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	<title>In•de•fix•a</title>
	<link>http://indefixa.ravensbeak.com</link>
	<description>Not concentrated at one point or upon one objective</description>
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		<title>Lowes Can&#8217;t Win This One</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This is how not to respond to a national controversy. “We have a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion, across our workforce and our customers, and we&#8217;re proud of that longstanding commitment. &#8220;Lowe&#8217;s has received a significant amount of communication on this program, from every perspective possible. Individuals and groups have strong political and societal views on this topic, and this program became a lightning rod for many of those views. As a result we did pull our advertising on this program. We believe it is best to respectfully defer to communities, individuals and groups to discuss and consider such issues of importance.” That last sentence contradicts their actions. If they truly believed that it’s best to defer to communities, and if they truly have a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion, they should have left their advertising in place. Advertising during a particular television program doesn’t mean you support the program. Do advertisers who pay $1milliion per minute for a Superbowl spot really endorse the game or a particular team, or are they just trying to get their product in front of as many eyeballs as possible? It&#8217;s the latter. Advertising is about getting people to know what your [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://indefixa.ravensbeak.com/2011/12/12/lowes-cant-win-this-one/</link>
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		<title>ZOMG! GUNS in BARS!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Blood in the streets! We’re all going to die! At least that’s what the Ohio news media would have you believe. As of today, unless there’s a sign at the establishment telling you otherwise, Ohioans with a concealed carry permit can carry their firearms into any D permit premises. They are not allowed to consume any alcohol while they are carrying their firearm. Read that again. No booze, beer, or alcohol of any kind while carrying. Nothing. Opponents are predicting blood in the bars, just as they predicted blood in the streets ten years ago when Ohio finally reformed their self-defense laws. “Guns and alcohol don’t mix,” we’re told. And they’re right. The Ohio legislature agrees with them. The ORC says you can’t be under the influence when you’re carrying a firearm. They’ll allow you to have a drink or three, up to 0.08 BAC and still drive, but they don’t think you should have any testable amount of alcohol in your bloodstream when you have a firearm. Before we go too far, we need to work on our language choices here. In Ohio, a D permit allows consumption of alcohol, including beer, wine, mixed beverages and spirituous liquor on [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://indefixa.ravensbeak.com/2011/09/30/zomg-guns-in-bars/</link>
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		<title>Battle Not With Monsters</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Seems like &#8220;Only Ones&#8221; posts come in bursts. Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche That pretty much sums up my thoughts about this arrest. I&#8217;d be curious to know how many law enforcement officials charged with enforcing child pornography or drug laws or weapons laws have crossed the line and violated the very laws they&#8217;re sworn to enforce. Maybe this essay should become required in-service training. Local coverage, with a link to the indictment.]]></description>
		<link>http://indefixa.ravensbeak.com/2011/09/28/battle-not-with-monsters/</link>
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		<title>Guns In The Home Are Dangerous</title>
		<description><![CDATA[And only police officers should have them there, because the rest of us can&#8217;t be trusted to handle them safely. Surely no police officer would ever point a rifle at their significant other, or a TASER at children right?]]></description>
		<link>http://indefixa.ravensbeak.com/2011/09/27/guns-in-the-home-are-dangerous/</link>
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		<title>Back in Muskogee</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Well, we&#8217;re here. We arrived around 3:30 this afternoon, after one long day and one short day of driving. We&#8217;re letting the kids run off some energy tonight, then we&#8217;ll start working on stuff around town. Lots to do. we have regular internet access again, so look for more posts here soon, like my rant about the 28 &#162; per gallon of diesel fuel surprise in Indiana.]]></description>
		<link>http://indefixa.ravensbeak.com/2011/09/20/back-in-muskogee/</link>
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		<title>Six Months</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It doesn’t really seem as though we’ve been on the road for six months, but the calendar doesn’t lie. We left Columbus 23 February, and it’s now 1 September, 190 days after our departure. My apologies for not keeping the blog up over the last six weeks or so. Our internet access has been limited. We arrived at Marmon Valley Farm for what was supposed to be a 2 ½ week stay. Our boys had a week of summer camp, then two of the girls had a week of camp at MVF, making it pretty centrally located. We emailed them before we left in February, offering to trade a couple of weeks of work around the farm for an RV site. It was a new experience for us and the staff at MVF. We had never workamped before, and they had never used workampers. But Wrangler Matt Wiley knew us from regular visits to the farm, and agreed to try it out. Near the originally planned end of our stay, he asked me “How much longer are you guys planning on staying?” We talked it over and decided to stay until mid-September, just after their Family Work Weekend. Farm living [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://indefixa.ravensbeak.com/2011/09/01/six-months/</link>
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		<title>WordPress For Android</title>
		<description><![CDATA[WordPress For Android was listed at the bottom of a blog post I read this morning, so I wanted to try it out. Install was seamless as well as painless. Interface is nicely laid out, although I can&#8217;t see writing thousand-word posts on my phone. The only drawback I see at the moment is adding images to posts. I suspect I can add photos pretty easily from the phone, and I can access the existing gallery. But a lot of the images I use come the web and I usually edit/resize them first. I won&#8217;t be able to do that, so I&#8217;ll have to plan ahead with some general images. Still, for short quick posts or live-blogging, this should come in pretty handy. Added: Seems I can only add images from the phone, not the existing gallery I&#8217;ve built up at the blog. Added: I&#8217;ll be using this image as a default for posts made from the phone.]]></description>
		<link>http://indefixa.ravensbeak.com/2011/05/25/wordpress-for-android/</link>
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		<title>Pennwriters Conference Takeaways</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As promised, here are my takeaway points from the conference. Writing is not the solitary, highly competitive existence that keeps so many writers from getting started. At least it doesn’t have to be. It’s competitive in that it takes a lot of hard work to get published these days, but it’s not competitive in the sense that someone is going to take your perfect idea for a story and steal it. That’s not the way the professionals work. Most importantly, it doesn’t have to be solitary. Jonathan Maberry sang the praises of writers organization in general and Pennwriters in particular. He said PW is a “shining example” of what a writers organization should be and do. Read and support your genre! You’ll learn what’s going on in your genre, and you’ll support fellow authors. When the time comes, they’ll support you, too. I think the two best things you can do to further your career as a writer are to join a writers organization and go to writers conferences. PW is my first writers organization, and this was only the second conference I’ve been to. The last was some ten years ago and was a purely commercial conference, without the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://indefixa.ravensbeak.com/2011/05/20/pennwriters-conference-takeaways/</link>
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		<title>Pennwriters 2011 Conference Wrap-up Part 2</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Again I say, Wow, what a conference! The main part of the conference kicked off Friday morning. There were several sessions during the weekend with conflicting workshops and I had a hard time deciding about the pre-conference sessions too. I ended up following the “Improve Your Craft” track for most of the conference, since the only feedback I’ve gotten from the only agent who’s seen Don’t Stop Believin’ has been that she couldn’t get involved with the characters. Ramona Long kicked things off with the “Four Truths of Characters.” Every character has four basic facts or truths about them: Society (who they are in relation to the rest of the world); Family (who they are in relation to their family); Personality (everything about them); and Flaw (their weakness or vulnerability). We deconstructed some well-known characters (most from Pride and Prejudice), and it was amazingly helpful to look at Danny Cumberland from The Sad Girl through that lens. My next session was “Psychoses and Psychopaths: Crafting Believable Characters” with Brent Maguire. This was a high-level session giving us background on lots of personality disorders and personality traits. Again, it gave me a new lens to look at some of my characters, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://indefixa.ravensbeak.com/2011/05/18/pennwriters-2011-conference-wrap-up-part-2/</link>
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		<title>Pennwriters 2011 Conference Wrap-up Part 1</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Wow. What a conference! This was my first Pennwriters Conference, and only my second writers conference. The first, over ten years ago, left me feeling energized but lonely. It was a commercial conference, not directly affiliated with any particular writing organization. I recall feeling that I got my money’s worth of instruction, but didn’t get much in the way of networking. I left Pennwriters with half a dozen new Twitter followers and at least a dozen new acquaintances, and I wasn’t even staying at the hotel! There were several pre-conference sessions on Thursday. I chose the “Many Genres, One Craft” track, thinking it would give me the most bang for the buck. Yes, I’ve got a novel done, but I know I need to improve my craft. MGOC is a collection of lessons from the faculty, students and alums of Seton Hill’s MFA in Writing Popular Fiction. The pre-conference is described as Six workshops for craft and career. The three morning sessions focus on plotting with Victoria Thompson, character with Timons Esaias, and setting with Heidi Ruby Miller and Jason Jack Miller. In the afternoon, sessions focus on pursuing publication with Natalie and Matt Duvall, building a brand with Mary [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://indefixa.ravensbeak.com/2011/05/15/pennwriters-2011-conference-wrap-up-part-1/</link>
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