Fast Fiction

The traffic on Candy Blog doubled.

My web host handled the increase in web traffic admirably.

I got many nice emails & comments.

I was interviewed by my “hometown newspaper”. The story became the front page story on the following day.

I got at least a dozen emails suggesting I try alternative chocolate products. Nine of those suggestions were for the same product, which makes it sound like there are some very passionate people out there about high-antioxidant chocolate.

Strangers now know how to pronounce my name.

The sweater I bought to wear for the piece is now known as The Purple Today Show Sweater.

(I was honestly in a bit of a panic about it after I did the interview. Perhaps I watch too much of The Daily Show & Colbert Report, but I could see how they could edit the piece together to make me look like some obsessed nutjob.)

Earlier this year I tried to do a cute story for Candy Blog on the presidential candidates’ favorite candies. I contacted all the candidates (via email for the most part) through their press contacts and requested the information. Yes, I approached them not as a supporter but as a person doing a story.

In some instances I got a reply. In other instances I was subscribed to email newsletters as if I was interested in voting for them or donating money. The worst was the Obama campaign, which not only had trouble getting me off their email lists, they also started calling me. (I gave them my cell number, because, well, I was contacting their press office and thought that my question was legitimate - not something they’d just filter into their fundraising queue.)

The oddest part was last night, however, when I got an email from John McCain that said that he accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for president. (And asked me to donate ... maybe some other stuff, I didn’t read it, I just skipped to the bottom to unsubscribe.)

I clicked the unsubscribe link and was taken to this page.

Anyway, as I was never a McCain Supporter (and never opted into their email system) I didn’t pick from the list, merely stated in the optional comments box that I never subscribed to this list and hit unsubscribe.

The form bounced back with a red error message: Reason Required (go ahead and make jokes about politics and how reason is even present in much of the presidential race).

How can I tell the man who might be president a lie just to get off of an email list? I am not and have never been a McCain Supporter ... how can I select a reason from their list that’s accurate? I want to unsubscribe because I’m not a McCain supporter. Not only that, I never subscribed and I don’t have to give a reason for requesting to be removed. 

I sent Hershey’s an email via their web request form on Monday looking for the ingredients for the Krackel Bar, which is part of the Miniatures assortment. (They stopped making the full sized bars in 2006.)

I emailed them because I didn’t really want to transcribe the list on the phone. Let them do the typing.

Instead of sending it to me in the response, they replied with a case number and told me to call them during business hours (9-4 Eastern) to get my answers.

Okay, I called this morning and gave the representative my case number and she read back my request: What are the ingredients in the Krackel bar. The ingredients list on the Miniatures bag lists them all together and I want to know just what’s in that bar.

She asked me why I want to know.

I stammered that I wanted to know what I’m eating.

She asked if it was an allergy issue.

I replied that I wanted to know what was in that bar. If I ate only that bar, what would I be eating? (The package does say “something for everyone” so Hershey’s understands that sometimes people just pick through and eat only one variety.)

She said she did not have that information. It doesn’t exist in her records. If she wanted she could escalate me to a supervisor, but they had only the same info that she does.

That seemed pretty useless.

She asked if I wanted to be transfered. I said no, if they were comfortable with me publishing that they are unable to give me the ingredients for that bar, then I think we were done.

So there it is, no way for you to know what’s in a Krackel. Well, there’s a long list on the back of the package of what could be in a Krackel. So as long as you’re comfortable with some combination of those ingredients, go ahead and enjoy.

UPDATE 8/22/2008: I got another email from Hershey’s and it said this:

Thank you for contacting us about HERSHEY’S MINIATURES chocolate bars and your question regarding the KRACKEL bar which is part of the assortment.

Our Nutrition Department personnel reviewed your contact and confirmed that all of the ingredients contained in the KRACKEL bar are listed on the label of the HERSHEY’S MINIATURES chocolate bars. The KRACKEL bar is currently not sold individually and is only produced as part of the assortment. The recipe for this bar is proprietary and cannot be shared.

However, if you read the ingredients on the Hershey’s Miniatures package, it includes the ingredients for all four mini bars combined. It goes like this:

Sugar, chocolate, cocoa butter, peanuts, vegetable oil (palm, shea, sunflower and/or safflower oil), crisp rice, contains 2% or less of: lactose, nonfat milk, milk fat, cocoa processed with alkali, whey, soy lecithin, PGPR, salt, malt, vanillin.

Based on what I know of the Mr. Goodbar’s ingredients, which is also a mockolate bar (Sugar, peanuts, vegetable oil (palm, shea, sunflower and/or safflower oil) chocolate, whey (milk), nonfat milk, contains 2% or less of milk fat, soy lecithin, salt, vanillin.) and the last known ingredients of the true Krackel I’ve extrapolated the following as the likely ingredients of Krackel:

Sugar, vegetable oil (palm, shea, sunflower and/or safflower oil) chocolate, whey (milk), nonfat milk, crisped rice, salt, malt, contains 2% or less of milk fat, soy lecithin, vanillin.

If you’re going to give someone a bag of candy with the motto of “A Little Something For Everyone” you should be prepared that folks are not only going to have a favorite, but they might actually eat ONLY that one and they might want to know what’s in just that individually wrapped candy. That candy that says on the wrapper nutrition information 1-800-468-1714 ... which they also cannot provide separately.

But really I don’t think that it’s because the “recipe is proprietary” (believe me, I don’t wanna make these at home), it’s because they’re ashamed. 

I got my car washed yesterday, mostly in an attempt to get rid of the bird crap crusted on the front of the car from the Santa Barbara trip. (Note to self: while parking under a tree might seem like a good idea at the marina, it’s really just a roosting place for gulls.)

Since there was a line, I sat at the little input system long enough to really look at it this time.

The price of all washes ends in 99 cents. I pay at the pump with my gas purchase, so I just input my little code and go. But if you decide to purchase the wash here you have the choice of inputting only 1 or 5 dollar bills or quarters ... in any combination. Now I’m no math whiz but I can tell that there is no way to put in $6.99 with those as your sources. Not only that, the machine will not give change and doesn’t take cards of any kind.

So if you want to pay cash right there, let’s call it a one penny convenience fee. (I think the more convenient thing to do is to price the washes at $7.00, $8.00, $9.00 and $10.00 and have a clear conscience about your pinching of pennies.)

Oh, and the bird poop ... not really gone. 

The Condor Express left a little late on July 26th, a calm Saturday morning. We waited about 10 minutes for the last pair of passengers that called ahead to say that they were running late. And run they did, across the parking lot of the Santa Barbara Marina to join the eager passengers already itching to get out to sea.

The water was calm and glassy as we left the harbor. It also seemed oddly empty. Besides the half a dozen California Sea Lions on the buoy, there were no bottlenose dolphins near the sand bar as have often sent us off on our deep channel voyages.

So we pressed on, heading straight towards Santa Cruz island and the famed Painted Cave.

Sure enough about 30 minutes into the trip with the continued glass calm waters were some common dolphins. It didn’t look like much of a group, perhaps 20 dolphins that appeared to be feeding. But as soon as we stopped, it became apparent that they were only a small part of a larger pod feeding in that area. About 300 or so, surfacing, milling about, diving and splashing. There were a few that we could spot zipping around near the boat, chasing fish up and out of the water on several occasions.

Others were cow/calf pairs. Some of the babies (sometimes called footballs) weren’t more than a week or two old, still almost all gray and with slack skin that needed filling out with rich milk.

After delighting and interacting with them for at least a half an hour or literally running circles around them, we pushed on towards Santa Cruz Island.

As we could see the land off in the distance, I was talking to Bernardo Alps and we both turned to see a Minke Whale surfacing nearby. In my experience with Minkes (and one in nearly the same location last year) I figured that’d probably be the only look we’d get.

Instead this Minke surfaced again and again, in regular succession. Then turned back towards our boat, coming about thirty feet from us and turned upside down, pushed with its strong flukes and came up and out of the water for a moment. It looked a lot like those common dolphins chasing down bait fish earlier - only instead of being six feet long this one was about sixteen. (Still a very small specimen.) We got a good look at his white belly, striped flipper and even the narrow and pointy chin as he lifted it out when surfacing.

After a few more cycles another Minke surfaced nearby, much larger, and possibly the mother of our unusually exuberant one.

We continued to spot dolphins for pretty much the rest of the voyage, sometimes stopping for a few minutes to enjoy them.

We pushed on to Santa Cruz Island to have a look at Painted Cave. It’s an interesting opportunity to look at the sea birds that skim the waters near the rocks and perch there.

Part of the reason for the early look at Painted Cave was the hope that the fog would burn off out in the Channel. Alas, little luck with that, so we pushed on, into the fog to see what we could see.

After putting a photographer on a research vessel from the University of Oregon, they told us of a blue whale in the area. Even though visibility was poor, probably not more than fifty feet, Captain Mat slowed the boat and ran in wide circles. Eventually someone heard one of the blows and there it was a huge blue whale. It was strong and much meatier/fatter than ones I’ve seen in past years.

For the next three or four hours the fog slowly fizzled away and we saw more and more blue whales. Most were in pairs and often we’d have four or five in view at any given moment. The UoO vessel was in sight most of the time as well, though we were rarely on the same whales.

Unfortunately I had a bout of motion sickness about the time we spotted the first whale which lasted for pretty much the whole afternoon. This leads to a lot of internal admonishments about bringing medicine or maybe just not going on the full day trips in the future. As the wind picked up though and the air cleared I felt much better and enjoyed our last few sightings. (Though I took fewer pictures towards the end.)

What’s become clear is that the Santa Barbara Channel has become host to a vigorous group of Blue Whales and the prospect of seeing other creatures like Minke and Humpback (none this time) and of course the many species of dolphins makes this a world class destination. Just 90 minutes from my house. Now I just need to conquer sea-sickness.
More photos here.

As is always the way after a major candy holiday, the emails have started.

Most are complaints or specific comments about products:

I purchased four 375 g containers of the Hazelnut Chocolate for my kids for Easter. Two of the containers had 30 chocolates & two had 29.

Is this normal?

I don’t even know what that is!

I’m not a store, I’m not a factory. I’ll do my best to help you, but please be specific. ("Can I still get the coconut creme eggs?” is not specific enough when that’s the entire email.)

It’s not just me, there’s a good article at the Washington Post about the guy who owns donotreply.com. 

“Freestyle Snowmobile is like dressage with elephants.”

Photo: Trevor Brown, Jr. via X-Games

I don’t know what sort of proof they want. Will they just take me at my word? Will I have to click something else later? How often will they check in with me.

If I check that, will facebook tell other people that I said that it was true?

This facebook world frightens and confused me [1]. 

I’ve never actually talked much about the financing aspect of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I donate every year (even though I work for them, too), but I’ve never made an appeal on my blogs for others to donate.

For those of you not familiar with it, NaNoWriMo challenges ordinary mortals to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. No experience necessary! Tens of thousands of writers have not only participated since 1999 but dozens have also been published. The goal isn’t necessarily to get a book out in front of the public, but to start by getting it out of your head. 2007 marks my seventh year participating and will be my seventh novel.

Why do I do it? It’s a great writing exercise. I’m always surprised at what I can come up with when an absurd deadline is put in front of me. I enjoy the socializing on the forums (which I moderate) and I love the thrill of watching other writers find out what they had inside them. I’ve also met some of my best friends through the website. Yes, those crazy internet people ended up being really nice in person!

Here it is ... my appeal:

Please support me in my goal to raise $500 for National Novel Writing Month by November 17th ... that’s the night of our first write-a-thon, called The Night of Writing Dangerously.

You can donate by going to my fundraising page at FirstGiving, which operates as an intermediary to track donations made in my name. The money goes towards the program which is not only the website for adults to tackle that novel they’ve always wanted to write but also the Young Writers Project which creates in-school programs for students to tackle free-writing as part of their curriculum.

For every $5 you donate via my FirstGiving page, I’ll enter you in my Limited Edition Candy Drawing! Just leave a comment here and I’ll hook it up with that drawing. 

Twenty years ago this month I bought my first computer. It was a Tandy, model 1420LT. It was a laptop. It cost $1,600. Which was a lot of money back in 1987. A lot for me ... considering that I lived on about $5,000 a year while in college.

It wasn’t a great computer, but it served me well for five or six years. I ran a bootlegged copy of WordStar and wrote at least fifteen plays on it and my graduate thesis.

It was supposedly a laptop, but it rarely left my desk. It weighed 14.7 pounds.

Since that time I’ve had two other computers that I’ve purchased for myself. My desktop, which was a refurb from Dell, and then five years ago I bought my second laptop, they one I’m typing this on right now.

Today I bought a new laptop online at Dell. The model? 1420. Yes, twenty years later and I’ve stumbled onto the same model number as my first laptop.

The biggest thing I did when purchasing this computer was opt for some style. My laptop has become an accessory, and since it is often found on my lap, I thought it should look good. I opted for an upgrade and chose a colored case ... “Espresso Brown”, which I’m hoping I can tell people is called “70% Cacao.”

Where my first laptop had 640K of ram (and only a dual disk drive, no hard drive), this one has 2 gigs of ram. These sorts of advances don’t make my writing any better, but it sure helps with the digital photos. And of course I’m not bootlegging my software any longer.

Oh, and the price this time ... $1,600 (give or take a few). The more things change, the more they stay the same. 

This was a fabulous trip for several reasons. We had lots of company (The Man’s brother, nephew and his girlfriend from Florida plus two friends from LA joined us). And of course the weather cooperated and we got to see some whales!

First thing we saw were several small pods of Long Beaked Common Dolphins. What fun, they came along and swam with the boat for a while.

The morning was rather gray and I was hoping it would burn off quickly. It was certainly not as dim as the previous trip, but still, as we got out to the prime Blue Whale zone, visibility at times wasn’t more than 500 yards.

We did come upon a pair of blue whales though and this time in addition to taking photos, I tried for a little video (mostly because I think that’s the only way you can get the scale of these creatures).

Later Captain Mat excited threw on the boat brakes to have a look at this. It’s a Basking Shark. The sharks themselves are probably rather common, but seeing them off of Santa Barbara and close to the surface like this is quite rare. The video isn’t that impressive, really, the distance between the dorsal fin and the waggling tail fin is probably 6-8 feet, so the shark is probably only about 12-16 feet. (They can grow to be 30 feet.)

Most importantly we saw the blue whales so clearly, following along with the first pair for quite a while.

I was very, very tired when we were done, but of course I want to do it again. No new species to add to my list of cetaceans, but the basking shark was certainly special. 

I haven’t been working very hard on coming up with something for Script Frenzy. I know I don’t usually work very hard at NaNoWriMo, but with plays I actually think A LOT about what it’s going to be ahead of time.

At first I was going to do my tornado/miracle play. (Don’t ask.) It’s not really a work in progress, as I’ve never typed any of it up, just a few notes I wrote to myself on an airplane a few years ago in a notebook I don’t think I have any longer.

This play is inspired by this article in the NY Times: Victim of Climate Change, a Town Seeks a Lifeline by William Yardley.

But that’s just what inspired it. I have no idea what it’s going to be about, I just thought there was a whole play right here:

“I don’t want to live in permafrost no more,” said Frank Tommy, 47, standing beside gutted geese and seal meat drying on a wooden rack outside his mother’s house. “It’s too muddy. Everything is crooked around here.”

I’m planning on setting the play in another village that was just mentioned in the article called Shishmaref because it’s on the Chukchi sea, which is the summer ground of the Gray Whale. (See how all these things come together?)

I’m starting on Saturday!

As tired as I’ve been from work the past few weeks, I still managed to get my butt up at 4:30 AM yesterday to get to Santa Barbara for an 8 AM cast off at Condor Express. The American Cetacean Society had their first full-day Humpback Whalewatching Trip of the year.

We tried something new, kind of geotagging the adventure. The photos aren’t precisely located on this map, but I don’t suppose anyone can argue with me since they’re within about a half a mile or so. (Maybe ... I have no clue.) You can see my whole set of photos grouped by where they were shot.

Here’s a brief chronlogy of our adventure.

4:30 AM - Wake, shower and make lunch.
5:30 AM - Depart for Santa Barbara
6:10 AM - Stop for coffee in Westlake Village
7:45 AM - We boarded the Condor Express. The trip included a continental breakfast, so I had some coffee and a half of a naked bagel.
8:05 AM - Depart the dock - conditions were calm, but a very thick marine layer kept it rather dark and didn’t give us great shooting conditions.
8:35 AM - Encountered a small but active and agreeable pod of Dall’s Porpoise. They were certainly zipping around, but kept circling back and seemed to be involved in feeding (probably deeper than we could see, as we didn’t see their prey).
9:35 AM - Encountered our first two whales of the morning. They were feeding rather deep (Captain Mat made mention of bait fish at the 300 foot level). They came up and displayed flukes quite faithfully. As I was standing there watching the second cycle I caught sight of a good size pod of dolphins directly behind the boat. I called to the naturalists and they confirmed them. After a few minutes the boat was underway to intercept the dolphins about a half a mile away.
9:45 AM - We caught up with the pod of about 100-150 Pacific White Sided Dolphins. They were circling around, also in a feeding mode. White Sided are rather common dolphins, though not as common in the Santa Barbara Channel normally. However the water temperature was 54 degrees, just inside their range. The past two trips I’ve taken in the SB Channel I’ve seen Common Dolphins, so this was a treat. The sassy black and white is of course rather similar to the Dall’s Porpoise, though more muted along the sides of their bodies. After about 15 minutes with the group we were still within sight of our other pair of whales and we went back to them.
10:40 AM - Another pair of whales, this time it was a Humpback female and a young calf. The behavior, while interesting to watch, wasn’t so much to photograph. What was remarkable was the difference in size betwen the two. The wide mother and the narrow and short calf displayed quite a bit of back, with the baby breathing three times for every two the mother did. Mom fluked a couple of times and stayed down for a while. They stayed in the same area as well, leading us to believe that she was feeding while the calf stayed closer to the surface. We watched them for nearly a half an hour before heading off to the deeper parts of the Channel in search of the large masses of whales sighted earlier in the week.
11:30 AM - While we zipped along, The Man and I had a little lunch. I made hummus and chicken wraps on lavash bread. The seem to do really well as a picnic lunch. Some pretzels and a bit of water to wash it down.
12:10 PM - Another pair of whales, but they were really long period, down for over four minutes, so we moved along to find better “behaviors” that we could observe.
1:30 PM - Another pair, this was a mother and calf again. She had similar markings - white inside an otherwise all black fluke, but even less white (so we knew it wasn’t the same pair). We watched for a while and then moved along to tuck in close to Santa Cruz Island.
2:20 PM - Watched another whale (long diving) for a bit closer to Santa Cruz Island.
2:35 PM - We tugged along close to the shore and then had a close look at Painted Cave. There were lots of birds hanging around, including Oyster Catchers and Pigeon Guillemots.
3:10 PM - We stopped at Prisoner’s Harbor to pick up some campers. That took about 10 minutes so we were all looking sharp to see if we could spot the Bald Eagles that have colonized the island. No luck. We saw pelicans though ... yeah, quite notable.
3:20 PM - I saw something that looked like a huge dolphin off the port and called out to the naturalists. It was quite close to the boat, about 30 yards, so we swung around and I pointed out the position. By my description, Alisa determined that it was a Minke whale. I’d never seen one before. They’re known for not swimming in a straight line and sure enough, we saw it three more times but it was vexing, even doubling back once. I never got a decent look at it beyond its dorsal fin, smooth back and then it was down again. No perceivable blow. We were due back at the dock at 4 PM and we were 12 miles away, so the Captain turned us back towards the mainland.
4:10 PM - There was another pair of whales straight ahead so we stopped to watch them. Strange whales. They came up, dove with flukes, then came up pretty much in the same spot and just sat there. They’d come up, sink down a little bit, bob up and blow then sink a little, but still their back was showing. This went on for about three minutes, then they went down and we were off for home.

I was fabulously tired and about five miles from shore we finally got some sun. But at least there wasn’t much wind or waves. Good trip. Good trip. I want to do it again later this summer.

We got good looks at about 12 whales and saw about 18 total (if you count distant blows). I can tick two species off my list - Dall’s Porpoise and Minke Whale (though I wouldn’t mind getting a better view).

See all photos on Flickr in my set and of course check out The Man’s.

I’m planning on writing a play, start to finish next month.

This comes as no surprise to anyone, as I do this kind of stuff all the time.

But I’m asking you to join me.

Join ScriptFrenzy and write a screenplay or a stageplay in 30 days.

Just like with NaNoWriMo I’m heading up the forums and community building there. And just like with NaNoWriMo I’ll be copiously documenting my wordcount and progress right here. 

I can’t tell you what sort of bullshit this is, but I’m going to try:

MySpace has removed all hotlinked photos and slideshows (delivered in flash) hosted at Photobucket because they contain (sometimes) paid advertising. The advertising in question is a teaser campaign from Spiderman III. Here’s a bit of the story from PCWorld:

The block came in response to an ad-sponsored slideshow that Photobucket recently began running and that it encouraged MySpace users to post in their profiles, violating MySpace’s terms of service, the social networking site said in a statement.

Basically, only MySpace can junk up its pages with gratuitious advertising. MySpacers aren’t allowed to advertise other things. Well, they’re allowed to solicit sex and promote their albums and movies ... but they’re not allowed to hotlink to other advertisements.

Whatever.

My issue is that MySpace has been letting its users abuse my site for years. Yes, I’ve contacted them. I’ve contacted them. I’ve emailed them. I’ve even talked to folks I’ve met socially that work there. They don’t give a crap. It’s my problem their users don’t understand hotlinking is like making collect calls.

It turns out that it is possible to selectively block hotlinks from one domain. Halleluiah!

But now I discover that all I’d need to do is employ some .htaccess magic and have those thousands of hotlinked photos (yes, last month was 230,000 hotlink hits, the majority from MySpace according to the IP addresses logged) into some sort of ad that MySpace would feel threatened by. See, all this time I was thinking I had to put P()rn up there. Turns out that’s not what would catch their attention. Ads for, I dunno, something owned by some other media conglomerate might work.

Only problem is I can’t afford to host whatever image that might be (230,000 hits even at 10K each is kind of sizeable).

Wait a second ... I think I’m onto something here ...

I can sell the adspace! I can find someone who’d like their ad served up to 230,000 impressions in one month all over the web (though pretty much on MySpace).

The sale of that might cover the extra bandwidth I’d have to buy on my hosting plan.

So either I get my domain banned and don’t have to worry about bandwidth drains in the future ... or I make money with the ad impressions!

Here’s a bunch of articles:
Los Angeles Times
SFGate