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It’s been a bit since I posted something to my blog, so I wanted to talk about my grand NaNoWriMo experiment from August-November of last year. Simply put, things did not go as expected.

As each month passed all sorts of personal events kept on intruding to the point where I couldn’t even think of writing much less get my head into completing my goals. I experienced a sort of meltdown in my personal life and this directly affected my writing more than I’d thought possible. Add to this the self-imposed stress of trying to get the draft done before December and you pretty much get a disaster.

But that was last year, and now in this new one, I decided to approach writing differently. Even though my personal and financial life is still in turmoil, I’ve forgiven myself for missing my own deadlines last year and set myself a more workable schedule. I try to write what I can daily, but not under the constraints of NaNoWriMo-type deadline. I think this will give me room to breathe and not paralyze me with stress.

It also gives me the ability to concentrate on stabilizing other parts of my life while keeping the story moving. I’m hopeful that once things work themselves out on one front it’ll make it easier for me to put more effort into writing.

Either way, I will try to post at least something each month about where I am and I hope I have better news to tell then.

As someone involved in IT for most of my life, it was very refreshing to see a writer who knew how things really worked. Who understood how networks, databases, and other pieces of infrastructure that runs our daily lives really functioned. Daniel Suarez, is the thriller writer I’ve been waiting for: Someone who actually has a clue what really is happening behind the computing curtain.

All to often, I’ve found that most writers who write science fiction and techno-thrillers have no experience whatsoever with technology and love to throw terms and ideas out in order to cover their ignorance. This was one of the first books of fiction I’ve read where I saw the writer knew exactly what he was talking about and wasn’t depending on a subscription to Wired for all of his technical information.

As a novel, I found it enjoyable and frightening at the same time. Since I know about the technology he talks about in his books, I can easily see some of the things that happened actually occur. As one reviewer on Amazon had said, “This isn’t a novel so much as it is an object lesson in what can happen.” What I found fascinating was looking at all the reviews, people who really didn’t understand the technology involved, or people who think they do (listening to CNET podcasts and what not does not count as “knowing about computers and the internet”) did not like this novel as much as people who really do know the way things work in the internet.

In some ways, Daniel has limited his audience to very technical people, but to be honest those in the later generations are more technical than the previous ones and it is very refreshing to read a book where they author isn’t dumbing down the novel in order to keep people who aren’t technically inclined happy. Its like the author is saying to his readers, “If you can understand, great take a seat and hold on to the pull bar for a wild ride. If you can’t, then STFU and find yourself a Grisham book”. I like that. I like it very much.

To sum things up, if you’re in IT or involved anyway in computer technology, you should read Daemon. If you really understand what Daniel is talking about, it should both excite and scare you. This is definitely a thriller for our generation, and I sure hope to see more like these popping up in the near future.

After reading most of my caffeinated entries on this blog I’m sure you know about my love and obsession with single serve coffee machines. One of my most loved is my Keurig B70. It is simply the best single serve system out there.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, the company with the largest selection of KCups and who also owns Keurig as a subsidiary.

When I first started my affair with Keurig, I went through a multitude of sample packs of KCups trying to find the ones I liked best. I realized quickly that many roasters were not created equal. Some burned their roasts to the point where their full city roast was more along the lines of a French roast. And then some made weaker roasts of coffee.

This was where I found myself with Green Mountain Coffee. When I first tried some of their Colombian Fair Trade, I found it to be very week and lacking the flavor I expected from a medium roast. At that point I wrote them off and decided to keep with Diedrich Coffee’s KCups which I felt had the best flavor.

So, fast forward to a couple of months ago when my neighbor had purchased his own Keurig and being the neighborly sort, I gave him some Diedrich KCups and he gave me some of his Green Mountain Colombian.

Now, I wasn’t too thrilled about the exchange, thinking that I would end up tossing the those KCups into the trash, but it had been a while since I last tasted Green Mountain KCups (at least since they had purchased Keurig) and I have learned a variety of techniques to improve the flavor of weaker cups of coffee, so I decided to give them another shot.

That was when the unbelievable happened and I found that Green Mountain’s Colombian Fair Trade was actually very good. I found myself purchasing a large pack of the coffee from BJ’s the next day in order to supplement the other KCups on hand.

Initially, I was concerned when Green Mountain have purchased Keurig and thought that I would be relegated to either drinking KCups I hated or to just use the MyKCup adapter to brew my own blends, but thankfully they’re still licensing to other roasters and still bringing new ones on-board. The fact I also now like some of their KCups is of course also a plus.

I walk away from this with a fresh perspective on Green Mountain, and also with the desire to revisit some of the KCups I wasn’t too happy with in the past. Let’s see what other new “old” roasters I can discover.

Well, last month was a disaster as far as writing. There were a lot of things going in my life as far as my work situation that prevented me from really putting in the time to write. I was hoping that November would be better, but it’s off to a rocky start.

However, even with the less than optimal start, I’m not gonna give up and keep going forward with it. So far I have about 2000 words done and I can only go up from there.

Well, it’s October 1st and today is the first day of my personal NanoWriMo. I had some missteps in September due to events out of my direct control, but I’m now back on track and ready to go. I’ll be posting my progress here as I delve deeper into my writing frenzy.