Red Tide!

The area here is experiencing a horrible red tide bloom. Red tide kills pretty much everything that it comes into contact with. There are dead fish floating around everywhere. Additionally, dolphins (the mammal kind), manatees and sea turtles are showing up dead in the area.

The red tide is an algae. It turns the water a dirty brown color. Not only can you see it, you can smell it. It irritates the eyes and makes breathing more difficult. My wife got splashed with some this weekend when we were fishing and got a nasty rash.

We get a red tide bloom fairly regularly, but not on this scale. It currently runs at least 100 miles down the coastline. It ranges from the bays along the coast all the way to maybe 10 miles out.

Although it hasn't reached where I live, we can smell it when the wind is blowing the right direction.

We have been able to fish, though. It isn't too bad in my part of the bay so I can catch bait. We generally run farther out than the red tide extends, but we do run through patches on the way out, which kills our bait.

Fingers crossed it doesn't get to my place, but the way it is spreading I fully expect it to get here.

One side note that is interesting. The red tide has become a political topic. Lots of finger pointing. However, everything I've read indicates it is a completely natural phenomenon and not caused by anything human related (i.e. pollution).

The second book got another Gold award! Woot!

I'm getting more an more confident that these books actually might do well. The feedback has been tremendous. I just need to concentrate on marketing and getting the word out.

I'm pretty much on a freeroll with work now. I've done all the math and I can make retirement work any time. However, I would really like to take care of some short term obligations (pay off the books and my truck) before I do.

The other side of the equation is the books. I simply don't have the time I need to work on marketing while I'm still working.

However, knowing I can leave any day makes work a lot more palatable. Things will happen, I just need to be patient.

I took the day off yesterday to work on my website. UGH!

The host I use is integrated with a couple of website builders. One is Wordpress, which I'm seeing mixed reviews about. It seems to be the most popular but not the easiest to use. ****** is the other one, which gets pretty decent reviews.

I picked ****** some time ago but I can't get it to do want I want it to do. It leaves a TON of whitespace around objects and from what I read the only way to fix it is to get into the html/css files and monkey with stuff. Front end work has never been my strong suit and I honestly just don't like working with web pages. But, at this point in time I really don't want to hire someone. I need to learn this.

I gave up on ****** and tried Wix. They start you out with some sort of AI nonsense that doesnt' give you control of much. I spent most of the day trying to figure out how to make stuff work and after I had almost given up, I found that there is a basic editing mode that wasn't obvious when I started.

Minirant - I hate using other people's software. I really struggle trying to figure out what someone else is thinking. Probably because my programming thought process has never been "normal". /minirant

At any rate, this will be quite a learning curve for me, but I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually.

Maybe one of you website gurus can give me some idea of which is the best to use?

What is the nature of the site, will you be selling your books there? Have you ever done any web dev before--like do you know the basics of html and css (I'm assuming you know something about programming in general)? If you just want a website builder, than IDK, but if you want to make it yourself, find a template you like that uses Bootstrap 4 framework and you should be able to put together something you like pretty easily. There must be hundreds of free bootstrap ecommerce templates you can use as a starting point, and then you can make it look how you like instead of working within the limitation of something like ******.

I mean if you hate front end stuff and don't want to mess with html/css, then it's obviously a bad plan, but I've just taught myself stuff over the years and can do pretty much anything I want with Bootstrap and googling things that take me to the answer on stackoverflow, and my comp-sci education is a high school BASIC course in the 80s.

It's not really going to be an ecommerce site. Everything is selling through Amazon so I'll just have links to that. It will really be an author site with "about", upcoming books, maybe blog, email signup, testimonials, etc.

I was hoping to avoid actual coding. Not because I don't think I could do it, more that I simply don't have the time to invest. And, honestly, I would just as soon never see a line of code again in my life . I was hoping to find the easiest thing I could find.

I'm going to play around with Wix some more and see how it goes. I'm definitely not happy with ******.

As a programmer I think Wordpress is pretty meh, but in my experience if you find a theme you like it should be pretty straightforward to throw up some content and have a decent-enough looking little site without too much frustration. I haven't used the alternatives you mentioned.

bigger,


I can't recall if you posted this or not. What is the age range for your books?

3-8 maybe.

In other news..........

I reported 3 different places where water is coming into my condo. Additionally, both decks above my patio are sagging and look bad. And guess, what, they are.

Here is what the first one they decided to work on looks like. Ugh.



Fortunately, this is the responsibility of the condo association. Probably 1 months worth of my dues, but I don't have to worry about hiring contractors, etc.

This was the month I had targeted for retirement. I don't think this will happen.

First, I'd like to continue to chip away at some financial obligations. The longer I work, the better shape I'll be in when I finally quit. Also, the higher likelihood that I may not need to get a part time job. Or, at least it won't be as necessary.

I still have my ups and downs at work, but the knowledge that I can leave any time has made things much much better. I almost don't hate it right now.

Hurricane, UGH!, what is it good for - absolutely nothin'

It is the price we pay for paradise. Everyone I know accepts this fact. But it doesn't make it better when one actually hits.

Last year, Irma gave us quite a scare but, thanks to a shift to the east, spared us (biggerwife and I) for the most part. No damage to speak of. We were just without power for a while. Not too bad.

I really don't fear the wind too much. I think we probably got gusts up to 100 mph last year and everything held up. Of course, wind speed is sort of like the richter scale. Each 10mph increase causes an exponential increase in damage. But, I feel pretty good about where I live.

Storm surge is the beast. We got none to speak of last year. In fact, the water actually got sucked out of the bay. But, we were on the "clean" side of the storm. This one (Michael) has caused a significantly higher surge and it is hundreds of miles further away. This is because we are on the "dirty" side of this one. The water came up about 2 feet higher than the highest tide we experience. That is still about a foot lower than the seawall next to us, but the waves still went over the wall. It has actually been higher with smaller storms that came closer, all on the dirty side.

The water in our complex has never reached any of the buildings. To get in, the water would have to come up another 2 feet above the seawall, maybe more. I think this is very possible if we got a bad storm on a track to go just west of us. This one was about 150 miles away and we still got a significant surge.

We perpetually keep our fingers crossed, but we realize the day might come. But, again, it is the price we pay for where we live and we would never give that up.

Today in dilbertland, one of our system admins decided to send out a "test" email. Apparently, the first test did not yield the desirable results, so he sent out a second "test2" email.

From what I can tell, these were sent to the entire company.

It seems my entire day will be deleting reply all emails stating:

Got it
Got the second one, not the first one
Please don't reply all
Take me off the list
PLEASE STOP

Over 100 so far and it's only been 30 minutes.

Oh wow, hahahaha! That is kind of awesome. Just remember, you get paid to delete emails, what a world we live in.

I don't know if you follow NH1's log in H&F but...

this is your life now

You should have to enter a captcha and solve a math problems and click on "are you sure you want to send your reply to eveyone?" a dozen times before you can unlock the reply all option on any email.

Boating at night is extremely challenging. Even with a full moon and city lights, you "think" you can see everything around you. But you can't. I've been absolutely sure nothing was in front of us and barely missed a channel marker, which is basically a big telephone pole in the water with a sign. The other problem is you completely lose your sense of distance. You can look around and see all the things that should give you a sense of where you are, but then you come really close to something you think should have been very far away.

Anyway, I mention this because this happened right by my house the night before last. It killed the driver and badly injured the passenger.

I haven't posted here lately because there just isn't that much happening in the world of bigger.

I continue to keep plugging away at work. It feels a lot better knowing I can leave at any time, but at the same type it still sucks.

One work story. I absolutely cringe every time anyone asks me for a time estimate. I know that whatever I say it isn't what they want to hear. Also, it is usually impossible for me to know 5 minutes after I find out what it is they want me to do.

Anyway, my latest project is an application that, again, nobody knows anything about. It isn't even running in production. It has been stagnant for years. They want me to change a bunch of stuff and get it running again. I have no clue what it is even supposed to do. My boss asked me for an estimate so I said 3 weeks. Immediately he says, "well that won't work". I just about called it quits right there. WHY ASK ME IF YOU ALREADY KNOW THERE IS ONLY ONE ANSWER!!!!!????

The third book is soooooo close. I love my illustrator but she does some little things that drive me crazy, and she completely forgets conversations and brings the same stuff up over and over. She insists on tweaking my verses. We also work with an experienced writer that gives really good suggestions and fixes my horrendous punctuation. Between me and the writer, we come up with something we like, and the illustrator changes it. It gets more confusing because the illustrator starts asking the writer about stuff without me knowing and then things just change. We've been going around and around with this final version for weeks now because of stupid little punctuation changes. AARRGGHHH!!!!!!

In general, I've sort of had a bad week. I find myself sort of falling back into bad thinking, which sort of feeds itself.

The biggest struggle I've had being married is not being able to be alone. As an introvert, I need this. It recharges my batteries. So, when I get stressed, I can sort of zone out and I get back to normal. But having someone around all the time, and someone who is somewhat like the energizer bunny, makes it impossible to do this.

It's a struggle for me. And, I try to be real careful to not vent towards her, or not vent at all. But it definitely affects my mood.

Does your wife know that you need more you time? I'm sure if you phrased it right she'd be happy to try and work with you in regards to it. More alone time fishing perhaps? Do you have a room that you could have as a study and she knows if the door is shut you need some time to yourself but if it's open she's free to come in. People can be very different in how much alone time they need. Obviously don't be selfish about it but hopefully you can find a middle ground that works for you both.

Yeah, we've talked about it, and I think she gets it.

We do have an office and I think she's picked up on sort of leaving me alone when I'm in there.

On the flip side, like you said, I also need to be aware that I can't just hide every time my batteries need reacharging. I think this is the difficult part for me.

The whole issue isn't really what she does or doesn't do, it's how to I manage it.

As for fishing.............. Just being out there is completely and utterly recharging. She picked up on that really early on in our relationship. She makes absolutely sure I'm able to get at least one good day of fishing every week. As for her going, I really like fishing with her. She loves it as well. It's a really good activity for us to share.

The third book is done. I have to wait for the technical reviews of the two publishers I am using, but they are, for the most part, complete.

Finishing up with this was a lot more difficult than the other two. I'm not exactly sure what was going on, but every time they sent me a "final" proof, the writing was incorrect. Misspelled words, incorrect punctuation, and often just changing the wording altogether.

I'm beginning to wonder if my illustrator might be having some issues. She has been asking the same questions over and over and has been out of touch for periods of time. She had the completed manuscript to give to the printer but for some reason either didn't give him anything or rewrote it or something. I'm not sure. But, I'm sort of concerned that something is going on with her.

She has started the next one however, so we shall see.

Here is the cover for the newly completed book. It's the proof version so it has some printer lines on it (not sure what those are called. But the front and back tie together so I thought I'd show the whole thing.

Looks great BB!