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Journal entries of my life as a writer. |
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This is a journal of my writing life since I joined the Writing.com community of writers. This is such a different place for me, I think it's a good idea to document my new writing adventures. |
 I'm impressed with myself. I've been working hard on my Beginning Java Programming book. I'm making short educational packets with exercises and possible solutions. I post them in the computer science section of https://www.edonyourown.com. I made these kinds of packets for my Beginning C++ Programming book and they are some of the most popular items on my website. So I figured Java packets might be popular, too. I think they might get real popular once I get deeper in because Java is used to program for Android devices. I'm still working on console applications, but I'm almost ready for the GUI programming. That should peak some interest. That's one of the advantages of Java over C++, since it feels easier to do GUI with Java. That doesn't take away from the importance of C++, though. And I find there is a lot of crossover between Java and C++. So knowing C++ before learning Java can be a plus in some areas, even though there are so many differences. So I feel it's important to chip away at concepts and make these packets that eventually add up to a book. My C++ book is my best selling book, so there is a lot of hope that the Java one will do well, too. I just need to keep moving forward. |
 I managed to get the second week of my contest closed out and posted the week three prompts. Only two people entered the contest this week, but I still consider that a success. It made it easier to judge and send out the reviews and it ended up being cheaper than last week. I tried to pick better prompts for this week in the hopes that more people will participate. I'll have to see if I can invite more people to enter the contest. I like it when the newbies enter the contest because they get really excited about winning. I announed the winner in the community forum and in the contest itself. I still want to keep the contest going. I like having it. I got invited to a contest group for people who run contests. I though that was interesting. I guess I got myself noticed. |
 Take a package of hot dogs and a package of ready to bake croissant dough from Pillsbury and wrap a piece of dough around each hot dog. Make sure to pinch and smush the edges of the pieces of dough together around the hotdogs so the dough will stay around the hotdog while it's cooking. Place the hotdogs wrapped in dough on a cookie sheet covered in foil for easy clean up. Make sure the hotdogs aren't touching. Use the directions for the croissants to cook the dough wrapped hotdogs. It might be necessary to turn the hotdogs with the dough on their sides part way through the cooking time to make sure the dough cooks evenly.Mix equal parts yellow mustard and barbeque sauce together to make a fun dipping sauce for the croissant wrapped hotdogs. Enjoy. |
April 19 Blogging Prompt for "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"  What types of things do you avoid asking for help with? I usually avoid asking for help if possible. I've found it's just better to do things on my own when possible. I run into real problems when there is no way for me to do it by myself. I cross my fingers and hope for the best customer service, but I have bad luck with that. There have been times when I have just done without, rather than asking for help. I suffer at times because of that, but I weigh the consequences and make my choices. I hope for the best and plan for the worst. |
| April 18 Blogging Prompt for "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" Describe the wackiest but most useful advice you've ever received. I don't know how wacky it is, but the advice I received was to be a life-long learner and to inspire others to do the same. I have gone back to school many times and have done a lot of self study on my hobies of website development and computer programming. I struggled to get my bachelor's degree. It took twelve years and four colleges to finally finish it off in a special program for people working full time jobs. I feel education is something people can't take away from a person. Learning is helpful and useful. It keeps the mind nimble and ready for whatever comes next in this life. |
| April 18 Blogging Prompt for "Blogging Circle of Friends " Have you ever attempted to juggle anything either literally or figuratively? What was the results? I got the Klutz book for juggling years ago. It came with three cube shaped bean bags and step by step directions to learn how to toss one bag, then two and then finally all three bean bags. It took a lot of practice, but I did finally get it. I was never good enough to move on to juggling other things. But it did make me very impressed whenever I see someone juggling. As far as juggling things figuratively goes, I've had multiple jobs simultaneously and that was quite the juggling act to keep up with all of them while I was living in the snowy mountains. I used to go from house to house having meetings with my independent study students and their families and my tutoring students. It was a lot of work, but I felt like I was making a big difference. My third job working for the college was the easy job in the bunch. It was only twice a week to teach the evening math class and then time to create the quizzes and tests and enter the grades online. I was able to get my grading done while the students took the tests and quizzes. I was proud of the work I did to help those students. |
| April 17 Blogging Prompt for "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" Who is your favorite Stars Wars character? Hans Solo is my favorite character in the Star Wars series. I like how cute he is and how laid back he is, too. Everyone else is so serious. He's the softer side of things. I just really like the series of movies and had a lot of fun watching them when they first came out. I grew up in the Los Angeles area in Southern California, where the movie world is huge. I used to take the bus to Westwood to go to the movies. They had so many movie theaters we could see any movie we wanted to see. Westwood still has a lot of movie theaters, but some have been closed down, remodled and even torn down. Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica is the new in place to hang out. It's an easy bus ride from UCLA/Westwood. Movies, movies, movies... I love watching movies. Now that we can own movies, life is even better. |
| April 17 Blogging Prompt for "Blogging Circle of Friends " What are your typical Easter celebrations, if any? I am reminded of a poem I wrote. I'll link it below the text. My family usually has an Easter egg hunt and a family dinner. We don't do anything religious for Easter. I was raised without religion because my parents were from two different religions. The decision was for us to make our own decisions about what religion we chose. I never chose one and for years, I had no idea Easter had anything to with religion. So I am more into decorating eggs and having fun than anything else. I was always happy with the time off of school around Easter time.
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| April 16 Blogging Prompt for "Blogging Circle of Friends " Write a short story or a poem whose title is a palindrome about this week. Are We Not Drawn Onward To New Era? Where are we going? We're on our way to the future. What's waiting for us in the future? It doesn't exist yet. We have to wait to see the surprises awaiting us. I want to make the future, instead of waiting for it to appear. Go ahead and blaze the trail. Find where the future hides. Hey, this is a trick. We all get to the future at the same time, no matter what we do. But you can change your own future and the future of others. How? Just helping yourself and others makes the future brighter and more wonderful. So I can't get there faster, but I can make it better? Yes. Well, I'm going to college to bidemy time until I'm ready for the future of the workplace. Excellent plan. You'll be ready when the time comes. Thanks. Maybe someone made my life better by telling me about college. Yes... Pass it on... |
| April 16 Blogging Prompt for "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" How did you make your first dollar? I was twelve years old when I got my first babysitting job. It didn't go well. And no one told me what the going rate was, so I charged fifty cents an hour. My second job where I got money was tutoring math. I needed money for gas for the car, so everyone agreed to start paying me. I charged five dollars an hour if they were paying themselves and ten dollars an hour if their parents were paying. Again, I didn't know the going rate. My first job with an actual paycheck was working as a summer camp counselor for the Girl Scouts. I got hired part way through the summer when some counselors were fired on the spot for coming into camp drunk. My friend and I saved the camp from closing down for not having enough staff. I made six hundred dollars and got one day off a week and two hours off each day. Live in jobs are interesting. I got free meals and a cot outside to sleep on. There was a shelter for my stuff and we huddled in it whenever it rained, using our tarps to shield us from the rain coming into the shelter. I guess I know about low paying jobs. |
| April 15 Blogging Prompt for "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" What should they eulogize? Write the perfect funeral speech for your own funeral. Janine has lived a full life. She has been interested in helping people since she was little. She did volunteer work with the Girl Scouts and the Delians. She helped teachers and students in school while she was growing up. She helped coworkers in the workplace at all of the places she worked. She helped customers and students. She worked as a math tutor, a babysitter, a camp counselor at a Girl Scout Summer camp, a cabin leader at an outdoor science school, an instructional assistant for a fourth grade class and at a college, receiving clerk, accounts payable clerk and a textbook buyer at the Stanford Bookstore, as well as working the sales floor, football game souvenir sales and being a cashier, she was an administrative assistant, business analyst and technical call assistant at Intel Corporation, she taught in a variety of settings while she was a substitute and fully credentialled teacher. She taught in the classroom for middle school, high school and college students. She worked one on one with students and their famies with independent study students in charter schools. She even ran an after school math study session at a private school to get the students ready for the public high school. Janine has also struggled as a stalking victim and found writing about the situation helped herself, people trying to help and other stalking victims by giving them hope and a way for them to document their situations. Janine also engages in creating a variety of educational materials to help teachers, students and patents. Many of her resources will be available long after she is gone. Even after death, she is still helping people - her life work. |
| April 15 Blogging Prompt for "Blogging Circle of Friends " Tell us about your favorite pair of shoes and where they've taken you. I really enjoy backpacking, even though I haven't done it in a while. So my hiking boots are my favorite pair of shoes. I've been to the peak of Mount San Gorgonio and over half of the John Muir Trail in the mountains in California. I went over a pass that was around 14,000 feet high and had snow on it year round. I walked over snow bridges with water running underneath that day. My mom fell through one of them. I've been backpacking with my family while growing up and as an adult with the Girl Scouts. I was a camp counselor and I took my campers up a mountain a few miles. It's an experience that has nothing to replace it. Being out on the trail in the mountains is a wonderful way to enjoy nature. Walking across a deep creek with my backpack over my head to keep it dry was unforgettable. We changed our clothes and hung the wet ones on the back of our packs to let them dry. That's also why we brought tennis shoes, so our hiking boots didn't get wet. I know backpacking is not for everyone, but the ones who have done it are glad they have the experience in their lives. Make sure you know what to pack and how to do it safely before attempting a backpacking trip. It is a very dangerous thing to do if you don't do it properly. I'll link a story I wrote about one very dangerous trip I was on with my family as a teenager.
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| Hard boil four eggs. Make a white sauce in the microwave by using a large glass container so it won't boil over. Put a cup of milk, a tablespoon of flour and a tablespoon of margarine with salt and pepper into the glass bowl. Mix in the flour so there are no lumps. Heat it on high in the microwave for one minute at a time. Stir the mixture thoroughly with a fork after each minute of heating in the microwave. Once the mixture is about double the size it started out as, then add a tablespoon of mustard and a tablespoon of worchestshire sauce. Mix well and taste it. Add more mustard and worchestshire sauce to taste. Once it tastes the way you want it to taste, then add the chopped up hard boiled eggs. Mix well. Then serve over buttered toast. This is one of my favorite meals. |
| April 14 Blogging Prompt from "Blogging Circle of Friends " Am I doing enough to help the Mother Earth? Why? Why not? What else can I do? I ride public transit all over Los Angeles county to save gas and cause less pollution in the area. Public transit has reduced the amount of pollution in the area over the past several years. We don't have brown sunrises anymore and that's a good thing. The smog was so bad, you could see it in the sky. That's pretty bad. Los Angeles county is still working on adding more trains that run on electricity, so thete's no pollution from them. The busses are running on natural gas, so that reduces pollution, too. I try to leave places cleaner than I found them, so that helps, too. I just try to do what I can. |
| April 14 Blogging Prompt for "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" If you were given a chance to know what happens in your future, would you take it? Sometimes I feel like I can see the future. So this question is difficult. I want to change the future to make it better. So I would want to know the future so I could make sure the good things happen and try to change the bad things so they just don't happen. We can always make different choices that can change the future, because it isn't here yet. There is still time to take a different path in life. I know there are some things out of our control, but there's enough that is in our control that we can make a difference. |
 It took some doing, but I got the new week's prompts into the correct location and added the contest winner into the correct location. Now I hope there are contestants for week two. The prompts are much different for the second week. I actually posted the week two prompts early, but they were hidden in a droplist. I was shocked at how hard it was to pick the winner this time around. They were good entries. So now I feel more relaxed now that I finished all of the reviews and gave out the ribbon. I made it a pink one for the Easter themed winning entry. I think I'll make it a different colored ribbon each week. Then they will look pretty next to each other in the winner listing. I feel like I'm doing good deeds with my contest. I hope the entrants feel that way. I'll just have to see how it goes over time.
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| April 12 Blogging Prompt for "Blogging Circle of Friends " What are you IRRATIONAL about? I'm not irrational about anything. Maybe it's a curse, but I try to be as rational as possible. I have to think things through logically and think of steps to resolve issues that make sense. My problem is when I need help from others to accomplish my own goals and I can't get them to do what I need done. I have lived off of the philosophy if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. But there are some things I can't do and I need someone else to do them for me. That's my most frustrating time when I can't get someone to do something I can't do myself. So I get very frustrated at times and very angry at times, but I don't get irrational. I just don't think I'm wired that way. |
| April 12 Blogging Prompt for "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" Do you feel obligated to finish all the books you start reading? Why? I don't feel an obligation to finish all of the books I start. There are books I want to finish and others I don't. Eldest is a book I started and want to finish someday. I also want to finish Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Those are books that I wanted to know what else I hadn't had a chance to read yet. But there are other books that I found to be boring and I didn't want to finish them because I just wasn't interested. I used to read romamce novels a lot and then I lost interest. I guess I just wanted more out of them. I wanted more details. But those books did keep me entertained and I got a cute set of glasses as part of a romance book club. I was trying to pick up my reading speed by reading those books and it worked. Sometimes I have to put books away for a while and then come back to them later, so some books get partially read because of things going on in my life. That's just the way it is. Some books just don't get finished. |
 I got the next set of writing prompts ready for "Invalid Item" I hid them in the dropnote for past writing prompts. On Sunday I will list them as the current writing prompts, too. Then I also have to close out the first week contest. It's right in the middle of the review raid for "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group" , so that will be interesting. At least I was able to get more worksheets posted on https://www.edonyourown.com. I have a lot of things going on and I'm even keeping up with my writing goal on https://750words.com. Well, hopefully people will like the new week's writing prompts.
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| April 11 Blogging Prompt for "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" Which Muppet character do you most identify with? I identify most with Kermit the frog because of a personality workshop I went to years ago at work. A lady came and walked us through a personality assessment and classified us into color categories. I came out with the rare green personality which is even more rare for females. Greens are innovators. They come up with new ideas for how to do things. I was working for a charter school at the time and they said it was rare that greens ended up in the world of education. I worked with the head of the school to help shape the school and things improved at that schools for the years I was there. Now I work on making resources my old school could use with the program they set up for use with low end students. I have some higher end resources, too, but most of them can be used by low end students as well. My resources help prepare students for the California High School Exit Exam which needs to be passed in order for students to graduaye. I taught a math test prep class the last year I was at the school which was a total success and almost all of those students passed the test. That felt good. https://www.edonyourown.com |
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