Something’s Going On …

The Internet has been acting strangely today, and the Internet Health Report confirms it. The following is a screenshot from that website, taken at about 2:00 PM MDT, showing that several major Tier 1 providers are experiencing excessive latency.

Internet Health Report
No one seems to be posting anything about it yet, that I’ve seen, but there was a little buzz last week about Netsky.AG. Symantec seems more concerned about Narcs and MyDoom.AF at the moment, so it’s really tough to tell what’s happening. Fat pipes in San Francisco and New York seem to be the most affected, with latencies of over 240 ms.

It will be interesting to see what shows up on the news, if anything.

It’s a sale!

I’m pleased to announce that I am in the first stages of a non-fiction sale to a small computer magazine. The article is a short feature, and after querying the editor, I received an assignment to write the article!

This is very exciting for me. It’s an appropriate small step toward my goal of being a fiction writer. As Stephen King says in On Writing, it’s important to pay your dues before you really start to climb in the writing field. It gives you perspective and experience.

Of course, this is still in the early stages, and all kinds of things could happen. I could write the piece and the editor could decide that it doesn’t fit the magazine’s style. Or something drastic could come up and I could miss the deadline. Or something really drastic could come up that could force the editor to rethink the entire editorial schedule and my story would no longer fit. As they say, it’s not done until the work is completed, the papers are signed, the publication is in print, and the check is cashed.

But for now, there’s a sale on the horizon, and it doesn’t appear to have a skull and crossbones on it. 🙂

Landscape

Landscape

My fingers trace your landscape
From neck to thigh,
Your back a rolling plain
In the image of Gaia.

You are the Mother in microcosm.
I am the all-encompassing Aleph.

Electric shivers when we touch
Wake passion in the bones of the world.

— Stace Johnson, 2004