Chaos Program

Here’s what I hope will be a special treat for people: You can now download the full text (as a pdf) of Tree of Bones, my first novel. It’s a fantasy adventure about family, friendship and hideous undead evil. Download it. Read it. Pass it on. No charge (though small donations will be accepted).

I tried a few times to get a traditional publisher interested in publishing it. After a few (maybe more than a few) rejections, I decided to just toss it out on my website and let people read it if they wanted. That website no longer exists, though and, anyway, PDFs are more portable.

In its current form, the book is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

That means, for one thing, that I allow people to reproduce and distribute it, or even change it to suit themselves, as long as the following conditions are met:

• Distribution must be non-commercial in nature.
• I must be credited as the original author (same as on the title page suits me: “Tree of Bones by David Vandervort”).
• The book and any derivative works you make must be distributed under this same license.

None of that means you can’t ask me for more permissions, by the way. Or better yet, pay me for more permissions. But the rights described here are yours without having to ask or pay me.

The official description of this license can be found here http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/.

More information about Creative Commons licenses can be found at http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses.

Hope you enjoy the book. If you want to after you’ve read it, come back here and leave a comment. I’d like to know what you think.

Download it here: tree_of_bones

update 12/7/2009: added the link to the specific license.

Should doctors be more than medical technicians?

I’ve thought of this question several times in the last few years, most recently in connection with two emergency room visits for my mother. She complained of (among other things) a very bad headache. Early on, one doctor ordered a ct scan of her head to see if there was maybe a tumor or something to explain the headache. The ct scan showed nothing out of the ordinary.

Here’s the bit that made me start wondering about doctor education, or intelligence or something: When the ct scan came back clean, the doctors then proceeded to completely ignore the headache. It was as if, when the test showed nothing, the problem simply ceased to exist.

This is the way not-very-skilled technicians operate. People who, in the IT field (my field) would be level 1 help desk and who would probably never progress beyond that level. Example (a real one):

Me: “I have a problem with my internet connection.”
Tech support: “I’ll test the line.” (pause) “The line is fine.”
Me: “Okay but I keep losing my connection.”
Tech support: “Restart your modem and check that it’s plugged in correctly.”
Me: “I did that. The modem is fine. There’s something wrong with the connection.”
Tech support: “I’m sorry sir but the line is clean. You need to check your modem.”
Me: “Aaaaaaaaauuuugggggghhhh!”

read more »

Thanks to my job at Xerox, I had the fun and interesting experience the other day of answering some questions emailed to me by Amanda Morin, half of the Ruby team at About.com. This is new stuff to me. Some of the questions made me feel like I was doing a midterm in grad school! But the end result is not too bad, though she (probably wisely) cut my comment about scaling Java in comparison to Ruby (anyone who knows me, knows I’m other than a fan of Java).

The basic questions were about Ruby and about Cloud Computing. What do you know but 2 days after answering all those questions, I run across an article that states the obvious but little thought of idea that cloud computing may be a new thing for business but it’s old news for cyber criminals. What do you think a botnet is but a resource cloud? Wish I had seen it before! Oh well, check out the article Botnets and illicit file swapping: the original “cloud computing” and an older take at Cloud Computing: Invented By Criminals, Secured By ???

In addition to interviewing me, Amanda interviewed Hampton Catlin, who (unlike me) really knows what he’s talking about. There’s a series of articles on the subject. Go see the articles. Learn something and make it look like someone out there has an interest in what I have to say (It’s okay to pretend).

Interviews with me

• Cloud Computing and Ruby: Interviewing Dave Vandervort
• What is Cloud Computing? Interviewing Dave Vandervort of Xerox Innovation Group

Other bits of the series (also interesting, though not as much):

• What is Cloud Computing
• Cloud Computing and Ruby: Interviewing Hampton Catlin

updates

3/25/2009: Fixed bad link on “What is Cloud Computing” That was mistakenly pointing to the Hampton Catlin interview.

One of my short stories, a fantasy about a bard who gets in a lot of trouble, is now available for reading in the current issue of  Sorcerous Signals. The story itself is at http://www.sorceroussignals.com/LegendofBats.html and is also included in their first ever print anthology Mystic Signals . You can buy Mystic Signals at https://www.createspace.com/3370204 or from Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Mystic-Signals-1-Carol-Hightshoe/dp/1441453474/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232557841&sr=8-18

I sell a lot more poetry than short stories, even though I’ve been writing stories a lot longer, so it’s a big kick for me to actually see a story make it to print. The stories pay a little better too, though I’m not exactly getting rich off of any of them. Incidentally, this story is one of a sort of loose series of them I’ve been writing (and failing to sell), all taking place at around the same time. For some reason, they are all written in the first person, too. Don’t ask me what order they go in. This is the first one to be published, so it must be first! Did I mention it was a loose series?

Anyway, I hope people will read the story, buy the anthology, and leave comments here telling me what they think.

What do you think?