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His steel cold frame encompassed her as they darted through the forest. Above, a full moon shine down, shimmering off the leaves in quick glances of light, blurring past her as they drew deeper into the growth. She’d only known him for 25 minutes, but for some inexplicable reason only possible in love stories written by those not ever having been hurt by another, she trusted him completely. He was strong, silent, masculine, handsome, and a vampire.

They stopped just short of the clearing. In the distance she could see movements of small forest creatures. The same sort you might see in a Disney film, except these didn’t talk. He laid her down on a bed of flowers, which she later realized were honestly just moss and weeds, but they felt like flowers to her.

“Oh Edmund”, she said softly, “This is so beautiful”.

“It is?”, he replied, skeptically eyeing the aforementioned woodland creatures and mossy bed, before quickly regaining his composure. “Yea… Beth… it is”.

“Are you going to tell me what it’s like to be a vampire?”, she said, relishing the last word as it came out of her mouth.

“I guess”, he said.

“Don’t you want to share it with me?”, she replied quizzically.

“It’s kinda dull honestly. I’m hungry most of the time, except I have an insatiable appetite for human blood instead of lattes or hamburgers. I don’t grow old, and for some reason in this version of my existence, I can’t turn into a bat, which kinda sucks”, he confided in her.

“It sounds dreamy”, she said slowly.

“Did you really just use the word ‘dreamy’?”, he asked.

“I suppose I did”, she swooned.

“Yea… sure….”, Edmund said as he came around the other side of his mossy half-effort-but-its-the-thought-that-counts bed. “Beth, I have to tell you something”.

“What is it?”, she asked.

“I’m kinda hungry, that’s why I brought you here”, Edmund said.

“You want to show me how you hunt?”, she said, peering deep into his cold, dead, sorta blackish with specs of brown eyes.

“Uh… Beth… you don’t get it do you”, Edmund said as he pulled out a bib, the same sort you see at value-priced lobster shanty restaurants. He couldn’t afford another dry cleaning charge this week.

“You want me to be with you forever?”, she inferred.

“Beth… I’m a frickin’ vampire. We met on Match after I literally told you in an email that you looked good enough to eat. I just figured you were suicidal or something, but now I can see – you’re just dumb and oblivious”, Edmund said as he opened his mouth, baring his fangs.

“Wait a minute – you don’t seem to be that romantic after all…” Beth said before she was cut off.

<five minutes later>

Jason, the werwolf, arrived in the clearing just in time to see Edmund untying his bib.

“I missed it again?!?”, Jason said incredulously.

“Told ya man, I work fast”, Edmund said with a laugh.

“One day I’m gonna get here ‘just in time’”, Jason said reluctantly.

“Sure”, Edmund said, “I guess some day you’ll get here early enough to rescue yourself a girlfriend, loser!”

Author’s Note: The title of this post was inspired by, honestly, a section at my local Barnes & Noble. They now have a shelf titled “Teen Paranormal Romance”. It’s right next to another shelf named (I kid you not), “New Teen Paranormal Romance”. Meanwhile, their computer book s are missing, and their science & engineering sections are hidden away!

A Short Story a Day is a daily feature and creative writing project.

Leo woke up not to the sound of his alarm clock, but to a loud knocking at his door. It was 4 AM, well before his 5:30 AM alarm. He put on his robe and went to the door to find a policeman.

“Are you Mr. Hickman?”, the cop asked.

“Uh… no – Hickman lives next door”, Leo said, gesturing toward the right, as the officer apologized and excused himself.

Leo couldn’t get back to sleep, and when his alarm rang it felt like the world crashed down on him. He reluctantly got up, got ready for work, and walked out the door. No sign of the police, and interestingly the lights were on in Hickman’s house – he never had to wake up early! Leo paid it no mind and got in his car to drive to work.

At work, Leo received word that his request for a raise hadn’t come through, although he had received 2 extra weeks vacation each year. He wasn’t aware that this was an intermediate option between raise and no raise. Leo spent the first half of the day annoyed, and cooled by mid-afternoon. At least he had something good in the surprise, even though it wasn’t exactly what he wanted.

That night Leo came home and told his wife about the day.

“That’s OK Leo, two extra weeks gives us more time together”, she said as they sat down to dinner.

“Oh, by the way, did you hear about the Hickmans?”, Leo’s wife asked.

“Naw, just saw a cop this morning looking for them. Didn’t have a chance to look into it further”, Leo explained.

“Their daughter was in a major car accident this morning. She’s hurt pretty bad but they think she’ll make a full recovery – just might take 6 months or longer”, Leo’s wife reported.

“That’s horrible”, Leo exclaimed. He couldn’t help but think about his own daughter, living away at college. He’d call her later tonight just to make sure she was OK.

It had been 6 months since the day when Mark found the list in an old hoodie he was putting on for the first time that September. It wasn’t too remarkable – just a list of chores for the day, 11 months ago.

call insurance agent
buy eggs
call Kelsey’s school
drop off Jo’s car
print resume

Mark paused as he recalled the day he wrote the list. He’d just been in an accident the day before, hence the call to his insurance company. Jo was having her boss over for dinner, and needed the eggs. Kelsey had been caught smoking in the bathroom at school, and her principal wanted to speak to her father. Jo’s car was acting up, and he was tasked with getting it fixed. On top of that, he had been told a few days earlier that his temporary assignment, which he hoped would be made permanent, was ending. He’d have to get his resumé out there once more. It was just another rough day after a series of rough months in the life of the 43 year-old divorced father of 1 troubled teenager, who was trying to make it work with his fiancé of two years. The previous 6 months had been hard on her as they struggled with her parent’s deaths. Kelsey could care less, but Mark had grown to think of Jo’s parents as the ‘good’ in-laws he’d never had with his first wife.

But all of that was before he got the call that changed everything. He remembered that his phone rang while he was buying the eggs listed on the note. He could barely hear the voice on the other end as he stood in the supermarket, and he didn’t recognize the number. Finally after a few moments of exchanging whats and huhs, he figured out it was Jo. She was at the doctor’s office, and needed him to pick her up. He didn’t understand – she had his car while he drove Kelsey’s old beater. Why couldn’t she drive home? When he reached the doctor’s office, Jo’s doctor took him into her office. They exchanged pleasantries, and while they talked for at least 30 minutes, Mark couldn’t remember anything after he heard the word “cancer”.

She hung on for 5 months, but it was aggressive and it took her. Today, six months after the funeral, he found himself thinking how 11 months ago, dozens of tiny annoyances kept him aggravated and upset.  In a flash, all of that changed. Somehow during her struggle, he found a job that was sympathetic to what he was going through, allowing him to start a few weeks after the funeral. Kelsey came out of her ‘rough’ period and tomorrow he was scheduled to drop her off at school. It was hard without Jo, but he was getting through. He crumpled up the old list and threw it out as he replaced it with the shopping list of things to buy for Kelsey’s dorm. Life wasn’t less hectic now, but given the alternative he experienced in those 5 months, he was happy to have a mile-long list.

“Ready to go, Dad?”, Kelsey said as she came bounding down the stairs. “The stores might be crazy busy today!”.

“Yep, I’m ready for anything”, Mark said in reply.

So I am at the MVP Summit, in a room with a bunch of interesting people, and sadly I can’t give you any updates on the content (Other than to say Jack Cook is talking about suits right now, and no, suit isn’t a slang word for anything). But here are a few things I can talk about:

• It’s great to see everyone as usual
• Don Sorcinelli can apparently morph into a laptop bag. Be careful when he does this.
• The move to Bellevue is a nice change in terms of location, eventhough we aren’t able to bum around downtown Seattle.
• The reception last night (The “Welcome Reception”) was horribly executed. The room was way too small, the food kept running out, and there was no way to hold a conversation with more than 2 people without blocking someone or something.
• Everything is supposed to be 100% green, which is great from an ethical standpoint, despite all the gas that was used to get me here from NYC.

I’ll try to get some pics for the blog, although I didn’t bring my camera (for some reason I’m not sure; but I do have a phone with a camera in it!). But for now I’ll just show this picture from Windows Phone 7 Series (.com):

The following was written for my lab group at work, however it strikes me as something everyone may benefit from. Mail Merge is an awesome tool, and this makes it much more useful when a group shares an incoming e-mail address that replies should be directed to (e.g., sales@ or info@ etc.. instead of the individual who sent the mail). I’ve had to sanitize some of the screenshots to remove private information, however it shouldn’t detract from the overall message!

You’ll need:

• A copy of a mailing list, in either excel format or CSV.
• Microsoft Word
• Microsoft Outlook or Entourage
• An SMTP username & Password to send out through SMTP Servers that require encryption.

First-Time Setup

You’ll do these steps once per computer you use this on. I’ve broken them down by Outlook 2007 or Entourage 2008, with screen shots. The basic process is…
Outlook 2007:

1. In Outlook, click on "Tools" then "Account Settings"
2. Click New to set up a new e-mail account
   

   

3. Choose "Microsoft Exchange, POP3, IMAP, or HTTP", and click "Next"
4. Click "Manually configure server settings or additional server types", and click "Next"
5. Choose "Internet E-mail" and click "Next"
6. Fill out the information in the box as is appropriate using your group e-mail and a valid username and password that can authenticate to the SMTP server. Then click "More Settings"

   

7. After hitting "More Settings", choose the "Outgoing Server" tab and configure as follows (Assuming you need SMTP Auth):

   

8. Then click the "Advanced" tab and configure as follows if you need to specify SSL or TLS:

   

9. Click "OK", click "Next", then click "Finish". On the accounts box, select the new POP3 account you just created and click "Set as Default" so that the box looks like this:

   

10. Hit "close". You should now be set to use Mail Merge. Be sure to change your default back when done (See below for this step under "cleanup")

Entourage 2008

1. In Entourage, click on Tools, then Accounts.
2. Click on New, then Mail

   

3. Click on "Configure Account Manually"
4. Choose "POP" then click "OK"
5. Configure your account like the setup below, putting in your SMTP username and password:

   

6. Click on the button under SMTP Server that reads "Click here for advanced sending options"
7. Configure as follows depending on your server, the following is for one that requires TLS encryption:

   

8. Click OK, and return to the Accounts window. Select your new account and choose "Make Default". You’ll want to change this back later:

   

9. Close the Accounts window, you should now be ready to mail merge!

Running the Mail Merge (After Setup)

Word 2007/Outlook 2007

1. Open Word, Choose "Mailings" tab from the Ribbon, and click "Start Mail Merge", Then choose "Email Messages"

   

2. Next choose "Select Recipients" and then "Use Existing List". In the dialog that pops up, select the CSV file containing the mailing list:

   

   

3. Clicking on "Edit Recipient List" should show you something like this:

   

4. Click OK. Now you need to use "Match Fields" to make sure that title, firstname, lastname, and e-mail address are all matched up properly (The file in my example doesn’t have headings on the rows, so the first row values (my information) is what Word feels is the best identifier of each field):

   

   
   

   

5. With everything all matched up, you can now type your letter including Merge fields as you’d like. Here’s my example:

   

6. After you have everything written, click on "Preview Results" and you can see the "live version" that your readers will receive:

   

7. Once you’re satisfied, hit "Finish and Merge", then "Send e-mail messages"

   

8. In the box that pops up, find the e-mail column in the the "to:" drop down. Enter a subject as well, and hit OK

   

9. Mail Merge will rev up and spit a bunch of files into your Outbox in Outlook, and these will eventually go out to the masses
10. Cleanup: Remember to go to tools -> Account Settings and change the default back to your usual email account instead of the account you created in the "First Time Setup" above!!

Word 2008 / Entourage 2008

1. Open Word 2008 and choose "Tools" then "Mail Merge Manager"
2. In the window that opens, choose "Form Letter" under "Select Document Type", then under "Select Recipient List" choose "Open Data File"

   

3. Chose the CSV file that contains your mailing list.
4. Drag and drop placeholders where you’d like them in your mailing. Here’s my example:

   

5. Under "Preview Results" click "View Merged Data" to see the resulting e-mails

   

6. Click "Generate e-mail messages" on the "Compete Merge" tab. NOTE: If Entourage is not your default mail client, this button will be grayed out. To make Entourage your default mail client, go into Entourage preferences and click the button that says "Make Entourage my default mail client".

   

7. Fill in the appropriate values in the Mail Recipient dialog, and click "Mail Merge to Outbox":

   

8. Because the world is a scary place, Entourage pops up a warning message like this below. Go ahead and let it send your mail since you know what script sent it!

   

9. Cleanup: After the mail merge is done, you’ll want to go to Tools -> Accounts and set your e-mail default back to your original account so that you send as yourself and not as the group e-mail address you used for mail merge.

So there you have it, mail merge to any particular list you have, with a custom FROM header.

Candle Fail

This entry makes me suspicious. Maybe it’s the laptop being a bit older that makes me wonder how awesome it would be to take a junker laptop and create this “failblog” entry. But perhaps I’m just trying to make up excuses for this horrible sight.

www.junosora.com/wp/tigerscrane/2007/08/06/starcraft-origami/

Words cannot describe how cool this looks…

Teenagers, one of the latest singles by alternative-rock / emo / whatever band My Chemical Romance is a pretty humorous and ironic song that I figured I’d highlight here, for really no reason other than to put my thoughts out there on it (That’s what blogs are for right?). It actually applies to the title of my blog, as the song is amazingly sarcastic. Possibly too much, as Jill Weinberger pointed out in May when she wrote this:

“The video ends with the words “VIOLENCE IS NEVER THE ANSWER” and a message urging kids to get help if they feel like acting out. Still, there’s a fine line being walked here, and when your lyrics go, “if you’re troubled and hurt, what you got under your shirt will make them pay for the things that they did,” you’re placing a lot of faith in your fans’ sense of irony.”

I suppose the message of this song is somewhat obscured by the overt lyrics, hiding their covert anti-violence message. I think this is a good thing – it forces teenagers (and others) to actually think about the music they’re listening to. Of course, does anyone think about what they listen to anymore? I do, but unfortunately I can’t be sure of others.

Anyway, it’s got a good beat, campy lyrics, a very flashy video, and things worth thinking & talking about, I suppose!

Word 2007 lets you post Blog Entries directly. So Here is a blog entry… of a picture… of a weirdo cat