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The first hurdle passed

For those of you wondering why I seemed to have dropped off the face of the social media earth, I have been busy, busy, busy.

What have I been busy at?  Another book.  And it’s not about geeks and cats, the pictures in this post notwithstanding.  Nope, it’s the follow up volume to Developing Essbase Applications.

I’m going to leave the details a mystery (but yes, it is a group project to end all group projects, again, and yes we have a publisher and a contract and all of those wonderful things so it’s all for real)  as there’s still much to do and I don’t want to jinx the project.  For those of you who follow me on Twitter (I know for a fact that you do not, cf. my past blog post on blog readership so why don’t you get with it and read my even more frequently updated drivel and inanity), will have seen my tweet last night which ought to give you a hint as to what one of my chapters is about.

No, it is not a book Karl Malden, although I do encourage everyone to watch The Streets of San Francisco as it is an excellent police procedural.  And all of the cars are from FoMoCo.  And it is a Quinn Martin Production, so it has to be good.

In any case, that’s the scultpure that inspired the name Dodeca.  If that isn’t enough hints, I don’t know what is.

In any case, I thought you might like to see yr. obt. svt. at work so you can all thank your lucky stars you don’t do something as stupid as writing a book.  Fwiw, my royalty share on Developing Essbase Applications is 32¢ a copy.  It sure ain’t a road to riches.

So what am I doing?  Below you see my cats helping me out as I edit my first draft.  That’s Peanut sitting on the chapter, perhaps providing editorial comment by sticking her rear end on half of the chapter.  In the front Is Adam, looking incredibly bored, so perhaps yet another editorial comment.

I apologize for the mess.  This is the dining room and my maelstrom of stuff has hit this room.  All I can say is you should see my office.  Eeek.  I had to leave the untidiness behind me and ruin another room.  

Yet another picture – OMG, I have to clean.  And get Peanut off my manuscript.  Cats are such stinkers.

I feel sort of bad wasting your time with cat pictures but isn’t the internet all about watching cat videos? I’m just joining the club.  And they’re great cats.  Both are rescues from the mean streets of Philadelphia.  Adam, the older of the two, was rescued in Fitler Square where I used to live, and Peanut from under a truck in Chinatown.  I will spare you my rant about strays and unthinking owners.

So what’s next?

Cleaning my house?  Definitely.  After that, the editing process, getting the other chapters in, all of the fun legal stuff with Oracle (yes, they vet the whole thing, give us permissions to show screen shots on an image by image basis, etc. but don’t worry, it’s our content).

After all of the chapters are complete and we’re actually in the process of the second draft, I’ll share some detail about the book.  I’m very excited (and relieved that I got this chapter done, only ½ of another one to  go) about our work and I think it will be valuable to world+dog.

Be seeing you.