, Ms Fish's questions on the NaNo thread reminded me of something I've been meaning to ask you.

If a ship (personal, not commercial -- a yacht for instance) were to leave an American port and just head off into the ocean, is there anything that he has to do?  Anyone he has to say "goodbye" to?

What about coming into port?  It seems (I'm thinking of the pacific coast here) that there are so many goofy little peirs where you can dock a boat that just anybody could come wandering into the country.  Are all boats that zip up to the US given a stamp of approval by the Coast Guard?  If so, are they all inspected?

We have a thread for Webcomics, and a thread for books.  Where do comic books go?

Anyway, here's something wacky:

http://tv.ksl.com/index.php?nid=5&sid=127769

When your government has abandoned the notion of the individual and focused instead "group -based" social justice (and when it's incredibly in debt due to massive and all inclusive welfare programs), this is the kind of crap your politicians dream up:

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A group of Swedish parliamentarians proposed levying a "man tax" to cover the social cost of violence against women.

"It must be obvious to all of us that society has a huge problem with male violence against women and that has a cost," Left Party deputy Gudrun Schyman told Swedish radio on Monday.

"We must have a discussion where men understand they as a group have a responsibility," said Schyman, one of the party members to sign the motion for debate on the new tax.

Why aren't you at work?  Is it because you're a lazy sack of crap?

This topic has been moved to [link=http://www.timewastersguide.com/boards/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=rob;action=display;num=1112821914;start=0]Robison E. Wells[/link] by Tage.

So, SE's other thread reminded me that I ought to ask ya'll's opinion.  (I used ya'll's there simply because I like words with more than one apostrophe.)

I'm working on the sequel to Awake right now (which, granted, none of you have read), and I'm having serious POV issues.  In my head I always planned it that the first book would be from one person's POV, and in book 2 I would add a second POV character.  But then I went and wrote book 1 in first person, and I'm stuck wondering (a) do I want book 2 to have two first person POVs? or (b) do I want book 2 to have one first person pov and one third person? or (c) do I re-write the plot and leave only one POV?

This has had me stymied for several months.  I written buckets of stuff, trying different ideas, but I change my mind several times a week.

Any ideas?

So, the phrase "don't confuse me with the facts" gets thrown around all the time, in a joking fashion.  I've never run into anyone who actually thinks that way, until I had a meeting with management last week.

Our inventory (I work at a lumber yard--with about 11 million dollars worth of product in the yard) has been off fairly regularly lately.  We go out and count once a month, and we're routinely missing one or two thousand dollars worth of stuff.  It's a tiny percentage, given the total amount, but they want to find out where it is.

So, everyone who has a job that affects inventory management (including myself) has to go in front of the bosses.  My job was scrutinized, and, supposedly they were going to streamline the processes and make everything run smoother.  Supposedly.

The problem, they said, is that not all of the work is getting finished on time.  This is true.  (That's because my counterpart, Jennifer, and I are doing the work of three employees.)

So, this is management's solution: Instead of the current 48-hour turn-around time on all my work, they want it done in 4 or 5 hours.  This, they say, will solve all the problems.

"So," says I, "if it can't be done in 48 hours, how do you expect me to get it done in 4?"

They replied: "Well, let's just try it and see how it goes."

Me: "You're loony."

(That's not verbatim, but that's the gist of it.)

Anyway, if you don't see me much on the forum for the next little while, this is why.