OwlManAtt’s Blog

Readers Say AT&T Still Ripping Off US Soldiers.

“My husband just arrived in Iraq this past Monday (October 2nd) for an 8 month tour with the USMC (his first tour in Iraq). In this very short window, we’ve learned that AT&T has a monopoly on the pay phone service; they’ve set up their phones to only accept AT&T cards. Phone cards that offer cheaper rates (from other companies) cannot be used. To top it all off, to recharge these cards ($42 buys you approx 165 minutes of talk time; to compare, when he was stationed in Japan, $30 bought us 375 minutes of talk time), there is a 10% “recharge fee.” Though this can be avoided by just buying a new card from Iraq, my husband does not always want to be carrying cash on him. Further, we thought it would be easier for family members to just recharge this card than to send him new ones. Well, I was charged almost $7 in “taxes & fees” to recharge this card yesterday. Calls to AT&T revealed that they are no longer charging the surcharge fee as of Oct. 31, but that does me no good now. I’m just outraged that AT&T and the government have essentially created a monopoly systems with the pay phone service. Even though cheaper options do exist, the general public has been given the impression that to “support the troops,” you should buy these AT&T cards that have these outrageous rates and hidden fees.

“The information on these VIOP (sic) phones is very helpful, and I intend to pass this information along to him when he calls next. However, the other postings have indicated that they have problems, too, so I’m not sure which is worse. My husband has indicated that at his location, internet service is unreliable and when it does work, incredibly slow (7-10 minutes to load a page in its entirety), so I don’t think that VIOP would really work well for him. We’d be happy with consistent email as a way to communicate, but that can’t happen with his options right now, and we’re stuck with these pay phones.

“To top it off, when I called AT&T this morning to express my outrage at this issue, I asked how they could justify these charges for the phone cards. Well, the “friendly” customer service agent indicated that because of the cost of operating phones in Iraq (which I do not dispute) is higher than it is in other countries because of the instability, they need to recoup their costs somehow. And instead of AT&T just sucking up the difference to save these troops some money, they’ve elected to pass along those charges to the troops and their families. Outrageous. I hate the fact that we’re being nickeled and dimed by the government and AT&T. I have enough to worry about without figuring out how to fund calls home.”

Here’s to you, Ma Bell. Raping our troops for every single nickle and dime they can spare.

We’ll see you up on antitrust charges yet. You mark my words on that one.

As of October 1, my biggest concern is the yearly novel. The NaNo website is back up and refreshed, ready for the ‘06 novelling season. They (finally) put up an appropriately-sized button for blogs, so I updated the NaNoWriMo ‘05 button I had made. The new (and official) button can be seen on the right nav menu.

So. I have some pretty lofty goals this year:

• Write 100k words instead of 50k.
• Beat Colonia as far as wordcount and speed go.
• Write something meaningful that doesn’t completely suck.

On the technical front, I have the usual wordhack up, with a few improvements. Through a nifty little script called nanoget, I interface with the wordcount API to get wordcounts. So it will know when I’m slacking off, and it will know when Colonia is slacking off.

I’ve also set myself a daily goal of 3,400 words per day. Not a big deal, I’d say. If 2,000wpd was such a walk in the park last year, an extra 1,400 won’t kill me.

I also stumbled across a kickass AbiWord plugin called AbiCommand. My biggest issue last year was saving the .abw, .doc, .html, and .txt by hand every night and pushing them to owly.homelinux.net. With this plugin, that will no longer be a problem. I’ll check the .abw into subversion and a script will check it out, export it, and move the files into the appropriate folder for public dissemination.

A lot of old faces have been showing up in the NaNo IRC rooms (yes, plural, no, I can’t talk about why I pluralized that). Most importantly, DJ Phil has shown his face and will once again be gracing us with the gentle (or not so yasashii) melodies of his massive music medley.

Ah, but…IRC! What an excellent way to get on to the real purpose of this entry!

So I’m writing a novel. The biggest question everyone has is this: What the fuck is that clown OwlManAtt going to be writing about /now/?

The premise is a bit more complicated than last year’s. During and after Mind War’s writing, Uberuser asked if I’d write a book about our home channel. (Backstory: I’ve been part of one certain channel for several years, and we’ve a pretty rich history.) I thought that that tale could make a pretty fine scifi story. It also doubles as a tribute to Wendy’s tale, Knighthawk’s Tavern (forever lost to the web, alas). But I digress…

The premise is this: There is a tavern full of people. The story is set ~130 years into the future, where the world is kind of run-down and bleak. We do have hovering cars/motorcycles, cool guns, androids, supercomputers, holograms, and other assorted useful technology.

The conflict? A classic man-vurses-man and perhaps man-vurses-himself (depending on the narrarator’s PoV) story about the trials and tribulations of the ‘regulars’. I’ve identified five people who I can use as characters that cause a good deal of drama. I’m not sure if I want to do the first-person perspective or not, though. If so, the MC/narrarator can have some kind of internal struggle going on as a subplot.

My overall goal is to express something about community, loyalty, and consequence. And hot damn, that almost sounds like I’m a real author, doesn’t it? Haha.

I have a rough idea of what I’m going to do. The book will open on an interpretation of The Great Split, in the twilight hour of NixSec. We’ll have some action, and I think that ultimately, ‘Talon’ will either flee, never to be seen again, or outright be killed in the fight over the ‘pruning’. I realize that maybe three of my readers really understand what I just said, but it’ll make sense when I write it.

From there, I think introduct our setting, The Tavern, and begin pulling together the cast. A lot of people who are still active in the channel today are refugees from The Great Split, and some of them came in around the same time (or later) through different circumstances. Four of such ‘latecomers’ will be the source of great conflict (or at least, they’re on the table to be such).

Once the cast is in-place, there will be several of these ‘conflicts’ I keep talking about. Mainly, they’re strife between The Tavern and factions associated with certain patrons of The Tavern. For example, NeSa hijacked Uberuser’s nick back in the day. I’ll interpret that as NeSa stealing something from The Tavern, so we have to get it back, etc.

Each of these conflicts will cause more and more trouble. The last one needs to be some kind of doozy (probably involving Ryan) where when we resolve it, the book can find some closure.

In between and during these conflicts, there will be little ‘projects’. NukuNuku was the first major project (yes, ladies and gents, our favorite AI from Eron will be coming back!). The bots have been a long-term project maintained by three seperate people. We have the formation of the Yasashii Syndicate. We’ve got the Eron migration. We’ve got people getting shells here and there…the list of things goes on and on.

All of that said, I realize that this story is going to have to be a shitload more character-driven instead of plot-driven, as I normally produce. But such is so when I’m trying to convery community instead of ‘hay guys lets save the world k?’.

The TODO list:

1. Pick & develop character profiles.
   1. Pick ‘villians’.
2. Contemplate these ‘conflicts’ further.
3. Put together a rough outline of conflicts and projects.
4. Figure out how I want to end it.
5. Do some stuff about the setting. Worldbuilding FTW!

I may or may not snowflake this. At this point, I’m almost leaning against it, because the character development is so much more critical than plot crap. I’m not sure…

The notes will be available here. I’ll be updating them from time to time, so it may be worth checking, even if I don’t write an entry up.