Author Archives: Dave

Author, blogger, thinker, developer, and all-around digital creative. Applied theatre professional. Mac enthusiast. Coffee fanatic.

So, the candidate for which I voted won. I am not under the illusion that this is a magic fix for our country’s ills. I’ve heard talk from both sides about working together. I hope that it’s true, because, until we realize that we must re-discover the art of political compromise…that this “us vs. them” thought process must be replaced by simply “us”…then substantive change will continue to elude us.

Novel Update: Power Levels and Personalities

So, I promised more updates on the novel that has been my side project for…well, I don’t want to think about how long it’s taken me to get this far.

When I last wrote an update here, I guessed that I was within 100 pages or so of having a finished rough draft. I think that’s still the case, but I couldn’t progress any further with the actual writing until I had finished the planning process. I’ve been working off of the mind-map that I had originally put together for the project, and then outlining individual sections in detail. I’m a very detailed outliner…it makes the actual writing the last step in the process, but a much easier one. So, while Karen and our daughter were out of town for the weekend, I had time to spend thinking through a couple of plot issues that had arisen, and finish the outline for the last section of the novel.

The problems that I found myself having to work through…and I’m still tinkering with solutions to some of them…is tying together the point of the whole book while staying true to my protagonist’s personality. It works, just not in the way I initially envisioned. I had to re-structure the final conflict of the novel a bit, and I’m thinking that I may still need to do some tweaking.

In doing so, I realized that I’m walking dangerously close to making my villain too powerful. She has to be pretty bad news in order to offer a big challenge for the heroes to win over, but I’ve made her power level almost too high, and now I’m trying to decide how to compensate for that. Likely, I’ll end up doing some re-writes on earlier sections and pulling back some of the wild extremes of her ability. I’m guessing that, when I look at those sections with fresh eyes, that the extremes will feel out of character in any case.

So, the end result of the weekend’s work is a completed structural outline for the final section of the novel, with almost all of the small details finished, as well. With a little luck, I’ll have the entire rough draft finished by the beginning of the year! Here’s to optimism…

Bigger Isn’t Better

Here’s the thing: I don’t complain about specifics that often here, so…indulge me for the end-of-week post, okay? Thanks.

I tend to be resistant to big businesses. I would much rather give my money to a local business, because I think that does more good for everyone. Often, I’m willing to sacrifice some convenience for that. For example, as super-convenient as it is to just purchase my comic books digitally, I still had a local shop that held physical copies of my issues for me, because I wanted to spend my money locally for them. I’m still looking for a shop since we’ve moved, but, in general, you get the idea.

Most often, I strike a balance between big and small businesses. My coffee addiction…er, habit…is a great example. I like to find local coffee shops in which to relax (I just discovered one this evening, in fact, much to my delight). For purchasing coffee at home, though, I often just go to a nearby Starbucks. There are several reasons for this: I know that they will always be open late (I never seem to realize I’m out of coffee until 8 p.m. or so), I just hold my phone up to their scanner to pay, and I get a free drink whenever I buy a pound of coffee because I’m a gold card holder.

Well, about that…

Before our move, my system went something like this: load the Starbucks card for the approximate amount of a pound of coffee, get my free drink, have some balance left over, drop by Starbucks later to treat myself with whatever that balance happened to be. I would also buy coffee from a local roaster, but I was rewarded for being a regular at Starbucks. Since moving to New England, I’ve noticed that I don’t have anything left on the card after the same purchases. At first blush, I just attributed this to the fact that the cost of living is higher in New England than in Virginia. Last week, though, I held my phone to the scanner, and was advised that I still owed a few cents. The barista handed me the receipt, and I observed that I had been charged for both the pound of coffee and the drink. I brought this to their attention, indicating that the drink should have been free because I have a gold card. I was advised that the reward program had changed, and that drinks were no longer free with coffee purchases. The trade-off (and this doesn’t compensate at all in my mind) is that you earn rewards more quickly.

So, for the past three months, I’ve been purchasing drinks that I thought I was getting for free without realizing that I was doing so.

The thing about a reward program is that it should keep me loyal to your store by giving me nifty and special advantages. You don’t just get a gold card with Starbucks, after all…you have to work up to it, and then maintain a certain level of purchases to keep it. The free drink with a coffee purchase was a huge perk for me, probably the biggest. Now, it’s suddenly removed.

Not coincidentally, it appears Starbucks is doing extremely well, of late.

There’s such a thing as getting too big. After reaching a certain point, many (if not most) companies start being confident enough in their financial success that they stop caring about their customers. Now, I know that I don’t have a head for business, but my perspective is that the point of business is to take care of the people who come to you, treat them with respect, and earn enough to make ends meet and perhaps a bit of a profit for doing so. When you become absorbed in the profits, you stop caring about the people, and your priorities are hopelessly inverted at that point.

This seems to happen to nearly all big businesses.

Fortunately, I’ve found a local shop that also roasts extremely high quality coffee. And, since Starbucks no longer rewards me for my business in a substantive way, I’ll be giving that local shop most, if not all, of my business now. I suppose Starbucks will still be handy in airports and on road trips, but they are now my second or third choice.

Because they got too big.

Didn’t the Doctor warn us about this?

Have a good weekend.