I FINALLY FINISHED my editorial pass on the WFC Book. Some forty-nine stories (out of a whopping total of eighty-six total entries to all five WFCs). I find in re-reading everything over the past couple of months that I'm rediscovering how much I love some of the entries that these Fun Challenges have produced.

Next stop, layout; I've actually started some of the work for that. Sorry for the delay; watch this space for further updates.

MEANWHILE, IN ORDER TO FILL some of the WFC void, I thought I would do something that fleece suggested a while back, and collect everyone's decoy self-critiques during the anonymous voting period:

2 plus 3 equals 5
WFC3 ("Egg"): Agree with previous comments. HuSi references dragged it down. Otherwise, interesting. I think it's been ahead because several folks like it in addition to something else, sort of like how the Booker Prize goes to the commitee members collective second favorite.
WFC4 ("Three Words"): Good dialogue. Maybe too much packed into too little space? The bar scene was my favorite.
WFC5 ("Knock Knock"): Thank you for resisting the temptation to use "chew the fat" in this story. More lasagna, which should be expected at a pot luck, I guess. Good dialog. No story.

aethucyn
WFC5 ("What Do You Want?"): Like the idea. A bit cutesy. Suffers from being so brief.
WFC5 ("Taste Test"): This one reminded me that the best part of a lot of parties is being anti-social at them.

ana
WFC1 ("You're Not Ed Hulver"): I'm pretty sure I've read this before someplace.
WFC3 ("Next Time, Last Time"): Surreal nightmare of a broken man, who's not even very coherent.
WFC5 ("Almond Torte"): is there a point?

aphrael
WFC1 ("The Endless Wheel"): Interesting concept, so-so execution; the action scene in particular sucked.

BlueOregon
WFC5 ("The Leaving Agent"): "the perfect mixture of the ground seed of a grass with a single-cell fungus" reminds me too much of the "Tasty Wheat" scene in The Matrix, but this was very not-post-apocalyptic. I'm not sure which one is the pun. It skips all over the place.

Driusan
WFC2 ("The Colony"): I can't help but feel there's something wrong with the science in this, though I'm not entirely sure what. But I can mostly write it off as the narrator not understanding it since it's in the first person. I like the twist.

fleece
WFC3 ("one-twenty"): The David Lynch-esque approach to chronological disorder and inference made me seasick. I liked it anyway.
WFC4 ("The Odd Spot"): animal sex? gross.
WFC5 ("The Review"): like FIRST POST! I wonder if you're just taking the piss

Kellnerin
WFC1 ("The Man in the 20th Century House"): Where there should have been a punchline or some kind of resolution, there was a vampire ex machina.
WFC2 ("The Color of Rain"): Dunno if the ending bothers me on this one, but something does. Maybe its total lack of simplicity.
WFC3 ("Terzanelle to the Departed Beloved"): A potentially neat idea, not so well executed, but I can't say I could have done better.
WFC3 ("Homecoming"): A solid story, intriguing premise, but so low-key it sort of fails to stand out.
WFC4 ("Mont Blanc"): So oblique, almost misses the theme.
WFC5 ("Desired"): Has all the required elements, but in the wrong proportion, I think. Hard to feel sympathy for the narrator.

persimmon
WFC1 ("Songs of the Redeemed"): Has the most far-flung "little people" and "Ed Hulver", but is largely incoherent. Also, nothing actually happens in the story.
WFC4 ("Grocery List"): Sad, but sparse. Crappily formatted.

Scrymarch
WFC2 ("Reception"): Reminds me of p-m-agapow's description of the works of Ursula Le Guin: A not entirely unpleasant beating about the head with a sociology textbook.
WFC3 ("Single"): This is ok, but I've a feeling it was written in a bit of a rush.
WFC5 ("Fusion"): Smug, too short, and occassionally funny.

toxicfur
WFC3 ("Agency"): This is a nice vignette with some interesting imagery, but I feel like the ending kind of comes out of nowhere. Also, while I like the use of psychobabble, it seems forced at times, and awkwardly used.
WFC4 ("A Harsh Mistress"): I like the interplay of bad porn and bad real-life sex, but the writing is somewhat awkward, and the build-up is too rushed.
WFC5 ("Dream Logic"): I cringed at the Gaiman quote at the beginning (what is this, a research paper?), but I liked this story more than I expected to.

yicky yacky
WFC1 ("Bouncing off the Walls"): Like '... seen Kelly?' and others, had a great set-up which then died away. As with 'The Hill', the shit pun made me laugh. Voted for.

Does anyone else find that sometimes it's the decoy review that solidifies your guess of who wrote what? Or am I the only one who thinks this much about it ...

---

I'VE BEEN TRYING to fix my sleep schedule; in the past few months I've adopted the same habits as D, who has a much shorter commute than I [had | will have]. My boss-to-be emailed me to say that I'm scheduled for an all-day training session on my first day at work, starting at 9:00 sharp -- but he's in at 6:00 so I can get in early and get settled beforehand if I want. Oh, good.

I've become a can't-drink-coffee-at-night wuss, or I should have -- instead I've been either absent-minded or in denial. It doesn't help that the coffee in the pitcher in the fridge was brewed extra strong, so it can take ice melting in it, though the actual strength depends on how quickly you drink it. It doesn't help that I recently bought two 24-ounce glasses so they'd have room for ice, but truth is that they have more room than they really should.

It also doesn't help when it's ninety degrees out.

MY EMAIL ACCOUNT is already set up and I've even got Web access to it. I've never had email for a job I hadn't started before (I've received email from before I started -- mass mails and such -- but it's never been set up this far in advance and I've never had access to it before showing up). I've already been invited to a meeting I can't make (I have training all that week). It's too bad, because though I'm not sure I have anything to contribute, it sounded potentially interesting to listen in on.

Some other things I have learned:

The wiki is down for maintenance today. So, I guess there's a company wiki.

This morning I found my inbox spammed with automated build messages. I told D this and he was amused, because in his job, he's the one who sends out the automated build messages.

"How many do you send a day?"

"Three."

"I've gotten, like, twenty-five this morning. Look at this shit."

He glanced at the subject lines and seemed impressed with the release engineer. More of them kept coming throughout the day -- continuous builds. I see email filters in my future.

I keep opening messages from people in my department, skimming them, and telling myself, "I'm going to come back to this and try to understand it later."

Before today, I'd never received an email that used the word "h0rked" before. I feel like I've arrived, somehow; just where exactly, I'm not sure.