So.. ya. I tried to fix something last night and, in working while tired, almost crashed the whole place and spent most of the night figuring out how to fix it. Not good and certainly not an ideal reason for not publishing this afternoons story, but it is what happened. As a result, I ended up grabbing some sleep during the day today before heading to the theatre to work and completely forgot that releasing stories on Friday was now a thing. Sorry about that. I'll try to avoid breaking everything in the future :P

What WOULD have been released if I had been here and taken care of it properly... was Part 2 of MageOhki's backstory piece for Hikaru and Japan for the Second Generation. Enjoy "Rises the Sun" !  Remember, its a Gen 2 story, so it'll be at the top of the SECOND sidebar well (each of those square panels in the sidebar is a 'well') below the advertisement on the right. And if you go looking in the Stories menu zone, you actually have to select Gen 2 from the left sidebar menu, because only the Original Timeline stories display in the main panel by default.

What's that? What WOULD I consider a good reason for not publishing the story? Hmm... finding the woman of my dreams and discovering that she's filthy rich and wants to help me become the woman of HER dreams and we're on a plane starting our world wide trip of places we want to consider for our wedding... I think that would be a justified reason to miss a release and still have everyone completely happy for me to have done so. :)

Every now and then I jokingly tell people that Sound Engineering is more difficult work than running a nuclear reactor. Considering I spent a number of years as a Reactor Plant Operator for the Navy and am currently the Live Mix Engineer on a world premiere musical with 16 wireless microphones on actors and an orchestra of two keyboards, violin, cello, french horn, and percussion (also all mic'd and/or direct inputs)... I can safely make the comparison. In all honesty, running a reactor may require memorization of a lot of operating procedures; but even in casualty and high power testing conditions (both of which I have first hand experience on); the mixing I'm doing now is easily more taxing/demanding mentally.

Being able to break down all those complexities of sound into distinguishable (improvable) components with an awareness of what the current state means, what active manipulation can do, and how the end result can be put back together for better musicallity...in real time... makes the most complicated gaming boss fight or even a nuclear power plant fast recovery start up procedure following a scram... seem like child's play. Ok, admittedly, if I mess up a show mix, there's no risk that I'll irradiate half the west coast. But still!

Or... in simpler terms... my brain may have been fried Monday... but that was just the searing to lock in the flavor. It's spent the rest of the week roasting in the smoker.

However... even my toasty brain can get a little relief long enough to announce this week's content: we continue with Part 3 of "The Final Trump" from Bek D. Corbin! Enjoy!

Not much to say today, but hopefully this release goes off smoothly. I'll be about 4.5-5 hours into a day that runs about seven hours past the release time (I'll start at 9:30 and will probably finish up around 22:00... with an hour off for dinner around 3 or 4 in the afternoon). The rest of the weekend will be roughly the same, so if I'm wandering around here drooling and nibbling on brain matter Monday to try to get the release posted, be thankful to Dan and Phoenix for doing most of the cleanup/code editing these days.

If you're curious what I'm working on at the moment, check out the show's site at http://thedonnerpartymusical.com  ... besides some history and details about the writer and lyricist, there's some rehearsal footage and other interesting tidbits.

Here in the Whateley Universe, we have Part 2 of Wasamon's "Summer of My German Heritage", which is the introductory story in the Eisenmadel arc. It's in the 2nd Gen story collection. Enjoy and remember to comment or join the feedback conversation in the forums! 

Sorry, everyone, my day is running a little behind. Between this morning's staff meeting, some speaker repairs, and getting my groceries ordered so I can stop wasting money grabbing something from the corner store (where everything is marked up about 120% over the prices at Safeway... which are marked up a good 50-70% over the prices at the placed I'd go shopping if I had time to go grocery shopping). Fortunately, we live in a world where even peoples like me can fill out a little online grocery list and get someone else to bring the stuff to my door. Too bad I mostly resort to buying the cheapest frozen dinner style calories per dollar I can get these days... I really do enjoy cooking and experimenting with different spices and ingredients. I simply don't have the time and budget to do it. On the bright side, the Boston Market frozen dinners were on sale... and while they weren't quite as cheap as the Marie Callender ones, they're generally pretty tasty. And even the Marie Callender ones aren't bad. Could be worse... I could be eating Banquet and Ramen... I've done that...

So... now that its late and I'm rambling on about my crappy meal planning... let me get today's story release announced: it's going to be visible over in the Original Timeline stories, it's by Bek D. Corbin... and its Part 2 of the story "The Final Trump." Enjoy!

I set up today's story release to be ready to go on Wednesday.. but forgot to write a little front page note to go out at the same time. So here's a quick introduction for the piece that just released: It's in the 2nd Generation collection, but it crosses between the two timelines and fills in some details about the 'between' times. It's "Would the Last One Out Please Turn Out the Lights" from Elrod. 

Enjoy! And don't forget to write some feedback in the forums so Comcast and Times Warner have some browsing history to sell...!