noise."Story Notes and a Bonus! · 12:13am Sep 25th, 2017
Coming soon--a new story! Which I hope will give you a few chuckles.
Y'see, like most authors (I presume), I often have little snippets of ideas that go through my mind, or little bits of dialogue. Some of them are for a story; sometimes I'm turning a little bit of dialogue around in my head or a particular scene, or something like that, and I come up with a little bit of dialogue.
Those are the best, because I know where it's going to go, one day.
And then there are the other times where I get a little bit of a scene idea, or one little random quote that I feel like I need to use. However, I don't have a story to use them in.
On some, rare occasions, it's such a brilliant idea that it's worth forming a whole story around, but usually it's just such a minor thing that it would work as the punchline of a joke, or for one moment in a larger fic, but it can't stand on its own.
Just the same, I dutifully write them down whenever I can. Or lately, since technology is everywhere and notepads aren't always, I just send myself a text.
Like, here's an example: "Truckload of 'free' signs."
I was test driving a car, and went by a house that had had something set out front that was free. Whatever it was, it was gone, and all that was left was a sheet of poster board on a stick with "Free" sharpied on it. And I had this image of a pony in a truck (probably Lyra) with the back filled with signs that said "Free," and her trying to explain to Bon Bon why she'd taken them all.
That, in and of itself, doesn't really make for much of a story. But it could certainly be worked into a story where Lyra and Bon Bon are somehow transported to Earth, and where Lyra eventually winds up getting her hooves on a pickup truck to go exploring Earth.
Perhaps one day I'll use that little mental image, but for now I have no story where it might fit.
Among the random little snippets that come to mind occasionally are bits for clopfics. Usually where things go badly wrong, which probably says something about me, but let's just ignore that for now. Maybe it's just my weird sense of humor.
In fact, I was going to write a clopfic where the hapless protagonist hooks up with all the Mane 6 and things don't go well for him, but I never really found myself that invested in the idea, other than plotting out the basic premise of the chapters. Somewhere I've probably still got notes for that, but as it happens I remembered two of them and you're gonna find them in here.
I probably wouldn't have really thought of doing a bunch of short, not exactly complete stories, except that I was recently reading FuzzyFurvert's collection Fuzzy Fluffy Fables where he had three four short chapters of SciTwi trying to flirt, badly. Very badly.
I can't claim that they're original; one of them was mentioned in an epsode of the Mentally Advanced series, and another one already came up in one of my published fics, although this time I did it in a slightly different way.
I also had to do some research on dourine, an equine STD. It's not fatal, but it's also incurable, although I suppose the ponies would have invented a cure for it by now. I'm not sure if it can actually be transmitted to humans (I didn't do that much research).
Lucky for y'all, that chapter isn't one of the ones that's going to be in the first release.
I can't remember why I chose the cover art, except that it was kind of suggestive and also funny. Thus far there isn't a chapter where Trixie and Starlight Glimmer wind up tied together.
It does bring back memories of one of Present Perfect's stories where two ponies were glued together, although if I remember correctly, it was Flufflepuff and Rainbow Dash.
At first, I was going to see if I could have all the chapters be under 50 words, but some of them just didn't work out that way.
I could probably make some of them a bit longer, and add a bit more detail if my readers really wanted that, but I think it's probably better to have them all be quickies.
Anyways, I hope you get a chuckle out of it. I don't know how many chapters it'll ultimately be; I've probably got at least ten more stories worth of ideas.
If you've got something you'd like to see--either a pairing or an unfortunate event, feel free to comment or PM me, and I'll consider putting it in.
I've covered in previous blog posts about how my manager is sometimes an idiot.
Well, here's another fine example: last Thursday, another guy and me were putting a new cooling fan on a police cruiser. When we got the assembly out, we discovered that the nut you're supposed to hold on the fan motor is an eight point nut.
I have exactly one eight-point socket (they're not exactly common), and as luck would have it, it was the right size for the nut. However, the socket walls were too thick for it to fit in right.
So I asked him if he had a 3/8" drive half-inch or 13mm eight point socket.
He said that he didn't, but he had a twelve point, and that should work.
I said it wouldn't.
He insisted it would, because both twelve and eight are divisible by four, and I should have learned that in second grade.
Obviously, it didn't.
I'm thinking of cutting three squares out of paper and giving him a visual aid tomorrow. I'm not sure it's worth the effort, but I'm really tempted.
I know this will be a familiar feeling for you, but I am continually amazed that your boss actually still has a running business despite his invincible stupidity.
With the info we have, I can only attribute that success to the people like yourself who have the ability to reset your daily patience level for working for him.
You know why a pony that takes care of sick ponies all day is called "Nurse Redheart," right?
static.flickr.com/3334/3601714698_67bfb1efb2.jpg
"We gotta tell 'em! Tell everypony!..."
facepalm is pretty much the only way to properly respond. Just, wow. I don't even know how to process that.
I had much the same micro-fic bursts of inspiration when writing Changelings, Love and Lollipops, like what would happen if Pinkie visited the hive:
A small group of changeling survivors gathered on a nearby hill to watch the erupting volcano that had once been their home. Giant plumes of pink lava shot skywards, raining flaming chunks of molten rock around the ground as the earth trembled beneath their hooves.
“Just for one day, you said.” The changeling queen turned to the suffocating changeling she held by the neck and shook him. “What harm could it do, you said.”
4677760
That is exactly why stupid bosses succeed and get promoted. They have a small group of dedicated, knowledgeable people working for them that care more about the work and doing it well than trying to fight the boss all the time. Bosses like that always leave after a while. Just not soon enough!
4677760
Well, he's got a few advantages:
t.
1. He doesn't own the shop, he just manages it.
2. He is a good mechanic.
3. I respect the actual owner enough to put up with the manager's bulls
He's also an okay salesman. Possibly better than I am, to be honest.
One big advantage is being able to make fun of him online. That counts for a lot.
4677784
Huh, that's a new one.
4677791
It's pretty funny, to be honest. I mentioned it to RobCakeran when we were hanging out at his place on Friday, and he started laughing uncontrollably.
4677795
You should totally collect them and make a fic of them. I mean, why not?
4677838
Hell, that's why government works half the time. The elected/nominated officials are idiots, or got the job because they were ardent supporters of the party in power, but the workers under them actually care about their jobs and the people they're working for, and do the best that they can.
Exactly! I spent a number of years working for a multinational company that often hired real idiots as managers (although occasionally they'd accidentally pick a winner), and I usually outlasted them.
4677856
It works the same way in civil service. I've been there for nearly 14 years and it hasn't ever changed. It's a interesting as it is frustrating.
But at the end of the day, I still get paid, even if it makes no sense at'll.
Sounds like a verse to an Irish drinking song. Which makes even more sense given what we're discussing.
4677885
Yeah, and that does help. When I'm comparing the merits of the job to the downsides, "I get paid" is pretty high up on the benefits list. Plus I've been there for nearly ten years, and most of our customers know and like me, which is also nice.
4677844 Well it's good to hear that you're seeing positives around that situation.
4677907
I'll admit, it's not as much fun to blog about things he doesn't screw up.
4677849 Like Thoughtletts?
4677914
Exactly like that.
I hate to tell you just why your boss is still your boss... But hey. You should know.
America has fallen in love with sales and marketing.
Whether you can actually do something well in the real world, isn't really relevant.
It's all about how well you can convince someone else that you know what you're doing--and then get the real expert to do the work.
Sorry 'bout that, but the liars and story-tellers run the show now.
I'm not a big fan of the art style, but this remains one of my favorite Lyra/Bon Bon comics: https://johnflaherty.deviantart.com/art/Don-t-Ask-431486868 . Have you seen it before?
Your manager had the right concept, just applied it backwards. It needed to be the least common multiple that matched the nut (i.e. Compatible sockets would need to be a multiple of eight and of the right size to fit). So close, but we would have still given partial credit for the "it was almost right" aspect.
I'm intrigued... I like seeing the process of forming a tiny little idea snippet into something more.
Something about covering sickness/dourine though: I did a lot of research on equine diseases when building a Plague Inc. pony scenario a little while back. Lot's of awkward story potential of course, since it's exclusively sexually transmitted. It's rather severe though with many nasty symptoms. Dourine has a fatality of 50%-70%, although reaching the end stage may take anything between four weeks and 10+ years. Depends on the infected individual and the strain of parasite.
Factsheet on Dourine from Iowa State University
Better have the ponies come up with a cure and or vaccine.
4678016
Unfortunately, that's quite true. I really ought to work on that and I could probably get a job that I'm not remotely qualified for.
4678100
Yeah, exactly. As far as I know, there is no sixteen point socket, but if there was (and if it was the right size) it would have worked; likewise, a 24-point socket would have also worked, and so on.
A twenty-four point socket would also be the smallest one that would work on both eight-point and six-point bolts.
4678252
Fair warning, for most of these it's just the idea snippet and not much more.
I really ought to do a process blog for something short; the problem is that I usually do most of that work in my head.
If it was something that ponies could get, they probably would have a vaccine, or at least a cure for it.
It might not have been the best choice of pony STD, and I may yet change it. Then again, I can't imagine that there are too many people who are familiar enough with it to know the actual mortality rate, or for that matter whether it can affect humans or not (I honestly don't know).
Interestingly, knowing what I did about the disease did cause a minor change in the story: originally, the protagonist was going to get it from Mayor Mare, but I figured that anyone who did know about the disease would then be feeling some bit of sympathy for her instead of enjoying our hapless protagonist's misfortunes. So he got fleas instead (and yes, I do know that equines generally don't get fleas, but they can).
I just had a very strange thought.
A four-sided socket would work to turn an eight-sided nut, if such a socket existed. I'm fairly sure it doesn't.
In fact, a three-sided socket could turn a six-sided nut.
I'm going to become absurdly wealthy selling gag-gift tools that actually work...
4691956
They do, although they're not very common. I don't have any.
In automotive use, square fasteners are really uncommon, although not entirely unheard of. Things like fan mounting nuts on radiators are oftentimes square (they're captive nuts, though).
The downside to your idea is that the limited contact area would most likely just round the fastener you're trying to remove. That's why it's generally preferable to use a socket with the same number of points as the fastener. 12-point sockets are notorious for rounding off six point nuts.
Also, you're a bit behind the time with your three-point socket idea. IIRC, newer Ram pickups have a three-point fastener on their door latches.
4691985
Dagnabbit!
No matter how crazy-stupid I go, the world is always ahead of me!
4691992
There are already too many different styles of fastener. The world doesn't need more of them.