My Musings

Facebook Malware

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:56:30 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

Got this e-mail this morning and it was too delicious not to share.

Dear Facebook user,

Due to Facebook policy changes, all Facebook users must submit a new, updated account agreement, regardless of their original account start date.
Accounts that do not submit the updated account agreement by the deadline will have restricted.

Please unzip the attached file and run “agreement.exe” by double-clicking it.

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

The mail appears to come from Facebook <update+ogqlkohachj@facebookmail.com>. Facebookbmail.com? really? And you want me to execute an EXE file?

I thought we were past this, guys. We live in an age of drive-by malware infections from legitimate websites and botnets 10,000+ strong. And you’re sending executables in zip files?

Friday Linkdump: Publishing

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:43:24 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

For the whole time the Flametoad blog was on hiatus, I kept squirreling away links use as blog fodder. The theme for this week’s linkdump is publishing and e-books.

Profit & Loss – If you’ve ever wondered why books cost as much as they do, you’ll want to check out this post on Marion Gropen’s Publishing for Profit blog. Marion takes the reader step-by-step through all the factors that make up a non-fiction book’s cost. It’s an eye-opening exercise if you’re not already familiar with the business side of publishing.

International Rights – Publishing rights are traditionally sold on a country-by-country basis. This made sense 100 years ago for print books, but in today’s ebook market it just hurts the customer. In this case, the customer is a solider serving overseas who is being blocked from buying American books because his base’s IP address isn’t registering as in-country. It’s just another sign that it’s time to rethink how publishing works.

E-book DRM – Nobody likes it, but in an industry where profit is slim, the threat of loss through illegal duplication is terrifying. Booksquare tries to move the conversation forward with minimal drama.

Comparison Shopping – The price of e-books varies a lot more widely than one would expect. The MetaEbooks site lets you search for a book by title or author and find the cheapest price across several online retailers. You can even narrow your selection by ebook format.

Save your Money – A friend recently advised me to consider TVs to be just like computers. The technology is changing so rapidly that there will always be a better model on the market just a few months after you buy one, and for the same price. Should we now add ‘books’ to that category as well? The venerable Teleread.org has an essay titled “Why you probably should NOT buy an ereader this year”. I’m not sure I entirely agree, but read it for yourself.

Lessons from History – The excellent O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing companion website has a short post called Lessons from Digital Disruption in the Music Business. I’ll admit that I didn’t listen to the linked hour-long podcast, but the quote and other links were certainly good food for thought.

Books Aren’t Baked Beans – That’s the title of the first in an excellent series of articles by Martyn Daniels, republished by permission at Litopia.com. If you’re interested in publishing or even simply interested in a case study in how digital technology is disrupting an entire industry, I highly encourage you read the whole series.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Grimm News

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:52:36 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

Dear Parent,

In reference to your request for the return of your childcare deposit, I am afraid we must decline. I know that this comes at a particularly difficult time, in light of your tragedy, and we genuinely do not wish to add to your pain. I must regretfully remind you that your letter of intent is a binding agreement, and it clearly states that the deposit is 100% non-refundable. I know this may come across as a heartless policy, but unfortunately if we returned the deposit or childcare tuition of every child stolen from its cradle by a witch, lured into the land of Faerie by traveling musicians, or turned into animals for naughty behavior–well, you can imagine how quickly we would be left near-destitute. As difficult as this may seem, I hope you will take this rejection as a sign to strengthen your resolve and reaffirm your hope. Surely if your precious child is as clever as you led us to believe during the interview, he will find a way to trick the witch into pouring a circle of salt around herself or perhaps push her into an oven. If this is the case, then rest assured that your unrefunded deposit continues to guarantee him a spot here in daycare.

Regards,

Popularity: unranked [?]

ETU: Degrees of Horror teaser

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:29:56 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

It’s hard to believe, but we began working on ETU: Degrees of Horror back in 2007. Sometimes the words flowed easily, and other times we made absolutely no new progress for months at a time. With the first draft complete and work begun on revisions and refinement, Ed and I wanted to reward our loyal fans for their patience. So, I put together a sneak peek at a some of the content. The layout is in no way representative of the final book, but it’s fun and evocative of college life.

This sneak peek is only 32 pages, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the book as a whole. It covers all of chapter one, much of the character creation chapter, character sheets, a new mechanic for creating inventions, and a pair of adventures you can play. We’re calling this a “beta” because we’re seeking your input on the rules, so please head on over to the 12 to Midnight website and download it.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Halloween 2009 Weekend

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:12:25 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

Well, Halloween 2009 was a big weekend at Flametoad Manor. Starting with our family tradition of Saturday morning BBQ breakfast tacos, we quickly moved on to errands, home for a play date with one of Tadpole 1’s friends, and a low-key afternoon punctuated with pumpking carving and of course trick-or-treating. We had more than 100 kids come to our door, based on the amount of candy I handed out. This year I wanted to hand out something a little more unique, so I ordered a bunch of grape-flavored wax mustaches and gummie candy shaped like roadkill, sure to appeal to any 7 year-old’s funny bone. Mrs. Flametoad and I finished the night by watching Dusk Till Dawn, although I’ll admit we skipped to the part where the group showed up at the “biker bar”.

The next morning, I loaded up the kids and we drove to the Houston Zoo. Mrs. Flametoad regretfully skipped on this trip because the walk up and down the street did bad things for her broken toe. Walking all over a zoo just wasn’t in the cards. Despite the lack of Mommy, the tadpoles and I managed to have a great time. If you can’t see the photos below, you’re probably reading this on some third party site like Facebook. Just jump over to Flametoad.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Sacred Paper

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:51:29 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

And now, for the opposing viewpoint.

What made it all seem worthwhile was the book, the physical item, a kind of sacred and appropriate temple for the text contained within. Had I been told from youth that my literary destination would be some 7 inch plastic gizmo containing my texts shuffling alongside thousands of other “texts” I would have spit in the face of such a profession and become instead a hit man or a rabbi.

What do you think? Are e-books an abomination to all that is right with humanity?

Popularity: unranked [?]

Why Horror?

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:54:34 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

In the Halloween-themed episode of Castle that just aired, the script writers floated the theory that people who showed a deep fascination with death usually had a triggering, traumatizing event in their past. Since the tv show is about a murder mystery writer, the obvious question was what caused him to be drawn to death. We viewers may not know that answer for a while, but fortunately we can look for answers elsewhere.

A friend just sent me a link to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Eduction, titled Monsters and the Moral Imagination. For me, the money-quote follows.

In a significant sense, monsters are a part of our attempt to envision the good life or at least the secure life. Our ethical convictions do not spring fully grown from our heads but must be developed in the context of real and imagined challenges. In order to discover our values, we have to face trials and tribulation, and monsters help us imaginatively rehearse. Imagining how we will face an unstoppable, powerful, and inhuman threat is an illuminating exercise in hypothetical reasoning and hypothetical feeling.

This gets to the heart of not only horror, but the fun in roleplaying games as well. From the outside, there’s a vague notion that RPGs are for loners to play elves and dwarfs in their parent’s basement. In reality, it’s a highly social activity that posits a series of challenges and allows players to collectively overcome them (or not). Unlike traditional board games, the players usually don’t compete against one another, but cooperate against an external threat. RPGs come in all styles and flavors, but horror RPGs have a special place in my heart. The Chronicle article “gets it”. Enjoying horror isn’t about reveling in the macabre, it’s about imagining external adversity* and then overcoming it– all from the safety of one’s dining room table.

*As opposed to sitting around pretending to overcome internal adversity, like breast cancer. That’s just morbid.

12 to Midnight Annual Halloween Sale

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:15:17 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

Officially the blog is still on hiatus, but I just wanted to let everyone know that 12 to Midnight is having our annual halloween sale. Almost all our modern horror e-books are 50% off. Even better, our horror anthology Buried Tales of Pinebox, Texas is only $0.99! If you haven’t picked up a copy of this book, there will be no better time. If you enjoy it (and I know you will), I hope you’ll take the time to write a short review on Facebook, GoodReads, Amazon, LibraryThing, or whever you hang out.

You can read more about the sale on Flames Rising, or you can start buying from DriveThruHorror.com, Midnight Cellar (the official 12 to Midnight store), or RPGNow.

Solomon Kane

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:15:40 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

Oh yes!

Feel the Fury (of Robowaitress)

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:20:29 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

Yes, I know I said that Flametoad was going on hiatus, but this morning in my Flametoad inbox I found an e-mail from a guy named Alex Poutiainen. I almost deleted it, because the subject was “New Vid”, which has “spam” written all over it. However, the first few lines of the message related to Flametoad content, so I took a chance and opened it.

That’s when I was reminded that Alex was the guy who created Nazi Dinosaurs and Zoo of the Dead. It was very cool of him to write me personally to let me know that he’s back with a new YouTube movie – Robowaitress Fury. Enjoy!

Planned Break

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:51:09 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

Yes, I’m still here. I still have more to say about the whole health care reform thing. However, I also renewed my focus on finishing the writing/editing of a big project– ETU: Degrees of Horror. I have very little time for writing these days, so I have to make tough decisions about how I use it. That means Flametoad will be going on a planned hiatus for a few more weeks while I continue work on ETU. I will be back. In fact, when I return I’ll probably be devoting even more time to Flametoad than I had previously. I’ve got some ideas for short fiction in addition to my usual random essays and links to cool stuff. I hope you’ll hang in there with me. There’s still quite a bit of fire left in this old toad.

Health Care Costs

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:21:09 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

In Flametoad’s continuing series on health care, today I’d like to take a closer look at some of the costs that affect what we (or insurance companies) pay for health-care. Before I we get into those costs though, I did want to mention something that I meant to bring up in my first post. Has anyone else noticed that eighties are the new sixties? The average lifespan in America is now between 77.5 – 80 years old [PDF from the CDC]. Long term disability insurance is more important than ever because, as Mrs. Flametoad has said “We’re really pretty good about keeping you going. We just can’t guarantee that we can put you back to the way you were before.” This ties in directly with what I said in that first post about people who are regularly admitted to the ICU today are the patients who simply would have been dead 30 years ago. We’re better at extending life, but not necessarily because we’re living more healthy.

Anyway, this post is about expenses. What drives the costs behind health-care? Why, when you go to a hospital, does aspirin cost $10? That goes back to one of the idiosyncrasies of medial billing. If you’re really persistent, you can get a nice, itemized bill for your hospital services. What that bill doesn’t show you are items like ”nursing care”, or “administrative costs”, or “floor waxing”. When we buy a shirt from a store, we all understand that the price of that shirt includes the overhead involved in running that store–from utilities to rent to the cashier’s hourly wage. But when we see $10 aspirin on a hospital bill, the very first thing we all think is “I can buy a whole bottle for $3! I’m getting robbed.” In a way, it would be better if they did add on a line item called “hospital overhead”.

Another driving cost behind health-care is what we’ll broadly call “bad debt”. A 1986 federal law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, requires emergency rooms to screen and stabilize all patients, before even asking if they can pay. I have heard that both hospitals in my city are stuck with hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid emergency room visits every year. Incidentally, this law has been interpreted to apply to all persons, regardless of immigration status. That means that on boarder states like mine, hospitals get quite a few poor, illegal immigrants who go to the emergency room with no intention of paying. One source report linked from this Wikipedia article on EMTALA estimates that non-citizens make up more than 20% of uninsured (although I’m skeptical of their methodology).

On the subject of bad debt, the California Supreme Court has ruled that patients cannot be billed for services if their HMO fails to pay.

At issue in the case is a practice known as balance billing, a practice that typically occurs when a patient is treated for an emergency at a hospital that does not have a fee contract with the patient’s HMO.

In such cases, HMOs say, physicians and hospitals often submit inflated charges. But hospitals and physicians say that without minimum fee requirements, HMOs routinely underpay them.

Disputing such underpayments is impractical and costly, physicians say, so they bill patients for the balance, hoping the patients’ complaints will prompt the HMO to pay in full.

Now let’s talk malpractice. Conventional wisdom points to growing abuse of the legal system that began in the 1980s. Patients racked up large jury awards, which bankrupted some physician groups and drove insurance premiums higher. That would account for high health care costs, right? Well, there’s an interesting new study out by Americans for Insurance Reform that paints a different picture. Their report indicates that malpractice premiums and claims make up less than 1% of the total cost of health-care, that premiums and claims have been fairly steady for well more than a decade when factored for inflation, and that premiums are roughly the same in states that have enacted tort reform over ones that haven’t. Now, this is a relatively new report, and I would have liked a little more time for someone with more intimate knowledge of the situation to check it for accuracy. You also have to be careful because sometimes these innocuous-sounding groups are really mouthpieces for a particular political party. In this case, we’ve got what we’ve got so we’ll make the best of it.

To be honest, I was pretty surprised when I came across this report. It does certainly seem to fly in the face of conventional wisdom. More than that, it flies in the face of anecdotes by Mrs. Flametoad. However, upon further study and reflection, I found a pattern. The report quotes a New Yorker article about McAllen, Texas “the most expensive town in the country for health care” with regard to Medicare claims. The article quotes local doctors who claim that aggressive lawyers seeking malpractice suits are to blame. Yet, at the same time they admit that state tort reform has dramatically reduced the actual number of malpractice cases. So what gives? I think to reconcile what’s happening, we should imagine a cornered gunfighter facing a dozen grisled henchmen.

”You only got six bullets in that side-iron! You can’t shoot us all!”

“You’re right,” the gunfighter replied. So you six who want to get shot, just step forward.”

The direct impact of malpractice suits on “the health-care industry” may be small, but to the guy getting shot, it’s deadly. Nobody wants to be the target of a malpractice suit. Even if awards are capped, there are still the legal fees for the doctor’s defense. Consequently, doctors run more tests than their patients’ immediate symptoms would indicate, just as a CYA. Our bodies are all different, and despite all the medical advances we’ve made a lot of medicine is still trial and error. When it comes to our health, it’s nice to know that every avenue is being pursued, right? Yet, when it comes to assessing the cost of health-care though, how would you feel about being told that half the tests on your statement were unnecessary? And if that happens over and over again, what does that do to the cost of health-care?

In an interesting bit of timing, this hit the news.

It seems like the biggest winner in the health care system is the insurance industry. They make money from health care providers in the form of malpractice premiums. They make money from consumers in the form of health-care premiums. They even find ways to drop those bad bets to which I referred in my post on insurance.

So where do we go from here? That’ll be the next post. Stay tuned.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Health Care: Interlude

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 02:37:24 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

Worked on ETU tonight instead of my series of posts on health care reform. However, I believe this news report article on medicare fraud is relevant to the discussion. Stay tuned!

Insurance Today

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:53:27 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

Today marks the second part in my series examining “health care reform”. If you couldn’t tell from the title, today’s post focuses on how insurance works.

The best way to understand insurance is to think of it as institutionalized gambling. When you buy health insurance, you’re saying “I bet that I’m going to get sick or need health care this month,” and a company says “I’ll bet you won’t.” Based on what may as well be Vegas odds and the payout, the company determines a monthly premium, which is your bet. If you’re wrong, the company keeps the money. If you’re right, you get the payout in terms of health care spending. Depending on your policy, it probably still doesn’t pay 100%, but something closer to 80/20. Regardless, that’s insurance in a nutshell. The company needs to make sure that it wins its bets more often than the consumer, or it’ll go bust.

Health insurance companies have various strategies for making sure they don’t go bust. For starters, they like safe bets. A young non-smoker in his 20s or 30s is a much safer bet than a smoker in his 50s or 60s. Based on the odds, the companies can afford to offer lower rates for young, healthy people. It takes a lot of young, healthy people (safe bets) to cover the people almost guaranteed to lose the insurance company money.

We’ve all heard stories of insurance companies that drop a policy as soon as they have to pay out for the first major illness. For a consumer who has already suffered a costly (and likely serious) health problem, it definitely feels like being kicked while you’re down. It’s hardly fair, and various legislation has been tried over the years to prevent it, but it seems to happen anyway. Remember, the insurance carrier is a gambler. Why would a gambler make a bet he knows he’s going to lose?

Another strategy of insurance companies is to minimize their loss when they do actually lose a bet. They do this by using the strength of their numbers to leverage better rates from health care providers. Basically they say “If you want access to our network of 1,000,000 customers, we want a reduced rate on your services. You say that test costs $60? We’ll give you $40.” The problem is that sometimes that test really costs $50. That gets into medical billing, which is almost a post in and of itself.

I should also note that Medicare and Medicaid works the same way. Medicare is government insurance for the elderly. (Incidentally, in FY 2007 Medicare was 16% of all federal spending.) Medicaid is government insurance for the poor. There’s a standard table of what each insurance company will pay for a medical “incident”. This is a flat rate that is supposed to discourage health care providers from prolonging hospital stays or heaping on unnecessary treatment. If you get the same money whether you keep a patient for 10 days or 2, there is a certain incentive to get your patients in and out. This is another one of those changes in medicine compared to 30 years ago. Stays are shorter because there is financial incentive to have high turnover. Five patients staying one day are more profitable than one patient staying 5 days.

Now that we’ve looked at health care (Part 1) and insurance, the next part will take a closer look at the costs of providing health care. Stay tuned!

Popularity: unranked [?]

Health Care Today

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 02:36:28 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

In the grand Flametoad tradition of eschewing any sort of predictable theme, today’s post marks the first in a weeklong series of essays on health care and health care reform in the US. What can I say? Sometimes you get Duke Nuk’em Disease, sometimes you get health care reform. For this series I’ll be drawing heavily upon Mrs. Flametoad’s knowledge of the health care system. Mrs. Flametoad is employed in a hospital lab. As you’ll read, I’ll also draw upon other sources that have engaged in the national conversation on health care, which I’ll try to cite with links as much as possible. Be warned that I’ll be breaking it down in a way that plain folks (like me) can understand, which in some cases will mean simplifying very complex processes and systems.

Today’s post focuses on the health care as it stands today.

First, even as we talk about health care “reform”, I want to point out that most people aren’t really talking about reforming health care itself. Our advances in medicine are nothing short of miraculous and the envy of much of the world. What people want to reform is how we access that health care. That’s an important distinction, because as we work on improving the system we don’t want the science of medicine or health care to suffer.

In the interest of helping demystify health care and the hospital system in particular, I’ll share an interesting bit of trivia with you. Hospitals don’t employ doctors. (Okay, some hospitals employ a very few, but it’s not all that common.) Doctors employed by a doctor’s group and keep their own offices. Hospitals are merely places that provide facilities, staff, equipment, and support services such as laboratories. It’s like renting office space to work. THAT is why when you have to go to a hospital you get one bill from the hospital and another from each doctor. You’ll get one from your doctor, one from an anesthesiologist, the specialist, and so on. From the outside, it might look like all these people are working together like clockwork, but from the inside it’s like random cogs mashed into a watch casing with the expectation that they all work together to tell time. The amazing thing is that they usually do.

A week or two ago I was fortunate enough to catch part of a one-hour radio show in which two nurses were being interviewed. These particular nurses were instructors in a nursing school and had been in the nursing profession since the 1970s. This provided them, and we listeners, with a very interesting perspective on how the medical profession has changed. One comment that really grabbed my attention was the assertion that patients who were in the ICU 30 years ago are just regular admitted patients these days. The types of patients who are admitted to the ICU today would simply have been dead 30 years ago. So generally speaking, people who end up in a hospital stay today are more sick and need more care than ones 30 years ago.

As a corollary, people who would have been admitted for a two or three day hospital stay 30 years ago are instead treated to outpatient care today. This is actually win-win for both hospitals and patients. From the hospital side, they can bill for procedures without the overhead* associated a room stay. (More on that in a bit.) From the patient side, it’s usually safer to get home as soon as possible. With the rise of hospital “super-bugs” that are immune to all but the most aggressive (and expensive) of antibiotics, if you’re in a position where your immune system is already low or you have a wound that could serve as an entry point you really don’t want to hang out in a hospital any longer than necessary.

Patient expectations have also changed over the last 30 years. In the 1970s, people questioned their doctors much less. Generally speaking, they were less educated about medical procedures and had much less access to information. Today, patients are more proactive about getting treatment. Here’s an example.

Joe: Hey doc. I hurt my knee playing football in my back yard with my brother and our kids. Now it’s all swollen and I can barely stand on it.
Doc: Let’s see… yeah, that looks swollen alright. Hmm, I don’t see any indication of a break. I’d say it’s just sprained. Keep ice on it to reduce the swelling and keep weight off it for a few days. If you’re not better in three days, com back and we’ll take another look at it.
Joe: But if something really is wrong, wouldn’t it be better to get a MRI now?
Doc: …Well… it could. But if it’s just sprained then it’s a waste.
Joe: That’s alright. I’ve got pretty good insurance. This thing hurts like hell. I don’t think it’s just a sprain. Let’s do the MRI.

So those are just a few data points on health care today. There could certainly be more. Much more. A blog’s entire purpose could be devoted to demystifying the health care system. However, we have more important things to do. Tuesday, we talk about insurance.

RPG Awards

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 11:31:19 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

The ENnie Awards are the fan awards for the roleplaying game industry, and the voting booth for the 2009 awards is now open. Why does this matter? Because for the second year in a row, 12 to Midnight’s cartography imprint Fabled Environments has earned a nomination on the short list. This is a well deserved nomination, because their floorplan for a Victorian-Style Mansion really was a great map. It’s a beautifully designed house, both from a RPG standpoint and as someone who wouldn’t mind living in a house like that. If if suits you, we’d sure appreciate a vote in their favor in the Best Cartography category.

While we’re at it, under the category of Best Adventure, White Wolf’s The Rose-Bride’s Plight was written by Jess Hartley. Jess, as you know, contributed the ghost story Stigmatized Property to our Buried Tales of Pinebox, Texas. I’m sure she’d appreciate it if you’d show her some love, too!

If you’re not sure about the other categories, or if you’re just curious, Matt McElroy at Flames Rising has posted his favorites for this year.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Seen on the Net part XXII

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:32:15 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

I’m not entirely sure what the story is behind this, but undoubtedly there is one. Words fail me, but if you’re a fan of Frazetta (and who isn’t) then you’ll get a kick out of it. Or something. (via Hell in a Handbasket)

Joint Forces Command is holding a video contest “Why Afghanistan Matters“.

[The contest] serves as an opportunity for those serving – or who have served – in Afghanistan, to explain why the work they are doing in Afghanistan is of such importance. The intent is to provide a “boots on the ground” perspective of the military mission in Afghanistan from the point of view of those most closely involved.

The ethanol we started adding to our gasoline a few years ago is destroying engines. Now the government is looking at upping the ratio from 10% to 15%. Why do I not trust these people with my health care?

Popularity: unranked [?]

Good News Shouldn’t Be ‘Buried’

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 12:03:08 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

I’ve been terribly remiss in talking about all that has been going on with Buried Tales of Pinebox, Texas.

For starters, the book has had two very favorable reviews so far. Jeff LaSalla, New York Speculative Fiction Examiner, wrote an excellent review in which he gave quite a bit of detail without spoiling any of the stories. Just this week, Todd Cash wrote a positive review on Flames Rising. He said (among other things) “This anthology also reminds readers and gamers of just how much fun Small Town America can be for the horror genre.”

The multi-talented Monica Valentinelli also produced a book trailer for Buried Tales.

We’re continuing to spread the word about the book, and I’ve been humbled by the support shown by friends, family, and fans of myself and my fellow contributors. If you’re in the mood, there’s another easy way you can help. If you visit the Amazon pages for the print and Kindle editions of the book, you can choose to “tag” the books with keywords. The more people who tag the book, the more likely it is to appear in communities related to those keywords. You can check the tags that are already there, or you can add your own. It only takes 30 seconds to do, and but it’s a big help in terms of increasing the book’s visibility at Amazon.

If you’re a gamer, 12 to Midnight has also announced a Buried Tales contest. Read the book, answer some questions, and win the entire 12 to Midnight catalog in PDF format. That’s $400 in RPG titles. Furthermore, once a week we’ll be posting clues to help out with some of the trickier questions.

Finally, if you’ve read the book, I would personally appreciate it if you’d take the time to write a short (or long!) review for whichever online retailer that sold it to you. Reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations are critical for small press, and your help in spreading the word can help make or break a book.

Popularity: unranked [?]

It Was Ever So

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 11:49:56 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

So, writers… do you cringe at the sight of red ink? Do you feel a sting of pain like lemon juice on a paper cut at every word sliced or every phrase mangled by an editor? The Encyclopedia Britannica blog reminds us that the pain of editing is a grand tradition, and no work is immune.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Changing the Terms

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:05:18 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

In followup to Stop Helping Me, I thought you’d be interested to know that I got another update to Chase’s terms for my Visa card. There were 8 updates altogether, but the one that got me was the last one.

The Default Rates section of your Agreement is amended to add the following reason to impose the default APR on your account.

-You are in default under any other agreement for any other account or loan with us or any of our related companies, such as you fail to make a payment when due.

To me, this reads as if they’ll apply the default APR (which is something like 11% at the moment) to my card account if I were to be late on a house or auto loan payment through Chase. Am I reading this wrong? Does this sound to anyone else like kicking someone when they’re down?

Button Mashing

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 21:11:36 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

I recently realized that I was working way too hard; that I needed to cut back on work and find new ways to relax. One of thing things I’ve done is bought myself my first gaming console since the Atari 5200. I’m now the proud owner of an Xbox 360.

I have to say, this has been a pretty big change for me. I’ve been a PC gamer for the last decade and a half, ever since the introduction of Wolfenstein 3D. So far I’ve bought a handful of used games, which can be had for $10-$15 at pawn shops, game stores, etc. For the curious, I have Call of Duty 2 and 3, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, F.E.A.R, and a couple games for Tadpole 1—namely Kung Fu Panda and Lego Indiana Jones.

As someone coming from the mouse-and-keyboard PC gaming world, my first impression of the XBox is that there are too many damn buttons! For an “old” guy like me, keeping track of all those buttons and their functions is simply brain-bending. I bought this thing to relax and disengage my brain, so why am I having to work at remembering what the 10 buttons and 3 hats all do. Don’t even get me started one the various combo moves. Hit X X Y for this move, indeed.

The experience made me realize that over the last decade I’ve definitely settled into one kind of game, which is the first person shooter. Marvel Ultimate Alliance, despite including my fav Captain America, doesn’t seem to be my kind of game. Alliance feels like an exercise in button-mashing with not a lot of skill involved. So far, at least, I just haven’t gotten much enjoyment out of that. I’ve actually gotten more fun out of Kung Fu Panda and Lego Indiana Jones. Although those two are equally guilty of the combo-move overload, the perspective isn’t quite as annoying.

F.E.A.R is supposed to be some sort of supernatural FPS, and you know I’m all about the supernatural. But so far, I’ve merely found it hard to the point of frustrating. Granted, part of that due to my learning curve on the controller. FEAR was the first game I tried, and I haven’t been able to master it all that well, yet. I was also caught off guard by the swearing. WTF? I mean, what the heck? I mean, I’m an adult and I certainly do my share of swearing. It usually doesn’t bother me in movies or books, but it adds absolutely nothing to my game play experience. It just feels like vulgarity for vulgarity’s sake. Yeah, I guess I am getting old. At any rate, I haven’t seen anything in FEAR all that compelling.

In fact, every game I play, and FEAR in particular, is automatically compared to Half-Life 2, which is still the gold standard in games as far as I’m concerned. I’ll admit that it’s a high bar. So far the closest I’ve found is Call of Duty 2. This WWII first-person-shooter brings me back to comfortable territory. It’s a FPS driven more-or-less by a narrative. I only have to learn one function per button—no XBY-trigger combos. I’ve already gotten the hang of switching weapons, and I’ve only accidentally thrown a smoke grenade instead of a frag once. (It’s a lesson you remember.) Maybe as I become more comfortable with the controller, I’ll also be more comfortable with branching out into other styles of games. For now though, I think I’ll stick with Call of Duty.

I know it sounds crazy, but in the week I’ve had the console I’ve definitely relaxed more in the evenings. I’ve given myself permission to step away from my 12 to Midnight duties and enjoy life a bit more. If that means attaching a sticky-grenade to a German Panzer, then so be it. As long as it doesn’t turn into Duke Nuke’em Disease, it’s all good.

Good Luck

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:02:34 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

May your day go better than this. (video embedded)

Seen on the Net part XXI

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:36:16 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

It’s time for another random collection of shiny things that caught my eye on the internet!

How about a bird’s eye view?

Did you hear about tadpoles raining from the sky in Japan?

Or, here’s some interesting trivia. On-demand books published now exceed the number of traditionally published books. Even large houses are seeing the value of keeping their back catalogs alive through on-demand printing. It’s a brave new world for the printed word.

The Sky is Falling.

Have you heard of botnets? They are collectives of PCs that have been infected by malware, that turns them into slaves for criminal organizations. In many instances the PC owners don’t even realize that their computer has been turned into a zombie. Modern botnets are constantly updating and next to impossible to stamp out. Yet, recently researchers hijacked control of a botnet away from its criminal owners, and the results are both fascinating and frightening. This is definitely worth a read.

Popularity: unranked [?]

San Francisco

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:15:26 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

Last week I took my first trip to the West Coast. I had a training and certification exam in San Francisco. I wasn’t sure what to expect, other than temperatures 40 degrees cooler than what we were experiencing in Texas. I knew it was going to be a busy trip, but I thought I’d like to check out Alcatraz and maybe a few other sights. Unfortunately, this ended up not being the trip for sightseeing.

I got to my hotel at around 7 pm the night before my first class, but my body was still telling me that it was 9 pm. Jet lag really hurt on this trip. I awoke at 5 am after a very restless night, and enjoyed what would turn out to be my last few hours of leisure.

The class and exam were for certification in payment card security, which is one of my daytime job functions. By mid-day it was clear that I was in deep. Going into it, I really didn’t know what to expect with the class or exam. I realized that I was in a room with a bunch of people who had been involved in payment security longer than I and had more knowledge. There appeared to be a lot of rote memorization that I hadn’t done leading up to the class, and I was expected to do it on my own. So after nearly 8 hours of instruction, I went to my room and studied for another 3 hours. The next morning I got up at 5 am and immediately started studying until the class began at 9 am. Another 8 hours of instruction, then back to my room for another four hours of memorization. Then Friday morning, up at 4 am (awake at 3, truth be told) for another four hours of studying/memorization right up until the exam.

Fortunately, all that cramming paid off to some degree. I won’t know if I passed the certification for another two weeks, but at least I don’t feel like I embarrassed myself. I feel like I did pretty fair. Between studying my brains out and praying for peace and perspective, I made it through the stress, jet lag, and sleep deprivation without cracking.

Oh, and two hours after the exam I checked out of the hotel and headed back to the airport. My only first hand impression of San Francisco comes from the airport and the hotel. The airport is too small for the amount of foot traffic going through it. It was very crowded. People were lined up in the halls sitting against the walls because there was nowhere to sit. My hotel, Staybridge Suites, was something of a disappointment. It was an older facility, and somewhat frayed around the edges. The mattresses weren’t terribly comfortable and the shower was a sad little thing. All in all, it was a lonely room. What it wasn’t was small. Because these were suites for long-term stay, I had a kitchen, living room, and separate bedroom.

San Francisco seemed like it might have been pretty. I come from a part of Texas that’s green (when we’re not in drought), but relatively flat. It was a nice change of pace to actually see hills and mountains. Maybe one of these days I’ll be back, hopefully for something less stressful and with more time for sightseeing.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Thanks Cym

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:11:58 GMT

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

I just wanted to give a shout of thanks to Cym Lowell, for featuring Buried Tales (and Flametoad) on his blog. It was very generous. Be sure to check out Cym’s blog, then check out his novel Riddle of Berlin.