I spent just about all of yesterday in bed, fighting the flu. It didn’t matter much. The weather outside turned nasty at around noon, with low clouds, rain, wind, and hail. Temperatures were in the high 40s for most of that time.
As I suspected, while we were getting rain, the mountains north of us were getting snow. This morning dawned clear and bright with a view of the snow-dusted Weaver Mountains about 15 miles north.
This shot was taken from our upstairs front window with a 55mm lens.
Snow on the Weavers isn’t very unusual. I’d say it happens 5 to 10 times a year. In almost all cases, the snow is gone by midday. Once, earlier this year, it lasted 2 or 3 days.
Today remains cold — it’s only 40°F right now at 8:45 AM. But the sun is out and I expect the snow to be gone soon.
Yesterday was one of those days when you’re just so darn busy doing things that time goes by in a blur, ending in exhaustion and a good night’s sleep.
I woke as usual before 6 AM. I made coffee for me and a scrambled egg for Alex the Bird. Then I settled down at the kitchen table with a laptop to write up my “Feels So Good” blog entry. Mike and Jack the dog came down and had breakfast. Later, I cleaned the remains of the previous day from Alex’s cage, set him up with food and water for the day, and locked him in.
A typical morning.
Taking Out the Tires
Mike had gotten new tires for his new used car. He bought the car a month or so ago and it came with fancy rims and low-profile tires. Those rims and tires really aren’t practical for life on the edge of nowhere, especially when the last mile of road to the house is unpaved. So he bought new rims and tires on eBay. They’d arrived the day before and he had a Saturday morning appointment to get them put on his car. Since he couldn’t take them in his car, I had to drive them over to Big O in his pickup. We did that at about 8:30 AM.
It was a beautiful morning. It had rained steadily most of the day before, so everything was wet. The sky was mostly clear and the sun shined down on all the water droplets hanging from the trees, making everything sparkle. But what was even more interesting was that as the sun heated the moist ground, it was creating thin trails of mist in the washes and wispy low clouds in the low mountains around town. Wow.
Horseback Riding
I dropped the tires off and took the truck back home. My friend Janet called along the way. She’s visiting the area from Colorado, where she now lives. She used to live in Wickenburg and then in Congress, which is one town north of Wickenburg, but like so many of our friends, she moved away in search of a place better matched to her lifestyle. She’s an artist who paints original artwork on turkey feathers. While that might sound tacky, it really isn’t. You can see some of her work on her Web site and in a number of galleries and gift shops throughout the southwest.
Janet has three horses. Although they were in Wickenburg for a few weeks, her husband took them home when he returned a week or so ago. Janet’s here for some more business and to help out a friend before she heads home. She’s got one of their two dogs with them, Maggie, a part hound dog who looks a lot like the dog from The Simpson’s, but brownish red. Janet and I planned to go horseback riding the day before, but weather had cancelled that plan. With nothing else scheduled that morning, we figured we’d try again.
I’d been home less than a half hour when she showed up with Maggie. I showed her my baby chicks — she raises turkeys — and we went down to fetch the horses. We had them both saddled up and ready to go a while later. She’d be riding Jake, Mike’s horse. I’d be riding Cherokee.
By this time, we’d attracted the attention of our neighbor’s dogs, Trixie and the 6-month-old Charlotte. Charlotte had gone for her first ever ride with us about two weeks before and other than getting lost once for about 10 minutes, she did fine. Trixie always follows us. Jack, of course, lives to go out on the trail. And we had Maggie, too. So that was four dogs with two horseback riders.
The hills around our home were green with new grass and really pretty. We don’t get much rain in the desert so we don’t have much green anything. When it does rain, the grass grows quickly, seizing life to produce seed for the next generation in record time. The green stuff out there was mostly about four inches long and looked like a carpet. It would be nice to ride through all that green.
We headed out up the hill to our house and down the trail beside my neighbor’s property into the state land. Cherokee started acting up right away and we had to do a little rodeo routine before he agreed to follow Jake down the trail. Cherokee is lazy and, for some reason, he thinks he can get away with crap like that with me. He tries half heartedly to throw me off but I hang on, give him a good slap on the side of his neck, and we get back to the business at hand. Cherokee is not the kind of horse you put a “dude” on.
We took a trail that headed out toward the golf course at Rancho de los Caballeros, then way back out into the desert. The dogs ran around, chasing rabbits and each other, but always coming back within sight within a few minutes. Janet and I chatted about various things, moving along at a moderate pace along the trails. Janet was leading and each time she came to an intersection, I’d call out “left” or “right” to guide us along the way.
We were at the base of the trail that climbed to the top of a mountain ridge — we call it the “Ridge Trail” — when we realized that Maggie was missing. Janet said she often catches the scent of another animal and takes off after it but she’s usually back within fifteen minutes or so. We climbed the trail and stopped at the top to admire the view (which is spectacular), give the horses a rest and a chance to nibble at the grass, and do a dog head count. Maggie was still missing.
Janet was sure she’d catch up to us, so after about ten minutes, we continued on our way. We took a trail down the back side of the ridge that wound through a wide canyon — we call that one “Deer Valley” because we often see deer there. That dumped us out at a big trail intersection and I chose another trail that would bring us home. Our total ride was only about 4 miles, but I thought that was enough for Charlotte.
Maggie was still missing.
Search for the Missing Dog
She was also missing when we got back to my house. By that time, Janet was worried. I told he we’d take the Jeep out to Los Caballeros, as close as we could get to the point we’d last seen Maggie. I gave her every indication of confidence that we’d find Maggie. I felt confident, but I don’t know why. There were thousands of acres of empty desert out there.
We unsaddled, brushed out the horses, and dropped them off in their lower corral. We watched them do some synchronized rolling in the sand, then walked back up to the house to check with Mike about Maggie. No, she hadn’t shown up. I called Los Cab and left a message at the wrangler’s office. We thought there was a possibility that Maggie might have hooked up with other horseback riders out there and followed them back to the ranch.
We climbed into the Jeep and headed out. The ranch was our first stop. Two people had just come in for a ride and were brushing off their mules. No, they hadn’t seen a dog out there. We headed out to the skeet shooting range, which is one of the points accessible by car that was close to the trail we’d been on. Not that close, obviously, but within a half mile. There was no one there, so I parked and we got out. We called and whistled.
Janet caught sight of two riders out in the distance. For some reason, they kept stopping on the trail. Janet thought that maybe Maggie was with them, but we couldn’t see that far (or low) and they were well out of earshot.
We got back into the Jeep and after a few wrong turns, made our way to a little junkyard I’ve seen from the air a few times. I’d actually ridden through it years ago on my first horse and I knew it was pretty darn close to the bottom of the Ridge Trail’s climb. I drove through it, as far as I could before the two-track road ended. Then we parked and got out. We climbed a nearby hill and saw the trail we’d been on right on the other side of a fence. The barbed wire was hanging low in one spot and I gingerly stepped over it to get a better view out toward the wash.
We called and whistled and called. At this point, I started realizing the futility of the situation. If the dog was out there and she heard us, our voices and whistles would be echoing off all the hills around her. How would she know which way to go?
I was on my cell phone, calling the local police to see if the dog catcher had picked up a dog when I caught sight of something moving in the distance. The color was right. It was Maggie, running toward us. I told Janet I saw her, then told the policeman who’d answered the phone why I’d called and that the dog had been found. By the time I hung up, Maggie was with us.
We walked back to the Jeep where I had a dog dish and some water. Maggie seemed glad to have it. She didn’t seem the least bit concerned that she’d been away from us for close to two hours. We loaded her into the Jeep and went home.
The Garage Project, Part I
Mike was already working on the project we were supposed to be doing that day: cleaning out half the garage and putting in shelves to neatly store our accumulated crap. (Who’s law is it that says your collection of junk will always expand to fill the available space to store it?) He was very surprised to see us return with Maggie. He stopped what he was doing — pulling junk out of the garage and piling it on the driveway — and kept us company while we ate lunch. Then Janet and Maggie left and we had no excuse not to get back to work.
Well, we actually did have an excuse. Mike had called the owner of a pickup truck for sale in town. The truck, a 1994 Ford with 4WD and an extended cab, was exactly what we wanted to get as a spare truck we can leave at Howard Mesa. The price was within range. Just as we’d pulled all our junk out of the garage, the owner called, ready to meet with us. So we climbed in Mike’s pickup and headed into town. We drove the truck, agreed that it needed a new transmission, and told the owner we’d have our mechanic call him later in the week. Then, after two quick stops at the local Alco store, we went home and got back to work.
Mike had the idea of setting up a camera to do a timelapse movie of our setup. This was a great idea and easy enough. I brought my MacBook Pro out, set up EvoCam software to take a shot every minute and turn it into a movie, and pointed the camera at the blank wall where the shelves would go. Then we got to work.
The shelves were an Ikea product with a typically cryptic name. We’d used them before, in our house in New Jersey, and Mike had bought some new pieces so we’d have enough to cover the wall. What we discovered is that Ikea doesn’t make these things as heavy-duty as they used to. The wood was thinner throughout. Even the bolts were smaller. But they were still sturdy, and went up quickly, despite interruptions by my neighbor’s kids and numerous dogs.
Here’s the video:
Day’s End
It was pretty much dark by the time we finished. Since the forecast didn’t call for any rain, we just left most everything outside, closed the garage door, and came in for supper.
Mike grilled up some elk hamburgers, which tasted excellent with American cheese on them. With that, we had the ratatouille he’d cooked up earlier in the day. We stowed the dishes in the dishwasher and headed upstairs.
Yesterday, Mike hit Costco on his way home from work. That can be a very dangerous thing. For a while, he was in the habit of bringing home large quantities of food items with a limited shelf life. Being a family of two with no kids (and pets that eat pet food), we usually wind up throwing away huge, unopened cans and bottles of things he bought the previous year to make room for incoming items.
To his credit, he doesn’t do that much anymore. Like me, I think he realizes the amount of waste involved. Unlike me, however, he still doesn’t understand that if you buy an item on sale at the local Safeway supermarket, it’s going to be cheaper than buying it at Costco. Best of all, you don’t have to buy enough to feed the high school football team.
Yesterday, he picked up the shop rags I’d asked him to buy the next time he was at Costco. You might be familiar with these “rags.” They’re really paper towels, blue, soft, and absorbent. I like to keep a roll under the seat in the helicopter to wipe up drips and spills or clean the bubble when I’m away from the hangar. Costco sells them 8 or 10 rolls in a pack and that can easily last me a year. Best of all, they don’t go bad. I store them in the hangar.
But he did come home with an oddity that he set up and put in place while I was still hard at work on chapter 4. [Yes, Cliff, I’m still working. But it’s only 5:25 AM and my eyes are barely open. Not open enough to write about Leopard. I’ll be at my desk at 6 AM. I promise. I’m shooting for two more chapters today.] He alluded to it during dinner (which he cooked because I’m so busy with the book), saying that he got me a surprise and that I’d find it.
I found it when I was finished for the day, which was around 7:30 PM. I had some miscellaneous papers in my hand and was delivering them to the tall kitchen can when I stopped short. The old garbage pail was gone. A sleek new one with lights on its cover had taken its place.
“I found the surprise,” I called up the stairs to him. “How does it work?”
I did feel pretty stupid asking how a garbage pail works.
“Just put your hand by its top,” he called back.
I followed his instructions. The device made a short whirring sound and the lid opened wide. Afraid it would close again, I quickly threw the trash in. A moment later, another whirr and it closed.
“We really needed this?” I called up.
The truth is, he wanted one. He’s been wanting a step-on can for the kitchen for years, but the ones he’s interested in are in the $100 to $250 range. For a garbage can. There’s no way I was going to let him pay that kind of money for something we throw garbage into.
But let him loose alone in Costco and you never know what might happen.
To be fair, the new garbage pail does look nice in our kitchen. Its brushed stainless steel, which is also the finish on our fridge and dishwasher face. The black cover goes nicely with the black oven and microwave directly across from where it sits and the black countertop appliances.
And it works well. Well, perhaps too well. The damn thing whirs open every time I walk past it. (Another reason to get back on that diet — so I can slip undetected past my garbage pail’s infrared sensors.)
But in reality, this is just another example of wasteful consumerism. We took a perfectly functioning 13-gallon plastic garbage pail with a lid and moved it from where it was being used (the kitchen) to where it would not be used (the garage). We moved in a replacement with multiple moving parts and a motor that requires batteries to operate. So what if the old one was ten years old? It was in perfect condition and kept clean. No one saw that it didn’t match the kitchen — hell, everyone who comes to visit us thinks we keep trash under the sink — is that what most people do?
So we bought something we didn’t need with features that will make us consume more to maintain it. Sheesh.
The final question remains: where was it made? Where do you think?
I guess that’s the light at the end of the tunnel. It’ll be broken within 3 years. Then we can put it in the garage and pull the old one out of exile and back into active duty.
Prepare yourself for the usual author rant — but with a difference. This one is coming from an author who just completed her 69th book. An author who has worked with about eight different publishers and dozens of copy editors over the course of 15 years.
So no, this isn’t a newbie writer griping about a heavy-handed editor on her first or second book. It’s coming from someone who has been doing this for a long time and feels as if she’s “seen it all.”
I’ve taken this topic and split it into three parts. In this part, I’ll start off with an introduction to the topic of copy editing and tell you what I believe it should be.
What is Copy Editing?
The purpose of copy editing should be to ensure that the original text is:
Free of spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. Note the use of the word “error” here; that’ll be important later in this discussion.
Consistent with a publisher style guide. A style guide, in the world of publishing, is a document that sets forth usage in those gray areas. I’m talking about capitalization issues such as web vs. Web, hyphenation issues such as email vs. e-mail, and design issues such as boldfacing figure references.
Clear and easy to understand. This usually involves breaking up long or complex sentences or possibly rearranging sentence components.
Unlikely to be misinterpreted. For example, when you say the “Color in pop-up menu,” do you mean a pop-up menu named “Color in” or are you talking about color in a pop-up menu?
Consistent with the writing style of the established book or series. This only comes into play when you’re writing for a series that has a predefined format and style. For example, Visual QuickStart Guides (VQSes) tend to be short and to the point, so I don’t have room for personal stories, as I do in other books. VQSes also have level 2 headings that begin with the word “To” and are followed by numbered steps, each of which presents a single task. (I could list about a dozen style issues specific to a VQS, but you get the idea.)
Of course, what you’re writing should determine how much of the above is required. If you’re writing a novel much of this may not apply at all. Consider the book, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. The book’s first person narrator is a retarded man. The book is in journal format and the first few chapters are so full of spelling and punctuation errors (or omissions) that the book is difficult to read. But that’s because of the author’s choices and the method he uses to communicate. Would you expect a retarded man to have perfect spelling, grammar, and punctuation? Of course not. The author is using the character’s shortcomings as a writer to make his character more real — as well a to drive home the changes in the character as the story progresses. This technique was used again more recently in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which featured an autistic first-person narrator. If a copy editor had done a thorough job on the grammar or punctuation in either of these two books, he would have altered the characters. The same can be said for dialog in most novels, since few people speak using perfect grammar.
So copy editing of fiction is a different subject — one I’m not addressing here. I’m discussing copy editing of non-fiction, primarily technical or how-to books, since that’s where my experience is.
More to Come…
This is the first part of my discussion of copy editing. There are at least two more parts to go. In the next part, I’ll rant a bit about my experiences with one particular book over the ten-year course of its life (so far). You’d think that after 10 years, the process would be trouble-free…
Why not take a moment to tell us what you think copy editing should be. How do you expect it to change or improve your writing? Use the comments link or form to share your thoughts.
In yesterday’s post, “Getting Seriously Dugg,” I reported the history of a blog post that rose quickly to stardom in the world of Digg users. But that report was done early in the day, before the shit hit the fan (so to speak).
The Heat is On
The Digg count continued to rise throughout the day. And the hits kept coming. All morning long, there were at least 100 visitors online at my site at once. This is not normal here. And it was rather frightening. I kept expecting something to break.
But it wasn’t just the popular Digg post that was getting hits. It was the post about getting Dugg, too. Soon, it had more hits than the dugg post — even though it wasn’t dug by anyone at all. I’m still trying to figure that one out.
Things came to a head at 11:15 AM when I got an e-mail message from my ISP:
Our Hosting Operations Admins have alerted us to an issue with your hosting account. The account has overutilized resources within the shared environment. As a result, the account has been moved to an isolated server for Terms of Service violators. You have 30 days to research and resolve this issue. After this time, the account will be evaluated again. If the issue is resolved, the account will be migrated back to the shared environment. If it persists, you will need to move to a full Dedicated server.
I got on the phone immediately and called my ISP. To my knowledge, I hadn’t violated any terms of service by getting hits. My plan allows 2,000 GB of bandwidth per month. The billing month starts on the third — that day. So far, in all the years I’ve hosted there, I’ve never exceeded 6% of my monthly allowance. Just because I was getting 30 times the usual number of hits I get in a day, it was still not much more than I’d get in a total month. So there was no way I’d even come close to 10% of the monthly allowance — let alone exceed it.
The guy who answered the phone was extremely polite but equally clueless. He had to talk to Advanced Hosting. He couldn’t let me talk to them. They gave him a song and dance about too many domain names pointing to the same site. He attempted to hand the same thing to me. I told him that that shouldn’t matter since none of those domain names were advertised anywhere. Besides, there were only about a dozen of them pointing to one site and maybe 15 pointing to another. I wasn’t aware of any limitation.
“I’ve been dugg,” I told him. When I got no answer, I asked, “Do you know what that means?”
“No,” he said.
I explained that it meant that one of my blog’s posts had become very popular and that people were flocking to my site to read it. I told him this was a temporary thing and that it should be back to normal by the end of the day. I hoped.
He told me that if I continued to get so many hits to my site, I’d have to get a dedicated server. I told him I’d evaluate after I’d seen my stats for the day. (My account is updated daily in the middle of the night.)
We hung up.
A Brief Intermission
I went flying. I took a couple from Virginia on an hour-long helicopter tour in the Wickenburg area. I showed them mine sites and canyons from the air. We saw a lot of cows, too. Afterward, I goofed off at the airport, chatting with two jet pilots who’d come in and were waiting for passengers. Then I went shopping for dinner. I got home and had a snack. Then I looked at Digg. It was 4 PM.
What Happened in Five Hours
The post that had started it all now had more than 1,200 diggs. It had been viewed almost 30,000 times. The post about that post, which hadn’t been dugg at all, had been viewed more than 40,000 times.
But thankfully, there were only 33 people online. So the flood had begun to subside.
On the Digg Technology page, my dugg post was listed near the bottom, under newly popular. (Ironically, on the same page, near the top, was a post about how Digg was losing popularity. That had more than 1,200 diggs, too.)
The Morning After
It’s the next day. I can now look back objectively on my blog’s day with a Digg Top 10 Tech post by studying some of the stats for the day and how the differ from other days.
My ISP reports that for the first day of my billing period — yesterday — I used up .55% (that’s just over half a percent, folks) of my monthly bandwidth. That means that if every day was like yesterday, I’d still come in at less than 20% allowable bandwidth. So I don’t know what “terms of service violation” they were whining about.
W3Counter, which I use to track page hits and visits, says I got just over 27,000 page hits yesterday. Look at the chart below; it makes my site look flat-line dead before yesterday. Honestly — it wasn’t that dead.
Today’s hits are about 3 times a normal day. Nice, but I’m willing to bet it drops down to normal within the next few days.
W3Counter also sent me an e-mail message warning me that their free service doesn’t cover sites that get more than 5,000 hits a day.They say I need to upgrade to a pro account for $4.95/month. We’ll see how long before they disable my current account — I’m not paying them to tell me how many hits I get when I can easily set up some stat software with a free WordPress plugin. (ShortStats, which we wrote about in our WordPress book, comes to mind.)
(I have not been able to reconcile page hits as reported by W3Counter with article reads as reported by a WordPress plugin. I have a sneaking suspicion that the WordPress plugin counts bots.)
Digg, as a source of hits, kicked Google out of the top spot on my site. Google used to account for 54% of my visitors. Now, for the 14-day period tracked by W3Counter, Digg is the big source. Google doesn’t even make the list any more, with all the different Digg URLs people used to find my site. So my sources stat is completely skewed and pretty much useless for the next 13 days. And 93% of the hits in the past 14 days have been to the 18-year-old mouse story.
Meanwhile, WP-UserOnline reports that yesterday saw the most users online at once on this site: 375. I don’t think this site will ever see that many concurrent users again.
My RSS feed subscriptions have more than doubled. That’s great. (If you’re a new subscriber, thanks for tuning in. And don’t worry — I don’t write about Digg every day.) It’ll be interesting to see if that number continues to climb or if I manage to scare all the new folks off by failing to provide more Diggable content on a daily basis.
My Google AdSense revenue for yesterday was right in line with an average high day. When you consider that I got about 20 times my normal number of page hits yesterday, you might think that I’d get 20 times the revenue. I didn’t. Obviously, Digg users don’t click Google ads.
The last I checked, the 18-year-old mouse story got just over 1,357 Diggs. I think that I actually encouraged the extra Diggs by placing the Digg icon at the top of the post. I’ve since taken it away from all posts.
I’ve realized that I don’t want to be seriously Dugg. Other than the surge in new RSS subscribers, there really isn’t any benefit to it.
What do you think?
Have you been slammed by being dugg? How did it affect your hosting account or other services? Use the Comments link or form to let the rest of us know.
Yesterday, he picked up the shop rags I’d asked him to buy the next time he was at Costco. You might be familiar with these “rags.” They’re really paper towels, blue, soft, and absorbent. I like to keep a roll under the seat in the helicopter to wipe up drips and spills or clean the bubble when I’m away from the hangar. Costco sells them 8 or 10 rolls in a pack and that can easily last me a year. Best of all, they don’t go bad. I store them in the hangar.
I found it when I was finished for the day, which was around 7:30 PM. I had some miscellaneous papers in my hand and was delivering them to the tall kitchen can when I stopped short. The old garbage pail was gone. A sleek new one with lights on its cover had taken its place.
What is Copy Editing?
