Every time I need to do something on Linux, I run into a whirlwind of problems. Current issue: I turned on pretty much every firewall option when I installed Red Hat 7.2. Now I want to install a web server. Nope. The only method of reconfiguring this is to do everything short of pulling chips off the motherboard and crossing bare wires in the computer case. Is there any documentation on it? No. There’s a two year old HOTWO that does the “if your system has X Y Z do this..” crap, which means I would have to go on a major expedition to find out of Red Hat 7.2 has X Y Z, and of course it probably doesn’t, because Red Hat is legendary for installing stuff sideways and covering it with a bunch of unmaintainable crap.

Aside from that (which actually didn’t come up until today), I had a pretty relaxing weekend. It’s officially summer, and the city’s starting to smell like it. I think it’s going to be a long, hot, humid summer this year. New York summers are the worst, because the entire city is like a miles-long concrete solar collector, and then all of the big buildings dump heat out of their AC systems. But most of the buildings like restaurants, stores in my neighborhood, have substandard AC and aren’t built for the heat. And my building is like a big brick pizza oven. Luckily this year, I have a portable AC in my room, but it isn’t incredibly cool, and it uses a lot of power. I’m going to carefully orient the fans and maybe get another, more efficient one. Luckily, I will be out of town for about two weeks of the worst of it - next week, and the first week in August.

I went to Coney Island yesterday, just to take a long ride in the air conditioned subway and shoot a few photos. (I wanted to post the photos, hence the big Linux screwup.) I like the last part of the train ride through Brooklyn; the subway is outdoors, and passes all of these family houses with little backyards and stuff. Then you go through an immense train yard, with rows and rows of subway cars - some new, some old, some damaged or antique. The train stops, and you’re right at the corner of Surf and Seaside.

It’s very strange to be on the same train for so long, and then get out and see it right there by the beach. I had a similar feeling when I drove across the country for the first time in a small U-Haul truck. A few days into the trip, the truck looked so weird to me, because I had all of these mental images of it in Bloomington, at my mom’s in Elkhart, in the Badlands and at Devil’s Tower, the panhandle of Idaho after the plains and mountains of Montana. I could only imagine what it would be like to go to the moon and back, and then see your capsule sitting on the deck of an aircraft carrier with the interior filled with two weeks’ worth of tang bottles and moon rocks.

Despite the long trip, I didn’t do much at Coney Island. I shot some pictures, walked the boardwalk, got a hotdog at Nathan’s, and watched the people. Coney Island always has a strange feel to me, the way it’s laid out and the building surrounding the area. It’s a weird mix, because there are some high-rise projects or condos or something, and then there are hundred-year old businesses. There must be some strange zoning going on there, because I’d think it would be built up to the gills, like the rest of the city. Maybe it’s the practicality - I would love to have a view of the ocean, but the beach is always crowded, and how would you get to work every day? It’s a good hour and a half from Manhattan.

Anyway, not much else going on. I saw the new Ocean’s Eleven on Saturday, and Swingers last night. Trying to get in some Vegas movies before the trip. I’m not even sure I will gamble when I’m there, though.

OK, gotta finish eating…

I spend a lot of my spare time putting people’s names into google and trying to find them. I never really know what to say to them if I do stumble across them in a new life of whatever they are doing now, which is always radically different than what they were doing ten years ago. I have an incredible problem with looking into the past and thinking it was a wonderful time, hence my first book and other web projects. So I always find it amazing when I do run across some piece of the past in the form of a person or some old news posting or whatever.

Lately, I’ve been having more people find me first, which is always great. It makes me think the permanent 34.216.9.77/ domain is starting to pay off. I just heard from an old friend Alana who I thought was forever lost. And a few weeks ago, I got a message from Brian Smith, who even had a very small bit part in Summer Rain, although I didn’t tell him at the time.

I’m thinking of having a contest for the book where if you send a picture of yourself in a strange place with the book (or just the book without you in the picture), I’ll send you a dollar or something. Then I will put all of the pictures on the web. I don’t know if this is the sort of thing reserved for stolen garden gnomes, but I think it would be fun. Too bad I don’t have any copies yet, or I’d take some of my own pictures in Vegas and Colorado later this month.

I can’t believe a year ago I was in Florida. I sure wish I was sitting in the pool down in Treasure Island right now. I’d love to have some kind of canoe or small boat down there, where I could go to a public launch and then just circle around all day, do nothing, take a lot of photos. It’s such a relaxing thought, especially considering that New York is pathetically hot right now, and I had one of those days where every single fucking person on the sidewalk was in the exact wrong place in front of me. There are times I think about buying some kind of aircraft landing strobe so people would get the fuck out of my way. My doctor keeps telling me I should go for walks more, but if I can’t walk ten feet without someone tripping me up, I don’t think it will help my cardiovascular situation. I sure miss being able to hop on my bike and ride across an empty cornfield for 20 miles.

Okay, I think the AC is getting fired up now…

I woke to jackhammering this morning. Actually, I awoke to the sound of someone dropping a several-hundred pound jackhammer off of a truck, which to the half-asleep mind sounds a lot like a car being dropped from a skyscraper. Then, every car alarm on the block lit up, then the jackhammer. These idiots haver been building a three-unit for at least a year now, working odd hours with leftover material and half-assed labor. It’s pretty much the theme of my neighborhood. There’s a bar on 30th Ave. (right by my place) that has been under construction for a good two years now. And I mean their remodel job is taking that long. I could build a house out of trash and old printouts faster than that.

In good news, I got another set of proofs for Rumored to Exist today, and they look great. I approved them, and the book will now go to the next step of production. That means in about three weeks, you’ll be able to buy it from the publisher, and in about six weeks, Amazon and ilk will have it. It’s 268 pages, which puts it at $15.95. I’m pretty happy with that size and price point, and hopefully that means more of you bastards will buy it and maybe even actually read it.

Incredibly tired - I’ve fallen into the nap-after-work syndrome over the last few days, partially because I’ve had a borderline cold, and I didn’t get any sleep today. If I was smart, I’d go to bed at like ten and wake up early to avoid any potential jackhammer action. But, the Playstation 2 looks so inviting…

I got the first proofs of Rumored to Exist today. Unfortunately, the book block was paginated wrong, and I had to send it back. They put each “section” on a new page, always starting on the right, which meant tons and tons of blank space where it wasn’t supposed to be, and it made the thing read like a corny poetry book. So it’s back for a redesign, which will take a couple of weeks, and then the book will be out maybe six weeks after that. I’m nervous as hell that there will be problems, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

It does feel good to have an ISBN, though. Rumored will now be known as 0-595-23476-3. It’s also weird to see the whole thing in a book manuscript, with real fonts and layout and stuff. The cover also looks very official, with a bar code and everything. The price on this proof was $20.95, but that’s assuming a 384 page count, and this pagination fuck-up will bring it closer to the 300 mark, so maybe the price point will drop. I’d love to see it at or below 20 bucks.

I’m still going through this strange haze of not having the book anymore, and seeing it almost done freaks me out a bit. It’s hard to not have a steady project anymore, and I know I should be pushing The Device, but I haven’t been in the mood yet. I’ve got a lot of little shit to deal with first, so I don’t know when I’ll get moving with this thing.

Speaking of which, I have a couple of vacations coming up. At the end of this month, I will be flying to Las Vegas and then driving to my land in Colorado. The drill is this: a day at the Hacienda hotel just outside of Boulder City (I could not get a reservation on the strip if I arrived on a Saturday), then an all-day drive through the southwest, then four nights in Alamosa, then another hell-drive, then two nights at the Tropicana. The Vegas heat will be bad - I think it’s about 105 there right now. But the Colorado part will be decent, comfortable temperatures. And no, this isn’t the part of Colorado that’s on fire right now.

The second trip will be for my sister’s wedding in the beginning of August. It’s an in-on-Thursday, out-on-Tuesday thing. I haven’t been back to Indiana since I moved to New York, so this will be a first. I’ll be staying with Ray, and I have no idea what the itinerary will be, but it will most likely involve driving back and forth between all of the podunk towns in northern Indiana in which my family is scattered.

Not much else is going on. I have a dozen different books I want to be reading, but I’m currently going through a biography of Howard Hughes. It’s not bad sofar - I’m up to the point where his parents died - but I don’t know enough of his history to tell if it’s accurate or not. I am mesmerized by him though - something about his secretive and bizarre lifestyle makes me want to know more. Or maybe it’s because I like the Monty Burns character on The Simpsons so much.

Listening to the new Tony Levin solo album (Waters of Eden) which actually sounds a lot like a Shadowfax album, so It’s good for writing. I think I need to get out of the house though, go for a late night walk…

Sometimes when I look back at this much of my life in one place, it tends to freak me out.

For example, when I first got a designed, printed, final copy of Summer Rain and I saw and FELT how much the summer of 1992 weighed when it its final form, it made me realize how much could happen in three months. And to this day, I still can’t read the book, because a page or two into it, I start thinking about all of the events that I wasn’t able to capture in words, all of the laziness and intensity and all of the people whose paths I crossed who didn’t fit into that formulaic outline that I followed.

I recently finished my book Rumored to Exist and I’m now in this weird, post-partum funk, trying to figure out what’s next while also thinking that I have until September to figure out a way to sell this damned book when it hits the streets. After I zapped the final draft and other assorted submission form cruft to the publisher last week, I did some quick math and realized I’ve been writing this book for almost seven years. SEVEN YEARS! And this is the first time since before I left Indiana in 1995 that I don’t have a major open project. It’s like the kids have grown up and moved away. (Except I get the occasional $14 royalty check.)

I read a bunch of these old journal entries today, as I contemplated getting everything hooked up and operational again. I realized I really do like my old writing, aside from the strong nostalgia of Seattle it invokes. I really do miss Jet City, but I’m not sure if it’s that I miss the Pacific Northwest, or I miss the experiences of that time in my life. My leisure time and writing career are obviously structured much more differently now in New York, and I can’t say I feel it’s the most productive time of my life. But then, I used to say that back in 1996, and now I wish I could run things like that again.

I shouldn’t say I have no major projects - I actually have a few unfinished books and half-baked ideas. I started writing something for NaNoWriMo last year and got about 30,000 words into it. But I missed the first few days in Vegas, and then I got horribly sick when I got back. Somewhere during the trip to the ER, I decided I should fuck the contest and sleep as much as possible, and there it lay. It’s a bizarre sci-fi tale called The Device, about time-travel and a cross-country roadtrip, and it is partially similar to an older idea with the same name (but no roadtrip) that spawned from Rumored several years ago. So maybe that’s my next big thing.

Food’s here, Wyoming chicken burger from Rainbow Cafe. Hopefully, I’ll update this more, and shake out a few bugs in the site format at some point.