• RT @rstevens “Whin­ers are just peo­ple who haven’t been blud­geoned to death yet.” #
• RT @pourme­cof­fee “Media grad­ing out of con­trol. Andrea Mitchell just gave Alan Greenspan a C-​. “Needs improve­ment.”” #
• RT @MattDun­lap “New pet peeve: cash only restau­rants… it’s 2009, get with the pro­gram” #
• RT @Wee­Laura “KO cor­rects Michele Bach­mann on the Smoot Haw­ley Act. Which she called The HOOT SMALLEY Act. ON THE FLOOR OF CONGRESS…” #
• RT @zen_​habits “Before you hate some­one, try walk­ing a mile in his shoes. Then you’ll be a mile away form him, and have his shoes.” #
• RT @lehman­nchris “The sad thing is that Michele Bach­man thinks Al Franken cospon­sored the Hoot Smal­ley Act” #
• Yes, I’m just retweet­ing stuff I like tonight. It’s been a long day. #
• @scot­bot­mosh OMG! Glad to hear no one was hurt! in reply to scot­bot­mosh #
• Bird flu + swine flu = when pigs fly flu #
• Swine: the other white flu #
• @tib­bar­erew Goes well with kaiser, cause that’s how I roll in reply to tib­bar­erew #
• Dammit, the webOS Palm Eos com­ing to AT&T blows my Pre vs iPhone HD deci­sion all to hell http://tinyurl.com/dyt96d #
• @RobT43 I’m try­ing to really under­stand the non-​jailbroken iPhone expe­ri­ence first. I’ll com­mence tin­ker­ing even­tu­ally. in reply to RobT43 #
• @crimsonsky56 The Eos looks like it might be every­thing I want (I really dis­like slid­ers) but I need more deets. in reply to crimsonsky56 #

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• RT @BetterWriters: Why do writ­ers write? Because it isn’t there. — Thomas Berger #writ­ing #

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Nathan Bran­ford is a lit­er­ary agent with Cur­tis Brown, Ltd. in New York and one of the most inter­est­ing blog­gers out there about writ­ing and pub­lish­ing. Some­times he does a “You tell me” fea­ture where he asks his read­ers to com­ment their answers to a ques­tion about the writ­ing life.

The Wrestler” got me think­ing about the sac­ri­fices writ­ers make. While it’s cer­tainly pos­si­ble (and advis­able) to live a bal­anced life as a writer that does not involve Randy “The Ram”-esque self-​destruction, every­one I know who has suc­ceeded as a writer had to give up some­thing to get there, whether it was time doing some­thing more imme­di­ately fun, spend­ing time with friends and fam­ily, or the abil­ity to read bad writ­ing with­out cring­ing. What have you given up for your writ­ing dream?

Nathan Brans­ford — Lit­er­ary Agent: You Tell Me: What Have You Given Up for Your Writ­ing Dream?

This comes at a really inter­est­ing time for me. I’m reread­ing my jour­nals from 2000 in the process of con­vert­ing them from Word to Ever­note, and I’m shocked at how much my life has changed this decade. So what have I given up to be a writer?

• A wife (I really never date)
• Kids (see above)
• A house/​mortgage (really doesn’t seem wise given the feast or famine nature of publishing)
• Bet­ter pay­ing but more time con­sum­ing jobs in IT (I work on a helpdesk, but I could have been a CIO of a smaller com­pany years ago)
• Con­sis­tent suc­cess as a blog­ger (I can’t seem to make time to blog and write fic­tion at the same time, so when you see me post­ing here, you can safely bet that I’m stalled on a fic­tion project)
• A pretty fair bit of sanity

How about you?

• Proud to be 13,833 days Swine Flu free. #
• @tib­bar­erew The bucket of water has swine flu. in reply to tib­bar­erew #
• Now that he’s the only thing stand­ing between the Dems and 60, expect Norm Cole­man to keep fight­ing this until 2014. #
• @Alli_​Flowers Were you, indeed, fuzzy? in reply to Alli_​Flowers #
• @crimsonsky56 Specter would’ve lost the R pri­mary, the win­ner of which would have been a joke in the gen­eral. We get a seat either way. in reply to crimsonsky56 #
• RT @pandagon: 2012 Repub­li­can con­ven­tion to be held at Wheel­ing, WV Olive Gar­den. Extra seats to be given to Wheel­ing High Drama Club. #
• Actu­ally, yes, John, we do. RT @SenJohnMcCain: voted against Sebe­lius — we don’t need social­ized med­i­cine! #

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• Wait­ing for “Roar” from Clover­field to decide to quit loop­ing in my head. #

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• @crimsonsky56 I will take a hard look at the Pre, but won’t have a review unit. I’m lean­ing towards the iPhone HD as my next phone, frankly. in reply to crimsonsky56 #
• @Alli_​Flowers I’m wean­ing myself off Win­dows Mobile with an iPod touch until the iPhone HD comes out. in reply to Alli_​Flowers #
• @Alli_​Flowers What can I say, I’m con­vinced Win­dows Mobile has no future. iPhone is where all the devel­op­ers are. in reply to Alli_​Flowers #
• @Human­Race­horses I’m a lot curi­ous about the Pre and webOS, and will take a look since the Pre will come out before the iPhone HD. in reply to Human­Race­horses #
• @Human­Race­horses That said, I expect the Pre to have sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems over­com­ing the iPhone’s lead with devel­op­ers. in reply to Human­Race­horses #
• @tim­lay­tonsr Win­dows Mobile’s future is a mess. I can’t go into details (NDA), but there’s a lot of pain ahead. in reply to tim­lay­tonsr #
• @Human­Race­horses I was as anti-​iPhone as any­one, but 3.0 removes most of my objec­tions. in reply to Human­Race­horses #
• @tmanns2005 I haven’t had a sin­gle crash in Win­dows 7, much less a BSOD. in reply to tmanns2005 #
• The Storyteller’s Curse: I ruin per­fectly good fan­tasies by mak­ing sure they have max­i­mum dra­matic ten­sion. Get the girl, then she leaves me #
• Rock­ing Robo­cop Mile High Sci Fi style. #

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• @crimsonsky56 I got the iPod Touch instead of an iPhone *because* I’m wait­ing to com­pare the Pre and the iPhone HD. Lean­ing to iPhone, tho. in reply to crimsonsky56 #
• @crimsonsky56 Ever­note for the iPhone totally rocks. in reply to crimsonsky56 #
• @crimsonsky56 Ever­note for the iPhone does have local stor­age now. You can mark as many notes as you want as favorites and those are cached. in reply to crimsonsky56 #
• Ah, watch­ing the orig­i­nal Matrix. My all time favorite Bud­dhist para­ble. #
• Went to the Apple Store today, ended up buy­ing what I wanted from the Ama­zon app on my iPod before leav­ing the mall. #
• @crimsonsky56 Tiwikini has poten­tial. More fea­tures than TinyTwit­ter, faster than Pock­eTwit. in reply to crimsonsky56 #
• @crimsonsky56 WM is sadly far behind the Black­berry in power man­age­ment in reply to crimsonsky56 #
• @Human­Race­horses Red pill, def­i­nitely. in reply to Human­Race­horses #
• @Dar­ren­Humphries No, the tril­ogy as a whole has a Judeo-​Christian mes­siah arc, but The Matrix is very much about wak­ing up. Free your mind. in reply to Dar­ren­Humphries #
• @crimsonsky56 I’m impressed with the iPhone OS/​X power man­age­ment, REALLY want to see how far the Pre gets on 1150mah… in reply to crimsonsky56 #

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• @crimsonsky56 Wel­come to the Twit, Don! in reply to crimsonsky56 #

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• RT @ONE_​WHO_​WRITES “If you can spend a per­fectly use­less after­noon in a per­fectly use­less man­ner, you have learned how to live.- Lyn Yutang” #
• @Dar­ren­Humphries I’ve been using Spb Mobile Shell 3 for about a week and it goes a long way to mod­ern­ize Win­dows Mobile. Very nice. in reply to Dar­ren­Humphries #

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• @Alli_​Flowers Sylar lost it? When did he have it? in reply to Alli_​Flowers #
• RT @Pogue “TONIGHT’S MEDITATION: Con­doms should be used on every con­ceiv­able occa­sion.” #
• @Alli_​Flowers Haven’t watched Heroes since the writer’s strike in S2. Never got back into it. in reply to Alli_​Flowers #
• RT @ONE_​WHO_​WRITES ““I am always doing that which I can­not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” — Pablo Picasso” #
• New eReader for the iPhone auto­mat­i­cally syncs your book­shelf to your phone. I have read­ing mate­r­ial on my iPod Touch to last until I die. #
• RT @del­rayser Top lin­guists fin­ish trans­la­tion of the Serve Amer­ica Act, reach shock­ing con­clu­sion THAT IT’S A COOKBOOK!!! http://is.gd/bbT2 #
• @tib­bar­erew Could be worse, you could be Emu. in reply to tib­bar­erew #
• Finally start­ing to grok Ever­note. Wicked learn­ing curve for me for some rea­son. #
• @robotech_​master Actu­ally, 99% of my Ever­note data­base is tex­tual infor­ma­tion, not images. Fig­ur­ing out how to par­ti­tion that was hard. in reply to robotech_​master #
• @Dar­ren­Humphries I don’t hold much hope for the future of Win­dows Mobile. The competition-​iPhone, Pre, Android-​has too much of a head start. in reply to Dar­ren­Humphries #
• In five years we’ll look back and remem­ber Win­dows Mobile and Black­berry as mobile plat­forms that could have had it all, but didn’t. #
• @BaDZeD I don’t have a Kin­dle. Books from eReader.com are mine for­ever. in reply to BaDZeD #
• @Bran­don­Min­i­man In terms of mind­share, the iPhone has it all in mobile. I’m talk­ing future and mar­ket, not fea­ture list. in reply to Bran­don­Min­i­man #
• @Dar­ren­Humphries The Pre is poised to be the “cloud phone.” Syn­ergy can really put it over the top IF Palm exe­cutes. in reply to Dar­ren­Humphries #
• @BaDZeD Max­i­mum Geek may be com­ing back. A lot of that depends on @tib­bar­erew and how much he wants to keep up on tech news. He has a life. in reply to BaDZeD #
• RT @cindyscott54 Palin-​Bachmann 2012, because you haven’t seen crazy yet. #

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