Over 50,000 words. I actually made it and thus have effectively become a NaNoWriMo winner. Oh. My. GOD! I actually did it! And it was my first time to try for it, ever! I'm still pretty overwhelmed that I actually made it and perhaps am slightly more surprised that in terms of the actual story itself, I'm not quite done. I'll probably need to take the better part of this week to tie things up nicely and really call it a true novel that can stand on its own, but just getting this far is quite the achievement.

I guess was really gets me is the fact that for the past 5-10 years, I haven't really managed to write any significant amounts of fiction since high school (and those were mainly graded compositions). Thus to go from struggling fictionist to theoretically a novelist in the span of 30 days isn't something you can expect anyone to do. I have to admit I didn't really expect that I'd make it either. But I kept at it and Tobie kept on pushing me forward and making sure I spent time everyday writing and thus 30 days later we're here - with over 50,000 words and pretty much a full-fledged novel on my hands. My mind continues to spin with the possibilities.

So yes, I definitely have to give a very big THANK YOU to Tobie for convincing me to try doing this and even better, to just be there for me over the past month and help me achieve this literary goal. Sure, NaNoWriMo doesn't give you any sort of cash prize at the end and in essence the only monetary reward you get is a PDF of a certificate that you can download and print out for yourself. Of course that's not what it's about. It's all about the hard lesson that yes, you CAN write a novel if you really set your mind to it and give yourself a serious deadline. You'll cry out in frustration at times but you just need to keep on writing, keep on pushing and eventually you'll get to the finish line.

Oh yes, and Tobie is a NaNoWriMo winner, too!

Does this mean that I'm going to start writing novels regularly? I wouldn't go that far just yet - NaNoWriMo caused many a fun night at home instead of out with friends and I'm sure my social life could use some mending. Plus all the writing time dedicated to NaNoWriMo has certainly affected the regularity of entries on the Geeky Guide and I know I have some catching up to do over there. But at the very least, I do think I'll be writing more stories from now on and perhaps I'll finally get around to writing that one big novel that's been in my head for so long and yet I can never seem to find the time, the effort or the sheer will to do just that. NaNoWriMo has certainly shocked me in realizing just what I'm still capable of as a writer. It's an empowering thought, but I still feel a lot better for it.

Well, tonight's a local holiday and I've decided to stay in with Tobie. To celebrate NaNoWriMo, I cooked up a large batch of spaghetti, fried some pork steaks and sat down to watch Atonement. That was certainly an awesome movie and one that I'm going to enjoy eventually reviewing on the Geeky Guide.

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In the corporate world, Wally is practically a genius in work avoidance.

Current NaNoWriMo Word Count: 48,000 words exactly. Just 2,000 words to go with a full day left - whee! I can so do this! I just need to finish today's game, then I can go back to fully devoting my time to writing...that and continually tweaking this netbook. Yes, I'm now working from the notebook, hehe.

I'm actually right smack in the middle of a turn right now, but with midnight drawing close, need to get around to posting today's LJ entry. Yikes. So obviously this is not going to be a long entry nor am I 100% focused on my game turn right now. That's potentially dangerous too, but I need to get this done.

The desktop was behaving increasingly erratically last night and so I gave up and decided to move my activities to the netbook. This also involved the inevitable naming of the netbook and so now this Asus EEE PC 1005HA is now called Blacktron, in honor of my favorite part of the LEGO space line of playsets. I really, really loved the Blacktron LEGO line - they had some pretty awesome figures after all. I wasn't content with dealing with the restrictions of Windows 7 Basic and so I ended up totally geeking out online to figure out how to change the wallpaper and even the logon screen. So after a fair amount of twiddling and researching into different strategies for getting around those restrictions, figuring out what all these partitions on the EEE are for and of course looking for suitable background images.

So now I have custom background images with a massive Transformers battle for my default desktop and a close-up of the Autobot Matrix of Leadership as my logon screen. Even better, the core of the Matrix has somehow aligned with the profile icon box so it looks like whatever avatar I set for my profile (at the moment the same Soundwave icon attached to this LJ entry) is shining with the light of the Matrix. Sweet!

Sadly, Blacktron is in fact operating a lot faster than the desktop right now and I might actually migrate more of my activities to this unit. Hurrah!

Now back to the game!

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Damned if you do and damned if you don't. The evils of new managers at times! LOL

Current NaNoWriMo Word count: 44,784 words. This is it ladies and gentlemen - this weekend is going to be do or die for me in terms of my bid to finish NaNoWriMo this year. If you had asked me to write a 50.000 word novel a year ago, I probably would have said that you're insane and that I could never manage that given how I had been struggling with getting back into writing over the past few years. But here I am, roughly 5,000 words away from that goal and I've never felt this energized towards writing in years. I'm sure the novel in itself probably sucks and it's hardly anywhere near something that I'd think of as being one of my better works, but it's there and it exists and I'm doing to finish this bastard this weekend.

Of course this translates into not going out tonight or even tomorrow and pretty much just dedicating as much time as possible to getting it done, which I'm prepared to do. It also helps that Tobie is also writing a NaNoWriMo novel and thus we're both going to try and cross that 50,000 word mark together. We have barely 2 days left to get it done - we can do this!

Oh, but I have more news than just my NaNoWriMo target.

Today Tobie and I stepped out to pick up a few supplies from SM Cubao, which inevitably means going around the mall to look at stuff. I picked up two more Transformers today - the Animated versions of Jazz and Swoop, to help beef up my Autobot bench. They mark my 13th and 14th Transformers purchases for the year, which pretty much outweighs my total toy purchases within the previous 5 years or more. Of course I now actually earn enough money to buy toys like this as a major factor to this purchasing change, but in general I just seem to be at a better place in terms of my comfort with buying toys again. Plus they were only P300 each, so why not, right?

The major purchase this weekend was one of my tech goals for the year - getting a netbook. After much deliberation over the past few months, I finally went out to buy an Asus EEE PC 1005HA. I got the Windows 7 version with 2GB DDR RAM and the slightly larger 250GB hard drive to boot. I'm pretty excited about getting this fully set up, but of course with the need to accomplish NaNoWriMo, I'm sticking to using the desktop for now. Typing on that small keyboard is going to take a lot of getting used to and I can't afford to deal with a learning curve just yet. Maybe later.

Tobie helped me pick up a decent back for it as well - it's one of those single strap slings that don't really look like laptop bags given the number of pockets and compartments. I'm really happy with this purchase and I can't wait to get it fully configured for my needs.

Now if only I could get my hands on a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 before next Saturday's company Christmas party...

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Scratch Fury! Calvin and Hobbes reference! Squee!

First up, a very Happy Birthday to gaming friend (and soon to be psychic prostitute), Sam! A very, Happy Happy Birthday to you! I can't wait for our Trinity game to start! Wheee!

Current NaNoWriMo Word Count: 41,085 words. With luck, I won't be too busy at work tonight so I can sneak in some more writing. There are only 3 days left until the end of the competition this weekend is going to be do or die for me. Gah! But I remain confident that I can manage this and I'll be able to pull this off. I swear I will! Go, go, NaNoWriMo! =D

Work was a lot busier than expected, but then I suppose that's normal given I didn't go to work last Wednesday. There were long meetings, various consultations, challenging people to perform even better than they are now and thinking about 28 Google Wave invites and who would actually try my little contest.

One more work shift tonight. I can do this.

It's hard being a member of the support teams in a call center. Not just any support team, but one of the teams that have stronger operational ties like Training and Quality Assurance. The challenge with such groups is that holidays become a thing of the past for the most part. Here's what I mean:

When you're in Operations, like when you're an agent, if there are no calls, then you don't have work. This normally means that a lot of local holidays get trampled on while you at least you get to enjoy the holidays of the home country that you support. US-focused call centers get Thanksgiving off while other groups get to honor holidays in the UK or whatever. It's just how things go.

When you're in a more traditional support department like HR or Recruitment, you tend to get the local holidays off in order to honor your nice little daytime schedules and to save on holiday pay. You don't get the US holidays off since it doesn't make sense for how your job is defined.

Support teams like Training aren't so lucky, at least in terms of my working experience. When you're in Training, as long as there's a class, you have to work. Since we are not directly tied to Operations by things like call volume and such, training classes can always continue regardless of whether or not Operations has work. We also can still work despite local holidays since we have hard targets that we have to meet in terms of graduation dates and naturally we must continue to deliver quality agents to Operations. The best that we can manage is to offset holidays by declaring 11 hour work shifts for a 4-day work week or offsetting class schedules to Tuesday - Saturday in order to avoid a Monday holiday or whatever. It's just how things go in our industry.

So it's hard to figure out which holidays you'll get to enjoy, if any at all. More and more we seem to have acquired programs that have work even on major holidays like Christmas and New Year, and thus the expectation of coming to work seems to get even worse. It's a hard life but somehow the higher pay is supposed to help make up for the stress and loss of personal time.

June of next year will mark my seventh year in the call center industry, and I don't think I'll ever get fully used to this consequence of our jobs. Oh well.

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Do NOT mess with gamers while they're gaming under ANY circumstances. =P

To all my friends in the US, a very Happy Thanksgiving to you! Enjoy the Thanksgiving feast and perhaps you can find a way to send me some freeze-dried leftovers! =D

Current NaNoWriMo Word Count: 40,172 words. I'm 80% of the way there with only 4 days left to get the rest of it done. You can certainly imagine my internal stress as I just think about this prospect right now. Seriously. This is a aggravating as thinking about leaving the volume at a notch not divisible by 3 or 5 added together with the stress of not having paired utensils and throwing in the stress of buying an odd number of pork chops when I plan on cooking for an even number of people. I know it all sounds weird, but that's the best I can describe how this feels to me right now. But I'm not at all giving up - I know that I'll be able to catch up over the weekend and hopefully I'll make it just in time.

I haven't done much cross-promotional stuff here so it wouldn't hurt to sneak that in for today's entry, right?

I was surprised to find that I now have 28 Google Wave invites to give away. To make things more interesting, I've started a very simple "contest" of sorts over at the Geeky Guide for those who want an invite. I'm not asking for much! I'm just asking for more support for my geeky blogging efforts, hehe.

Speaking of geeky blogging efforts, you all do realize that I now write articles for NewWorlds.ph, right? I'm supposedly Associate Editor for TV but I haven't quite gotten around to writing my regular column just yet - perhaps once I'm done with NaNoWriMo. For the curious, you can visit my "blog" on NewWorlds.ph here or you can just search for any entries tagged with "geekyguide" at the site.

Beyond that, I've decided to also blog about my desires for a new digital bridge camera and possibly a netbook. If any of you have recommendations for me for either gadget or even have contacts / deals I should check out, I'd love to hear from you!

Now I have to cut things short so I can get ready to head out. Tobie and I are catching the premiere of Amelia at the Podium tonight before I eventually have to head off to work. Smell you geeks later!

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Happy Thanksgiving you geeks! Always be thankful for cats!

Current NaNoWriMo Word Count: 38,077 words. There are barely 5 days left in the "competition". It boggles mind to think that I've actually gotten this far and it totally stresses me out to try and figure out where I'm going to get the remaining 12,000 words in the time that's left to me. Oh my god. But still, upward and onward, right? I just need to keep moving forward, keep pushing myself. I MUST reach the goal! I will finish this novel!

Oh my NaNoWriMo. And to think I'm planning on doing this every year. Yikes!

Work was okay. Not too stressful but not boring either. There are a fair number of things going on here and there that probably don't absolutely need my involvement but a greater part of me knows I need to (or want to?) get involved. It's always the way with work - you do your best to stick to your own job and just make sure you do that well, but then things outside of your world start calling for attention. It's like an itch that you can't scratch and you know that you'll be able to make a different should you cross that line. Then again, I'm probably going to annoy a number of people along the way so that's just bound to be downright fun, hehe.

That sounded so evil. It probably is.

Yesterday we had a guest in the form of Jordan, the director of the documentary that's featuring Tobie's Diliman comic. He's a pretty swell (straight) guy from Canada who's pretty passionate about his work and a bit of a geek to boot. I only know this since we chatted for a while before they started the little interview / shoot and we ended up finding common ground in ranting about just how great Battlestar Galactica was and yet how annoying The Plan was at the same time. He's pretty busy with all the meetings and preparations he needs to get done for the documentary so hopefully we'll be able to hang out with him more sometime in December when he's not so busy.

I uploaded a mess of backlog photos to my Facebook account this morning - mostly food pictures, whether or not I cooked the dishes myself. I'll see when I can get around to uploading them to Multiply as well - I've been having trouble with the java uploader there lately and so I'm forced to use the HTML one, and that can only load 20 photos at a time. Ugh.

I'm way overdue for bed. Wish me luck later - I've been watching the weather and I don't quite trust it.

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I'm sorry, the Twilight / New Moon bashing isn't going to end any time soon.

Current NaNoWriMo Word Count: 35,643 words. Good God, there's still a long way to go and we only have so much time! 6 days! Can you believe that? I need about 15,000 words to make it to the end of things and I still have a bit of a ways to go. But we press on! At the same time, I've finally re-mapped The Gossamer Tower to the Geeky Guide domain, so you can now access it at http://gossamer-tower.geeky-guide.com/.

And yes, I did the same for Sietch Creare Lore - it's now at http://sietch-creare.geeky-guide.com/. I know, all the hyphens in the URLs might be a little weird. If you feel it doesn't work, I'd appreciate the feedback since I can always re-map it by dropping the hyphen.

The start of the work week was pretty tiring - I guess I wasn't as fully out of my weekend funk as I thought. It was a bit of a bitch trying to get back on that particular horse, but I think I managed it well enough. There were the usual amount of fires to put out, decisions to be made and all the usual mundane things that go into the work day.

At the same time, I was engaging in a variety of IM conversations about this and that and I think I made some headway last night. Then again, I could be wrong since the only test of things is how things will change (or not) in the long run, but I'm not necessarily holding my breath just yet.

I can't believe I'm still awake despite my lack of sleep from yesterday, but then Tobie is going to be filmed today for his comic, Diliman, as part of the documentary Aswang. I definitely wanted to stay up to meet the director and ironically to help Tobie stay awake but now it means I'm on the brink of collapse and so I really need to go to bed.

So there.

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I actually would so buy into the Google Chrome netbook concept. I just want a nicer way to connect to the web at once!

Current NaNoWriMo Word Count: 34,587 words. It's the home stretch my friends, and of course I'm getting nervous as heck about whether or not I'm going to make it all the way to the finish line in time. I'm still behind in terms of the estimate daily quota by at least another 3,000 words and given the work week is already starting, I know that I'm going to have some challenges with squeezing in enough writing time before the month (and thus he "competition") ultimately ends.

Gaming day was good, as always. It also helped that Adrian and Nabs were okay to stay a bit longer this time around so even if we started yesterday's session rather late, we still covered a lot of ground and got a fair amount of gaming done. Plus Mahar had come from a wedding and brought along some fortune cookies and buko pie to help make the game day a lot more...flavorful. Or something - I'm sure there's a better word for it, but it fails to come to me right now.

Today has been largely light. Tobie and I woke up in the afternoon and that gave us time to check on online stuff, prepare some more for the upcoming Trinity game that we'll be starting soon with other gaming group and eventually a nice dinner of munggo while watching George Lucas' THX 1138. It was a pretty impressive movie that had me thinking about similar films like A Clockwork Orange and even Equilibrium but with an entirely different level of mind-fucking. And here's me thinking that Lucas was just a good conventional storyteller who sticks to movies with more mass market appeal. It now almost seems like a disappointment that he doesn't make more movies similar to THX.

On a bit of a side note, I got into an interesting IM conversation last night with a friend of mine about developments with his ex. It's odd to think that I can now more directly relate to such conversations since I've actually been through the transition from one relationship to another. I'll not go into details in terms of what was discussed, but in summary it was more of the usual observations of how people behave after a break-up, especially in a social-networking environment. It's perfectly understandable for the most part but at times it certainly doesn't make things any easier to deal with but that's life and all that. Funny - I've gotten so used to giving relationship advice over things I may not have had direct experience with but at the very least now the post break-up routine is something that I have better insight about.

So there.

Work looms on the horizon and I still want to experiment with this Sew No More fabric glue to see if it's any good. Wish me luck!

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I love the guy with a hat - as far as recurring xkcd characters go, he's a genius!