Gennita Goes Wild West

That Comment Widget Update Update:

Blogger is looking into it, according to the Blogger forums. It's affecting many blogs, so there, it's NOT me and my "cowboy style" of coding, as one funny reader tells me ;-).

Speaking of that funny reader, she related an anecdote about Keanu Klaatu that had me choking on my pistachios:

The sad part isn't that his acting is so stiff and robotic. That's bad enough, but it's not acting. o_O I was on a flight with him several years ago. I spent the better part of seven hours watching him flirt with the flight attendants in that stiff inflection-less voice from the opposite side of the aisle. Swear by all that's holy, the man actually laughed in monotone. I still have nightmares about it. I wonder if his voice changes in pitch during sex... Probably not.

SEVEN hours watching Keanu Klaatu flirt in monotone. Man. That's worse than a noisy baby three aisle down.... I feel for you, my funny reader, so much so I won't let myself be insulted by being your source of amusement for my "slap-dash wild west coding approach for your blog." Ha, I say. It works, doesn't it? Eventually....

You know how I started "understanding" the coding? By looking at it like a foreign language. When I was eighteen and my then boyfriend and his nerd brother started yakking away about ancient and dead computer coding stuff (let's see, COBOL, Commodore, even Basic), my eyes would glaze over after about twenty minutes of listening to their secret language. I was forced to try to understand computers and how they worked after our breakup because I didn't know how to do much with the Apple IIe other than typing a paper into it and hit CONTROL P. So sad. The realization that I depended so much on that bast...I mean, boyfriend...disturbed me.

LOL. Okay, TMI territory. Where was I?

Conclusion: Being alone and working among people who wasn't computer savvy forced me to be smarter than I really am. Hahahahaha. But it's true. If not for people shrugging at me and my inability to understand any techie over the phone, I wouldn't have braved the world of secret computer coding on my own, to stare at HTML and say (with a deep breath and a prayer), "Okay, I can do this. Pretend it's French in hieroglyphics, only much much more difficult."

So voila! You see the results.

Hmm. Now that I think about it, I use this wild west approach in everything I do, including learning how to roof without first knowing stuff like...toolbelts, utility knives, or, umm...the different hammers. I was hungry, so I took a deep breath and said, "Okay, I can do this. Pretend it's like writing an essay, only with a lot more sweat than inspiration involved."

And voila! Here be your uber roofer author.

This is my roundabout way of saying that when Amazon.com puts Big Bad Wolf on their site (still waiting), it'll be official. I've also ventured into the Wild West of self-publishing. I've basically done it without much knowledge or talking to anyone. I do have the advantage of understanding enough about how the publishing business works, though, but that's also founded upon my past business experience of being an independent contractor. So yes, I'm a novice and yet, I'm not.

Many people will laugh, like they did when they saw my crazy coding or the sight of me on a roof (that's me, spreading amusement everywhere I go *grin*), but I'm hoping that, like my first tentative steps at understanding the computer and at trying to compete with men swinging and twirling hammers like drum sticks, I'll learn from it and be successful too.

In the end, it's just that part of me that refuses to let myself lie down because of excuses like

a) (computers are) too complicated
b) (roofing) is too hard
c) (computers, roofing, POD self-publishing) is too untraditional

because if I've done that, I wouldn't be where I am now. To me, it's always fun to know that I can do it, have done it, and even though my ways might be a bit "wild west," I'm still able to achieve what I set out to do, i.e., be able to talk computers and do something with them, be able to take care of myself with my brain or my muscles, and lastly, in this venture, be able to give my readers those stories that they want but my publisher has rejected.

CAN I SAY DIAMOND AND T's STORY? They've been rejected enough, dammit! :-)

Okay, I must be high on Christmas candy. Forgive me. Listen to Bing Crosby's White Christmas instead. There is no other voice on earth perfect for Christmas songs than Bing's.





I'm sure you're all busy with family and I appreciate your dropping by at this crazy woman's blog to read in between festive fun. Merry Christmas to you and yours and may you get everything you wish for, even if you've been a bad girl or boy all year ;-).

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