Bro update (wow 2 posts in one day!)

Dear Friends and Family,

Did I say I would write these every two weeks? That must have been a typo. Maybe I meant every two months. The time between each letter seems to be doubling. So don't worry about me for four months. (Kidding).

Every two weeks is rather difficult though. There isn't enough to report. Going to try monthly.

May be visiting Pennsylvania for a highschool reunion at the end of June. My roomate, Derek, needs to move to Portland the week before the reunion. Won't have the time to drive to PA (or at least not the same route). For those of you that were visited on my journey here: If you enjoyed my company, my appologies there won't be a visit this June. If you didn't enjoy my company, don't worry, you won't see me for a while.

After the last letter, hit a snag in writing the book. Took a while to figure out that I know nothing about police procedure. Got some help from some friends on the force. While waiting for one of their responses, started working on another long standing project.

Owned "http://www.tekempire.net/" since about January 12, 2005. Until recently, the site didn't do anything. Now, as far as functionality is concerned, it's finished. It's a text based forum, no pictures, nothing special to see. Most of the "commands" are akin to their counterparts in the UNIX operating system. It was designed for my own purposes, you aren't likely to enjoy it.

At this point, if anyone is considering taking a look at the website (despite how hard I tried to downplay its appeal), hold on a second. If my friends (or internet users en masse) have gotten to it before you, the messages may be vulgar or otherwise offensive. That being said, do as you please.

The website was supposed to waste a week, it ended up taking over a month at about ten hours a day. There were approximately five complete rewrites. Fortunately I learned something in the process.

When trying to build something, take the time to learn the tools. Creative construction is a cumulative process. The creativity part may not require any prior knowledge, but trying to implement an idea can require a great deal of it.

Outlines, even when not necessary to complete a task, will simplify it a great deal. The outlines don't have to follow any standard, the idea is to make sense to the author at a glance. A quote comes to mind, "Work smart, not hard." A lot of small tasks are easier than one big task.

Don't worry about time. Stress impedes performance. Also, time is a largly left-brained process, and creativity a largely right-brained one. While worrying about time, it may be difficult to be creative. Ironically worrying about time is likely to make things take longer. This one is probably the biggest problem for me.

Somewhere in the middle of the website diversion, one of my friends on the force sent me an e-mail. Not only did their response explain what areas to research, it gave a great deal of the specific information needed. Of course, nobody can write my book for me, so there is still some research to do on my own.

Originally thought I knew all I needed to know to write this book. Gained a new respect for authors (at least the good ones); they must be well versed in a variety of fields. Conversely lost some respect for computer programmers. Programming is no longer magic to me. (Or at least I discovered the spell to be caffeine and endless hours in front of a keyboard).

I'd like to thank those of you that have written to me on real paper. This dying art feels "warmer" than it's next of kin (e-mail). I do intend to respond to them in a more individual fassion, but there is a limit to what I can write in a given period of time. Eventually I will realize this is just an excuse and set aside a day to respond to all of them. Until then, please be patient. (Are you thinking that I can't know that I will realize something, without having already realized it? Well in that case I'll respond to your thought with this thought, "what?").