Stories

I wrote a story today. It's not good, but I think it has a weird sort of charm to it.



There once was a boy with an egg. He always had this egg, no matter what. It came with a carton full of other ordinary looking eggs, but this egg would not crack for breakfast no matter how hard he tried to break it. Tap tap tap, he went on the side of the bowl, and then on the pan and then,

Wham...

Wham...

WHAM!

It would not break on the counter. He took the egg to the garage and smash, smash, smash he went with the hammer. But the egg would not break, and so he kept it with him. Maybe it was not an egg, but only a perfect egg shaped rock. Who could tell? But it was something special.

He kept the egg with him always. For forty years he kept that egg. He had it with him when he met the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He had it with him when she agreed to go to the movies with him, when they had their first kiss.

He had it with him when she agreed to marry him. They had kids together, three beautiful girls, adorable from the moment they were born. He had the egg with him when she left him, taking the girls with her.

The egg was still with him the last time his children called him. And years later it was still with him when his parents died. When he lost his job he kept it with him while he worked around the house doing every day chores, and singing to keep his spirits up.

It was the only thing he kept when he lost the house, that and the clothes on his back.

Homeless and alone, he stopped changing clothes, and shaving. He lived wherever he could get shelter from the elements. He grew very skinny, with little to eat, and occasionally not feeling like eating even when he could. There just didn't seem very much point to it.

And so it came to pass, after forty years he sat on a corner of an empty crossroads, no where else to be, and nothing in the world but his rags and an apple he had gotten the day before from a kind stranger and his egg.

He didn't even like the egg, mind you, but what else could he do but keep it?

And so he sat there, on his fiftieth birthday, alone with his egg, when, it began to wobble, and crack, and finally to hatch. Out from inside the egg stepped a full grown unicorn! He was so shocked and surprised that he couldn't even think anything, let alone speak. The unicorn stood there silently, looking at him, and appraising him.

The two stared at each other in total stillness for an hour, before the unicorn flared its nostrils and sniffed the air. It saw the apple on the ground, ate it in one bite, savoring the delicious juices as it chomped down on it; then it turned and left.

It was still several minutes before the boy could think anything, as he was stunned into complete silence, both the apple, the egg, and now the unicorn gone. When finally he thought to himself, "So..."

"Unicorns ARE real!"

Getting Started with eCommerce

Been trying to get my stuff together to help with the commerce on my business site. I'm drowning a bit here. I don't know whether to do store software or a plugin for the Wordpress main site as is for the site. Finding the right payment gateway is a nightmare. You need a descent set of options for accepting payments, some  way to take credit card sales directly from the site, that requires an SSL, I've got that. Paypal, and Google Checkouts both have to be options. Amazon should be, but is a little harder to find support for.

As for direct credit card gateways? You're either getting high percentages or monthly fees. Monthly fees are right out, because of how inconsistent our businesses, but you have to weigh those monthly fees against the total cost of difference in overall per charge interest.

I'd love to find a book or some kind of resource talking about other people's experiences with this. I know one has to exist, this isn't dark ages. Small business eCommerce is a dinosaur now in terms of evolution. Obviously it's evolved to a modern animal, but still. I want more than I have been able to find.  I guess part of the problem is no one ever should tell you which payment gateway to use, and the vast array of options and needs is so extreme that maybe it's just not possible to tie it all together, and part of the problem is that so many of the options are incredibly worthwhile.

Anyway. I should have something workable up by the end of the month as a reasonable payment gateway, and I've really enjoyed learning about it all. I do wish there were some slightly more accessible resources available that were easy to find.

Death is the Poor Man's Doctor

I really haven't kept up with this in a while. It's a weird sort of private and not private, and I never know who has read it and who hasn't and what I can say about what I'm thinking. Everything in here is honest, but there are some things that I feel and do that I can be a little more expressive about than others. Journal status, though, I'm really enjoying my new job. I've been there almost 5 months and it's been an extremely enriching experience.

I want to spend some time talking about things that haven't changed. I'm still reading a lot. I've read four books in the last month and I feel pretty good about it. I've reread The Name of the Wind, I've read Spin, Just a Geek, and Big Jack's Dead. I am in the middle of re-reading Wise Man's Fear, and I am also in the early parts of Boneshaker. I've watched a ton of video. Most of the really big movies that have been released, many of which are so unmemorable that I couldn't even tell you all of them. I've watched most of Orange is the New Black, which is an excellent show. I've watched House of Cards, which I also enjoyed immensely, as well as the new season of Arrested Development.

I've been expressing myself musically. It's meant a lot to me, the few little songs I know on the guitar. I work hard to expand what I can do and push my boundaries. The music sounds beautiful to me, and I treasure every note that rings out from its grimy strings. I guess it's my fault they're grimy, I can have that effect. Maybe I should change them. They'd sound brighter. I'd just run my fingers up and down them all day again though, and rub off on them, and then they'd just be that way all over again so it feels a little futile till they can't hold a tune.

I guess that's just more mortality for you. I should draw more. I'd really like to draw more. And write.

Things that are new. Job, dog. It's been interesting meeting lots of new people. Lots of new people, it's pretty intimidating to me. I finally made it to a Houston Restaurant Weeks restaurant this year, and that's something I've been trying to do for a few years. It felt pretty good. I got a new desk. That was a long time coming. It was really special and took a long time to pick out because a desk is so important. And then... my chair broke. So now it's time to start working on picking a new office chair. That's something to sigh about.

I've been involved in kickstarer, and even started to reap the rewards of projects I have invested in. A lot has happened with Louisianime, it has really become something very important to me that I am proud of. I've really opened up to some new experiences all around in life.

I'm always sad when you've really invested yourself in a friendship and you get used to talking to someone every day before you notice that you're the only one calling them. You observantly notice, that if you went days without calling them, they just wouldn't talk to you, and all of a sudden you feel like a tool. There are so many nuances to that, you feel unwanted, burdensome, like a living annoyance. After that it's back to trying to moderate being as much friends with them as they are with you.

I'm going to take a week's vacation and go to California in September or October, and visit some new places.

Anyway, I'm really tired right now and it's time for me to get some sleep. I'm going to read and pass out, have a good night, world.

There's A New Member in My Family

Everyone meet Arthur Dent. He just arrived at my household yesterday and has already settled in quite nicely. He enjoys long walks around the neighborhood, cuddling in a lap to watch TV, sleeping, wagging his tail, and eating poop.

We'll see how this goes.