The Lord of Blog Entries

As I have been counseled to do, and makes sense now that the novel is in its later stages, I have removed all downloadable files of The Lords of Sargoff from my online storage. It is best at this point to not allow the full text to be freely distributed online, as that is something publishers would likely frown upon. So, anyone who reads this blog can send me an email if they wish to read the full text. I will still likely post some of it on my website (maybe the first third, I'm not sure yet), but certainly not all of it.

Though I only recently posted the full version, I am already undergoing another read through and round of edits (it'll be a work in progress until a publisher hits the print button). I have continued to work on the dialog to make it more fantasy-like. I have also added another chapter to further develop one of the characters (Lord Arien). It is currently nearing 61,000 words (3,000 more words than when I posted the last version just a couple weeks ago), and I'd like to have it over 62,500 words, which shouldn't be a problem. That is the number at which, with 250 words per page, The Lords of Sargoff would be a 250 page novel, which I think is pretty good, even if it is on the shorter end of novels.

I am very excited to start sending it off to publishers, should the response from anyone who should read it tell me that they feel it to be ready. After this next round of edits is over with, I know my wife will be re-reading it and critiquing it for me. In addition to traditional publishers and literary agents, I have considered submitting it to Tate Publishing. They are a Christian publisher that will take care of pretty much the whole publishing process, but they require an investment (over $4,000, I believe). Authors who sell enough books through them (5,000 copies, I believe) get their investment back. While I am not currently in a position to drop four grand on a book investment, I may submit the manuscript to them anyway, just to get their feedback on whether they liked the story. I will only consider going through them if I am not able to find a traditional publisher or literary agent (who require no investment) to publish it. But any feedback I can get from Tate would most likely be helpful.

LotD: Death Star Over San Francisco. And you thought Star Wars was a myth. It was, of course, a documentary! I found this video while at work, and just watch a few moments of it, without the sound, assuming there is sound. So I have no idea what they're saying, but the video itself was pretty nifty.

My Jedi Training

On Friday night, I went to see Star Wars: The Clone Wars, since it would be crazy for there to be a Star Wars film in existence that I haven't seen. The reviews of it had been rather grim, so I went with rather low expectations. Which, in the end, meant that the movie was about as good as I was expecting. The animation was pretty good for the most part, but the story wasn't too impressive, as they rehashed old plot points, even lifting quotes from other Star Wars movies and seeming to duplicate scenes from the other movies, with different characters. Overall, I thought the movie to basically be a glorified Saturday morning cartoon, and not too much more.

To continue the Star Wars theme, on Saturday, a large group of us (10 adults, 2 children) went to the Star Wars exhibit, which was rather excellent. They had tons of original props from the movies, including ships, costumes and weapons that were actually used in the movies. The had a large model of the Millennium Falcon, probably a good six feet wide, maybe. That ship, along with several others, had amazing levels of detail. My other favorite parts were the original Yoda puppet, (of course) Darth Vader's costume, and the original lightsabers. They had costumes and models for just about all the main characters, minus a few. It was excellent.

LotD: Star Wars TV Series. I'd heard about this around the time Episode III came out, I think. It's live action, but who knows if it'll be any good once it comes out in 2009 or 2010.

Ah, Stuff

Welcome to another exciting edition of Chromiden's Chronicles. Last week, as I stated in a previous entry, I took my wife on a secret date. She had no idea where we were going. Everything ended up going well. We drove from the Twin Cities to Rochester (about an hour and a half drive) and ate at a place called The Canadian Honker, as recommended to me by the newly-blogging Mrs. Marlin. It was rather good. The appetizer we got - onion rings - were deemed by my wife to be the best onion rings she'd ever had. Pretty impressive. She had a burger for the main course, and I had (as is rather usual for me at almost any restaurant) chicken strips, which were rather yummy. It was a wonderful meal. We then went to the second surprise of the night, in Stewartville (about 10 minutes from Rochester) - where we were entertained by the Stewartville Community Theater's production of Beauty and the Beast. It was a pretty good show and, most importantly, my wife liked it. So it was a good day.

We are now planning something that we haven't done in a while, which is a fancy-type dinner at home where each of us makes part of the meal, but where we surprise each other with what we're making. Unlike the first two times we did this, it has been decided that I will be making the main course. I need to start figuring out what to make, though I do have some ideas. I have other a month to plan, but I better think about it, so I don't forget. Whoops.

Here, using the rapid-fire approach, are some other random updates from my life.

• I finished The Two Towers today, and will be beginning Return of the King very shortly. Unlike with the movies, I enjoyed this book more than Fellowship of the Ring. Who knows why. But I am amused that the orcs around Cirith Ungol said hello to each other by saying "Hola!" I didn't realize that Mordor was that close to Spain.
• On the secret date trip described previously, my car hit the fun number of 180,000 miles. Another year or so and it'll hit the sweet number of 200,000 miles. Who knows if it'll make it. But we're prepared to pay cash for a car once either one of our cars kicks the bucket (her car is around 150,000 miles; so both are nearing the end, most likely). While I will miss my car, I am rather looking forward to car (or truck) shopping.
  
• I have done a bit of work on my new Cooproductions website. As I've stated before, I'm most excited to have a better place to post Lords of Sargoff updates and images and other game information from Reclamation and Myridia.
• We are going to ValleyFair tomorrow. How sweet is that?
  

LotD: Stefan Didak's Home Office Desktop. I think he needs more monitors.

Fifty-Eight Thousand Words, Just For You

I have uploaded the newest version of The Lords of Sargoff. For those interested in reading it, you can download it in the following formats:

• PDF [one combined file]
• DOC [one combined file]
• DOC [chapters in separate files]

For those up to the challenge of reading it, I hope you will give me honest and brutal feedback on what you thought of it. I am looking for any and all such things:

• Grammar and spelling errors
• Plot holes (things don't make sense storywise - big or small)
• Sections that don't flow, or don't seem to fit - sections of bad writing :)
• People and places that have dumb names (or names that don't fit)
• Things that are not explained enough, or explained too much
• Words that are overused
• Parts of the story that are too similar to "fantasy cliches"
  
• Anything that you think may improve the story

If this it to be someday accepted for publication, it needs to be as without flaws as possible, so hold nothing back. :)

LotD: Periodic Table of Awesoments. I'm amused that #11 doesn't have an abbreviation.

Myridia

So, as some who read this know and also play, one of my favorite board games is Carcassonne. It is a strategy game where players place tiles on the table, creating a geographical area and score points based on parts of that area (cities, roads, fields, or forests, river, and meadows, depending on your version of the game, though there are other versions).

Within the last few months, I've had the idea pop into my head for creating a game with the similarity of tiles making up a geographical area, and yet, rather different. So, I have written up several pages worth of rules for this game - Myridia - which is (I think) a bit more complicated than Carcassonne.

One major difference is that the game is in space. So each tile can include one of (or a combination of) planets, moons, asteroids, black holes, wormholes, stars, and empty space, and other little things (like treasures, space merchants and space raiders).

In Carcassonne, you claim things (cities, roads, and so on), trying to score points off of them. In Myridia, the main part of the game is delivering goods from planet to planet. There will be 5 different types of resources, some scarcer, some more common. Planets usually only provide certain types of resources and only want to by others. So you must build outposts and ships in order to pick up and deliver goods from planet to planet, trying to maximize your earnings. The purpose of the game is to earn more credits than your opponents (this is what determines the winner at the end of the game). Credits are also how you buy things. You can also earn credits by completing missions (they will show up on certain tiles).

Oh, Myridia is the name of the central star ("the sun") in this little galaxy that gets created during the game, thus, the name of the game.

LotD: Christian the Lion. It's kind of a cheesy video, but funky nonetheless.

Goodness is Coming

It is true that I have seen The Dark Knight twice already, but is that nearly enough for such an amazing piece of cinema? Heck no. Thus, quite possibly, the third time's a charm tonight. I'm pretty excited. I do love this movie. It current sits at #10 on my list, just behind Gladiator and The Matrix, but it is threatening to move up and overtake at least one of them.

In other news, I am taking my wife on a secret date night on Saturday night. I'll tell you more what it consists of in an entry next week, but I think she'll like it.

I have been increasing my work on The Lords of Sargoff, and have nearly read through the whole thing in the last few days. I then have a list of changes or additions to make. I have also made quite a bit of notes concerning plot lines for the second book, which I have preliminarily titled The Second War, though who knows what the heck it'll be in the end. I have a bit of work left on book one. I should be posting a new version of it within the next two weeks, for anyone who feels up to rereading it. I am then hoping to start sending it to literary agents and publishers by the end of the year. I feel, at 60,000 words (approximately 250 pages), that the story is mostly complete; most of the work on it now is minor tweaking.

LotD: Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince Teaser Trailer. About time, huh?

The Top Fifty

Here is the top fifty of my newly-redone movies list (which currently has a total of 402 movies). This is by far the longest of the lists that I will be redoing for my website. Numbers 10, 16, 17, and 19 are all brand new to my top 20. Originally, when I had first gone to see #17 and had reported it in this blog, I had thought I would place it below the series that started with #20 on this list. But then I saw it again, and it moved up. Good job Mr. Stark.

1 Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The
2 Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The
3 Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
4 Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The
5 Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
6 Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
7 Star Wars: A New Hope
8 Matrix, The
9 Gladiator
10 Dark Knight, The
11 Serenity
12 Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
13 Chronicles of Narnia: Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, The
14 Star Wars: Attack of the Clones
15 Braveheart
16 Batman Begins
17 Iron Man
18 Terminator II: Judgment Day
19 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
20 X-Men
21 Shrek
22 Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
23 Minority Report
24 Juno
25 300 (2007)
26 King Kong (2005)
27 Princess Bride, The
28 Signs
29 Se7en
30 Matrix: Reloaded, The
31 Fight Club
32 V For Vendetta
33 Cars
34 Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
35 Toy Story II
36 X-Men: The Last Stand
37 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
38 I, Robot
39 I Am Legend
40 Office Space
41 Bourne Ultimatum, The
42 Saving Private Ryan
43 Shawshank Redemption, The
44 Bourne Supremacy, The
45 Toy Story
46 Terminator III: Rise of the Machines
47 X2: X-Men United
48 Terminator
49 Transformers
50 Troy

LotD: Tilted Twister. It's a Lego robot that solves a Rubik's Cube.

I'm Illiterate

Well, not really. However, the amount of books I've read is relatively low. How many, you ask? Since I know you really want to know, I shall tell you. As far as I can recall, the number of novels I have thus far read in my life is 25. This includes 12 Left Behind books and 7 Harry Potter books. The other six are: The Hobbit; The Fellowship of the Ring (I'm currently halfway through The Two Towers); The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe; To Kill a Mockingbird; Jaws; and Sounder. This list does not include my reading of my own novel-in-progress. :)

My mother urged me to read more as a child, but I rebelliously declined. This was the time she managed to make me get through Jaws. Well, better late than never to start reading a lot.

But, alas. This shall be increasing more in the future. If anyone has any recommendations for me, let me know. Here's a quick recap of my current to-be-read list: Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time, Eragon, Chronicles of Narnia, and Artemis Fowl.

LotD: Terminator Salvation Teaser Trailer. Now, you would have seen this already had you gone to see The Dark Knight. Tisk-tisk. Christian Bale's involvement in the new Terminator movies has me more interested in them.

Kill The Bat Man

Batman Begins was an excellently entertaining, dark, very well done reboot to the Batman franchise. I have memory of only seeing Batman Forever - with Val Kilmer - which I thought was pretty good, but that - and any pieces of the other movies I've seen - can't hold a candle to what director Christopher Nolan did with Batman Begins. Christian Bale was the perfect choice to play Batman, and all the other pieces of the film fit together nearly perfectly. This was the movie that the franchise deserved.

And then came the sequel, The Dark Knight.

Which, by nearly every aspect, is one of the very best sequels that has ever been produced. It is not only better than its predecessor, and the best film of the year, but to me, it is the best film to hit theaters since Return of the King in December 2003. I am currently in the process of redoing my top movies list, and it debuted at #10. Not too bad. There were only 2 movies that were not from Star Wars or Lord of the Rings that ranked higher. Twenty points goes to anyone who can guess what those are.

[Just to clarify; while I think it is the best movie of the last 5 years, that does not mean it is my favorite - that title goes to Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. What I find the most entertaining and what I find to be the best movie are not necessarily the same thing.]

The story was dark - darker than the first - and the action was great, but The Dark Knight's greatest asset is the late Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker. This Joker is unlike any movie villain to I can remember, and one of the best. He is not a happy Joker, but a dark and menacing figure that steals each scene. There is talk of Ledger's performance earning him a posthumous Oscar nomination, which I most definitely think this performance is worthy of.

So, in short: go see this movie. If you haven't seen Batman Begins, borrow it or rent it, and then go see this movie. There is a definite chance that my wife and I will be making a return viewing.

LotD: Star Trek Images. Just some little teaser poster images from the next Star Trek movie.

The Thickening Dark

Sounds like a good chapter title for The Lords of Sargoff. Anyway, I've gotten some good work done on the story over the last week or so. It's now sitting at about 54,000 words (216+ pages) and growing. I'm adding in some new adventures and stories. Hopefully for the better. :)

Through my own thinking and reading The Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy, I'm going to be making a couple changes to how the story is written. First off, I'm trying to use language that is more fantasy-like; this goes both with my narration and the dialog. I'm also working on making the language darker, especially as the story moves forward.

Next involves the narrator. The way I'd be writing so far is that the narrator basically only tells what he sees, but doesn't necessarily know a lot himself. Another way to do it is to have an all-knowing, who can explain anything in the universe (I see Tolkien's work as being mostly like this). I'm going to shoot for something in the middle; a narration that knows more than I've written it as so far, but doesn't know everything. Hopefully that didn't completely not make sense. :)

LotD: History of Bad Keyboards. Yikes.

Sixteen Days

Crazy. It has been sixteen days since I last blogged. That's just crazy. What have I been up to? Uhh.. not too much. Just work and the usual.

I have been to two movies in the last five days. First off, on Saturday, the wife and I went to go see Wall-E, which I would definitely recommend to anyone else who pretty much loves everything put out by Disney and Pixar. I would put it squarely in the middle in my rankings of Pixar films, not as high as Cars and Toy Story II, but higher than Monsters, Inc. It was pretty fun and very enjoyable.

Then, last night, Megan and I went to see Hancock, which I also liked. It was a funny and interesting story, and I am a fan of Will Smith's acting. It's certainly not a perfect movie, but it was still entertaining.

At both movies, we saw previews for the movie Bolt, which I think could be really rather funny - an animated movie about a dog that comes out around Thanksgiving. However, the next movie on the radar for us is The Dark Knight - a guaranteed see-it-as-soon-as-it-comes-out type movie, with the added bonus of possibly starting off with a trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince. But we'll see.

I've been working more on Lords of Sargoff, adding some more plotlines and possibly changing some other things about how I'm writing the story. But more on that on a future blog entry, which will be much sooner than sixteen days.

LotD: Fantasy Fine Art Gallery. Good place to look for pictures of dragons and other such fantasy images. Also is a decent place for me to find Reclamation images.

Home Sweet Home

Most people reading this already know about my switch at work, but here's a recap for those who don't. For the past few months, I have been doing ASP.NET (website programming), learning a lot. However, last week, I was moved back to "Data Requests", which is what I was doing at FLS before I left to go work at Priority Publications. It is a very database oriented job, which I am liking more and more in comparison with web stuff. That being said, all of our database stuff is in Visual FoxPro - a Microsoft product (that Microsoft purchased from another company) that they are no longer supporting, and is "behind the times." We are now in the process of transitioning everything over to Microsoft SQL Server - a much more up-to-date, and powerful database system, and a technology that experience with is much more valuable than FoxPro. So this will both be good for the company - things will run faster - and good for me, as a bit of good SQL experience will look good on the resume.

So, I am now in the process of taking the programming we had in Fox Pro and rewriting it in SQL Server, so we can fully move into that and away from Fox Pro. The whole transition will take quite a while (at least weeks).

On another home-sweet-home note, I have been accepted to work the next TEC weekend, back on the Support team. I am very excited! Meetings start the last weekend in June.

And now for a small update on my personal projects.

For Reclamation, I have decided to look ahead, making lists of possible card titles for the next couple sets. Some books of the Bible are full of things to use; others... not so much. Leviticus especially will not have a lot (in such cases, multiple books will be combined into one set).

For Lords of Sargoff, I am doing deeper character definitions, following the Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy's suggestion. This includes developing timelines, deeper back stories, and character profiles for each character (more detailed for the more "main" characters). I have about 20-25 characters that I want to develop deeper.

LotD: Beautiful Cloud Image Gallery. The first one looks like a nuclear blast. Neato.

Cooproductions and Reclamation

My GoDaddy account has been setup! I am excited, and look forward to getting a chance to work on the site. For now, I have a graphic sitting there at cooproductions.com, as a place holder. I still have to figure out how I'm going to design it, and how I'm going to store the top ten lists (database driven vs. plain text).

I have also been working on a new design for the Reclamation cards. I have done a lot of work on the Hell design; see the Satan card image, and let me know what you think. I went with more of a fire theme. The Heaven cards will probably have a lot of light, like sunlight. And I may do something with parchments or scrolls for the neutral cards. But we shall see. Oh, and the image is bigger than I have previously had for cards. I picked a new font that I thought worked better. The sword icon in the upper right also now designates of that character is a fighter (a non-fighter has a book), so that is no longer written out.

On a side note, after grabbing the image I used for the Satan card, I began to think that it was, in fact, the Balrog from Lord of the Rings. But alas, it looks cool and works (though its supposed to be Satan as a serpent - so the actual card would have a different image, but it works for now).

LotD: The Dangers of a Transformers T-Shirt. Evidently, if a t-shirt represents something that could be dangerous, then it, itself, is too dangerous for the air.

New Chapter, New Site

I have added a segment to the beginning of the first chapter of Lords of Sargoff and shortened the rest of the chapter. You can find the updated version here. I will be making more edits to the rest of the story shortly, as this change affects other things. But I wanted to post the first chapter, to see if anyone thinks it is a better or worse way to start off the book.

I get to have some web design fun shortly. :) I am transferring (from Microsoft Office Live, which I didn't particularly like) the domain name cooproductions.com to GoDaddy, and will then set up hosting there. This is the same name I have used for previous sites, and other things I have created. I am looking forward to having a much more reliable host than I have now, and will be integrating the Lords of Sargoff page and a Reclamation page along with updated top ten lists and whatever else I feel like putting up there. It'll be interesting. :)

On a side note, here's an interesting story. I went to the high school graduation for my niece Ashley, who graduated from NRHEG. [New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva, for those not in "the know"]. It was a fine graduation. The odd thing was this: a man sitting a couple rows ahead of us had an iguana sitting on his shoulder. It was very much alive and he had it on a leash. What's with that? :)

LotD: 30 Sequels You Didn't Know About. Plus a link to 28 more.

Indiana Caspian's Ghost

Thus explains the last week or so of my life, cinematically speaking.

My wife and I went to see The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian last week. There was more action, and (after the beginning setup) was rather fast paced, bringing the end credits faster than I expected. While it was rather entertaining, I would have to put it a little below The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, though it's been a couple years since I've seen that one. I felt the ending battle wasn't as grand or epic as it should have been. That being said, if you liked the first one, you should like the second one.

The day after that, we went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which I also thoroughly enjoyed. I am not sure where it ranks among the first three, but it certainly would not be far behind. [Ranking may be decided shortly, when I redo my top movies list.] I left the theater thinking that I had enjoyed this movie more than Prince Caspian.

Then, we watched a movie that Megan had borrowed from a coworker - Ghost Rider, which was an impressive step down from the previously mentioned two movies. The graphics were good - the whole flaming motorcycle and rider - but I felt the storyline, writing, and acting were off. Nicolas Cage did an okay job, but some of the rest weren't so good. When it comes to comic book / superhero movies, this will battle for my least favorite, along with Daredevil.

LotD: More Terminator Movies. The addition of Christian Bale increases my interest in Arnold-less Terminator movies. Looks like they're already doing some serious planning: three sequels.

Writing About Reading and Reading About Writing

Both my body and my brain need exercise. So, I am going to start biking and reading on a regular basis.

I had been reading Angels and Demons, but found it rather uninteresting, and thus am stopping halfway through. I was then told the details of how it ended by my wife. Now, I will be picking up The Lord of the Rings, finally. About five years ago, I had read The Fellowship of the Ring and about half of The Two Towers, but never finished the series. And, considering I am a big geek and a huge LotR fan, this will soon be rectified. (I will probably read The Hobbit again before the movie comes out in a couple years.) I also might throw in a second reading of Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince before that movie comes out in November.

After Lord of the Rings, I will have a few options, including re-reading Chronicles of Narnia. A few other books on my reading list include Eragon, Wheel of Time, Artemis Fowl, the prequel books for the Left Behind series, and other Lord of the Rings readings (including Children of Hurin, The Silmarillion, among others).

While reading such books, I will continue to go through my Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy and working on Lords of Sargoff. Reading will both be entertaining, and helpful for me when it comes to my own writing.

I will also be biking. I have put on a few extra pounds, and wouldn't mind losing them and then quite a few more. The combination of regular exercise and eating less and healthier should help with that. There is a little trail through the woods near our apartment that I will be biking through. I am hoping to bike a few miles, a few times a week. That's where I'm starting anyway. I also am probably going to combine these two activities (sort of... this does not mean I will be biking and reading at the same time.) :) I can bike the 1.5 or so miles of a loop and end up at a park next to a lake, where I can sit and read for a while, and then take the loop backwards and head home. I think it will be fun. I also know that part of the reason I've been reading less is that I am easily distracted by my computer. :)

LotD: Record Road Trip. Forty-eight states in five days. Impressive.

Adventures in Buckeyeland: Part Two

My trip to Ohio was good fun. It is always good to see the family, and to eat Graeter's ice cream. :) The best ice cream in the world.

While I was there, I celebrated my twenty-sixth birthday. My mother and sister-in-law made a chocolate peanut butter cheesecake which was absolutely delicious. And of course, I got presents. :) This included Transformers on DVD (which we then watched about 20 minutes of on my brother's projector screen), and a couple of writing-related books: Christian Writers' Market Guide, which will be more useful when I get closer to looking for a publisher for Lords of Sargoff, and a book which I think will be rather useful right now - The Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy (or some title close to that). It talks about developing fantasy worlds and characters, and magic, and all sorts of other things. I've read the first chapter - a quick history of fantasy, with a list of recommended readings - and will soon be entering the chapter on characters. It should be rather handy.

And, here's some more big birthday news: when I returned from Ohio, my wife gave me my birthday gift, which was actually a birthday + anniversary gift (our two year anniversary is today). And... it was a Nintendo Wii! We'd talked about getting one later in the summer, but I was most pleased to get it now. We don't yet have any games for it (outside of Wii Sports, which is wonderful), but shortly we will be each getting a game we want (for her - Dance Dance Revolution; for me - MarioKart). It's tons of fun! :)

On an anniversary-related note, we are going to the most wonderful restaurant in the world tonight to celebrate: The Cheesecake Factory. And before that, Megan will get her present from me, which, while much less exciting than a Wii, I think she will rather like it - it's a good stack of books (8 of them I think) that she wants to read. (Her favorite genre of novel is becoming fantasy. Ah, geekdom is expanding.)

LotD: The Best of Google Street View. Street View allows you to see street-level images of roads in major cities. It's pretty sweet. This is a small collection of unique images that people have found on it, including a car fire and an airplane flying above the road.

Adventures in Buckeyeland: Part One

Well, I am back to Minnesota after an excellent 5 day stay at Erik and Gina's house in Columbus. The only thing that didn't go well was one of the very first things that happened - and ended up being rather humorous. Well, here we go.

My wife dropped me off at the airport in Minneapolis, then headed down to her mom's house for the weekend. After I was dropped off, I started to go through the security checkpoint with my bag and my laptop. The man at the x-ray had another security personnel take my bag and look through it. She opened it up and I saw something I did not expect - shall we say... "feminine products." Yes, I was about to trek halfway across the country, and I had grabbed my wife's bag out of the car, leaving her with mine. (The reason they wanted to look through it was because of the bottles of shampoo and conditioner, which they then threw away.)

I tried desperately to call my wife, hoping she could turn around and swap the bags, but she did not answer her cell phone. So, with a certain amount of self-annoyance, I boarded the plane with a bag full of female clothing, thus leaving me with only the clothes on my back for things to wear for the next five days. Whoops.

The clothes thing didn't bother me too much, but my bag swap meant I did not have my Lord of the Rings cards with me, which was too bad, nor did I have the CD's of my wedding pictures which I was bringing for my parents and brothers (those cds will, instead, be mailed out shortly). I also did not bring the decks I had made for playtesting of my Reclamation card game. However, we printed some out there (I was able to connect from my laptop to my work computer at FLS, which conveniently, had my flash drive, where the game files were stored). We played a game of it and came up with some more good improvements (in theory).

Anyway, shortly after arriving in Columbus, I went shopping at Meijer [like a Super Target] and picked up a pair of jeans and other necessities, and borrowed shirts from Erik during the week. So it was just a minor annoyance in the end, but still rather funny.

More to come on the trip.

LotD: 107 Years and Counting. This light bulb has been shining for 107 years.

Iron Man

I went to the earliest possible showing of the movie Iron Man - last Thursday at 8:00 p.m. I rather enjoyed the movie, though for superhero movies, I'd put it just below X-Men and Batman Begins, but a good step up from most other series, including Spider-Man. The Iron Man series has a lot going for it and has the potential to become much better. The action scenes were great and the there were some very funny moments to it. The special effects were done perfectly and fit in just right. It's very smart for an superhero movie. So go see it. :)

Next on the list: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. I'm pumped.

In really much more important information, I attended a little party over the weekend. Oh, yeah, it was a wedding of the Mac Man, Mr. Anderson: my sixth time as a groomsman. Oh, how my feet hurt. :) But everything seemed to go off without a hitch, and the newlywed couple is now in Florida. Lucky! :)

LotD: Real Life Iron Man. Well, not exactly, but it seems this company is trying to get some cheap big-time publicity for their "exoskeleton robotic suit."

A Look Back

December 26, 2007, was one of the hardest days I've ever had. The day before had been a wonderful Christmas day at home with my wife. I got up in the morning and went to work at Priority Publications, where I had been employed as a Web Programmer since September, after leaving my 2 1/2 year job at FLS Connect as a Database Analyst.

After arriving to my desk, my boss asked me to follow him into the office of the company's HR person. As soon as she said "These types of meetings are never easy," I knew what was coming. They had decided to terminate employment with me, effective immediately.

I sat there and listened while my boss listed the reasons why I was let go. I wasn't the right fit. Perhaps there were some things that I wasn't doing properly. I wasn't proactive enough. I then went back to my desk, put my belongings in a box, and left.

From the moment I knew I was getting let go, I felt my emotions rising up inside of me. I held them in until I got in my car, then proceeded to sit there and cry for several minutes. I even cried a bit of the drive home. Which is rather odd for me, as those people who know me well know that I don't cry often or easily. But this hit me hard - not because I would not be making money. It wasn't merely the fact that I would no longer have a job, but it was how I lost it.

I felt like I had failed. I was in a position that I felt comfortable in, right where I thought God wanted me to be at this point in my career, and I failed. And yet, at the same time, I know that none of those things that my boss had brought up as reasons for my termination had been previously brought to my attention. I didn't see the point in God bringing me to this company, only to have me let go after 3 1/2 months, before I was really able to further develop my skills.

Priority had just bought a new company that included four web developers - each of which had much more experience than I did. It seems to me that they simply decided that they didn't need me anymore. They had a lot more experience now. Which brings me quickly to the concept of company loyalty. I am a loyal employee, even after being at a place a relatively short time. After about 2 or 2 1/2 months at Priority, a former FLS coworker of mine told me about a job at his company. I went to the interview, but was very hesitant about it - because I had only been at Priority a couple months and didn't feel right leaving so soon, and this came across in the interview. I was merely there to see the opportunity, but I didn't really feel right about it, because I had a good job at a company. A company that I felt a part of and felt at home with. I was not offered the job - one of the main reasons being, basically, that they didn't think my heart was in it, which it wasn't.

So within a few days of losing my job at Priority, I started my job search, which mostly returned no results from potential employers. The job at my former coworker's new company had already been filled. After about a month, I started a temporary stint back at FLS Connect, doing the same type of Database Analyst thing I was doing before, but it was only for a week, as it was a busier time and they needed the help. On my last day, I was brought into my boss' office and he asked if I was interested in coming back to FLS full time, but in a different position, which brings me to my current state of employment. I am a Junior .NET Programmer - I do programming for their web site and web applications. Which is rather similar to the job I had at Priority Publications.

Maybe it's just something about this company. FLS was my first job right out of college, and the way that all game together was right from God. Within the last few months before graduating from college, I had my resume online and had had practically no bites on it. Then, about two weeks before, I got a call from FLS, and we set up an interview. I graduated from DeVry (in Columbus, Ohio) on a Sunday, drove up to Minnesota on a Monday, had the interview on Tuesday, and was called and offered the job on Wednesday. It was perfect.

But I had to leave the company, get let go, and be unemployed for a month in order to get the job I really wanted at my original company. It's weird how things work out sometimes. I am so thankful that I left FLS on excellent terms. I had even come back one other time for about 2 weeks in October/November to help them out prior to election time. If I didn't have that great relationship with this company, I may still be out of a job.

That being said, I still don't like to think about Priority. If I let myself think about it too much, it brings back those same feelings of failure. I know everything always works out the way it should through the will of God, but this hurt. It made me question my quality as an employee, as well as my choice of a career path.

Oddly enough, not having a job for a month did give me a significant amount of time to work on writing my novel, which is what I'd rather be doing anyway. I don't know exactly what God's ultimate plan is in all of this, but I know that He has one, and I'm trusting Him in every step.