The other day I opened the file cabinet and pulled out a story.  It was a 5,000 word short story.  I started to read.  After a couple paragraphs, I set it down.  I asked myself who wrote this story, even though it had my name and old address on it.  I just couldn’t fathom that I had written something so good.  I read on.  A page later, I realized it was mine.  I remembered the story, its multiple drafts, and the development of the characters.  I also saw it needed one more pass to call it a final draft.

I decided to try Google Docs optical character recognition from my desktop computer which runs Ubuntu Linux 10.10.  I dusted off my Canon CanoScan N676U scanner and scanned 20 pages.  I really did not want to type the whole thing.  I saved the pages as a PDF docuament.  I opened it in Evince and saw everything looked fine and attempted to upload it to a folder in Google Docs.  It bombed after several minutes of uploading.  The file was too big.  I should have looked at Google Docs upload limits first.

I opened PDF Chain and split it apart.  I uploaded the document in sections to Google Docs and had it OCR the pages.  From what I’ve read, Google Docs uses the Tesseract engine.  It performed very well.  The occasional lowercase L was recognized as a number one, but not very often.  Oddly a line of prose was transposed on one of the pages.  But what made it nice was that Google Docs retained the PDF and embedded it in the document, so I could compare it against the OCRed text.  I then copied and pasted the text from each section into a single document.  I downloaded the reconstituted document to my computer and imported it in the Scrivener for Linux beta that I am testing (I will be writing more on Scrivener at a later date).

The upload limit on Google Docs is a pain.  It created more steps than I wanted. It meant I had to work on it by sections and reconstitute it again.  I thought scanning the original document was going to take the most amount of time, but it didn’t.  I spent more time vivisecting the scan’s complete PDF for upload, uploading the sections, and merging them back together again.  This has me reconsidering using Google Docs OCR abilities.  I mean if I were to scan the 250-page novel that I also have in my file cabinet, it would take more time than that story is worth.  Yes, that novel is that bad.  Even another short story would be a pain to OCR via Google Docs.  I can use OCRFeeder with the Tesseract engine on my desktop and get the same quality results as Google Docs OCR offers without creating additional steps.

I’m all about saving steps as I digitize many of my short stories and writing journals.  I’m ready to renew my dreams.  One short story at a time.

It’s not your fault.  Sometimes it’s the surgical tools that let you down.  On your end, you may have encountered OpenOffice mangling the format of a Microsoft Word document that you are collaborating on with a deviant friend that uses Microsoft Office.  You may have attempted to fill out an online job application form that some employer has demoniacally saved in Word.  You may be attending school and the evil instructor requires you to use a formatted template saved in Word.  The situation that has brought you to the operating room does not matter.  The fact that you are trying to suture limbs upon a torso with a knitting needle does.  It makes you look like a mad scientist… and sometimes it makes you look quite daft.

OpenOffice is the venerable free office suite of the open source world.  It does a great job when used with it’s own (and actually several other) document formats.  It’s compatible with Microsoft Office, but that does not mean you’ll see beauty upon opening a document created in Microsoft Office.  OpenOffice is quite good at creating monsters when working with Microsoft Office documents.  It’s the woes of reverse engineering office formats.  Sometimes it creates beauty and sometimes it creates monsters.  The beauty of OpenOffice is its platform independence.  It runs on Windows, OS X, and Linux.  This is all nice and good, but you want it to work… and work well.  You don’t want monsters interrupting your productivity.

Enter SoftMaker Office.  It does a much better job handling Microsoft Office’s proprietary monsters… I mean, file formats.  It is nimble and stable.  It runs on Windows and Linux, but unfortunately no OS X version is offered.  It is inexpensive… and right now SoftMaker is offering its Office 2008 product for free.  During the holiday season when you download SoftMaker Office 2008, SoftMaker will make a donation supporting aid and development projects around the world.  SoftMaker is even offering a free package of 80 fonts, too.  SoftMaker Office 2008 is free to use as long as you want.  Free tech support is offered.  Future upgrades are even offered at reduced prices, which if you check around its website, you’ll notice SoftMaker Office 2010 is out.  If you like SoftMaker Office 2008, you can upgrade to Office 2010 at the upgrade price, if you desire.

In the beauty of this holiday season, banish your monsters to Halloween while you enjoy the beauty of working with Microsoft Office formats without the monstrous Microsoft price, take warmth in the spirit of SoftMaker’s donation and go forth to excise other monsters in this world.

Every time I drive off for work, I struggle with hope.  I do this for my family.  I do not do this for me.  I can honestly understand why men abandoned their families during the Great Depression.  It is much more than humbling.  For the sense of self worth, it is humiliating.  Granted there have been times I have come to better appreciate the struggles of others who have long worked such jobs.  The struggle is in knowing that I have done better and can do better, but for the troubling economic times.

I hope my underemployment soon changes for the better, for I am very near the end of this.

Ubuntu worked well for years, but I am tired of it not working after a fresh install or breaking after an upgrade.  On the desktop, it is usually due to my NVidia video card.  I do not have the time or patience to track down fixes.

Debian, on the other hand, works.  I may spend time upfront configuring a few things, but I find it works and updates/upgrades smoothly.

So I contemplate switching from Ubuntu to Debian…  Am I alone in this consideration?

The problem is finding the time.  I lost my IT job, which helped me finish the story.  But put a severe financial strain on my family.  So I really need a job.  Really need a job.  I submit applications and resumes almost daily.  My location is not a hot bed for IT jobs and in this economy it really sucks.

But how is it I don’t have time to write when I am out of work?  My wife is working full-time toward a bachelor’s degree in nursing and working part-time on the weekends as a CNA at a nursing home.  We have four children.  The youngest three are four-years-old, almost three-years-old, and 17-months-old.  Interruptions never seem to cease.  At their ages, they do not understand Dad is at work.  They see that I am at home… with them!

So I write when I can.  When I don’t have time to write, I carry around index cards and jot down ideas when they come or most often, when I resolve a scene transition or a stubborn scene.  I have written scenes on index cards.  I have also done late night and all night writing sessions.  Whatever it takes.  Writing is my profession.  It just does not pay the bills yet.  I forgo some sleep, but hey… I still function well enough that the kids know I am awake.  Like me sleeping would prevent them anyway.

John August had a recent post on writing.  I agree fully with his views.  To be a writer, be professional and write.  It is that simple.

After years of ignoring my need to write, I now know it is what I have to do.  There was a void in my life not being filled by earning paychecks doing jobs that seemed to suck the life out of me.  Writing fills it.

What bothers me is that my family is now financially caught in this creative gamble that is a spec script.  It may end up breaking my family.  I am willing to drudge through more IT work.  But I am more than willing to go to the edge for my craft.

When I take that next step, I hope my family has climbed upon my back.  I am taking that step for them.

It will be a challenge to fit the needs of work and its daily 2.5-hour commute (damn job), family (blessed part of my life), and running (training for an October marathon)  in with the time needs of writing 100 pages of comedy.  As I type this my day-away-from-one-year-old son squirms upon my lap, my 2-year-old daughter hovers behind me, my day-away-from-four-year-old son pops in from time to time to ask plaguing questions, and my 12-year-old daughter surfs indifferently on her mother’s computer… and I fixed supper for the family (my wife is working a double shift at a local nursing home).

Why add more activity to my day when it is full already?  Because I must.  I am tired of IT.  That’s information technology.  Not it.  I have put aside writing for too long.  Almost 15 years of telling myself that I will write when this or that happens.  Well, it isn’t going to happen unless I make it happen.  Writers write.

Fifteen years ago, I had a short story nominated by an editor for an Illinois Arts Council Award.  He told me he almost nominated it for a Pushcart Prize.  I had completed a novel-length manuscript  and numerous short stories fifteen years ago… and I stopped submitting my work for publication.  I went fifteen years looking for what life could give me and lost fifteen years of seeing what I could give to life.

What the hell am I attempting to say?  If you consider yourself a writer, write.  If you are a web developer, break the browser and then go back and fix the page that broke it.  If you work IT, be an IT worker.  If you are a student, study.  If you are a teacher, strive to teach your students and not just earn a paycheck.  If you are an artist, push yourself and your art to its limits.  If you are a parent, be that guiding force, that upstanding example for your children to emulate as they grow into themselves.  If you are a musician and/or singer, make everything you produce an exploration of music’s soul.  If you are a politician, be a damn statesman or stateswoman and use your own mind instead of your party’s hive mentality.

In short, everyone, simply be professional.  Use your given talents to develop other talents in yourself and in others.  Don’t rest.

You only get one revolution in this frenzied life.  Happily make the most of it.

Within this mix of changes, I turned 40.  And when any one of the birthdays after 30 places you into the beginning of another decade of life, you cannot help reflecting on the life you have lived and compare it with the life you had hoped to live.  You also cannot help asking yourself questions that you may not have honestly asked yourself in years — heck, decades.

The questions can probe anything.  They may lead to new insights, goals, and directions.  They may affirm the life you have been enjoying.  They may reveal every major lapse of judgment you have made in your life.  You may find answers.  You may find more questions.

The important thing is you come away from the questions with the answers, goals, and plans that will take you into the life you want to lead.  Allow the answers to form your perspective on your life.  Set your goals and plan the steps that will lead toward achieving them.  And let the rest of your days be your renewal.

And as for me…  I am focused on returning to running after several years of being sedentary.  I am focused on writing fiction and screenplays, as well as writing on my blog.  I am focused on my relationships with my wife and children.  I am focused on making more money for my family’s needs.

“Mid-life is the old age of youth, and the youth of old age.” — a proverb

To make your resolutions more permanent, write them down. Display them if possible. Every week make a point of review them. This will serve to help instill the resolutions into the positive changes in your life as you envisioned them becoming.

A couple of years ago, I had reached 200 lbs. My knees hurt. I was out of shape. My clothes were no longer fitting me. On New Year’s Day of that year, I made it a goal to eat less, to eat healthy meals. I did not write it down. I made a mental note and did not let myself forget it. Over the course of that year, I watched what I ate. I avoided second and third helpings at meals. I cut out the majority of the fast food and snacks that I had been eating. Without exercise, since my knees would have suffered from it, I managed to lose 40 lbs. I returned to the weight I was in college and my knee pain left. I am able to run again without knee pain or swelling. I am able to play on a hard wood floor with kids without complaining about my knees hurting. I did it by simply not allowing myself to lose sight of my goal.

The goal I set was not to lose 40 lbs. It was simply to lose weight. A goal, a resolution does not have to be specific. Specifics can work against you. They tend to penalize you when you veer of course. Often times, making things specific makes it easier to give up a goal or resolution when you do not adhere to the specifics. Stay with your vision of change, not the specifics. Although you may need them, your vision is your real goal.

Having said this, here are my goals and resolutions for the new year:

• Finish writing the screenplay I began a little over a year ago.

I have been stuck in the Act II blues. Recently, I worked it out. My plot was forced, thus the scenes and characters actions and dialog became forced. The story suffered. I knew where it began to breakdown and decided to simplify the storyline at that point. Once the screenplay is finished, I intend to shop it. If it sells, great. If it does not, I have accomplished my goal of finishing it.

• Write my next screenplay which already has several scenes sketched and the plot’s spine put in place. My goal is to finish writing this screenplay as well in 2008.
• Resume writing my novel. I have always wanted to be a novelist.
• Read daily. Fiction mostly.
• Write daily. A lot of this list depends on it.
• Resume running regularly.
• Repair some bridges and tear down some walls in my life.
• Commit to returning to school to obtain a masters in English and a teaching certificate and/or striving to write for a living. I can do both. I have always felt a need to teach in the public school system. Working as a teacher would afford me more time for writing as well as promoting positive change in the lives of others.

That’s it. Much of it is simply structuring and organizing my time to balance these with being a husband and father.

The key is to keep it simple.

There was no beauty to it. It simply served to get me to work and back. If it turned heads, it only did so in surprise that such a vehicle could be running. And it did run…

Until this morning when it gave up its ghost, its drive shaft, parts of the clutch assembly, and rear differential broke apart over some very large bumps near the El Paso, Illinois exit on Interstate 39 as I drove to my job in Bloomington.

With the recent foreclosure of our home and the lack of funds to repair the vehicle, we are again left with only one vehicle, our family van.

If only Santa would be so kind as to leave me his sleigh and reindeer this Christmas.

Happy holidays!

In January of 1977, my parents moved my family into a new home. The house had an intercom system with a turntable and radio at the control center. One of my fond memories of that house was going to sleep as I listened to music piped through the intercom’s speakers. Most of the music was Christmas songs, the Beatles, or Paul McCartney and Wings. Another thing my siblings and I did was listen to my mother’s early Beatles, Dave Clark Five, Byrds, Rolling Stones 45s and a couple of early Beatles LPs on my father’s old stereo and a Mickey Mouse record player in the basement.

By December 1980, I had a solid appreciation of early- to mid-1960s music. I knew each member of the Beatles. I knew the Beatles had disbanded. I also knew that John’s assassination meant the Beatles would never reunite in the way that every Beatles fan hoped. I spent several hours that week and beyond sequestered from family, so that I could cry without anyone knowing. It affected me deeply, more deeply than anyone realized, even to this day.

That Christmas I got John Lennon’s and Yoko Ono’s “Double Fantasy” album. Listening to the album opened another wave of sadness. Even today, I feel sadness. The ranged and depth of sadness has changed as I have grown older.

Several years ago, the late John Ritter spoke at Eureka College of how much he loved the Beatles and John Lennon and how Lennon’s death affected him. He said it took him a long time to work through the senselessness and grief of it. But even then, the senselessness still touched him deeply.

John Ritter spoke of a friend surprising him by bringing him to a Los Angeles recording studio where Lennon was working on some songs. Ritter was too awed to speak to one of his idols. Later in the evening, Lennon, after being perplexed at who this was in the recording studio, nodded at Ritter.

After speaking with the audience, Ritter greeted, spoke with, and signed autographs for those in attendance. I did not have anything for him to sign, so I ran to my car and grabbed my CD of the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” I rushed inside to present it to John Ritter to autograph. As I did so, I said, “From one Beatles fan to another, would you sign this?”

Ritter’s shoulders sunk as he took a deep breath and sighed. He asked, “Where did you get this?” I answered in my car. He turned through the pages of the CD booklet, as interested as if it was the first time he had seen the Sgt. Pepper’s album. After a while he turned to the last page inside the booklet and signed: “A splendid time for all! John Ritter.” When he handed it back to me, it was easy to tell that Ritter was touched by the gesture.

Unfortunately, John Ritter would leave this world prematurely, too. As with Lennon, Ritter left behind a wife and children. Quite a Beatles fan, John Ritter’s gravestone quotes the Beatles’ song, “The End” — “And in end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” Coincidentally, three years after his death, my daughter, Maryen, was born on what would have been Ritter’s 58th birthday.

John Lennon lived 4o years. I have found as time goes by, I have been affected by John’s death less in what it cost the music world than what it cost his family. I feel for Sean, having been robbed of his father’s presence and love. I feel for Yoko, having been shorted a lifetime of love and friendship with her soul mate. I feel for John, having not gotten a chance to share in his son’s growth and life beyond the age of five.

Professionally, Lennon was reemerging, “staring over,” after a five-year absence. This time, he was reemerging as a well-grounded individual. What he would have shared with the world, as well as his family, we unfortunately will never know.

Twenty-seven years ago, I awoke to the stark realization that life could merely be “what happens to you
while you’re busy making other plans.” As did many people.

Peace.