TGIO 2009

TGIO...that's NaNo speak for Thank God It's Over. November, that is. I won again this year, barely. I dropped way behind in week three and had to play massive catchup on the last weekend. Here's my stats graph (in words per day):

Yeah, I made it. Yeah, it's a complete mess. The story's not done - I'm thinking the first draft will probably be around 80k - but I can't bring myself to go back and look at it. It veered so far off course so many times that I think it's going to take a baseball bat to get it to submit.

Still have a few homework assignments left, but the semester is almost over. Today is the last day of the penultimate week, and the week after next we have finals. I still have to do two more homeworks for Software Engineering, two more for Database Systems, a homework, a group project, and the final for Internet Programming, and a worksheet and the final for Economics.

Marie and Dan are coming down to the house this weekend (yay!). They're going to stay over Saturday night and we're all going to the S&W range on Sunday. Mm, cordite therapy...

LTC Course Day

It's one of those days when I have something to post about! After getting up at 6:30 this morning, I spent all day at the Smith & Wesson Academy in Springfield, taking the firearms safety course. It was taught by a really entertaining instructor, whom I had seen at the range before but never spoken with. He was actually lively enough to keep me from falling asleep when class began at 8am.

I already knew the basic handgun safety procedures, and I was bored stiff by the "shooting" portion of things (15 students, 6 guns...need I say more?). The laws regarding firearms are what I really needed the information about, especially since even the parts I thought I knew turned out to be wrong due to some recent and rather sneaky changes to the Castle Doctrine.

Anyway, I successfully completed the course and got my State Po-sponsered certificate, and I did manage to have a good time doing it. I got an especially hearty laugh when the instructions for loading a revolver included the reminder that the bullets go in "pointy end forward."

I could drag this out, but I'm learning a new method of typing which has temporarily slowed my typing speed from 90wpm to about 5wpm. If you're really that curious, it's called Dvorak, and I heard about it through Holly Lisle.