So my word count right now is up to 15,257. I have to say that I am pretty impressed with myself. Through the end of this past Friday I was sitting at around 7,000 words. Nanowrimo stated that yesterday was supposed to be a "write in". I was to dedicate as much of the day as I could to just writing. 

I probably sat down to write for 5-6 hours and I cranked out another 7,000 words. My story is getting to the point where it is starting to find its stride and open up a bit. Hopefully things continue to be easy here on out. 

To close out this check in I will post up another unedited excerpt. 

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So I have been Nanowrimo for five days now. For my first go at this I have to say that I think I am doing pretty well. The first day was extremely difficult to just get started. I probably ended up starting over three or four times before I finally found a good flow. So far I have written every day except today. That puts me slightly behind my target word out, but overall I am sitting at approximately 4300 words.

So far i have found that while writing, the important thing is to literally just get words written. Forget about how it is written and just keep putting words down. As I am writing I have found that I needed locations and characters that I originally did not anticipate. As I am going along I am just filling in all of that information with an "XXXX" that will allow me to go back at some later point to try and look at something. 

I have also found that writing with my eyes closed as helped tremendously. I have the ability to type on a keyboard without looking at it. So closing my eyes to fully imagine the scene that I am in has helped me a lot in trying to visualize what I might need to describe and put down onto a page. 

Overall I have to say that I am really enjoying this process so far. I will post some excerpts, completed unedited as I go along. 

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Ok, 

So day one is done. Man was it hard to get this started. I probably started and rewrote this beginning sequence a half dozen times. I have ended the day with 1724 words though which I feel is not to bad of a start. I basically made my way through the introduction of my characters. 

I am toying with the idea of posting up my content as I write to get feedback from people who may have thoughts or ideas I could explore. I assume that my writing is going to be pretty atrocious since I am basically mashing at the keyboard to just get words on the page. We will see if that may be some thing I want to do. 

So here it is. November 1st is the start of Nanowrimo 2013. I have told myself I am doing this. Writing a novel in a month. Am I prepared? I have no idea. I tried to do some real planning and outlining the past couple of months and I have a solid idea. I suppose we will just sort of see how this all plays out. 

As I have mentioned before, I have never done anything like this before. Am I nervous? Heck ya. 

Time for a reading update. Back in July I read Ringworld with the Sword and Laser Group. Can't say I really enjoyed it that much. I have found that more and more I am having problems reading science fiction books. I used to enjoy SciFI for its critique upon society, but as of late they just haven't been connecting with me. May be it is because the books i have been recently reading are older and a product of their respective time periods. Perhaps I am just looking for some more pure escapism in my reading. 

I tried to give SciFi another go this past month when the audio book of Ready Player One was on sale on iTunes for $6.00. I am again having problems really getting into this book. The narration by Wil Wheaton is fantastic and the 1980's trivia in the book is fun, but that novelty sort of wears off pretty quickly. My biggest hang up in getting into the book is my lack of connection with the main character. One of the "things" that always gets me in a lot of books are characters who make illogical decisions. Ones who risk their lives needessly or in the book have demonstrated a good skillset and then seemingly forget it or under utilize it later. The Entire of the Rose had this with the main character who just couldn't control his reckless temper and even Cordelia's Honor actually had it right at the end when our main character (who was so intelligent through all of the book) goes on a boneheaded rampaging suicide mission. In Ready Player One we have a character who was almost murdered and he is going about doing some reckless actions to expose himself. He also has just pulled himself out of poverty and constantly talks about his limited money, but then goes on to spend a large portion of it for seemingly no reason at all. 

There is also a bit too much exposition in Ready Player One describing the surrounding world. We get these long drawn out descriptions of something dozens of pages after we have already been experiencing them. 

Anyways, the main book that I am still loving is the Malazan Book of the Fallen, and I am now on book #5, Midnight Tides. Overall I have to say that this book is the slowest of the bunch for me, but it has the simplest cast of characters thus far and is still just so well written I can't help by enjoy it. The Malazan books constantly amaze me at how well crafted the world is and I know I will be cranking on right through to the other books after this. I really have fallen in love with the Malazan world. 

So one of the things I wanted to accomplish this year was a successfully participation in Nanowrimo. Nanowrimo is a national novel writing month that takes place in November and encourages people to write 30,000 words in 30 days. It is difficult for sure, but a fun project to shoot for. I attempted this a few years ago, but started the night before and was not very successful. This year I have decided to map out my novel idea several months in advance and I think I have a pretty decent idea. 

Tied in this with is also a concept for a board game that I am working on. Yes, a board game. I am experimenting with developing a board game mechanic. This weekend I began cutting out some prototype pieces to begin testing. There is a lot of work still here, but I think I can possibly get something decent this winter. 

So last Wednesday I woke up in the morning to put the news on while I prepared breakfast and found that what should have been the ABC 7 morning news was now a black screen that said "scrambled" across it. Slightly disappointed, I figured that the cable must have just been down. Minor hiccups like this have happened before and I have needed to re scan my TV.  I did the re-scan and found that all of my channels were still scrambled, but I did have two Xfinity promotional channels that were available. 

I went online later that day and did some research online and unfortunately found that Comcast has decided to encrypt all TV channels, even broadcast channels on limited basic cable. My research turned up this help file that was published September 4th. This means that where you previously could get HD broadcast channels with the QAM tuner in your HDTV you now have to have a set top box to receive any channels at all. A follow up call to Comcast later that day confirmed this message and after going back through my previous bills I did note that I receive the following letter in the mail from them. 

I think the thing that bugs me the most about this whole ordeal is just how unnecessary all of it is. Limited Basic cable was costing me $28 a month. To require a set top box so Comcast can further try and push their marketed services upon me is just slimy. It reeks of underhanded business practices and it unfortunately puts customers who are far away from broadcast towers (45 miles or more) at a major disadvantage. So I canceled my cable TV right there on the spot. If I had another good internet provider I would have done so with that as well. 

My resolution was set then to setup an antenna in my home to get broadcast TV. My search started over at antennaweb.org . This is a great website that allows consumers to put in their address to find out what type of antenna they may need. The power ranking systems for the antennas are nicely colored coded  to let you know what sort of power and size of antenna you may need. Everything in my areas based upon my location from the city put me in the yellow, red and light green area. I was therefore able to pick up a very straightforward antenna and mount it in my attic with no problems. 

I bought the RCA ANT751 which you can find for about $60 on Amazon. This antenna was nice since it is only about a meter long and it was very easy to mount. When I went through the actual installation process I ran into a couple of hiccups that I thought others should be aware of. Since I still use Comcast for my internet I found that the antenna signal and the cable internet cannot share the same coax cable since their frequencies overlap. I had to then go through my house to see how my coax was run and split up. Thankfully it was pretty straight forward. I had my cable connection come into the house through the basement and then run straight up to the attic where everything split off from there. All of the cables were nicely labeled as well.Since I had to separate things off I basically had to identify one room in the house to place the cable modem and resign the fact that I could not get antenna TV there. I actually opted to do this in the basement itself after trying a couple of other locations. I previously had drilled some holes in my floor for running speaker cable so I then ran my ethernet cable along the floor boards to run back up to my router located in the family room. Ultimately, the whole process worked out really well and was about as painless as it could have been. 

So last year I rode the Illinois River Byway down by Peoria. I had an OK time with it, but I sort of expected more river. After reflecting upon it for a while I actually realized that I enjoyed the ride quite a bit, despite getting lost. I wanted to do this ride again this fall with a group of people, so I headed out today to scope the ride out and plan my approached. 

I decided to to take the route down in the opposite direction this time, on the west side of the river. This proved to be a much more enjoyable ride overall. I was able to take highway 29 down to Peoria quickly and then I ended up with a beautiful drive into the marshlands and wildlife refuge just outside of Havanna. Riding north back on the east side of the river also made for some easier transitions to some side roads and highway 26 on the way back up is a nice long stretch of almost uninterrupted highway, which makes for a nice ride at the end of the day. 

Overall it was very productive. I ran into a couple of construction detours that threw me for a loop on one-way streets in Peoria, but I think I have a plan worked out on how to bypass those. 

Last week I picked up some new LED lights for my motorcycle and installed the P3 lights for the tail end of my motorcycle. Installation over all was very easy and I spent more time running the wires than I did doing the actual installation. 

Another gaming update. So what have I been playing since I last posted in May? A good bit actually. 

Syndicate

Syndicate was a rather average cyberpunk FPS game. The graphics in the game were quite good for the Xbox, but the gameplay overall was pretty dull. Your basic run and gun shooting with a slow time mechanic that I often times forgot was even there. I was pretty disappointed overall since I really love cyberpunk on the whole. 

Shadows of the Dammed

Here is a game that I heard a lot of people talking about when it came out. It is supposed to have a lot of "B" movie charm to it. What it does have is a lot of teenage sexualized drama. I dunno what it is, but the whole over the top sexual thing with the Japanese really annoys me these days. It makes me think their society of men are just perpetually stuck in a sort of adolescent phase. Soap box aside, the overall game I am not really enjoying. The shooting mechanic has to be so precise to make a hit that I just find the game frustrating. I just don't have the time to mess around with perfecting perfect skill shots in a game in order to effectively progress my way through it. 

Overall the game just reeks of a bit too much Japanese game design in it in all the wrong ways for me. It is also of the horror genre, which has never really been an genre I have found interesting apart from the original Silent Hill. 

Overlord II

Overlord is one of my favorite games from this generation. The first game nailed the Pikmin clone while adding just enough of other elements to make it unique. Overlord II came around and it is basically just more of the same, all the way down to the training and origin story. It again, was rather disappointing since I would have liked to have seen more divergence from the first game. Still and OK game and the end boss this time around was a lot less frustrating (perhaps too easy). 

Saints Row: The Third

I normally hate open world sandbox games. Saints Row 2 and Crackdown really changed my mind this past generation and Saints Row: The Third was such a highly hyped game that I had to play it. I think it may have been a product of it being over hyped, but I felt the game was just "OK". It is certainly solid and still has one of the better shooting mechanics. It even had some really great moments with some songs, etc. Overall though I found myself bored, as I do with most sandbox games with doing the same actions over and over in the side missions. There is only so much driving and shooting one can do. 

Dishonored

Overall, here was an excellent stealth action game. A nice art style with good mechanics and interesting game play. I still felt a bit over-hyped for this game a bit, but it is definitely a world I would like to go back to. My only major gripe was the amount of backtracking and returning to the same levels.