Archive for Personal News

Quite A Week!

11/21/2010 ALL, CNN, mental_floss, Personal News One comment

When I look back on 2010, I can just about guarantee that the week of November 14 – 20 will be one I’ll remember.

It started on Sunday night when my article The Cool History of the Slurpee was posted at mentalfloss.com. The story idea was suggested by an editor at CNN.com, as they wanted to run something before the so-called “Slurpee Summit”, and when my mental_floss editor brought it to me, I jumped at the chance to write it. This, of course, meant that it was pretty much a guaranteed post on CNN.com. Now, because of this latest reprint, if you go to CNN.com and search for my name, it’ll come up ten times. That’s pretty exciting to say the least.

On the same day the CNN story posted, I saw that a certain Twitter user had sent out a link to my mental_floss article the day before. I noticed quite a few people retweeting that tweet, so I decided to send the original poster a thank you tweet. Turns out that tweeter was the Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine! We got to talking via Twitter, and now I have an assignment from Entrepreneur Magazine, set to run in an early 2011 issue! I’ll have more details as things develop, but needless to say I’m pretty excited about this opportunity. Oh, and for all those people who think Twitter is a waste of time…I beg to differ.

In personal news, we are finally leaving the hotel next week. We moved in on October 8, meaning we will have been here for about six weeks. Our condo looks great so far, and we expect the carpeting that’s going to be put in Tuesday will really seal the deal. I’ll be sure to post some before and after pictures once we’re settled in again. The difference is huge and will really help us sell this joint whenever the time comes.

That’s all for now, folks, but thanks for stopping by. Look for another post around this time next week with pictures galore.

Little People, Big Hit

11/10/2010 ALL, mental_floss, Personal News, Websites No comments

I’ve had another good week at mentalfloss.com with my latest story, “Little People, Big Fun: A Brief History of Fisher-Price Little People”. As of the time of this post, I’m sitting at 72 comments on the story, which is still a little bit behind the 84 I had for my Controversial Candies post, but I’m still not complaining. By the way, Candies did wind up being the #1 story that week it ran, so I’m pretty happy to have reached that level again.

I’m actually working on new story right now that was a request of mental_floss from a pretty big website. I don’t want to say anything more right now, just in case things fall through, but it would be a nice addition to the ol’ resume.

And with that, I’m going to go write another entry in my 100 Novels Project, which I’ve been neglecting since July or August, but am finally making the time to come back to. Check it out when you have a sec.

Two Months!?

11/04/2010 ALL, mental_floss, Personal News, Websites No comments

Yes, it’s been two months since my last update. I’m sorry to both of you who read this website, but my life has simply been too crazy for words – written or otherwise.

We are currently going on week three of living in a hotel room while the contractors rebuild our condo. It could be a lot worse – we’re in a two-bedroom suite with a fridge, stove, dishwasher, three TVs, two bathrooms, three beds (and a pull-out couch if we really needed it) – so we have plenty of room to spread out. But it’s still not our home. We’re looking forward to getting back into our place as soon as we can, though we just got word this week that we’re looking at another two weeks before that can happen. The transition has not always been fun, but I feel like we’ve fallen into some good routines and a comfortable mental place that has made the transition a little easier. But, again, it’s still not our home.

Of course through all this, I’m still writing for mentalfloss.com. I wrote some of our Watercooler Ammo emails, so I can’t show you those, but I’ve been writing my regular entries, too, so I’ll post those real quick (these are in chronological order, oldest to newest):

Roll Over Beethoven: 6 Modern Deaf Musicians – This one was fun and got a few good comments and links. Can’t ask for much more.

Large-Scale Legos: BrickExpo 2010 – This was a quickie post I did that was a pretty decent-sized hit. I love how the ones that take me an hour to write end up getting more hits than the ones I spend a week researching and writing…

Phony Philatelists: Four Stories of Stamp Forgers – I really liked this one, but I think I was the only one. This was the start of a slump for me, unfortunately. I was writing what I thought were some really interesting topics, but the readers just didn’t agree. I think they might have been better fits for the magazine, perhaps.

Under the Sea: 5 Underwater Human Habitats

10 Postmasters General Who Weren’t Boring – This was part of mentalfloss.com’s 10/10/10 celebration, where the whole day was filled with 10 Lists. I’d actually written this article about a year before when I was pitching for a similarly-themed issue of the magazine, and, due to all the crap we had going on with the condo, I had no choice but to just turn this in instead of coming up with something new. I always liked this one, but it was a bomb. In fact, pretty much the only comments I got were people telling me I missed something or I was wrong about something. Thanks, folks…


Nectar of the Gods: Alcoholic Mythology – This was the start of my recovery from the depths. It wasn’t a huge hit, but it got some really great comments from readers.

Sex! Drugs! Racism! 8 Controversial Candies – This one was inspired by my lovely wife. Her initial thought was banned candies, but I had to adapt it to controversial ones because there aren’t all that many candies that have actually been banned. This was my return to good standing. I think 82 comments (currently) might be a new record for me. I think I was most proud of the comment from one of the inventors of my childhood (and adulthood) favorite, Big League Chew, a product featured in the article. That was pretty cool.

So, yeah – writing, living in a hotel, and just generally getting by. That’s the story of our family right now, which is about as exciting as it reads on the screen. I wish I had more to tell, but, well, now you know why I haven’t written in two months. That being said, I’m working on another long-form blog entry, which I’m going to try to get to soon. Or maybe it’ll be 2011 by the time I write again. You can never tell around here, ya know?

A Long Overdue Update

09/01/2010 ALL, CNN, Deep Thoughts, mental_floss, Personal News No comments

Sorry it’s been so long since my last update. While life is always hectic, things have been especially so over the last few months. I’ll give you the short version, but let me start with some mental_floss linkage…

5 Alternative World Cup Tournaments: This was posted the Monday after the 2010 World Cup ended. My editor and I both thought it might be good timing as a sort of exhale from World Cup fever. Apparently we were way off base, because the story was probably my worst flop yet. It registered a whopping two comments, one of which was “You forgot about…”. I think the most frustrating part was that I remember staying up until the crack of dawn that Monday morning to make sure I got it done on time to still be relevant. However, when it hit, I found out just how irrelevant it really was.

12 Essential Facts About the Folks Who Race Horses: This was a reprint on Neatorama from my last mental_floss Magazine article. It’s always nice to be reprinted by the fine folks over there.

The Ultimate Superfans: Tribute Bands That Really Rock: This was such a fun one to write. And it wound up being a fairly nice hit, garnering plenty of good comments from readers. I even sort of became friends with some of the guys from Rad Bromance, an all-male Lady Gaga cover band, as I was the first “big” media outlet to cover them. They’re a cool group and I wish them the best in the years to come.

7 Bits of Movie Magic That Disappeared: Much to my surprise, a story I wrote back in June wound up on CNN.com on August 8. I didn’t even know it was on the radar until my editor sent me the notification that it was online. I remember it was a nice way to end the weekend.

Public Transportation is for the Birds (And Dogs and Goats): Now this was a fun one to write! It was inspired by an article on the stray dogs that use the subways of Moscow to get around the city, but it just expanded from there to some really fun stories of animals riding buses, subway cars, and trains. It didn’t take the internet by storm, but it was such a fun one for me to work on that I’m ok with that.

The Stories Behind 8 Back-to-School Essentials: I remember when I was researching this story, I dug through mentalfloss.com for at least 30 minutes to make sure it hadn’t been done before. I just couldn’t believe someone hadn’t thought of it already. Admittedly, my initial thought was to do office supplies (Post-It Notes, fax machines, etc.), but it was my editor who finely-tuned it to school supplies to fit in with the week most students were coming back from summer vacation. The narrowing down was a good thing, because the story has been very popular, reaching #2 on mentalfloss.com for the week. I’m still getting the occasional comment notification almost a week later.

That about wraps up my mental_floss news for now. Some exciting stories, a few flops, and a few “meh”. But that’s the way it goes online. That’s something I have to often remind myself of, but it is such a valuable thing to learn if you’re going to stay in this business.

As for the rest of my life, well, frankly, it’s a wet, soggy mess. Since late July, we have been battling a water leak coming from the condo upstairs. This leak has been an occasional problem since we bought the condo back in 2006, but it always went away after a day or two, would stay dry for a few weeks, and then rear its ugly head again for a day or two, then go away again. So it was really hard to nail down to any particular cause. Back then it wasn’t really creating any major problems – we’d put a bucket under the leak in the basement to catch what little dripped out and we’d be fine.

But Summer 2010 has been different. It’s been so stinking hot here in lovely Missouri that our upstairs neighbors have had their air conditioning running constantly. This has helped us pinpoint the source of the leak, but it’s also meant a steady of stream of water droplets cascading down the inside of our bedroom closet and into our basement. Now, instead of a day or two here and there, it’s been more and more water every hour of every day, going on since July.

For potentially legal reasons, I don’t want to describe, in my unprofessional opinion, what type of damage we’re looking at here, but know that it is severe. When repairs are finally done, there’s a very good chance we’ll be moving out of our condo during that time since it will be quite uninhabitable. We’re not looking forward to the massive inconvenience this will be, but we’ll do what we have to do to get the problem fixed and our condo repaired. Still, just the prospect of packing things up, moving them to storage, and then living either in a hotel or at a relative’s house for a few weeks or a month, is not a fun one by any means. It has been causing a lot of stress on my wife and me and we haven’t even started doing the actual packing yet. I can’t even imagine what life will be like during that time, though I hope to blog about it throughout to give you some idea of the hell our lives will become.

Well, I really don’t have much more to say at the moment. I’m getting pretty tired from a full week of mental_floss, my day job, and stressing out about the leak, that I should probably hit the sack pretty soon. Maybe dreaming for a few hours will help me adequately escape reality for long enough to temporarily forget.

Until next time, folks, thanks for reading!

Rough Day

08/18/2010 ALL, Deep Thoughts, Personal News One comment

I have other things to update my three readers about, but for right now, please give me a moment to just sort of sulk, if you will.

Recently, I applied for two jobs at my current employer. As if to punctuate my schizophrenic resume, I applied for a job as a GIS Technician and another as a Techinal Writer.

You might ask why I applied for other positions and the answer is simple – I’m off my career path.  For about the last 18 months, I have been one of three, and then later one of two, primary contacts to support our outage management software. To know our outage software requires zero knowledge of GIS.  I fought tooth and nail to land a GIS job at the City of O’Fallon, and now I have been away from GIS for about half as long as I was ever in GIS. I’ve lost track and I’d like to get back on.

But what about the writing job? Well, if I can’t make GIS work, why not try to segue my writing for mental_floss into something new, ya know?  I’d love to take my career in that direction, so if I’m going to get off the GIS track, I’d at least like it to be towards something I enjoy.

The thing is, my co-worker that also supports our outage software is himself a writer. More specifically, a tech writer who used to work in the department I was applying to work in. He was forced to change departments years ago after a corporate shuffle took place, so he left under good terms with the department head and employees.  So since he left when he didn’t really want to in the first place, of course he applied for this latest tech writing position, just as I did.

Today it was announced that he had received the job. I wasn’t surprised whatsoever – logically it makes perfect sense for that department as he can simply step into the role without much fuss, plus he’s a good writer, so it’s a total win-win for them. I knew all along, honestly, that he would get the job.  That’s not the part that necessarily bums me out.

The part that sucks is that now I am the only person in my department who will be full-time outage management support. This means I have to take on the support calls, all the training, all the conference calls, and all the meetings by myself…for a job I no longer wanted to do so much that I tried to get out twice.

And because I’m now suddenly the go-to guy, that means I’m automatically taken out of the running for the GIS job.  I mean, it makes sense, of course, because the department can’t be left without someone to support the software, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t suck any less.

Long story short, I lost two jobs today at the same company. How’s that for impressive? I wonder if I can put that down as a skill on my resume? Don’t get me wrong, folks – I’m thankful that I have a job. And I’m going to do my best after I’m thrown to the wolves once my soon-to-be-former co-worker has officially made the move to the other department. But at the same time…damn.

So now my options are: Stay where I am and accept the fact that I’m probably stuck in this role for the next year or two until I find someone to replace me so I can transfer to another department; or find another job outside the company. Neither are especially appealing to me tonight. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll feel differently, but for tonight, after this just happened, I’m pretty well down in the dumps. I’ve found myself in some dead-end jobs before, but never have I been so utterly pigeon-holed as this; absolutely stuck between a rock and a hard place. 

But for right now, all I can do is accept it and move on. Unfortunately, I’m not independently wealthy, so I have to have a job. Nor do I have the background, skillset, experience, and the personal contacts to just be able to find a new, better job tomorrow in a field I want to be in. I’m just a working stiff who has to do what he has to do.

Maybe someday I’ll get my career back on the GIS track. Or maybe I’ll find a whole new track to lay with my writing experience. Who knows what the future brings? But at the very least I can tell people I lost two jobs on the same day at the same company. That seems like a rather fun topic for a cocktail party, huh?

No? No, it doesn’t? Hmmm…well, then I guess it just plain sucks.

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