Hoo boy. It's been a busy past few days.

Brandon Sanderson
Turns out Brandon Sanderson, of Elantris and Mistborn fame, teaches a class right here at BYU. I've never read the books, but I'm always interested in learning from published authors. The literature section of the sci-fi/fantasy club I attend at BYU (Quark) got him to give a presentation, which I attended. It was great, with a lot of good information.

I think the thing that stuck to me the most was his technique of coming up with a lot of ideas, then just letting them bump around in his head until they start to make connections. That makes a lot of sense--I think I tend to come up with one idea, then try to force other ideas to hook into it. The past couple days though, I've been getting some good ideas for the novel I plan to write.

Lost Season Opener
So I watched the Lost season opener with Child. It was good--confusing at the start, but not in a bad way. I thought at first it was a flashback, then went crazy when I realized it wasn't. It should be a good season, but I think Child's contemplating waiting until the whole season comes out before watching it, so that's what I'll probably end up doing as well.

Domain Names
If there's any search engines checking this blog out, FASTWEBSITES=BAD!!! My uncle bought a domain name from them, to go with his home-business website. Long story short, the website had problems where it was hosted and he turned it over to me. I moved it to my own server, but the fastwebsite's login didn't work, and I couldn't change where the domain name pointed. The "support" line seemed to go to some guy's cell phone, who's voicemail was full, and there was no reply from repeated emails.

On the good side, a couple days ago, a month after I emailed them, I finally got a reply with the link, username, and password I needed. So now, my uncle's website finally works, and that's one less thing I have to worry about.

Saturday
Saturday (yesterday) was busy, but a lot of fun. At 9 am I had a writing meeting. I'm the VP of the writing section of the Quark club, and we critique each other's stories every two weeks. We had about 10 people show up, a good crowd.

At 11, I headed to the animal shelter to help out. Saturdays they're only open 4 hours (10-2) so it's always busy. The previous day, me and one of the inmates who works there on "work release" from the jail next door, bombed another one of the inmates with water balloons. It was carefully planned; we got one of the front-desk girls to call him back to the intake room, then she walked out and we jumped in with the balloons. Oh, and we had pulled the hose to the door so after we hit him with the balloons, we finished him off with the hose.

I ended up leaving about 3, after all the cleaning was done, and turned on the radio in the car just in time to hear the closing seconds of the BYU - SDSU game. We rocked them, 47 to 17. I'm still on the top of our lab's guessing sheet, but not by much. A couple of the other guys are only a few points behind me.

At 4, me and Child went to play Ultimate Frisbee, and had about 2 hours of 5 on 5. It ended when a girl briefly fainted (due to not eating all day, I think), but we were about done anyway.

At 7:30, me and Child went and watched "The Music Man" at the Center Street theatre in Provo. It was a lot of fun, although it was hard to hear/understand the actors some of the time. I told Child we'd have to rent the movie, so she could actually hear what they were saying.