This amazing video caught lightening striking three of Chicago’s tallest buildings at the same time.

Some days I hate that I have to coerce myself into productivity. There are so many little tricks I’ve seen to do it, such as Merlin Mann’s (10+2)*5 hack.  One trick to avoid distraction I’ve come up with is what I call the “24-hour To Do Queue”. It’s a MacGuffin, as there is nothing to it but a little psychological manipulation.

I use the trick to help me stay focused on the task at hand when I have a strong desire to goof off instead. I keep a piece of paper next to my keyboard. When some random thing comes to mind that will distract me from what I need to get done, I write that random thing down in the queue. I also write down anything that is useful, but also a distraction *at that moment*.

So by the end of the day I may have a list like this:

• Check out what Megadeth is up to.
• Research Happy Days “Jump the Shark” episode.
• What’s going on with the Principality of Sealand?
• Learn more about oAuth.
• Research home inventory software.

The next morning, when I’m reviewing my tasks for the day, I pull out the 24-hour To Do Queue.  I can see that “Megadeth”, “Jumping the Shark” and “Sealand” were momentary flirtations but “learning oAuth” and “home inventory software” are worthwhile tasks. I move the worthy items to my real to do list. I discard the useless tasks and start a new queue for the day.

The trick is that by writing down these frivolous tasks, I’m essentially giving myself “permission” to do them, just not right now.  Tomorrow I’ll know better and ignore thme], but they are written down where I won’t “forget” about them.

This year for my Groundhog Day Resolutions, I’m taking an idea from Chris Brogan. Each year, Chris uses three words to guide and direct his focus for the year. For me, I chose these three words:

• Deploy
• Serve
• Connect

Deploy

I’m full of good ideas. Have I ever told you I invented XML back in 1994? Too bad I never did anything with the idea; I could be rich like Al Gore after he invented that Internet thing.

I have these great ideas, but often don’t deploy them into the development stage. Those I do develop often languish in the last 10% of completion. I don’t deploy them into the wild. I think they stay there because I don’t like to ship imperfection, and it’s always imperfect.

How arrogant.

It’s better that I deploy something not quite right than to never deploy at all.

The story of Flickr is pretty interesting and relates to this, I think. The founders of Flickr, it’s said, were working on an online game. One of the features they created was a way for players to share photos with their friends. The photo sharing piece got such rave reviews by the players that Flickr became what it is today. The game? Discarded.

Had the team built their game and not deployed until it was perfect they would have their big opportunity.

So for me: I need to focus on deploying. It doesn’t matter whether it is a code project, website redesign or blog post; I need to ship earlier than I do now. Or, I need to ship. Period.

Serve

The church we attend here in Indiana does a Weekend of Service each fall. The doors of the church are closed and services are cancelled. The congregation goes out into the community and serves. The impact is amazing, both to the community and those who have served. I want to focus more on serving others; both outside and within my family. It is important to spiritual balance and well-being. It’s an example I want my boys to see and participate in.

Connect

In the next few months, we will be leaving Indianapolis and moving to Chicagoland. It’s a big step for our family just as it was a big step moving to Indy two years ago. There are many new things for us: New schools and friends for the boys, a new territory for my wife, and a new marketplace for me. It is primarily about meeting new technology partners, networking, and getting to know the community in which I’ll be working. In Indianapolis, it took nearly two years for my connections to start paying dividends in the form of referrals. I would like to reduce this time in Chicago. Surely, they can use a good freelancer there!

We also need to connect into a church, community, and neighborhood. We are moving to Chicago for the long term and I want to make sure we’re embedded and get to know those around us. I’ll be looking for ways to connect with others in my neighborhood, community, church and marketplace.

The specific goals

I read an interesting blog post at the Church of the Customer. Ben McConnell writes about creating a 1-page strategic plan in the form of an info graphic. He believes this allows you to visually see the Objectives, Goals, Strategies and Tactics that will move you forward. In the next few days I will create my strategic plan for "Deploy / Serve / Connect". These will then translate into Groundhog Day Resolutions I can monitor.

You can follow a special Twitter account I’ve created to document my successes: @2010_3words

I was reading about The Writing Practice over at Chris Brogan’s blog. It’s about how he takes little snippets of time where ever he is to do a bit of writing. (He calls that time quilting. Clever.)

One piece of advice he has there about writing practice is this:

Publish often. Another place where our practice falls down is that we keep tons of drafts of things around, but never publish. Here’s the truth: If it’s not out there, it doesn’t count as much. (Journal keepers, I don’t mean you. Put down the purple pitchforks.) Get your work out there onto the web, onto blogs, into the hands of other people, whatever. Get it out there. The more you publish, the more people will take swings at it, the more people will riff off it, the more you’ll get the chance to get feedback.

This fits perfectly into one of my 3 words for 2010: Deploy(). If I don’t get it out there, it doesn’t count. So this is getting posted right now. As is. Even if this post is 90% Chris’s content ;-)

Last weekend I attended GenCon with my 12yo son (his first time at GenCon – w00t). Despite his youthful enthusiasm for all things merchandise, he humored me and sat in on a panel session for a full hour. Thanks, bud!

"Chummers and ‘Mechs and Writing for Catalyst" was the panel we attended. It was led by Hugo-nominated author John Helfers and the editor of Catalyst Game Lab’s long fiction. He was joined by an esteemed panel of game and fiction writers from Catalyst.

The panel covered what they are working on for the Shadowrun and Battletech lines and offered advice for authors that want to write for these games.

Meet your deadlines

Meet your deadlines, meet your deadlines, meet your deadlines. This statement was the leading comment by the panel. Your deadlines affect product schedules and could mean your fiction will be cut (and by association, so will you). Be on time: meet your deadlines.

Read good fiction

Reading good fiction lets you see what good writing looks like and what mistakes to avoid.

Know the universe

Creating fiction in a known universe can be tricky. Consistency is important because the readers expect the story universe to operate in certain ways. This applies both to the tone and style of writing and the history and technology of the universe. Changing fundamental technologies or timelines won’t fly with the editors.

Writing for a game is not a hobby

While RPGs are a hobby for most people, writing for the RPGs is not. It is a career and should be handled as such. Be professional, and remember: meet your deadlines.

You are writing in a shared world

Because Battletech and Shadowrun are shared game universes, your need to tread lightly there. If an editor requests changes to a character or plot point, be flexible. Editors know the facts better than you. They also know where the product lines are headed. One writer’s first story went through 9 edits before publishing, so be prepared.

Find the little details and extrapolate

It may be tempting to write on the bleeding edge of the universe. When you first get started, find somewhere off the beaten path to write. The primary characters of the universe have already been plotted for new products.  There are many "throw-away" statements in source books that can make a great starting point for your story. Extrapolate those little details into something interesting. Readers of Battletech and Shadowrun fiction love to see the lives of everyday people in the universes they love.

Be encouraged

Shadowrun covers a 60-year time span and Battletech covers a millennium. This can feel overwhelming to those less familiar with the history, but authors should be encouraged by this statement: RPG material is written in a way to help tell stories. Gaming is a story-telling activity just like writing.

Avoid clichés

Each Catalyst universe has been developed for years and each has developed its own clichés. An example given was Johnsons (business people) double-crossing the runners they hired in Shadowrun. Learning what is considered cliché and writing outside of that give you a better chance of success.

(Note: I would have liked for the panel to expound on what things were considered clichés in each universe, but time prevented them from doing so.)

BattleCorps

BattleCorps is the online fiction site for Battletech. At this point they are desperate for fiction to meet their desired quotas. This is good news for those who want to break into Battletech fiction.

Word Length

For most pieces of fiction used by Catalyst there is a word length requirement. Authors should write in the 5- to 10-thousand word range. Also know that some word limits are very strict. Even a dozen words over and it will be returned for editing.

Finally

I’d like to thank author Jean Rabe, who I understand coordinates the writer’s symposium that takes place at GenCon. I only wish I had been able to attend more sessions.

I got tagged on Facebook to fill out 25 random things about me. So here they are in a non-prorpietary location.

1. I tried avoiding this meme, but 3 people have tagged me, so I’m going to fill it out to get it over with. I’m going to be anti-social and not retag others, though. Neener neener! I’m really going to make these as random as possible, too.
2. I wink with my left eye… it’s my non-dominate eye.
3. I used to sing "The wheels on the bus" to our youngest son after changing him, and I’d swing his legs back and forth when I did the "wipers on the bus go swish, swish, swish".
4. I used to have long hair but shave the sides. My friends hated having to help me out with that one.
5. There was a pond by a house in our neighborhood. We used to trespass there and catch tadpoles and crawdads.
6. My dad built this cool fort for me, but my friends and I found and fixed up a cool tree fort in the woods instead.
7. I have this amazing capacity to call people randomly when I put my iPhone in my pocket. Therefore only my sister and my wife are on the speed dial anymore. Once I called my boss from a beach in Tampa. He wasn’t so pleased to hear how nice it was there.
8. On a flight back from France, I sat in the back of the plane and filled soda cans with the fluid from a lighter and lit it off. Methinks that wouldn’t go over too well these days.
9. Chris and I picked up our friend Deron at his house one summer day and drove into town (something like 12 miles). Deron commented that it was hot in the car, so we rolled up the windows and cranked up the heat. By the time we got to Subway, the keys were so hot I couldn’t get them out of the ignition.
10. I always hated the big box of misfit crayons but I could never keep my crayons in good enough order that they didn’t eventually end up in there.
11. I have a painting of a duck that I always hang above the toilet. I have done so ever since I got said duck painting from my uncle, who had it hanging over his commode.
12. I consider all colors of Silly Putty unholy versions of the One True Pink. I’d rather have no Silly Putty than colored.
13. One of my favorite things to do as a kid was pull out the big old dictionary my mom had and look at the list of first names it had in the back and use them for characters in stories.
14. I used to love finding random junk in the parking lot of the window factory next to my house growing up. Later, in college, I used to collect random plastic blobs from the dumpster at the plastics plant I worked at.
15. One day I asked my roommate Tom if I could borrow his pen. He gave it to me and I used it to stir my coffee. For some reason he didn’t want it back after that. I think I took the bigger risk of contamination on that one.
16. As a small child, I wanted to be a garbage man when I grew up so I could watch the garbage truck scoop all that garbage. As a small child, I decided this from inside the house where I could not smell the garbage.
17. Having wondered how my parents always knew what I was doing around the corner, I take great delight in using sounds, shadows and reflections to deduce what my children are up to.
18. While the events leading up to my sister falling through ice were reckless and irresponsible of me, I thought the handling of the events immediately following it were pretty heroic.
19. Sometimes when I’m walking through the house when no one else is home, I pretend I’m in the Matrix and practice all my cool shooting moves.
20. The best New Year’s party I ever went to was the one where we slid down the stairs headfirst.
21. One time, after getting yelled at by the Vice President of Interior Design (I’m not making that up), I spend an hour reorganizing all the chairs on the 3rd floor so they were in their correct location based on stickers on the bottom of each chair.
22. One of my most valued possessions is the Zippo lighter Joe bought for me on my 20th birthday. I don’t ever use it anymore, but it still means a lot to me.
23. When I was 8, I asked for a birthday cake that had double the regular frosting. Unfortunately, it was also a Dukes of Hazzard cake and the red dye of the confederate flag made it inedible.
24. My favorite Sesame Street Character growing up was Oscar the Grouch. My kids would contend I took his example way to seriously.
25. I once spent an afternoon playing in an Ag Lime pit. I thought my mom was going to kill me when she found out (assuming the Lime didn’t do it first). She made me throw away my favorite pair of jeans which I had been wearing that day.

(A guest post by my wife…) 

It was a cold January Morning. The family was sittin’ down for some vittles before the day began. The smell of freshly cooked bacon filled the air. Steam rose from the pancakes that were hot off the griddle. The table was set. The orange juice was poured. The woman arrived with something the boy had never seen before – a fried plantain. It looked like a banana, smelled like hash browns and clearly had salt and pepper on it. The boy sat back, folded his arms across his chest and with great determination said, “I am not eating that.”

The woman replied with equal determination, “ You will not be excused from the table until you do.”

The  boy scratched his chin and thought..

Time froze.  You could hear the clock tick in the background.  You could feel the tension.  You could hear the ole Western Whistle in the background (like the music done by the Spaghetti Western Orchestra or Clint Eastwood’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly).

IT WAS TIME FOR A SHOWDOWN! (Please play music if you have not already done so.)

9:41 AM (Already 20 minutes into breakfast)

“I will sit here until bedtime but I am not eating that!,” the boy said with true grit.

“That is fine. Then sit we will,” said the woman with steely eyes.

9:51 AM

The boy is starting to break. He looks to lay down on the chair next to his. A white hat man helps the woman by taking the chair away. There will be no mercy shown to the boy.

“I will sit here until school starts or I have to go to the bathroom,”  grunts the boy.

“That is fine and we will do nothing else until you eat that plantain,”  the woman holds firm.

10:21 AM

The boy flinched a couple of times but held firm. The woman respected the determination of the boy.  He held firm.

“There is no need for you to be stubborn about this,” goads the woman.

“I am a man of my word. I will never eat that!” the boy states with honor.

The woman suppresses her laugh. He is besting her and that must not happen. She regains control.

“Changing your mind is not a lapse of integrity,” she offers.

“You will not trick me.” He digs in even further.

10:30 AM

The woman sees him waning. He is whining. He has fought valiantly. She will WIN!

Then like a fiery Phoenix he rises…

“I am more stubborn than you!” he yells.

“I don’t doubt that!” she scoffs. This kid is good. She is starting to wonder how long he will last.

Silence reigns. Tick tock, tick tock.

10:43AM

The boy’s brother walks in and assesses the situation. He knows this is not good. With his key negotiating skills he says to the boy,”Stop being stupid and eat the plantain so we can play Lego Batman.”

The boy hops off his chair, pops the plantain in his mouth and muscles through it. The woman checks to make sure he swallowed the plantain and the two brothers galloped across the kitchen into the sunset.

While she may have won this round… She knew he would be back…

Author’s Note…

Seriously, I wish I would have had a big brother to talk some sense into me. My showdown with my dad over a hard boiled egg lasted 3 days! I wonder where the boy gets is from. I have to run… My acting lesson today put me an hour and a half behind schedule.

We ate our Thanksgiving dinner on Friday afternoon.  My in-laws traveled up from Tennessee after spending a week visiting other relatives there. After two days of turkey – and despite The Wife’s fabulous cooking – they opted against turkey dinner leftovers for a third night in a row.

They offered to take us out to dinner, so we started the laborious process of figuring out where to go. We narrowed down to two choices and finally decided to try Loon Lake Lodge on 82nd and I-69.

After finishing our dinner, we returned to the car only to find the passenger window on the driver’s side smashed in. The Wife’s laptop and my son’s school backpack were gone. The car parked next to us had its passenger window smashed. They lost a purse. Fortunately, it was a smash-and-grab, so the thief missed other valuables. The other people had a camera and laptop in their backseat, and my oldest son’s PSP and my FLIP were also in the backseat of our car but weren’t taken. 

We asked the manager at the restaurant to call the police for us. He was sorry it happened to us, and indicated that this had happened before in their parking lot: THE NIGHT BEFORE! My neighbor ate dinner there this summer and both of his coworkers’ cars were broken into and their property stolen.

I understand our personal responsibility in this; we should not have left valuables visible in the car. I also understand that the restaurant can’t be responsible for damages caused in their parking lot. At the same time, however, I think they should take some ownership to protect their clientele.

The parking lot is dark and deserted. Better lighting and cameras would deter thieves. Hiring a security person would also protect cars from vandalism. The management knows this is a problem but they don’t seem to care. They didn’t even try to win us back by offering gift certificates or a cold drink while we waited for the police.

I wasn’t  sure I would eat there again. After the break-in I definitely won’t eat there again and I would warn others not to eat there as well.

We should have gone to our other choice – Stone Creek Dining Company – instead.

Remember those days when you tried to impress the person with whom you were dating with your witty remarks and clever anecdotes? Remember how you’d open car doors, use manners and wear pants? Ahh, fun times, fun times.

In those days, I too was trying to sell my future wife a bill of goods. We were already engaged that fateful day, but I still kept to my best behavior at all times. It was especially true the weekend we were visiting my parents. Those moments were always stressful when your fiancee evaluates your parents’ every idiosyncrasy. I thought it best we leave the house and get a little break. We went downtown to shop on Main Street.

Eventually, we found ourselves in a homemade gift shop. While I stared aimlessly out the front windows of the store, The-Wife-To-Be perused the inventory.

“Oh, these are cute,” I heard from behind me. When I turned to look, what I saw was so terrible – so horrible – I could barely stifle my gagging reflex. She held two porcelain bears decked out in Pilgrim outfits. They were the perfect Thanksgiving couple except for one thing: they had DEMON EYES.

She asked what I thought of them. I mumbled something incomprehensible and nodded in an attempt to be supportive. I silently hoped she would move on. Instead, I heard the five worst words: “I’m going to buy them.”

The little old lady running the store carefully wrapped the bears in paper and tucked them into a bag. As I carried the spawns of Satan to the car, the bag got heavier and heavier with the realization the bears would grace our dinner table each Thanksgiving for the rest of my life. Their wicked painted eyes would stare at me over the turkey and taunt me for not putting my foot down. Still, I didn’t want to hurt her feelings and I put them in the trunk.

When we got back to her house I offered to take the bears to the basement and store them until Thanksgiving. I found a dark corner and tucked the bears behind a box hoping they would be forgotten.

Time passed.

Three years later she re-found them. We were cleaning when she discovered them still wrapped in the bag.

“Why on earth did I buy these?” she asked. She turned the bears to show me. Their evil eyes caught mine.

“You thought they were cute,” I replied and took a cautious step back.

“Why didn’t you stop me?”

I took another step back – this time from her. I mumbled something incomprehensible and shook my head. Our marriage would never be the same after that moment: we both knew I failed to protect us from these cutesy demon bears. She stuffed them back into the bag and told me I could get rid of them.

But something else stirred in me – a mischievous need to “get her back”. Get her back for buying them, I guess.

One night close to Thanksgiving, I slipped the bears under her pillow and cackled to myself. I waited until she climbed in bed and reached under the pillows. She felt them underneath and pulled her pillow away to see what the lumps were. A startled scream echoed from the bedroom when she saw their fiendish stare.

I laughed myself to sleep on the couch that night ;-)

I have found a way to surprise my wife with the bears each Thanksgiving since. One year she found each of them buckled into the front seats of her car. Another year they were staring at her from inside the refrigerator when she open the door to get some creamer. She even found them waiting for her in the shower in a creepy Psycho-like moment.

Last year when she was working out of Indianapolis and we still lived in Wisconsin, I shipped the bears to her office. Inside the box was a note: “I know you’re lonely down there by yourself. I thought these guys could keep you company.”

Happy Thanksgiving from us and the demonic Pilgrim Bears!

Kyle Lacy and Lorraine Ball have compiled their lists of the Top 50 Indianapolis bloggers. Unfortunately, since I’m a pretty lax blogger I didn’t make either of their lists; at least, not this year. So, for 2009, I’m going to make it my goal to get on their lists of bloggers. Lorraine’s list will be a bit trickier, as I’m not just competing with her Indianapolis blog picks, but those around the world.

Lorraine’s list can be found at her website Roundpeg: My Top 50 Blogs

Kyle’s list can be found on KyleLacy.com: Top 50+ Bloggers in Indianapolis