Monthly Archives: April 2010

How My DVR Blowing Up Taught Me a Lesson

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Dish Network DVR Until my DVR died a quiet death in the middle of the night, I never realized how completely reliant on technology I am.

My wife and I woke up to a surprise this past Saturday.  We settled into our weekend routine of waking up by watching The Soup, and when we hit our DVR button to access the show, nothing happened.  We reset it.  Still nothing.  Live TV was fine (and still is), but our ability to pause and record it was gone.

After I called Dish Network, they promptly sent us a replacement receiver that I installed easily.  The problem, though, is that all the recorded shows we were saving for whatever reason are now gone.

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Writing My Novel: It Has Begun!

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Microsoft Word DocumentToday is the first day of the rest of my life.  How about that?  Well, more accurately, and less clichéd,  today is the first day after finals, which means that today is the first day I get to sit down and treat writing my novel like it is work.

As I write this, my manuscript sits at 22,157 words.  My goal is 85-100k by the end of June.

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Looking for Guest Posts

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Guest Post Since my wife and I will be traveling for the first part of June (attending Slayage and then making our way south to Disney World), I was hoping to find a few willing writers to mind the shop while I’m out of town.

If you have an idea for a post (or posts!), send it my way through my contact form and I’ll be back in touch to work out the details.  You can even hit me up on Twitter (@professorbeej), if you prefer.  As long as the topic falls into the generalized theme of the site (pop culture/modern media), we’re in business!

The deadline for these guest posts is June 1, 2010, and the only reason I am even putting a date on them is so I can be sure to have enough time to format and schedule them.

One Year of Beej

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4561 Somewhere between April 22 and May 14, Professor Beej will have its 1-year anniversary.

I started the first Professor Beej on blogspot on Christmas Eve 2008, but I never really posted to it; to be honest, I had no idea what a blog was other than an online diary of “I did this today” or “guess what my cat did this morning? OMG!” I would throw a post here or there—sometimes months between posts–but it really took me until late April/early May of 2009 to settle into a regular posting schedule and settle into my niche.

So it’s been a year now, and this place has made me exceedingly happy.  All of you have made me exceedingly happy.  I never would have guessed I would have as many commentors and readers as I do in just a year.  I never really thought anyone would care about what I had to say.

So from the bottom of my heart: Thank you.  (And tell your friends about me! Tee hee!)

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Writing My Novel: Midlist or Bust

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My goal in life is to make a living by writing.  I don’t aspire to be a breakout New York Times Bestseller.  I’d love it, don’t get me wrong.  But I’m not setting out for that.  I’m no James Joyce with pretentions of being the next big literary author, either.  I don’t even want to be Darren Rowse or Seth Godin.

No, what I want is much simpler.

I want, more than anything, to be able to write and make enough of a living to qualify as part of my two-income household.  I want to make a career as a midlist author.

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