Dieting, Upgrading, and Writing

There’s a few things I want to talk about, but before I get into some of the topics, I want to announce that in just two days, I’ll be posting an entire short story to this blog. It’s part of an anthology spanning many blogs, or as I’ve been calling it a “blogthology.” Here is the handy graphic:


I’ve been working on this fun project with my friends in the #WriteFightGIFClub community on Twitter. It is still the best online group I’ve ever been a part of. If you’re a writer and you want a nonpolitical group of people to hang out with, you should look us up. We make jokes, we’re supportive, and we encourage writing.

About 20 of us are participating in the WFGC Hotel anthology. We’re all writing different stories with different genres, with the Hotel as the binding agent linking them together. When I post my story, I’ll provide a link so you can read the others. I’ve read a couple of them and they are fantastic.

We’ve all heard the story of an orphan that’s told he’s a wizard. Or, if you’ve gone to see Shazam recently you’ve seen a story where an orphan is told he’s a hero by a wizard. My story runs along the same lines, only my orphan, Jake, needs a bit more convincing.

I’m excited to share The Reluctant Apprentice with you. I had fun writing it, and I’m sure you’ll have fun reading it.

To prepare for this posting, I wanted to do some housekeeping with my blog and my web server hardware. It’s something I’ve been needing to do for a long time. Posting the short story became a good excuse to actually get it done.

My servers are in my garage, which is fine most of the time. In the summer, however, it gets pretty hot, and the oldest server does not like the heat. Actually, it doesn’t like much of anything. I brought it up almost 10 years ago, and it was an old computer back then. It should have been retired a long time ago.

My other server is tiny, hardened, utterly silent, and better in every meaningful way. I picked it up specifically so I could get off the old wheezer. I’m happy to say that as of a few hours ago, the move is done.

It was not easy. Since this is a writing blog and not a tech blog, I’ll spare you the details. When I first checked the blog after the move, I found a couple of things broken. Links to images wanted to use plain http but the new server is using https. I believe I’ve fixed the issues with images, but there may be other problems.

Email might be wonky. I’m hoping that the people subscribed get their posts per usual, but there’s a pretty good chance email still isn’t right. I’ve cranked up the security. It’s possible I’ve ratcheted it up so tight that nothing gets out. I’ll find out in the morning!

Speaking of tightening things, I’m on the last hole of my belt. I’ve been dieting since the beginning of March and I’ve managed to lose quite a bit of weight. As of this post, I’m just under 195. My official starting weight was 211, though I’m pretty sure I was 215 when we started the diet. Melissa and I have been doing it together since the beginning, and Bryanna joined us a couple of weeks ago. All three of us have lost a bunch of weight. We’re going to all be slim and sexy by summer.

That’s it for the update. Watch this space for the story on Tuesday! It’s going to be great!