Daily Journal 1/15/26

Turned the keys over to the new tenant yesterday, and showed him how to operate the alarm system and the security cameras and such. And presented him with a good luck present — an original, vintage Pokemon poster from the first year those little monsters reached American shores. (He intends to open a Pokemon store, so I figured it was an appropriate good luck gift).

And with that, this chapter finishes. The book continues, though.

So, here I sit in my office, Howard 101 (Sirius/XM) on in the background. It is 7:12am. I have all day to write, right?

Well, no. Because I am on day 2 of putting together the AuthorCon VI programming schedule, so the vast majority of my day will be spent on that.

Remember when I first relaunched this Blog and we talked about social media algorithms and how they are fragmenting us as a society and a community and how people are not getting the information they need because the algorithm decides they shouldn’t see it? Well, that’s on display full force with programming for this year, given the influx of queries from authors who missed the deadline to apply to participate in programming. And we didn’t do anything different, folks. We put it in all the same, usual spots we always do. The only thing that’s different is the algorithms — mostly now driven by the various platform’s individual AI — are choosing to show those folks other stuff, because a squirrel meme or the Trump admionistration’s latest outrage will get more engagement than a reminder to apply for programming for a charity event.

Anyway... if you are one of the folks who missed out, you will get a chance to be included once this preliminary schedule is finished (which should be by day’s end today). SO MAKE SURE YOU ARE CHECKING SCARES THAT CARE’S SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS FOR THAT NOTICE. Or, just check back here on my site.