Anne N. Mouse: Blog

The blackberry bramble to be exact! Today most of my day was spent beating back the blackberry bramble that is only slightly more common here than the poison oak... Indeed when I see something playing the strangler vine on one of the true Oaks here (we have several members of the Querkus family here) or the pines (Sugar, Ponderosa, Digger... etc I don't think Pinion grows here....) I always suspect either one of the two, either poison oak or blackberry bramble.
Now the blackberry here is obviously a member of the rose family, at least that is what the flower looks like, I also suspect that what we really have is a black raspberry but the fruit turns black when it is ripe rather than being red..
Anyway, I've got scrapes and scratches from the briar patch that have probably (reasonably likely) have poison oak oil in them. I saw some poison oak (I was told to avoid it) directly where I was told I had to beat everything as low as possible with the string trimmer...
Anyway, I'm feeling a bit of burn from the poison oak.

I ain't sure yet. I'm sometimes feeling like a box of rox would be smarter than me when it comes to doing html!
I expect in part it is that I'm just not used to it and haven't built the connections between the terms (I guess you'd maybe call them terms) that the language uses to perform certain actions and those terms. In other words, just as when writing a quotation requires both an opening quotation mark and a closing quotation mark to be complete, so to does each action in html require an opening 'statement' telling the computer to mark something a certain way and a closing 'statement' telling the computer that whatever you started a while ago is done....
So I suppose what I need is lots more practice to get to the point that I can read a 'script' and tell what is missing to cause it not to work the way that I wish it to work....
Maybe I'm starting to make some connections, and I'm almost as bright as a box of rox in a dark basement?

I made my goal today of thoroughly reading the TOS for Free Code Camp. Let me say they amazed and refreshed me. To understand why I'm going to provide the web address for them. It is here: https://terms-of-service.freecodecamp.org/
Now for a brief overview from me: This is the first set of TOS that it took me less than an hour to read. Considerably less really. The first reason for this was that they weren't dense with legalese to the point of requiring a JD to read and three other (at least) JDs to interpret! The second is that I doubt they total much more than 1500 words, this too is refreshing as a great number of TOS agreements seem to want to bury you in words if they can't flummox you with dense and obtuse language.
Third, though it pretty much goes without saying, I could understand the TOS. They seemed to have chosen the clearest words possible to get their meaning across. I could go on I suppose, but now I'd best do two things. First I need to get some breakfast, then I need to get a shower.... :P~ Tmi?

When I write fiction, well really anything, I often wonder if I've missed catching the audience's attention. Sometimes I get feedback, like on some of the stuff I've posted lately has gotten the reaction: What the heck was this? Some of it was experimental, some of it got a different reaction. I got some seriously low scores, yet got feedback from some who liked the same story.
I'm not worried about whether or not people liked the 'subject' so much as whether those who would read get to the first thousand words (heh! a good reason for writing flash, vignettes, and drabbles!) and give up because they feel they might as well be reading a badly done instruction manual...
Now where was I going with this?
Oh yeah, do I ever write stuff that leaves my audience thinking: Ghadddd that is drier than the Sahara in the middle of summer?
Have a good day,
TJ

I think that pretty much describes me these days. After all here I am trying to learn a little, or more than a little about coding and finding the going rough. Why? I'm fighting a whole flock of internal fears that have beset me and caused me to slow to a stop in essence.
One is spending money on anything at this point. After all if I don't do well it would be just that much more good money (which I have very little of) after bad. And I don't have to be anything except a technical nincompoop to run a shovel. That is a pretty low tech piece of equipment. Of course I'm getting long in the tooth and not picking up those jobs (not that I really seemed to pick them up with regularity anyway) any longer, so I'm pretty much facing life of starvation on the mean streets that only want to see me dead if my estimation of the way life looks is correct.
Bah I shouldn't be so depressive. Tell that to someone else. The only thing that keeps me from the codine bottle is the fear that I would only get half way to dead.