Scott Lyerly

How Was Your Weekend?

November 17th, 2013

I finally went to see the Higgins Armory this weekend. I’ve only lived in central Mass for fifteen years now. Figure I might as well go see the famous Higgins Armory.

You know. Before it closes.

Yes, that’s right, The Higgins Armory is closing down. At the end of this year, the doors close. Literally, December 31, 2013 is the last day the armory will be open.

The decision to close was a tough one, but a 2,000 piece collection spanning 4,000 years can only live in a building made of glass and steel for so long. The building it seems is the primary reason for the closure. The operating expense has become to great for the endowment.

Most of the pieces will end of at the Worcester Art Museum, which is a mixed blessing. Mixed in that it’s great that the Higgins collection will remain a) largely intact, and b) in the central Massachusetts area where it was originally collected. Mixed in that it sucks the armory has to close in the first place.

So I finally got off my rear and went to see the Higgins Armory with the fam and some visiting family. I highly recommend it. It’s a lot of fun to wander through the building and see the incredible assortment of weapons and gear.

But hurry. I’ve got about six more weeks.

Below are some pictures from the today’s visit. Enjoy.
Review: “The Wolf Gift” by Anne Rice

November 15th, 2013

It was suggested recently that I offer a review of Anne Rice’s “The Wolf Gift”, even though I have not finished the book. I was on the fence about this, because I’m not sure it’s possible to fairly judge a book without having finished it all the way through.

However, the fact that I wasn’t even able to finish it is perhaps review enough.

That said, I’ll offer the following comments regarding the book, as far as I have made:

If you are looking for a werewolf book that follows a traditional werewolf mythology, this ain’t it. In this book, the werewolf(ves) in question can change at will rather than being tied to the lunar cycle. This “gift”, while beyond the “victim’s” control at first, can be mastered, hence changing at will. And it comes with other interesting attributes, such as the ability to sense evil, almost as a smell, and the desire to play the furry fanged superhero to a city of murderers and tormentors. There is something to the idea of watching those who are due get their comeuppance, even if it involves tearing off of limbs and the disgorgement of viscera. But the great analogy of werewolf fiction, the inability to control aspects of oneself, is lost in this book. The straining dichotomy of being both good and evil at the same time is a primary driver of werewolf lore, and it makes for compelling reading in other fiction. Here the werewolf is incidental. If not a werewolf, the main character, a good Catholic boy with the improbable name of Rueben Golding, could just as easily be some other beast battling the forces of darkness. If not for the fur, he could be Batman.

The characterizations are implausible. Am I to truly believe that a woman with a deceased family backstory easily and without reservation falls into bed with a werewolf? Oh yes, that’s not a mistype. Her first encounter with our hero is a sexual one and it is with the hero of our story when he is in full werewolf form. There’s an undercurrent of romance to the novel that might be excused by Rice’s previous forays into erotica (see her Sleeping Beauty series), but this descends comically to the level of bestiality that is at once laughable and unbelievable.

An unbelievable story, however, may be saved by excellent writing. And that is sadly lacking here. In his book “On Writing”, Stephen King describes some writers as having a “tin ear” towards dialog. Rice is apparently hard of dialog hearing, as the characters come off antiquated and stilted. Take the following example, as the protagonist is conversing with himself, and, ostensibly the wolf lurking beneath:

“Oh, but you knew, didn’t you? Didn’t you know this was inside of you, bursting to come out? You knew!”

My guess is that Rice is trying to infuse a gothic sensibility into a modern-day story, but the results are flat. The proliferation of exclamation points within the dialog, and really throughout the entirety of the prose, underscores the crudely drawn characterizations. I suppose exclamation points are a matter of personal preference. I don’t mind the odd ! now and again, but the constant inclusion of them makes the characters seem melodramatic to the point of absurdity, and the result is that we feel very little, yay or nay, regarding their perils, lives or deaths.

But I hate to think that the book has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. So I desperately sought something to latch onto that would carry me through to the end. The best I could come up with is that, at least to the point where I stopped reading, there were no sparkling vampires. Alas, this was not enough to compel me to finish the novel.

In the end, I cannot recommend this book to anyone. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and for someone looking for a werewolf-superhero-romance mash-up, this book might just be the right cup of lunacy.
Excel Geeking: Changing a Query Parameter in Access from Excel

November 13th, 2013

If you read the “About Me” page, then you’ll see that the first thing I say is that I’m an Excel guru. And I am. It’s what I do for a living where I work (among other things).

But till now, I haven’t logged any Excel or VBA related posts. Not a one.

Let’s change that!

Fair warning, this one is going to be geeky. Now’s your chance to bail.

Still there?

Okay, let’s go then!

I do a lot of “Excel as a front end” work, where Excel is the user interface, and the data gets sent back to a database, usually Access, because it so prevalent.

I ran into a situation where I needed to pass a parameter to a query in Access because that query was a perquisite of my running another query that had the first one as a dependency.

Most of the time, when I’m connecting to Access from Excel, I use ADO. But in this case, I used DAO because it was simpler. Below is the resulting routine, in which I pass a string variable to the query prior to using that query elsewhere. Fully commented for your reading pleasure.

Sub Pass_Parameter_To_Query(sWeek As String) ' This passes a parameter to the max of time qry in order to enable dynamic time period run of the report. ' ' Inbound: sWeek = a string variable containing the week in question, in whatever format is required by the query. ' ' NOTE: in order to run this, you'll need a reference to the Microsoft DAO X.X Object Library.

' Variables declarations. Dim sDBPath As String ' This is the path of the DB. Dim sDBName As String ' This is the name of the DB Dim accObj As Object ' This will be our Access object Dim dbs As DataBase ' This is the database object we'll use (requires the reference) Dim qryDef As QueryDef ' This is the query definition we'll use (requires the reference) Dim sSQL As String ' This is our SQL string. Dim sQueryName As String ' This is our query name.

' We'll start out by setting the string variables.

' The DB path and name are actually global constants I use elsewhere, so I don't set them specifically here. sDBPath = msDATABASE_PATH sDBName = msDATABASE_NAME ' This is the name of the query we'll be changing. sQueryName = "qryTimeMaxes" ' This is out SQL statement: the dynamic part that will be fed from a user form is the Week field. sSQL = "SELECT Max(MonRptData.Year) AS MaxOfYear, Max(MonRptData.[Fiscal Season]) AS [MaxOfFiscal Season], Max(MonRptData.[Fiscal Quarter]) AS [MaxOfFiscal Quarter], Max(MonRptData.Month) AS MaxOfMonth, MonRptData.Week " _ & "FROM MonRptData " _ & "GROUP BY MonRptData.Week " _ & "HAVING (((MonRptData.Week)=" & sWeek & "));"
' Now we'll play with our objects (nothing dirty!) ' First we set the access object. The access object isn't really an access object at all, just a plain old ordinary object that we make into an access object using the "Access.Application" string. Set accObj = CreateObject("Access.Application") ' Then we open the object, using an access object model method, OpenCurrentDatabase, the the DB set by our path and DB name strings. accObj.OpenCurrentDatabase sDBPath & sDBName, False ' Next we'll set the database variable to the database we've just opened. ' Note that, because we didn't make our DB visible when we opened it, you can't see it, but it's open nevertheless. Set dbs = accObj.CurrentDb ' Now we'll get into the query itself. ' First we delete the old one... dbs.QueryDefs.Delete sQueryName ' ... then we recreate it with our new SQL string Set qryDef = dbs.CreateQueryDef(sQueryName, sSQL) ' That's it. The only left if to clean up. We'll close the database... dbs.Close ' ...then destroy our objects to free up all the juicy memory they take up. Set qryDef = Nothing Set dbs = Nothing Set accObj = Nothing
End Sub
If you followed that all the way through, then you’ll probably realize that I didn’t technically pass the parameter to the query in question. What I actually did was delete the query, then recreate it with the new parameter. This gives you the same result as setting the query parameter if you were actually in the Access database.

That’s it. Hope somebody out there finds it useful.
My Types of Writing

November 12th, 2013

I’ve been on a writing jag recently. Moreso than I can ever remember. I’m writing everyday, writing all different types of stuff. I’m writing fiction, I’m writing blog entries, I’m journaling. I’m becoming nearly obessive about it. If I don’t get something down on paper (actual paper or virtual paper), I feel like I’ve lost a day.

This is kind of a new experience for me. I’ve never been driven to write the way I am now. I can’t really say for sure from whence it came, but I’m glad it’s here. I’m actually gettin’ shit done.

What follows is an explanation of the types of writing I’m currently doing and what each type means to me.

Fiction

Okay, we’ll start with the obvious. Fiction writing. Story-telling. That’s what it’s all about, that’s what I first started off doing, and that’s where I feel the “end game” is for me. The idea of telling a story that I have in my head is a thrilling and daunting concept that I have struggled mightily to execute.

Because of both my cavalier attitude toward my own fiction writing and lack of force of will to keep writing when the writing gets tough, fiction tends to take me a VERY long time. My first book took six years to write and edit, start to finish. My second book, of which I finished just the first draft this year, took me three years. Three years for a first draft!

While I let that second book simmer before I tackle the editing, I’m in the throes of my third book. This time, because of the push to write, I’m three months into this first draft, and eying a completion of the draft around the holidays.

Blogging

Blogging, at least this much of it, is kind of a new thing for me. I’ve done some blogging before, I’ve had two or three previous blogs that I had brief courtships with, and then abandoned.

The primary issue I’ve had with blogging is that I don’t feel I’ve had anything interesting to say. This is an online platform, and as anybody who manages online content will tell you, you have to keep the content fresh. This then has been my number one problem with blogging. How do I keep the blog fresh with nothing to say?

This time I’m saying whatever comes to mind. Well, within reason. In order to become a successful writer these days, it helps to have a successful online presence. At least, that’s my impression. To the end, I’ve chosen to write about whatever strikes me, just as long as I work on it every day.

Following this process, I’ve discovered that I have lots to say, even if I’m the only one interested in what that is.

Journaling

This is the personal stuff. This is the stuff that I write for myself and only myself. This is the stuff I do longhand. This is the stuff that will never see the light of day.

There’s a specific type of satisfaction of opening up my journal and seeing the pages that have already been filled out. There’s that immediate sense of “I did that” that is gratifying. And I know, someday when I’m gone, my family will get to read through these journals and gain a deeper understanding of who I was.

Journaling is not easy or natural for me. I tend to get frustrated with longhand writing. It goes “too slow” for this member of the keyboard generation. Which is another good reason I do it. It teaches me patience.

That’s it. There are other types, things I do for work. I write SOPs (standard operating procedures), instructions, user guides, programming code–the list goes on. But even though I’m writing for each of these, and it’s by no means a cakewalk to do so, I don’t consider it my writing. Maybe that’s beause I don’t own any of it at the end of the day. Maybe it’s because I have to instead of want to. Maybe it’s because some of it is truly soul-sucking. I mean, c’mon. No matter how much you like your job, and I do, a full day writing SOPs will make you want to scream by the end of it.

But for the writing I enjoy, these are the three biggies for me.
A Grateful Remembrance

November 11th, 2013

I’ve been thinking a lot today about my grandmother who passed away at the end of this past August. She was ninety-four years old. She out-lived her husband, my grandfather, by twenty-seven years.

The reason I’ve been thinking about her recently is because her loss is still very recent, and I haven’t quite let that settle into my mind or my heart. And because it’s Veterans Day.

My grandfather was a Marine. He joined the Marines after the bombming of Pearl Harbor. Because I was only thirteen when he died, I didn’t have the chance to ask him about his time in the service.

So many members of my grandmother’s and grandfather’s families were in the service. My grandfather and his brother were both in WWII. My grandmother’s cousins all had husbands in the service, as was my grandmother’s brother. One cousin lost her husband in the war and went on to re-marry the man I knew as her husband.

I would have greatly enjoyed the chance to talk to my grandfather. Because I was still very much a boy when he got sick and died, the world outside was still distant to me. Even if I had talked to him when I was thirteen about his service years, I wouldn’t have understood the conversation.

After my grandfather was gone, and as I grew older, I relied on my grandmother for stories about the war years. We would talk over hands of canasta, games which my grandmother, mostly blind and getting hard of hearing, would trounce–I mean TROUNCE–me. I would ask her about the family history and the large cast of characters that rolled in and out of the stories. When two men who are brothers marry two women who are sisters, the result is a close-knit family with lots of stories.

There aren’t many left now. My grandmother was ninety-four. Her youngest cousin is eighth-four. I saw this cousin at the hospital and subsequently the viewing. It was bittersweet to see her again under such circumstances.

What never occurred to me while my grandmother was still alive was that, despite the fact that my grandfather was off doing the fighting, my grandmother was as much a veteran as my grandfather. Aside from all of the normal daily work that is done to build a life, my grandmother had to do this without her husband by her side. Worse, she, like all the wives and girlfriends and mothers, had to do this with the constant worry that a telegram would appear some bright blue morning declaring in as succinct a manner as possible that the life as she knew it two minutes ago was at an end.

These things have been on my mind this Veterans Day. As much as we celebrate and give thanks to those who go off and serve their country, this day is also about those they leave behind to keep up the house, cook the nightly dinners, help with homework, make the home feel like a home despite the glaring absence.

I’m eternally grateful for the service and sacrifice my grandparents gave for their country. Without them and others like them, we would not be the nation we are today. But more personally, my family would not have become the family it is without them.

So this Veterans Day, if you know a vet, thank them for their service. And if you know a vet’s family, thank them for their sacrifice.
Free E-Book Until Monday

November 10th, 2013

Just a quick reminder that Part One of my serial novel “How It Ends” is free on Amazon through tomorrow.

In the nutshelliest of nutshells, it’s a science fiction story about what happens when a robot falls in love with a human girl.

Try it out, you might like it. And if not, the worst you’ve lost is exactly $0.00 and an hour or two of your reading time (or however long it takes you to read 101 Kindle pages)

Part Two is out now at the very reasonable price of $0.99. Part Three will arrive just after the new year, and Part Four will conclude the novel in March ’14.

Hope all of my readers enjoy it!
Some Runs Are Just Bad Runs

November 9th, 2013
Like the title says. And today, I had one.

I’ve been using the Maffetone Method for training since late September. I wrote about the results one month in back in the tail end of October. I was doing well, feeling strong.

Well, that was not the case today. Today I ran 3 miles at a 12:02 pace, and my heart rate was averaging 150. In some cases, it was all the way up to 159. This is a big change from where I was on October, when my pace was down to 11:37 and my average heart rate was about 143. Hey, bad runs happen. Fact of life.

I recently took a two day workshop sponsored by my job entitled “Problem Solving and Decision Making”. In this workshop, the facilitator stressed that when something was working and suddenly stops working the way it should, your first question should be “What has changed?”

Taking that approach, when my run was done and I saw the results, I asked myself that very question. Here’s the list of things that were different when I started this run, compared to my normal runs:
1. It was 2:15 in the afternoon – Most of my runs are early in the morning, starting around 5:20AM, but because it’s so cold and so frickin’ dark now at 5:20AM, it’s harder to get out and hit the road.
2. I was pretty agitated – I knew I needed to get out and run. It had been nine days since my last run (Halloween to be exact). I was chomping at the bit, and because of some unusual activities this weekend, I didn’t have a set schedule of when I would do certain things like running. When I finally got out this afternoon, I was far too anxious to just take off.
3. My route was different – I usually run the exact same route. But after a while, I yearn for something a little different. Today was that day. I wanted to mix it up a little, so I changed the route. I’ve already got a lot of hills to contend with (in my best Jesse Pinkman: “This ain’t Kansas, yo. This is New England. We got hills and shit.”) Despite the fact that I always deal with the same elevation, today seemed like I was running uphill more than ever.
4. I had consumed a Snickers bar, a PB&J sandwich, several handfuls of Good & Plenties, and a diet A&W Root Beer only 1/2 hour before my run – I know it’s bad, I’m still trying to shake off the Halloween sugar addiction. Don’t judge me.
5. I hadn’t run in nine days – I went on a 17 mile hike last weekend, and my legs were stiff through Wednesday. Okay, not really an excuse. I could have been back out there Wednesday morning, but I had no motivation to run in the dark and the cold. See point number 1 above.
6. I changed how I measure my heart rate – Before I would start the heart rate monitor during my warm up and allow the low heart rate then (and during the cool down) to impact the average heart rate. Today I started the monitor as I started running and ended when I stopped running.
So, in effect, lots of things had changed. And I ended up having a really shitty run. I don’t know that I could pin it on one thing or the other. And I know that part of the problem is that the Maffetone Method is a slow burn kind of thing. If you want to see instant results, you’re gonna be disappointed. The entire winter season, a good five or six months, are all about building a great aerobic base from which to race. The means running ridiculously slow, even though I feels like you’re getting nowhere. Which is a tough pill to swallow in our instant gratification world. Because of this I tend to run faster than I’m supposed to (my heart rate should be about 140).

Yet even while I was moping about my shitty run, my wife reminded me that at least I got out and ran, which is better than sitting on my ass at home.

So I’ll try again on Monday, for which I happen to have the day off, and see if I can’t do better.

Live to run another day.
Werewolf Novel Cage Match: Winner

November 9th, 2013

I haven’t even finished The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice yet, and I can already declare a winner:

The Last Werewolf, by Glen Duncan.

How can I make this call without having finished one of the books? Easy. It’s because the Anne Rice book is bad. SO bad. Like, not sure if I’ll be able to finish it bad.

I might write a review of it later, but that would mean I’d have to finish the book, and I’m not sure I can subject myself to any of punishment. We’ll see.
Sneak Peek at Tomorrow’s Release

November 7th, 2013

Tomorrow marks the release date of Part Two of my serial novel, “How It Ends”. Subtitled The Plan, it follows the continuing story of Sidney, the university professor who remains shaken after his encounter with Eric; Brian, Sidney’s colleague who is planning to exploit his work relationship with Sidney and personal relationship with Anita to advance his career; Eric, the ruthlessly ambitious corporate executive who is making “arrangements” to deal with a blackmailer; Anita, the brilliant beautiful college student who is trying not to be swept away by the whirlwind around here; and Gammons, Eric’s personal robotic assistant who appears to be falling in love.

You can jump into “How It Ends” risk-free starting tomorrow. I’m dropping the price of Part One, The Evaluation. If you log onto Amazon tomorrow, you’ll find the price of Part One a very reasonable $0.00. But hurry! Amazon sets a limit on the length of time I can drop the price of the book. It will only be free from tomorrow through Veterans Day.

As promised in the title of this post, here’s a sneak peek at the cover of Part Two.
Blogging, Blogging, And More Blogging

November 6th, 2013

Read this. It’s great.

I was thinking about this topic a bit myself today. I previously wrote about NaNoWriMo and why I’m not participating. I think the concept is brilliant and wish all the participants the best, but because of the state of my own writing, I’m not in a position to participate.

My friend over at Untitled*United is not in NaNoWriMo this year, but is instead participating in NaWri15Mo. Won’t lie to you, I’d never even heard of it. I had to look it up. It’s on Tumblr, and it’s sole purpose is to help writers do fifteen minutes of focused writing per day in November.

Then, yesterday as I’m looking through tip posts on WordPress, I find a reference to NaBloPoMo.

NaBloPoMo? Sounds dirty.

Turns out this one is designed to get bloggers blogging more. Have to say, I’m all for it. There’s a reason I’ve kicked my own blogging in the ass recently to get it going. The result is that I’ve logged twenty plus posts in the last thirty days. And counting.

But do we need another bastardized form of NaNoWriMo to really get people writing? Are we just cheapening the concept by adding a fifteen minute focused version, and a version dedicated to blogging only, etc? Are we watering down the idea? There are probably more that I don’t even know about.

Or should we embrace all the opportunities to push us forward with our writing?

My answer (cause I know you’re just dying to know) is “Hell yeah, we should embrace it!”

These are contests in which the organizing body gives no prize. Hell, some don’t even have organizing bodies. You get little gifs or jpegs that you can post on your site or blog or whatever saying you participated or finished or done other damn reason.

Prizes aren’t the goal here, folks.

The goal is to get people, writers, writing. Shake off the cobwebs, brush off the rust, get your ass off the couch and away from the TV and in front of whatever your choice of media is (computer, typewriter, write longhand if it strikes you) and write. The goal is not publishing what you’ve got at the end, as some might think, though it’s certainly not outside the realm of possibility. The goal is to get writing.

I think you could argue that we don’t need less of these. We need more.

So go on! Get writing!