Staring at empty pages, centered 'round the same old plot

I'm an author! I grant you I was this before, with a full two textbooks co-written under my belt, which certainly adds up to one book even if the second used a lot of material from the first. This is hard to avoid, mathematically speaking; there's not a lot of point to coming up with a new way to explain the Law of Large Numbers unless you're showing off all the ways you can work up explanations for the Law of Large Numbers. Still, it's written.

In any case as mentioned we hatched the plan for a second edition of the book, and the publishers finally got around to sending their approval. Better, they've sent the contract out, after a short pause while they seemed to be very uncertain of the notion that I wasn't at a college or university. Really, they asked about what school it should be sent to twice for me, and then only settled on sending it to my co-author's school and having him send it on to me.

Despite this roundabout method (I can't be the only non-affiliated author they've ever dealt with, can I?) the certified-mail envelope finally reached me, and I've got multiple copies of the contract on hand. Of course, that's the easy part. Now there's the challenge of getting LaTeX installed and working on the new computer, and the writing stuff too.

Trivia: The Westinghouse Electric Company was the fifth company which George Westinghouse incorporated. Source: Empires Of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, And The Race To Electrify The World, Jill Jonnes.

Currently Reading: Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory In Everyday Life, Len Fisher. I cannot express how much more credible your pop-sci book about game theory becomes when you explain how QUANTUM! computers will destroy Prisoner's-Choice type defects wherein every agent acting for his own rational best interest turns out to screw over everybody involved.

(And, hey, old time radio fans: Turner Classic Movies is showing the Fibber McGee and Molly, and Great Gildersleeve Too, movie Here We Go Again tomorrow at 2 pm Eastern Time, United States feed. Someday they're bound to get to Love Thy Neighbor, I know it. )