“We prohibit human rights abuses associated with the extraction, transport or trade of minerals. We also prohibit any direct or indirect support to non-state armed groups or security forces that illegally control or tax mine sites, transport routes, trade points, or any upstream actors in the supply chain. Similarly, Nokia has a no tolerance policy with respect to corruption, money-laundering and bribery. We require the parties in our supply chain to agree to follow the same principles.”

Nokia Publishes Policy on Conflict Minerals.

Ah, well do I remember the era of Cyberpunk 2020 and a world filled with corporations more powerful than governments, able to dictate laws and shape society. While I applaud a policy that has human rights at its core, I can’t help but laugh at the irony of a corporation prohibiting human rights abuses. I, for one, welcome our new corporate overlords.

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So the question I have for you, my reader, is what do you come to this blog for? If you come for information about Nortel/Avaya, what would you like to see more posts on? If you come for topics related to writing, what would you like more of? (If you come for the music links, I’m sorry =)

On Tuesday, the Authors Guild posted the following article on its blog. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in the ways in which the book business is changing, and how we reached the point where a single retailer has the power to dictate terms to publishers, and thus, indirectly, to authors and readers.

Publishing’s Ecosystem on the Brink: The Backstory

via Victoria Strauss at SWFA.org.

I can’t say it better than Victoria did, so I won’t try.

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C.S. Friedman’s The Madness Season Chapter 15.

Daetrin awakens in the Honaqa Gorge. A brief exchange between a young woman we don’t immediately recognize and Daetrin takes place, in Greek, and then Daetrin is pushed back in to unconsciousness (to facilitate healing.) The young woman (later to be named Kiri) awakens Daetrin long enough to feed him her blood, then he passes out again. He awakens again, and this time he’s stronger but still severely wounded.

… She had drawn me against her, and her offer was unmistakable. It was there in the scent of her flesh, in the pounding of her blood beneath her skin, so close against my face. I felt the last vestiges of my self-control slipping away into darkness, and I lacked the strength—and the desire—to fight for its return

Who are you?

What are you?

Why?

How many year had it been, since I had last tasted human blood? Even in the Time Before that was a rare occurrence; I would no more have forced that attention upon a woman than I would any other violent hunger. Animal blood had sufficed for me, as it did for most of my kind. And I had forgotten. The intoxication of feeding on one’s own kind. The heady flavor of human life. The feel of a woman’s body in my arms, and the heat of her blood as I drank it in—the scent of her, so very female, which awakened other hungers—the need to hold her, to drink her in, until my body shivered in pleasure, my desperate hunger reduced to mere desire. I had forgotten there was anything like this … and maybe, in fact, I had never known. What human woman could ever have given herself in this way, with so little fear of consequence?

Again Kiri and Daetrin talk. She explains the nature of the Marra and then asks him the nature of his kind. He is embodied (not Marra), she is not. There’s more, but you should read it yourself. A lot of dialogue that gives you subtle hints; Kiri seems vulnerable despite being Daetrin’s healer and protector.

Then, when Daetrin awakes, he is alone.

Terrible emptiness inside me: I convinced myself that it was only hunger, a physical yearning, and had nothing to do with my isolation. It was good to be free of fear for once, with no one to answer to but myself. No aliens to analyze, no humans to deceive, no home to worry about defending. Nothing to save, or abandon. An animal freedom, dream-pure. It was a welcome relief.

Wasn’t it?

And when Daetrin takes the form of a cat (he’s always near his original mass when he shape-shifts) and encounters Kiri, in the shape of a mountain cat.

Which is when I heard the other cat coming. I drew myself back and hissed, an instinctive reaction; hunting cats defend their solitude with vigor. But I wasn’t prepared for what bounded out at me, with such playful enthusiasm that I was knocked back onto my haunches in surprise, all my hostility suddenly deflated.

It was a mountain cat, female, smaller than myself, in that stage of life just past kittenhood. And I would like to say that I knew what it really was because my senses were so keen, or my reasoning so sound. Or because my cat-body could pick up the scent of alienness that surrounded her, or some similarly impressive accomplishment. But the truth was simply that she still had human eyes—the same human eyes—and the chestnut fur with russet tipping, that perfectly matched the shade of her human hair.

The cat psyche is a straightforward thing, infinitely simpler than its human counterpart. In it there is no conflict of id or superego, no wrestling of divergent emotions, no clouding of issues with intellectual complexity. As a man, I would have greeted her return with misgivings, any hint of happiness stifled by my concern over her nature and purpose. And alarm at her shapechanging. But as a cat I was simply glad to see her, my joy unfettered by human concerns. And I think it showed.

She padded near to where I stood, and extended her nose for perusal. I sniffed her gingerly, knowing that feline instinct was wary of any new scent. But her sent was arm, encouraging … even mildly arousing. It circumvented the biochemical channels that warned of danger and left, in its wake, an offer of companionship.

Later, after hunting, they talk again.

“You are feeling better?” she asked.

It occurred to me suddenly that she really didn’t know the full extent of what she’d done. And how could she, when even I barely understood it?

“You saved my life,” I said quietly. With as much gratitude in my voice as that one phrase could contain. And hunted with me, which no woman has done in centuries. Memories arose within me, painful and compelling. Brigid. Bianca. Yolanda. For a moment I was lost, hunting in those other times. Feeling the pain all over again, as fate took each companion from me. And the loneliness—always the loneliness.

The chapter concludes with Daetrin agreeing to follow Kiri to Suyaag, the human capital of Meyaga, once he has freed Cantona from the Priest-Marra.

Concluding this chapter, we end with the following hooks:

• Daetrin feels an emotional/sexual bond to Kiri as a result of her feeding him “human” blood, and because of her hunting with him. What’s going to happen between then?
• Daetrin commits to traveling to Suyaag with Kiri, a merging of purpose. What will this mean for Daetrin’s future?
• Daetrin commits to expelling the Priest-Marra from Cantona. Will he succeed?

Stakes: Free the Cantonan people from the Priest-Marra, learn his abilities, test himself before he proceeds with his fight against the Tyr.

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In this very short chapter, we evaluate a flashback moment. Based on context, it must be Daetrin’s POV. He’s in a church, during an era when there is a Plague.

C.S. Friedman’s The Madness Season Chapter 14.

From a purely informational basis, this page-and-a-half chapter adds nothing to the story. (Really, it doesn’t.) The narrative is historical, it presents a time in the POVC’s life when they are living in a community that has been struck by the Plague. They are trying to establish themselves within the community, and they are faced with a priest who conducts a ritual (communion and consumption of the Body and the Blood of Christ).

Informationally we are presented with:

• His mother was a priestess and oracle (possibly predating Alexandria.)
• His father was a scholar of Alexandria, trading his knowledge for acceptance (and other necessities and luxuries.)

The timing of the piece is indistinct. There’s a lot of periods when the Plague ran rampant through the world. The was an epidemic in Asia in the late 1800s that even made its way to California via Hawaii. Based on what we know, it would have had to have been late 1800s to early 1900s. The one thing I found when looking up information on the Plague is that it did not reach the same level of severity in Europe that it did in Asia— and because of the lack of specifics we can’t know where we are, or when we are.

What the timefugue does do though is set the mood. We know that Daetrin fell off a cliff and nearly died (it was possible he died, but unlikely… he is the protagonist after all.)

There are thematic similarities between the last chapter and this one. The hostile community. Daetrin’s attempts to fit in (but the conclusion of this chapter says he never fits in). The priest. The chapter moves the mood and pacing from Daetrin’s attempt to flee (and near death experience) to something more claustrophobic. In this scene/chapter, we’re not shown anything outside of the church and we’re told little more. There’s a sense of brooding danger, hidden just out of site.

I’m left with the conclusion that the point of this scene is to draw back from the fast pacing of Daetrin fleeing and transition to a lower paced scene.

Concluding this chapter, we end with the following hooks: None, this short chapter suggests that Daetrin is not dead.

Stakes: None.

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Pairing the Jawbone Prime or Jawbone 2 Bluetooth Headset to Your Cell Phone

Put your phone into pairing mode

This can usually be accomplished by going under settings in your menu and selecting Bluetooth. Follow the prompts to “find a new device.” If you are having problems, refer to your phone’s user guide.

Put your Jawbone 2 Bluetooth headset into pairing mode

The first time you turn your Jawbone on it will immediately go into pairing mode. If you need to manually put the Jawbone into pairing mode, start with headset off. Hold down the NoiseAssasin button and power on. Continue to hold down button for 2 seconds. Headset will flash red and white when it is in paring mode.

If you are having trouble with this step, try pushing in the NoiseAssassin button just a half a second before you push in the talk button.

Select device and enter in universal keyYour phone may or may not ask you to enter in a key code. If it does, the code is always four zeros: 0000

You are paired up!

via Jawbone Bluetooth Headset Pairing Guide | Headsets.com – America’s Headset Specialists.

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Mon Jan 23 at 4:00 UTC (or Sun Jan 22 at 8 PM Pacific), there was a pretty spectacular solar flare. For the next several days we’re going to see an upswing in support tickets at work. In the last 48 hours we’ve had a few systems go down, power & environmental problems, UPSs burn out. This evening I worked on a site where a VPN router went down for no apparent reason. (All signs point to the network, but everything else on the network was working and the VPN router is directly connected to the internet… It was very perplexing.)

Whenever I hear about a solar flare, I’m sure there’s going to be more tickets in the work queue. If you read the FCC guidelines carefully (read the label on the box of every piece of electronics sold in the US), it says that all electronic devices must accept interference (even if it may cause undesired operation).

This device complies with part 15 of the FCC Rules. Operation is subject to the following two conditions: (1) This device may not cause harmful interference, and (2) this device must accept any interference that may cause undesired operation.

via http://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Engineering_Technology/Documents/bulletins/oet61/oet61.pdf

And that’s what a solar flare puts out (large bursts of energy that can caused undesired operations.) In Sweden there were reports of the power grid being affected by the solar flare.

The picture is pretty, but it also means work.

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This beautiful artwork was brought to my attention by Phil Plait @ Bad Astronomy. This is the piece that Phil liked.

If you like the art, the artist is selling their work via DeviantArt. (I don’t get a commission, sadly.)

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My wife purchased a copy of the book for my Kindle as a(n early) Christmas present. The voice of the story is very strong and a lot of the dialogue says “itinerant criminal” and “minimal education.” They also use words that are intended to make them seem more educated than they are (which only further emphasizes how uneducated they are.) The best part of the writing is how self contained it is. The best part of the story is how it makes you feel sorry for the kidnappers (who you shouldn’t like, or feel sorry for.) It’s short and to the point, and amusing for the entire ride.

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