C James

Chapter 78: Dances with Madness Trevor’s demons clawed at his mind, filling him with a dread certainty that he’d either die or be left insane. Trevor clutched at Shane’s arm. “Don’t let them...,” he gasped. The words clued Shane in, and he said sharply, “Trev, you are not at sea, it’s OVER!” Shane’s voice changed and he added softly, over and over, “You’re safe”, while hugging Trevor to him. Trevor’s breathing finally eased, and his shaking ebbed. He fumbled for Shane’s hand, and t

True... nothing bad ever happens to my characters, which is part of why we always remember that I never use cliffhangers!

Hey! I thought I posted that.. I forgot, so no cliffhanger. It's called "Dances with Madness". Nothing dire there... maybe Trevor just meets a guy or girl at a dance, and their name is madness.

Emoe!!! King cliffie?? But but but... you know I never, ever use cliffhangers! As for winning that particular award every time but one that it's been offered, I was framed!! By an EEEviiil conspiracy!! Well, as for number of chapters... I did, when first sketching out the plot, say it would be 20 to 25 chapters in total. I will admit that it's possible that I might have been mistaken... Remember... I cannot count. But, I'm pretty sure Circumnavigation will have less than 100 chapters. The last two chapters and the epilogue were written at the very start of the story, and large blocks of text between chapter 81 and the end are already written. However... you're overlooking something... what's the one way to bring the story to an ending fast? Bridget wins, and Trevor's head is shipped home (eastbound, thus completing his circumnavigation) to appear on Sanchez's platter. Awww... hopefully not the cliffies bit?

There has been much speculation regarding Shane's sexuality, so I thought I'd put up a poll. CJ

Hrmmm. Banning Marmite... Marmite and vegemite are similar, though not the same. I like both, each has it's uses. Marmite is gooey, like a very thick liquid (about like blackstrap molasses) aqnd is easier to use for marinades, etc. Vegimite is a little more akin to peanut butter in consistency, and haqs a slightly different taste. I love it on toast.

Shane is certainly a master of the wind-up, as seen with the kangaroo setup. 'Tis true, I like carrots.

I for one give my profound and heartfelt thanks for any and all feedback, be it public or private, praise or criticism. To those that read stories here, and take the time to give a review, a forum post, or feedback of any sort, even if it just a one sentence PM saying "Hi", I thank you, for feedback is so oft the stuff of gold for any author. In a word, preposterous. Many authors, myself included, ASK for criticism. Someone giving us constructive criticism, openly or otherwise, is doing us a favor. A favor I for one am most thankful for. Splendid advice, if you're after a world where good authors have no readers whatsoever (due to never posting their work) and GA is the realm of only bad writers and would soon cease to exist. I have no interest in such a world, nor do I see it possessing one iota of allure. To write well is a goal, one of self-improvement, an inner peace, an act of sharing, a sense of verve perhaps, or simply joy... it may be all these things, or merely some. What it most certainly is not is braggadocio. Perhaps you would do well to ponder why you believe it so.

I'm pretty sure it's not an overheat. The problem began showing up when the system was cold and warming up, never after that. Also, I have active motherboard monitoring of temp, and my cpu stayed under 100f (very cool, for an Athalon) and the motherboard under 90. I have a high capacity CPU cooler plus about ten other fans in the case... I'm a big believer in having ample cooling. The fans spec out fine; they work, plus I checked them on a multimeter. The only one that's a little doubtful was one of several case fans, and unplugging it made no difference. I have cleaned everything anyway, though. I will try that, probably tomorrow (I've been busy with work these past few days so not much time to work on this) . I left it to last because I'm more likely to do damage doing that than I am testing stuff with a multimeter. I can pull it off tomorrow and have a look, but if I need remover and surface purifier I'll need to wait until I can get some shipped here. I've just used acetone in the past, then alcohol for surface prep, but that'll depend if I have paste near plastic here. I do have some thermal paste to use though.

Interestingly, we find out a huge thing about Shane soon... very soon... in chapter 78 in fact, plus even more in 79. I'd like to bring up something from a prior chapter I meant to talk about: Shane's "Night of the Mob" short story. He was quite pleased with himself, because though every word was true, it was not at all a reflection of the actual reality. Instead, as he said, it was misdirection, which Shane called a sneaky writer's trick. Shane actually did pretty well with "Night of the Mob." It was all narration, and as I often say, the narrator cannot lie.

Of course it's not a cliffhanger... As we all know, I never, ever use cliffhangers. As for Shane... we really don't know much about him at all, especially his backstory, or things that have happened to him. We will, starting in the next chapter. Nope, can't be a cliffhanger... I never, ever use those. And of course I could never be mean to a character.. Have I ever been? Well, at least we now know that Shane has known about Trevor all along... which is why he was doing things such as making the budgie-spotting remark, peeling off his shirt (after meeting with martin Blake ) when Trevor was being a wiseass and throwing it at him to shake him up a bit, etc.. and we also know that Shane decided not to tell Trevor the main way Shane knew so soon. Sorry to hear you've han panic attacks... a friend of mine in college had them (I never saw them, but I was told) so I know they can be hell. CJ

My main suspect, the power supply, isn't it. I tested it on a multimeter. I found a spec graphic online so it was easy to test... I tested the four pin CPU power as well, and even the peripheral plugs. I'm now checking things like the power cord, and I'll check the power outlet as well (it's plugged into an APU at the moment). The battery is okay, so my next step is to play musical chips with the RAM, then test the graphics board by taking it out, along with all the other cards. A final step will be pulling apart every connector and taking out every card, then putting it back. if that doesn't ID the problem, at this point I'll have to assume it's the motherboard, which means fixing it isn't worth it. (I've examined the capacitors, they seem fine, and they're about the only thing on the MB I could fix.). Actually, the most likely cause of the problem is my gremlin control unit is kaput.

Interesting writing anecdote here... The narrator cannot lie or be mistaken. Characters, however, are under no such limitation; they can lie, and they can be wrong. For example, the word "straight" appears two times in this chapter. The first is a reference in dialog by Trevor to Joel. Could Trevor be wrong? Yes, it's possible. However, if the narrator said it, then Joel would absolutely be straight. The second (and last) appearance of "straight" in the chapter is in dialog by Shane. "Then in the grocery store, two hot girls walked right past you, but you were oblivious. No straight guy with a pulse would have been." Shane is giving an opinion. In this instance he's technically wrong, because even 100% gay guys are capable of noticing that a girl is hot, in the same way that a 100% straight guy is capable of noticing that a guy is hot. They can recognize them, just fine. It's also very possible for a person (regardless of orientation) to not be oblivious to a person who is unattractive by any criteria. Trevor may well have been oblivious (and what he's dealing with between the ears makes him decidedly moreso than normal). One complication to the rule; if a charachter says something, and the narrator weighs in on it by saying Then it is the absolute truth, with no room for doubt. The narrator cannot lie, though they can misdirect. As Shane said, misdirection is a sneaky writer's trick. That lines you quoted are probably the most important one in this chapter. Right now, Trevor is on the razor's edge of a total (and possibly permanent) breakdown. The combination of stresses (the trauma and nightmares, coming out, his insane deflation method, the worries about people still trying to kill him, etc) pushed him to the breaking point. Even if he gets past the panic attack, he'll be in a very vulnerable state for a while, where any major stress could break him forever. It's a good thing there's nothing going on in his life that could be in any way stressful. Hrmmm, on an utterly unrelated note, we still don't know who it was that Sanchez called in Australia several chapters ago, do we?

Why no more wrestling? At least Trevor finally came out.

ROFL! Good to know I'm not the only one who hits the wrong keys sometimes.

Cliffhanger? But... I never use cliffhangers! Ah, the sinking feeling that Trevor had after his inconvenient pirate encounter.. He was just feeling a little... down

Breaking point is up. Cliffhanger-free as always, and just good, relaxing fun... plus a red visitor!

"Breaking Point" just posted. And Lol.. Christmas in the story will come soon. Yep! We'll be having more story days per chapter, so the 17th is right around the corner. I'm not yet sure on an exact chapter count, but it'll be under 100... and if it's not, somebody please shoot me. ACK!!! Now now, no goat roasting!

I'll check into the chapter 60 issue, thanks! Circumnavigation usually posts weekly, and though I'm not certain on the final chapter count yet, it will be under 100 for sure.

Chapter 77: Breaking Point After their lunch of Trevor’s sandwiches, Shane glanced at a clock. “It’s already mid-arvo,” he said, using an Australian word for ‘afternoon’. “I think we’re both a bit worn from the swimming, and we’ve loads of time. How about putting the beach flags on hold until morning?” Trevor stretched and nodded. “I was kinda hoping you’d say that.” “I have an ulterior motive,” Shane said with a grin, and then added, “For a writer, it’s important to write when

Just a fast update (I'll add more soon) My desktop system is now totally dead. I was not able to do a restart to run VMware. Now, every time, it gives me the "System fail CPU test" code on POST. But, one difference; now, sometimes, all that happens when I hit the power button is the fans spin a little for a moment, then stop. The power supply to the motherboard spikes my multimeter but does not seem to reach 12 volts. I am getting ever more suspicious of my power supply. I don't think I've had an overheat; I do overclock, but only by 10%. I also reset the auto-shutdown temp from default of 257 f to 180f, and my usual operating temps have always been below 120f, usally in the 80f range. I have a LOT of cooling capacity, plus 5 of the fans are multi-speed and go to higher speed when core temps climb over 100f. If it's not the powersupply or something similarly cheap, I'll be biting the bullet and getting a new system. I'm on my laptop now.. after a bit more experimenting on my old system, I'll attach my keyboard and monitor to it. (I hate laptop keyboards). I already have a mouse hooked up. My sincere thanks to all responders, no matter how this turns out.

good point, but if I can fix it in the $50 range and get another year out of it, I'd be better off than spending a grand or more on a new system with a lifespan of maybe 5 years. On the other hand, some of the hardware is older than the system (a couple of the smaller hard drives are pushing 15 years, the floppy drive is close to 20.) When i build a "new" system I tend to use some older parts if they still work. So, some of the system is very old, and thus a big risk for failure. So, if it's a power supply issue or a bad capacitor or similar, I'll probably just fix it. If it's major, like motherboard/CPU, it's not worth it (even if I can find an identical motherboard and CPU to fix it). Another factor is time; a Windows 7 system is going to take me a ton of time to get everything reinstalled and working again, ugh. I'm also concerned that I'll hate windows 7 the same way I do Vista on my laptop. I'll go have a look at Windows 7 on a friend's PC and seen what I think. I used Arctic Silver for the paste... I think I still have some from about 2 years ago. I've pulled CPU's before, I just don't like it (I fear the CRACK! of death... LoL) A local PC repair place isn't an easy option for me; it's about an hour's drive to the closest one. (I don't live in a town or city). I still have the power supply on my suspect list (along with the rest) though... an out of voltage range CPU (vcore) on POST can fail the CPU. All of the trouble is happening at startup with a cold system; the freezes in Windows, then the CPU fail when i try to reboot, or freezes or the system powering itself off during boot attempts. However, once the system has been running a few miniutes, it's fine until I either hypernate it or do a cold shutdown. A possibly related thing I just noticed; it no longer does a full shutdown itself; it hangs, still running, at the point it would normally totally power off. I'm also going to do a visual check of every capacitor in the system... capacitor fail fits the profile, and replacing one of those on the motherboard is easy and cheap, assuming I can find a suitable replacement. (I can solder electronics). 2 Will do... I 3rd: RAM: Running memtest is a really good idea. Hrmmm... I've had power supply failures that just drive one line (like the 12 volt) out of spec range, though that's rare (and usually due to a bad capacitor). I wish modern power supplies were like the early ones that would run without a motherboard attached; those I could just throw a multimeter on and see what they were putting out at the various plugs. A lot of my stuff is pre XP (Heck, a few run in DOS boxes only) and the microsoft virtual machine that comes with Win7 ultimate or pro only says it runs XP software... so, I'm thinking I'd still need dual boot, BUT, I can't do that as Win2k won't run new hardware. Basically, I don't want to spend a ton of money and time buying tons of new apps and then learning them, and so I would want to stick to old stuff. For example, a lot of FTP programs and apps I use are Win 98 stuff, and I'm very fond of Norton Utils 6, a DOS based utility set that has capabilities modern stuff doesn't (though I do use newer stuff too for other tasks). I'd have to spend thousands to replace it all with new stuff, which would vastly exceed the cost of fixing or rebuilding my old system (assuming I can find parts). Another thing I can't do without is batch files... I need them for sorting and processing files. For example, if I need to process a whole set of directories with an archiver to produce an archive set (split into sequentially numbered files for ease of transmission, then create a new dir to move them to) of only specific kinds of file extensions (say, PDF and mpg) I have a batch file to do it (or I can write a new one or alter an old one). I can't do it manually (too much work, of the kind that computers are supposed to be for) and I have no idea what the Win7 approach would be (how would I do this on a Win7 system?) I have 64 bit on my dual-core VISTA laptop... I like the idea of it, though I find Vista a PITA to use. I also can't help but notice that system-intensive apps (archiver programs, google earth, etc) run faster and smoother on my old Windows 2k system (same amount of RAM) than on the new dual core Pentium 64 bit laptop. Why should it be external? A lot less clutter with cards in slots rather than cables and separate units (especially if they need power supplies too). I LOVE those "battlestation" layouts you linked to!!! 3 screens... WOW, that would be handy. Thanks!! CJ Edit: Just found this: Hrmm! That should work... I'll see if a freind of mine will let me test some older apps on his Win 7 laptop. And, if I can run a DOS emulator of some kind so I can run batch files, I think Win7 is feasible for me.

Plenty of fans. :-) I have one intake fan for each physical hard drive (the airflow goes over the HD's), three exhaust case fans besides, a high capacity CPU cooler fan, and even a fan on the graphics card, plus an internal flow fan for the motherboard-RAM slots area. Several of my fans are variable speed and go to high power when the motherboard detects a temp rise. I beefed up the airflow over what a normal system would have because it helps stuff last longer, plus I have much thinner air (less cooling capacity) due to being at 7000 feet. I have temperature monitoring on my motherboard, and that looks fine. (I often overclock the system, which is another reason for the load of fans). I can see the battery, and I'll test that. I don't think that can cause this problem, but anything is possible and it can't hurt to check. Thanks! :-) I do RAID for backup, BUT, just in case I go with a new system that won't take EIDE drives, I also updated my external drive backup yesterday, and backed up every HD to it. I can hook that external to my laptop (it's firewire), so theoretically I should have access to all my data even if this system goes down. I agree on buying one, IF I can find one that does what I need. The problem would be having available bays and slots (for a fax modem, for additional HD's so I can do RAID arrays, etc) and also the operating system; I can't wipre the drive and install Windows 2000 in a new system; it won't have the drivers for the hardware. I'd have to go with Windows 7, and that'd mean reinstalling tons of stuff, some of which is old and might not run on it. I don't do much of any gaming (I think the newest game I have is the original microsoft Age of Empires, which is at least ten years old. I'm not a gamer). I do however do a lot of high-end graphics work (which is why I built a fast system). But.. most any system I buy would be as fast as this, assuming it had (or could take) at least 4 gigs of RAM. If I go with a newer OS, I think I'd want 8 gigs (windows 2k is limited to 4). What I'd really like is the ability to run two monitors, but lots of systems can do that these days. I'll be running a program called Memtest from a bootable CD overnight, assuming I can get the system to run at all after shutdown. If I can't, I'll just remove two of the four RAM chips, try to boot, and if it won't, try the other two (that should elimiate a bad RAM chip, becuase two failing at once is unlikley). I'm positive it's not the hard drives; the failure often occurs before the bios even gets to them. After the initial freeze, I can't boot (or even start to) without getting the CPU error code. This happens within half a second of power up, before HD access. I could, though, just disconnect all drives (CD and floppy as well) to eliminate them as suspects. I'll keep that in mind (it might also be a HD controllers, and I have one on a card plus the ones on the motherboard). Computer are indeed home to demons and gremlins. :-) Thanks!

I am in desperate need of advice... My desktop computer has started having trouble. It freezes (usually within a miniute of waking it up out of hybernate, requiring a power off reboot. (this is operating system independent; it happens no matter which OS I boot into). When rebooting, it gives me "System Fail CPU Test" warnings instead of booting, but if I let it sit for a minute, I can sometimes get it to boot. Once it's been on a few minutes, it works fine until I shut it town or hypernate it again. I built it about 6 years ago. It's a tower case, Asus AV8 motherboard, 4 gigs of RAM, AMD 3600 CPU, 5 physical hard drives, 2 CD ROm and 1 CD burner, one floppy drive. The memory passes a memtest. The first freeze was a couple of weeks ago, but I thought it was just a software problem. It's not, sometimes this happens before the operating system starts booting. Today, it took me 20 trys to get past the first couple of miniutes, but now I'm past that, no problem at all. My best guess so far is it's a loose connection, because it seems thermally related. (it occurs during the CPU's warm up). CPU temp profiles seem okay though. So, I'm guessing a loose connection aggravated by the thermal expansion during power up. Getting the CPU and heat sink out and putting conductive grease on the pins is my next idea... though I'm holding off because the CPU cooler mount takes a LOT of force and messing with it runs the risk of breaking stuff. Edit to add: I'm now also suspicious of my power supply... the Vcore voltage seems a touch erratic, and power supplies are a common fail point. I might take it apart and check the capacitors (BEWARE if you ever try this; they can hold enough charge to kill you even after unplugging the thing!) Anyone have any other ideas what it might be? If I need a new motherboard and CPU, I'm probably going to build a new system instead. Maybe dual or quad core, though I'm undecided as I don't have software that makes much use of that. Currently, I run Windows 2000 (with three different boot partitions to give me 3 operating systems) on this system (the one that's having problems). I have XP Pro, which I could upgrade to but I've never been that fond of XP. I have Vista on a laptop and hate it. I could go windows 7 pro (I need to be able to run old software) but I've heard that you have to do a clean install and reinstall ALL the software, which would take me forever (I have tons of software, much of it old (some of it even DOS based). so I'd prefer to avoid it. Either that... or I'll go to Costco or somewhere and buy a system. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

Jim is in many ways the rock in the storm. :-) He knows the whole story, so he knows things Gonzales can't, but still, he hasn't jumped to conclusions the way a great many others have. Thanks! :-)