When confronted with a choice...

One of the interesting aspects of this, my third LJ Idol season, is that up until late in last year's fracas, I was able to fairly consistently draw upon episodes from my life as source material for the competition. Compiling a group of memoir-like stories had, after all, been my original aim in my first season, which continued into the second.

However, when the going got tough in that respect—the well of personal stories appeared to be going dry and there was no time to stop and find new stories—I started to write fiction, which offered its own set of challenges. Given the opportunity, I have no doubt I will write quite a bit more fiction this year as well.

For the first week of this season's competition, contestants have been given the task of writing on one of two subjects, and while such a choice does offer more freedom and latitude, it is exactly that freedom that makes the task of deciding what to write about that much harder, especially when nothing quite clearly jumps into one's mind at the get-go.

Let me qualify that: Something did jump into my mind at the get-go, and it tugged at the edges of my consciousness all night long, with the tantalizing fascination of an irregularly shaped peg that is just ever-so-slightly too large for a corresponding hole—or is it?

* * *As if on cue, a load of translation came across the transom yesterday, which will interfere with any attempt to sit down leisurely and do a little brainstorming. (I am not complaining, BTW.)

Apropos of which, it occurs to me that "brainstorming" is really a euphemism for "thinking," the result of having to explain what one is doing without actually using the latter word. It is curious that while society places "thinking" on a pedestal as a most worthy activity (except when it comes to watching advertising and listening to politicians), in the real world, most projects don't actually have a code against which you can charge time spent—thinking.

And now, off to work.

Cheers...

Android checkpoint...

Generally speaking, I like my DROID X phone.

1. The screen is roomy.

2. There are many useful applications available for the phone.

3. The battery provides reasonable service life given my usage patterns.

4. The voice recognition is pretty good, even if it only seems to work with relatively short phrases.

Still, it's not the perfect phone. What bugs me about the DROID X:

1. From time to time, for no apparent reason, the unit reboots. This happened once during a phone conversation, which did not make me a happy camper, but fortunately, the process is pretty quick—15 seconds or so—so it's not a show-stopper.

2. The phone's ability to be used as a 3G mobile hotspot sucks dead bunny rabbits through a dirty soda straw. Connection time can generally be measured in seconds before they go away. It didn't work in New York, it doesn't work in Pagosa, and didn't work in Denver. The feature is seriously broken.

3. The keyboard, while better than that of my previous BlackBerry storm, is a pain to use.

More later. Maybe.

Cheers...