[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Thanks--I appreciate how neatly you let me off the hook, there. ;-)

No thanks required for stating a simple truth.

I was once so aggravated about Mr. X's drama (I mean, he could scream in ways that I didn't even know had been invented, I s**t thee not.) that I told him if he DIDN'T take two xanax, I wouldn't be in the following day--or EVER again. Bygod if he didn't at least shut up.

I interviewed once at a family owned computer outfit. I stood out as being the only guy they'd encountered who had ever heard of a key software package they used. (A former employer sold it.)

I got along well with the folks I spoke to, but was warned the elderly owner was wont to scream at and berate employees. I said "Thanks for the warning. If he tries it on me I'll close the door and scream back." (These days that sort of behavior would produce a lawsuit.)

Never did deal with him. I got rejected by his son, and likely just as well.

He should have been delighted. Usually, becoming The Shadow takes years of difficult training, after all.

He came by it naturally. Some people have "black thumbs", and plants die on them. He did that to computers.

As long as he stayed out of the computer room, I was content.

Been there, done that. In fact...I fear to look behind my main CPU as I type this. Probably have that scenario right now, sorry to say.

I try not to have that sort of rat's nest.

The last time I had issues like that, my desktop was spontaneously powering off. The problem proved to be dust accumulation inside the case, that had clogged the CPU fan and prevented it from working. The machine would overhead, and the CPU would stop dead and the machine would power off.

There were whole litters of dust puppies in it.

Open the case, vacuum out the dust, clear the fan, close it back up, and make sure the covers were in place on open slots in the back to prevent future dust build up.

Mostly, we don't read them. We obviously can't, not and finish them in a reasonably productive manner. And some--well. Let's just say, it's better if it isn't sticky. The tale about the Penthouse setters is amusing, thanks for that.

I thought you would appreciate it.

With the Internet and self-publishing, the Internet is now the largest slush pile in the history of publishing. There are reasons why trade houses now mostly only look at submissions from established agents. Reading slush was always an editor's least favorite chore, and much of it was "gouge out eyes with a spoon after reading" quality. Nowadays the unwary reader is subjected to it.

An old friend was former executive editor at a trade house, and is now a full time writer. She spent a few months as a freelance editor at a Harlequin books eBook imprint (and a unit of Harlequin was one of her publishers). She resigned, and said "I guess I didn't miss editing as much as I thought." The eBook imprint's deal was "no advance, but higher than normal royalty, and a well received title can be picked up by Harlequin for print edition." What it got in consequence was stuff that would hit the slush pile, and stuff established writers had been unable to sell elsewhere.

My take was "You do miss editing. You miss making a good book better. What you don't miss is reading slush, and that's what you were doing."

I don't even CARE about tripe becoming a best-seller. Twifright? 50 Shades of Dreck? Good-o. After all, let's not forget: by all meaningful measures, fully HALF of the population is below-average. They want reading material, too. This thought helped me reconcile myself to the idea of purportedly grown women being emotionally involved in crap like "Team Edward" or "Team whatever guy." So...good for the crafters of dreck.

Doesn't even have to be "50 Shades Dreck" (which was done definitively 25 years ago by "Elizabeth McNeill" in "9 1/2 Weeks", in one much shorter volume, and got a bad movie adaptation.)

There are lots of things that just don't grab us, but become best sellers. For instance, I'm not the market at which romance is aimed, and I wouldn't take a Harlequin offering free. I have no time to read it and no interest in doing so if I did. But there are people who do that sort of thing well, and a large market that likes it.

As long as publishers make enough money to continue offering what I do like, I'm content.

Thanks--I'd love to take credit, but mostly, that's a store-boughten template. Because I'm terminally cheap, I ended up doing scads of the work myself, but I still had to hire out all the Joomla customization. (Wanker CMS, let me just add that. Utterly crackpot ways of doing things.)

Templates are fine. No point in rolling your own if something off the shelf is applicable. The trick is recognizing it needs to be done and picking a good one.

I haven't looked at Joomla, but my suspicion is that the problems are mostly in understanding how to make it do it. An old friend is a noted open source advocate, and was griping about the quality of the lot of open source (which Joomla is) documentation. I proposed a drinking game. Look for open source projects. Take a drink for every one where you don't understand the documentation on how to use it. Take two drinks for every one where you can't even find a description of what it's supposed to do. You will be under the table in short order...

I've definitely become more savvy at simply cutting off customers that are unsuitable, no matter whose fault it is. Some simply need more than we provide--that's hardly anyone's fault. Some...we just don't gel. No click. But I've learned how to catch on to this sooner, fortuitously.

You learn things after you do them long enough. And the issues are inherent in any client oriented business.

Thanks. As I said: I mean it.

Any time.
______
Dennis