Category: Chatter

If someone demanded I summarily declare why I have achieved my modest success where so many other writers haven’t, I would have to say it’s because I mercilessly separate dreams and goals and only act upon the latter.

What’s the difference?

A goal is something I control. “I will write four books this year” is a goal. I might succeed, I might fail, but it’s within my control. If I write three I fail in my goal, but hey–I’ve written three more books!

A dream is something I don’t control. Generally, dreams require other people take action on my behalf. “I will coauthor a thriller with James Patterson” is a dream, because while I might reach out to Patterson I don’t control how he reacts. Chances are he would throw me off his front porch and unleash the hounds.

I work on goals. Never on dreams.

Do this long enough, and dreams fade. It’s not that you lose the capacity for dreaming, but if you remain goal-oriented your idle fantasies start feeding into your goals instead.

Today, I fear I’ve caught a dream. XKCD’s latest interactive comic includes a Murderbot reference.

I can’t really call this “author goals,” because I don’t control it. But it’s certainly “author dreams.”

Stupid dreams. Get out of here with that lame non-actionable tripe. Dammit.

In 2013, I was a Guest of Honor at Penguicon.

No con had ever treated me better. My room was handled. My assigned flunky made sure I got fed (or, in my case, made sure I ate). There was a green room with sandwich fixings and snacks and the most ridiculously oversized heap of Pop Tarts I have ever witnessed. Not that I should be eating Pop Tarts, or even particularly like Pop Tarts, but I am always compelled to admire spectacle.

At the closing ceremony, the con chair asked the GoHs if anything went wrong. I said something along the lines of “you were magnificent. the only thing I could possibly say is that there was no toaster for the Pop Tarts.”

Truly trivial. That con was run better than some multimillion-dollar IT launches I’ve been part of.

But Hospitality Czar Cylithria Dubois got a look of absolute horror on her face. She took her job seriously, and had FAILED. Less than perfect! Dishonor, dismay, disaster!

It was okay, of course. We had a laugh afterwards.

I’ve come back most years since. Every year, there have been Pop Tarts in the con suite. Every year, the con suite has lacked sufficient power to plug in a toaster without blowing out the circuit breakers. It’s become a running joke.

This year, ten years after my GoH stint? When I walked up to the hotel check-in desk I saw an assortment of bags behind the counter. I thought “Oh, the ConCom is up to their usual tricks of giving GoHs welcome gifts. It’s nice to see the old ways being kept. Them folks are in for a treat.”

I gave my name, and the receptionist said “We have a package for you!”

Lithie had left me…

…a toaster. With a lovely thank-you note, promising to remember the Pop Tarts in another ten years. I nearly burst an aneurysm laughing.

But in the con suite?

Not one Pop Tart.

Am I saying that after a decade of con suite Pop Tarts, Lithie leveraged her influence to make sure there would be none on the year she gave me a toaster? No. Lithie operates on the highest standards of ethics and probity. I’m certain it’s mere convenient coincidence.

But my long-suffering missus scurried out to a grocery store, so that Sunday I could offer Lithie a toasty-warm Pop Tart.

Not that either of us like Pop Tarts, mind you. That’s not the point.

I’m already planning for next year. Yes, for talks. And… other things.

Lithie says that in ten years, she’ll bring the Pop Tarts. Most twenty-year-old food would transcend staleness, but come on. They’re Pop Tarts. They’ll be as fresh as the day they were excreted.

Turns out I have additional Penguicon events. I also need a place to list the books I’ll refer to in my talk. Rather than rewrite the old blog post, I’m starting over. First, the references.

OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems
The Copyright Handbook
LLC or Corporation?
Tax Savvy for Small Business
Cash Flow for Creators
Domesticate Your Badgers: Become a Better Writer through Deliberate Practice

I’ll have some of my books in the bookstore, room 317. They told me I can bring as many titles as I want, which seems foolish but oh well. I’ll have a handful of Networknomicons, some fiction, several recent tech books, Letters to ed(1), and assorted other detritus. While the con is having folks buy books by sending Paypal direct to the authors, I plan to find my Square reader. If you show up during one of the three hours I’m in the store, I’ll take your credit card myself. (Or charge your card myself. Whichever you prefer.)

And now, the schedule. There’s full details on the con’s Sched, including any room updates.

Friday, 21 April
5PM: AI, Writers, and Artists (panel), Charlevoix C
7PM: Writer’s Block Bookstore, suite 317

Saturday, 22 April
11AM: OpenBSD Filesystems (talk), Algonquin A
Noon: Reading (talk), Portage Auditorium — somehow, they put the readings in this room. It bears a close resemblance to one of the rooms where someone dies in $ git sync murder. $GSM does not take place at this hotel, and the $GSM con is most assuredly not Penguicon, I admit to feeling somewhat leery. I might read from that book, though.
1PM: Rat Operated Vehicles (talk), Algonquin B (Big Top) — contains no actual rat
2PM: Writer’s Block Bookstore, suite 317
3PM: LN2 ice cream (consuite) — this is not part of my official schedule, but come on, you know I’ll be there
4PM: Terry Pratchett: The Man, the Myth, the Reading Order (Charlevoix C)
6PM: Crowdfunding for Creatives (Charlevoix C)

Sunday, 23 April
11AM: Writer’s Block Bookstore, suite 317
noon: One Man Publishing Army (Algonquin C)

Penguicon 2023 starts in ten days. As usual, I’ll be presenting talks and serving on panels. Repeatedly.

It’s a light year for me, though. Only six events. The rest of the time, I’ll either be wandering around or heckling other presenters, like you do.

Friday
5PM: AI, Writers, and Artists (panel)

Saturday
11AM: OpenBSD Filesystems
1PM: Rat Operated Vehicles
4PM: Terry Pratchett: The Man, the Myth, the Reading Order (panel)
6PM: Crowdfunding for Creatives (panel)

Sunday
12PM: One Man Publishing Army

Somewhere in here, I’ll also be doing a reading. That isn’t scheduled yet, but I’m told it’s happening. Check the final schedule when you show up.

One reason I’m attending? Their solid mask policy is enforced by an ex-marine with an attitude like a badger with bad bowels. Yes, a real ex-marine. I had covid in March. Not only am I still recovering, the experience has made me twice as determined to not catch it again.

I believe that April Fools’ pranks should be benign violations of expectations, and that they are best when they have a physical reality. If they don’t have a physical reality, they should be targeted to amuse a small group of peolpe. While I had thoughts about one for this year, they fell apart under the pressure of fulfilling Kickstarters. But for my own reference and perhaps your minor amusement, here are the Internet-relevant pranks I’ve pulled in the past.

2021: I know that people read my tech books for the footnotes, so I released a collectible hardcover collection of them.

Smart books have footnotes. Smarter books are only footnotes.

2020: The Networknomicon.

Abdul Alhazred’s infamously rumored Networknomicon, or SNMP Mastery, has long been blamed for the Spanish Inquisition, the Second World War, and Cleveland. While nuclear “testing” was thought to have eradicated all copies of the manuscript, an astute student with a baggy shirt and considerable mob debts recently liberated one tattered survivor from the Miskatonic University Library of Computer Science.

2018: I took sponsorships on a book, but refused to say what the book was. 1 April, I released Ed Mastery. The Standard Text Editor. “ed Mastery.” It has a blurb from Ken Thompson himself.

Let me be perfectly clear: ed(1) is the standard Unix text editor. If you don’t know ed, you’re not a sysadmin. You’re a mere dabbler. A dilettante. Deficient.

Ed Mastery also comes in the Manly McManface edition, because some men can’t handle feminine pronouns in their tech books. Part of each sale goes to the Soroptimists, because screw you, that’s why.

Any third-person singular pronouns that appear in the standard edition, for normal people, are female. Those who believe that women don’t belong in tech books may purchase this special “Manly McManface” edition, where all third-party singular pronouns are masculine.

To compensate for this edition’s much smaller market, though, the Manly edition is unfortunately pricier than the standard edition. That’s basic economics.

For added “what the heck” I also wrote a scathing review of Ed Mastery, personally attacking the author, which Dan Langille generously published on his blog. I stand 100% behind this review, by the way.

Before that? Joke blog posts, aimed at the BSD audience. Basically intended to give a small group of folks a chuckle.

2014: Dan Langille and I coordinated on Oracle buys BSDCon and me responding by starting DetroitBSDCon. For the record, I think DetroitBSDCon would be amazing but, you know, pandemic.

2011: The Great Committer was to honor John Baldwin in the most embarrassing way possible.Apparently some of his cow-orkers started calling him the Great Committer and genuflecting when he approached, so that’s a plus. I still think that the BSD community adopting the pinky-and-forefinger-horns salute would rock.

2003: Dan Langille and I posted on how the UN was forcibly merging the BSD projects under the FretBSD banner. The OpenBSD paragraph still makes me giggle.

Theo de Raadt could not be reached for comment. While Theo’s home has been surrounded, UN peacekeeper troops have yet to storm the building and heavy casualties have been reported in the surrounding countryside. UN spokesmen insist that the siege is going according to plan, however, and Theo is expected to be available for integration in the new combined BSD at some date in late 2023. Of the two hundred eighty-nine casualties suffered by the UN troops at this time, the commanding officer insists that they were caused by a rampaging Canadian moose. Daniel Hartmeier, previously of the OpenBSD Project, insists that OpenBSD has no weapons of moose destruction.

Also: we caught a news reporter. That was fun. Sadly, my more substantial pranks of later years failed to catch… anyone. Apparently I have everyone’s expectations. If I want my next prank book to attract attention, I’ll need to bind it in penguin hide.

The problem with having written this many books is providing a catalog of them. One day I might do a print catalog just for giggles, but not today.

I have, however, built index pages. You can find all of my novels and story collections at https://mwl.io/fiction. My in-print nonfiction books are all listed at https://mwl.io/nonfiction. Each entry links to the breakout page containing the book.

Been meaning to do this for a while, but Copious Free Time(tm) and all that.

I believe I’m supposed to encourage you to check the lists to be sure you have everything, but I’m well aware that nobody wants everything. At least now you can easily find everything, and that’s gonna have to do.

An author’s brag shelf is where they keep one copy of every edition of everything they’ve published. The problem with a practicing writer’s brag shelf is that it needs more and more space. I mean, look at this from 2017.

That’s respectable, I think. Many authors built their careers around that many books. Fast forward three years, though, and it doesn’t look so tidy.

Fine. I’ll recycle an old bookcase for my brag shelf. As of November, it looked like this.

As they say on social media: oh no.

It was time to deal with this once and for all. I’m about halfway through my writing career, and unlikely to become considerably more prolific than I am. I counted the number of shelf-feet I have consumed so far, doubled it, and bought the next size up. Allow me to present the Terminal Brag Shelf, which should suffice to hold everything I write for the rest of my life.

The bottommost shelf holds duplicates, so they don’t count. I got the wrong doors from Ikea, so I have to return them and get doors that are fully glass. Because what’s the point of having a brag shelf that hides things away? If you’ve made it to my office, you deserve the full experience.

Unfortunately, seeing everything neatly arranged here with lots of room for more books, more room than I can possibly write to fill, my first thought was: I must overflow this bastard.

Oh no.

I edited my SNMP MIB to include the two new books, Prohibition Orcs and Frozen Talons, and realized that the first book in that table came out in 1992.

Thirty years ago.

Plus, Frozen Talons is my 50th full book. If you count “things with my name on them,” including anthologies and chapbooks but not translations, it’s number 96. No–wait–my list is missing one thing. It’s 97. Quick, someone send me a neurotypical personal assistant to track all this crap!

Fifty books in thirty years. Two thoughts.

1) A more business-oriented author would have planned a 30/50 Marketing Extravaganza, with advertising defoliated into swanky golf courses and a special cryptocurrency limited to a single coin for each book. The coin for Ed Mastery: Manly McManface edition is measured in units of–uh, never mind. The thought makes me even more tired.

2) Daang, I write slow.

It’s not as quite as bad as that, of course. Look at the “More Books By This Author” page from Tarsnap Mastery in 2015.

Excluding the “coming soon” titles, that’s 14 books. Many of them are heavily-researched 500,000-word doorstops.

I’ve written 36 books in the eight years of full-time writing since then. Somewhat better. Numbers don’t really mean much, though. What does “36 books” mean in the real world? Well, here’s my catalog in April 2015. One copy of every version of everything, including translations.

I took the photo to make the shelf look full, but note that there’s space at the far left end, next to the Japanese translation of Absolute FreeBSD.

In 2017, the shelf became full.

I thought that was an achievement. Look, the books fill the shelf edge to edge! There is no way to stuff another book onto that shelf!

Silly me. 2020:

I had a hard choice. Upgrade the brag shelf, or stop writing.

Here’s today.

We bought that bookshelf in 1996 for gerbil cages. I’m afraid it’s about to overflow. Fortunately, Ikea has bookshelves again. Maybe I can get something fancy, with glass doors?

Of course, neither the number of books nor the total mass of said books matter. The sales on most of these books faded into the long tail years ago. Like “words written per day,” “how many books I’ve written” is irrelevant. The only books that matter are the ones I’m writing now. But, also like “how many words have I written today,” the count of how many books I’ve written is the only way to measure the ineffable and to set goals.

So, here are some goals that might take me through my career.

1) Next year, I will break “100 Things With My Name in Them.” Anthologies and chapbooks count for this. With February’s Devotion & Corrosion collection, Run Your Own Mail Server later in the year, and (hopefully!) $ git merge murder and the Skybreach books before the end of the year, I should break this easy. With any luck, there’ll be new editions of the ZFS books near the end. Given my atrocious record-keeping, perhaps I’ve crossed this already. Who knows?

2) 100 books total before 2033. Some doorstops. Some 40,000-word novels. A whole bunch in between.

While I intend to keep writing until I’m dead, I also know that I have no idea what my health will be like in however many decades I have left. With any luck, in 2032 I’ll shoot for 150 before 2043.

What are all these books? Grab the current list in my SNMP agent, as discussed in the Networknomicon. Because some of you still treasure your minds, however, I’ll leave a copy here for posterity. I don’t think anyone but me has a complete set of originals, except for maybe EB over in Israel. If he doesn’t have all 50, he’s pretty dang close.

Anyone who has all 96–uh, 97–should probably seek professional help. And a carpenter, for a good bookcase.

SNMP table: TWP-MIB::mwlBooksTable

 titleIndex                                                              title year      genre      length
          1                                                        Gatecrasher 1992    fiction full-length
          2                                                Believe it or Else! 1993    fiction full-length
          3 SLUGS: The Satanic, Loathsome, Unholy Game System (as Greg Donner) 1994    fiction     novella
          4                                            Gatecrasher 2nd edition 1995    fiction full-length
          5                                  Women who Run with the Werewolves 1995    fiction   anthology
          6                                                       Absolute BSD 2002 nonfiction full-length
          7                                                   Absolute OpenBSD 2003 nonfiction full-length
          8                                    Cisco Routers for the Desperate 2004 nonfiction full-length
          9                                                          PGP & GPG 2006 nonfiction full-length
         10                                      Absolute FreeBSD, 2nd edition 2007 nonfiction full-length
         11                       Cisco Routers for the Desperate, 2nd edition 2009 nonfiction full-length
         12                                              Network Flow Analysis 2010 nonfiction full-length
         13                                            Horror Library volume 2 2010    fiction   anthology
         14                                                    Opening the Eye 2011    fiction       story
         15                                                Breaking the Circle 2011    fiction       story
         16                                                        SSH Mastery 2012 nonfiction full-length
         17                            Vicious Redemption: Five Dark Fantasies 2012    fiction full-length
         18                                                     DNSSEC Mastery 2013 nonfiction full-length
         19                                                       Sudo Mastery 2013 nonfiction full-length
         20                                           Absolute OpenBSD, 2nd ed 2013 nonfiction full-length
         21                                        No More Lonesome Blue Rings 2013    fiction       story
         22                                             Sticky Supersaturation 2013    fiction       story
         23                                                           Lavender 2013    fiction       story
         24                                                         Pax Canina 2013    fiction       story
         25                                               Wednesday's Seagulls 2013    fiction       story
         26                                FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials 2014 nonfiction full-length
         27                                                      Immortal Clay 2014    fiction full-length
         28                                                Waking Up Yesterday 2014    fiction       story
         29                                                    Calling Control 2014    fiction       story
         30                                                 Moonlight's Apples 2014    fiction       story
         31                              Networking for Systems Administrators 2015 nonfiction full-length
         32                                                    Tarsnap Mastery 2015 nonfiction full-length
         33                                               FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS 2015 nonfiction full-length
         34                                                      Forever Falls 2015    fiction     novella
         35                               Spilled Mirovar (Prohibition Orcs 1) 2015    fiction       story
         36                                                       Whisker Line 2015    fiction       story
         37                                                     Wifi and Romex 2015    fiction       story
         38                                                        PAM Mastery 2016 nonfiction full-length
         39                                      FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS 2016 nonfiction full-length
         40                                    FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZedFS 2016 nonfiction full-length
         41                                    Kipuka Blues (Immortal Clay #2) 2016    fiction full-length
         42                                                    Hydrogen Sleets 2016    fiction full-length
         43                              Drowned Mirovar (Prohibition Orcs #2) 2016    fiction     novella
         44                                   Butterfly Stomp Waltz (Beaks #1) 2016    fiction full-length
         45                            Earthquake Kitten Kiss (Beaks spin-off) 2016    fiction     novella
         46                                         Butterfly Stomp (Beaks #0) 2016    fiction       story
         47                              Forced to Talk, Like, With Your Mouth 2016    fiction       story
         48                             FreeBSD Mastery: Specialty Filesystems 2016 nonfiction full-length
         49                                                  git commit murder 2017    fiction full-length
         50                                                 savaged by systemd 2017    fiction       story
         51                                           Httpd and Relayd Mastery 2017 nonfiction full-length
         52                                                         Ed Mastery 2018 nonfiction     novella
         53                                Ed Mastery, Manly McManface Edition 2018 nonfiction     novella
         54                                           SSH Mastery, 2nd edition 2018 nonfiction full-length
         55                                      Absolute FreeBSD, 3rd edition 2018 nonfiction full-length
         56                                            Bedazzled by Blockchain 2018    fiction       story
         57                                                          Face Less 2018    fiction       story
         58                                 Boundary Shock: Tuesday After Next 2018    fiction   anthology
         59                  Boundary Shock: Robots, Androids, Cyborgs, Oh My! 2018    fiction   anthology
         60                                          Sudo Mastery, 2nd edition 2019 nonfiction full-length
         61                                             FreeBSD Mastery: Jails 2019 nonfiction full-length
         62                                      Terrapin Sky Tango (Beaks #2) 2019    fiction full-length
         63                                                  Winner Breaks All 2019    fiction       story
         64                              Boundary Shock: Apocalypse Descending 2019    fiction   anthology
         65                                       Fiction River: Superstitious 2019    fiction   anthology
         66                                                  Snot-Nosed Aliens 2019    fiction   anthology
         67                                         An Interpretation of Moles 2019    fiction   anthology
         68                                                       SNMP Mastery 2020 nonfiction full-length
         69                                       Boundary Shock: Alien Dreams 2020    fiction   anthology
         70                                                 The Networknomicon 2020 nonfiction full-length
         71                                             Cash Flow for Creators 2020 nonfiction full-length
         72                               Boundary Shock: What Might Have Been 2020    fiction   anthology
         73                                                   Face The Strange 2020    fiction   anthology
         74                                                   Bloody Christmas 2020    fiction   anthology
         75                                               Drinking Heavy Water 2020    fiction full-length
         76                                                         Final Gift 2020    fiction       story
         77                                                     Woolen Torment 2020    fiction       story
         78                                    Drums with Delusions of Godhood 2020    fiction       story
         79                                     Uncollected Anthology: Deities 2020    fiction   anthology
         80                                                     Woolen Torment 2021    fiction       story
         81                                Aidan Redding Against the Universes 2021    fiction full-length
         82                                             Fiction River: Chances 2021    fiction   anthology
         83                            Fiction River: Dark and Deadly Passions 2021    fiction   anthology
         84                                                        TLS Mastery 2021 nonfiction full-length
         85                                                     Only Footnotes 2021 nonfiction     novella
         86                                                    git sync murder 2021    fiction full-length
         87                                         The Holiday Spectacular #2 2021    fiction   anthology
         88                                 Boundary Shock: Wandering Monsters 2021    fiction   anthology
         89                                                Fantastic Christmas 2021    fiction   anthology
         90                                               Mysterious Christmas 2021    fiction   anthology
         91                                                   Witness November 2021    fiction       story
         92                                           Domesticate Your Badgers 2022 nonfiction full-length
         93                                        DNSSEC Mastery, 2nd edition 2022 nonfiction full-length
         94  Letters from ed(1): The FreeBSD Journal Letters column, years 1-3 2022 nonfiction     novella
         95                                       Fiction River: Broken Dreams 2022    fiction   anthology
         96                                                   Prohibition Orcs 2022    fiction full-length
         97                                                      Frozen Talons 2022    fiction full-length

On Tuesday, 8 November 2022, 7PM Detroit time, I’ll be giving a talk for mug.org about Rat Operated Vehicles. If the guys are cooperative, there might be a demo.

(Narrator: It’s a live talk. They will not be cooperative.)

Compared to my last few MUG talks, on topics like TLS and SNMP and other unholiness, this will be light and fluffy.

If you missed my Rat Operated Vehicle, I have a YouTube playlist. I should probably upload some more videos before the talk, though.