News of the Lost

Several years ago, I had the wacky idea of starting a feature on this blog called “News of the Lost” to highlight news articles about lost items. I can’t even tell you how many times we’ve been contacted by people searching for actual lost luggage. It’s probably not smart to make any sort of serious post on April 1st anyway…

So without further ado, I give to you this amusing link:

IndiGo: Man says he hacked airline website to find lost luggage

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-60937480

Whatever Happened to Jamie Anyway?

I disappeared for quite a while there. Distanced, out of it, unfocused, and yes sometimes unresponsive too. I’m sorry. Things just got out of hand. Bear with me; this is likely going to be a long letter. It’s not easy to sum up 6+ years of life.

Continue Reading…

Statistics and Math For Indie Authors and Publishers

This is probably an odd post to start 2021 with. It’s certainly an odd title, and I’m okay with that. Truth is that the vast majority of people these days have attention spans that can be measured in nanoseconds. My website’s bounce rate is hilariously bad—like many other sites, visitors often leave before the page even completes loading!

As a content creator, that gives you basically two choices:

1. You can fret, worry, waste hours tracking metrics, and invest countless hours in learning how to make your site load faster in the hopes that you can appease a few more people from the masses…
   
   or
   
2. You can shrug and just not care. Focus your limited time and energy on what really matters.

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What Am I Waiting For?

For months it’s felt like my whole life has been on pause. I work, nearly every day, and then I keep working. Sometimes I work nights and weekends, often putting in twelve to sixteen hours a day. I live alone, and see probably three people a month in real life. There’s nobody around to tell me to stop. All this work is mostly for my day job, but I haven’t been sleeping well for the past ten months or so, and often wake around 3 AM to start my day. Those early morning hours are typically invested in writing and editing, when I can summon the energy and don’t have any looming deadlines at work.

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World, Paused

Seems like the whole world has been put on pause. Most of my neighbors’ cars sit in the parking lot beside mine. Roads, when I venture out, host only a fraction of the traffic that I’m used to seeing. When I visit a store, entire sections have bare shelves. Shoppers shamble through the aisles, even avoiding eye contact, as if the infection could spread that way. I’m not typically an outgoing person, but I can fake it on occasion, and lately I’ve been channeling my inner Dappil on my fellow residents. I make a point to be over-the-top friendly, because dammit the world needs that now. Say something that’s funny and a little crazy, lighten the mood, and remind others that we’re all still alive.

Yes, I would like a cheeseburger… and four hundred napkins, please.

My drive-thru plan for dealing with the toilet paper shortage

I’m back to working from home, full-time, during all this craziness. You’d think that would give me more time to work on my books and Lost Luggage Studios, but the opposite is true. I lose track of days and hours very easily. My day job keeps me busy for 10-12+ hours a day, five to seven days a week. A lot of the things I had planned to do in March… well, yeah, those never happened. Kind of hard to work on my own projects when I lose 80+ hours a week to my job. I feel like my whole life is in a holding pattern. I’m sure most of you feel the same.

Stay well. Stay safe.