You're in much better shape than I am.
Notes more or less reconstructed, but not distilled.
Turns out there is another problem with my little box. Aargh! Okay, a couple more hours. I have a pretty good idea of what's up.
After sleep and maybe 5 hrs of electronics, I'll switch back to the chapter,
Girl Genius has been running for 16 years. The Dreamland Chronicles has taken 13 years (with a major interruption) to approach its final chapter. Unfortunately, the author of Lovecraft Is Missing did not live to finish his story.
Using it as a frame might be too much, and in it's full length it might be too long. But it's good info. You might even be able to use two or three parts as Kha and Airen get ready to roll.
Y'know how Tazar remembers the past in prison? I wonder if you might be able to use parts of Karls story like that, maybe as Kha tries to make sense of what happened in Earthwound.
Status: I just got a couple of reviews to do. I spent much of Friday trying to to convince my body that it should either want me awake or asleep but not both. Did some errands on Saturday, then started arguing with my body again. Threw some stuff out and rewrote. (How do some of the people here keep turning stuff out! I hope that practice helps.)
Finished wiring the new version of the 12-volt LDO supply--and found that I made a couple of serious errors because I couldn't keep the thing straight working upside-down. (Should have gotten sleep instead.) Fixed it.
Then I realized that I used a larger heat-sink, and it wouldn't fit next to the LEDs epoxied into the case sides. I cut the heat sink down--a really ugly hatchet job.
It worked perfectly--except that the voltage divider that sets the turn-off threshold was off. The tolerances on the resistors in the voltage divider added in the worst possible way. I replaced them with a 100k multiturn trimpot. 
In the process I cut one wrong resistor lead (replaced the whole resistor) and somehow created a short circuit that made the whole thing go haywire.
With that fixed (and some heat-shrink over various twisted leads) I got it working nicely. Then I discovered that the heat sink also interfered with the circuit board mount. I used a composition cutoff disk this time. It's still a hatchet job.
As I was wiring the circuit board into the box (with its strain-reliefed wires) I managed to sever the main ground line. But I did the fix and a pigtail with the same piece of wire.
And then I discovered that the cover wouldn't fit. I needed to clip off 1/10'' off two corners off the circuit board.
Oh, and one of the two ground contacts in the power plug isn't really connected. They also make a VERY tight contact.
BUT the box works. Nicely. I can recharge my iSound boxes in the car now.
I have six tasks listed to get the next project finished. Some are mechanical, some electronic. Some are well-defined, some less so.
Meanwhile, some ideas came to me in the shower. It will take me at least half an hour to reconstruct them and another to put them together cleanly enough to go in the notebooks. BUT they may play a major thematic part and maybe help round out Melayne's thread in Book 2. (And maybe it will show up back in Lifspynth as well.)
First, two reviews and one to reply to. Then try for this next approach to my next (current project) chapter in B2.
I just discovered that the new menu stays on screen even as I scroll down the home page. Terrific!
Not terrific--terrible. That screen is your only way to communicate withe the computer and web sites, and that menu parks itself on the screen taking up space--and you can't scroll it out of the way when you don't want it. Imagine a notebook or dictionary that fused itself into your physical desktop and couldn't be pushed away when you wanted to do something else in the space.
Depends on how hard. Heck, if the kick were strong enough, it could kill him (shock to the vagus nerve, I believe). But it has to be very strong, and very well executed. More likely he'll be severely impaired for half a minute to several minutes.
Using it as a frame might be too much, and in it's full length it might be too long. But it's good info. You might even be able to use two or three parts as Kha and Airen get ready to roll.
Mandates and Kha--
Kha leaves the letter and leaves the Guild. He stops for provisions--is that when he encounters Karl and Karl's account of the Fateful Events? Could you use that as your starting point for Mandates, with Kha's letter and a sentence or two of dialogue as a prologue? It would fill in detail not in the other stories, and Kha could spend some time giving Airen a more recent history
And what of Marion and her Seeing? Hmmityy hmmityy hmmityy.
There are other ways to chase false solutions, but having her buy into other people's solutions and other people's energizing motivation gives her a chance to learn to be active and find her own non-helpless solutions.
Took Wednesday off. Will get back to work wjrn I caugjt up om sleep.
Demands a recount
Got maybe half of one-and-two typed up, with the first edit-for-composition done in process. I'm near 1,800 words.
There's a LOT of description. Tolkien could manage it. I don't know if I can. You'll tell me.
Just don't promise that he can see the whole system! NYC has a transit museum in an old station.
Anywho, my question is, would my character, who is trying to save every penny, walk from her hotel in the lower east side to the building at Little West 12th St and Washington. it's 2 miles, per google. Or is there a subway route that would get her there quicker. To me it seems walking would be quicker, but...I'm not a New Yorker. Of course, neither is she so she might just be as confused as me. LOL!
It will probably depend on the weather and her desperation. By subway: F train at East Broadway and Rutgers Street (will be PACKED during morning rush) to West 4th, up two flights of stairs, A train to the 14th St. station at 8th Avenue. She could also get the F further north at Delancey (more people off the train) or pick up the M at Essex (a block or so from the Delancey St. station) and take that to West 4th Street. Again, two flights up to the A train.
Once you're in the system, transfers are free so there's no point in getting off until you get to the optimal station.
The big problem is that during the morning rush any train she gets near there will have just entered Manhattan, and the windows will be bulging with commuters. She'll be lucky if four or five of the thousand or so people on the train get off. (You have GOT to ride the subways into Manhattan during the rush if you're going to be in town.)
If she's willing to walk south into the financial district, she could pick up the A at Fulton Street. She'll have to fight the crowds getting off, but those stations have just been rebuilt and will have more room for her to get in. (Subway practical etiquette: People waiting to get on stand to the side of the doors. People getting off walk out the center of the doors. Of course, if there are a lot of people getting off, they'll fill the doorway. As the stream tapers off, the people waiting to get on push in from the sides. It's a conflict that works.)
She could also pick up the 2 or 3 at one of the other (connected) Fulton Street stations and take it up to 14th street and Seventh Avenue. That's the SECOND station in Manhattan on that line, so a few more people may have left. That station also has been rehabbed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_Center ; note that this just finished, so if your story is set ten years ago, all these stations would be a mess to get into during the rush) so it shouldn't be too hard to get to the trains. But it's IRT, so the cars are narrower and the platforms will still be narrower. (It was quite an achievement to shoehorn the tracks and stations into the financial district.)
Hope this helps.
Edit: Also http://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/Station:_ … sit_Center
Good luck!
A couple additional thoughts.
If you want to be truly sadistic, there is a pair of linked transfer stations in Brooklyn separated by about 80 vertical feet of stairs. (Correction on this item!)
On street naming and grids: Manhattan has an East 8th Street and a West 8th Street, as well as an Eighth Avenue.
Brooklyn has 8th Street, East 8th Street, West 8th Street, North 8th Street, South 8th Street, Bay 8th Street, Brighton 8th Street, Flatlands 8th Street and Paerdegat 8th Street. (Did I miss any?) Also 8th Avenue.
Queens has two different 1st Streets -- at opposite corners of the borough.
Probably more info than you can use. For more more info than you can use, try forgotten-ny.com . The big treasures are in the grey sidebar way down on the LHS. Happy trials [sic].
Walk around Midtown at lunch. Try to capture the conflict of human and vehicular traffic. Try to experience it, if you can, as a driver or front-seat passenger. Experience the rush hour on foot, on the subway, on the laconic buses, and in the back seat of a taxi. Go to a less-packed region (Broadway between Houston (House-ton, PLEASE!) and 14th, maybe--your friend will know) between 2:00 and 3:30. Get a feeling for the way New Yorkers jaywalk and adapt to the current state of the traffic lights, the different way they move at the lights and the crosswalks. How would someone who is hungry and maybe over-caffeinated fare in that cauldron?
Learn the New York way of ordering coffee: 'Regular' means with milk. Light, white, light and sweet, etc. Find where the city allows food carts and trucks to operate, and see which are popular at lunch. See the human and vehicular jams, if you can, when there is an event at MSG. Get disoriented by the lights at Times Square, and by the traffic crossing the sidewalk at parking garages. See the stupid tourist stuff (including women wearing nothing but body paint) that the city and the courts have conspired to allow near Times Square. (Is your protag desperate enough to consider this? She'll need an artist to do the work and share her take with.)
See Washington and Union Squares if your character might possibly go there.
Take the subways at the rush. Include trips in the financial district where the stairs to the street are one passenger wide. Especially take all the subways, at various hours, where your protag may go. Have her realize she chose the wrong (wastefully expensive) options on the MetroCard. Have her take the wrong train, or a train that's been re-routed; have her end up in Brooklyn or Queens (look for stations with the same street names--WkiP will help here). Include an elevated or street level run. Have her fall asleep and end up in Coney Island--or a bad neightborhood. Have her goggle at the subway map, and a map that shows the entire rail transit system.
Have her ask directions on the street and experience both kindness and rudeness.
The subway is almost always quicker, but it's not cheap (even though bridge tolls subsidize it). Fares are convoluted; check WikiP. Use the Transit setting on Google Maps to see the routes/services. (WikiP for the distinction.)
As far as really cheap motels... SRO stands for single-room-occupancy and it's a term that is used in New York (and nowhere else in my experience) for seedy/shady joints in close proximity to the business districts. You know, for wall street types to rendezvous with their mistresses and hookers. They were all over the place around Times Square and everywhere but that was twenty five years ago. Giuliani cleaned it all up, I think. NOTHING is cheap in NY anymore.
diBlasio is determined to send it all to hell again, while raising everybody's costs, just on principle.
What about a motel across the Hudson within reach of a PATH station? If you're going to be in lower midtown, not too far east (Madison/40s is pushing it in summer or deep winter) the PATH might bring you close enough w/out an added subway fare.
One and two done. I have a version of three that should splice nicely.
So lucky I should be!
A quick status note on the part I'm writing right now:
I sat down with my notebooks sixteen hours ago. The first four I spent on other things. The next four I spent mixing other stuff with this material. It took two more to get fully immersed in it.
And then the story began to flow. Unfortunately, I'm logorrheaic and I'll have to trim it once it's typed up. But that won't be so hard. Right now the hard part is keeping it from all tumbling out, out of order; keeping myself in the same story moment as my pen. I stop to make notes for later parts and notes about things to fix in previous parts. I stop to check my shorthand spelling. I stop to go to the bathroom or drink more coffee. And then I tumble on, so long as I'm still in it. I'm feeling a whole lot of the emotions that my characters are feeling or soon will feel, and people who have seen me like this have asked if I am alright. The expressions on my face worry them.
Roughly divided, I have five sections:
Approach in black and white
Loss of innocence: enigma
Answers in the undying world of the dead
The precincts of the living: appalling and appealing
Thor: questions answered and questions unasked
I hope when this is done, Amy will smell clews ... and maybe even find a few. And I hope the foreshadowing runs deep into the story. (I also hope it's not too consarned trite.)
I've finished the first section and almost finished the second. We'll see if I can get to the third before sleep comes to redeem its rights.
And then I have to go and fill in what I missed, but first I owe Amy some stuff and I should do a review or two as well.
Yes, but more a drawn out clump than a thump. Or maybe a schlump.
A business can legitimate but not established, or legitimate but a maverick.
There are cheap hotels and there are cesspits masquerading as fleabags.
Tom may be right about legitimate modelling agencies, but not all are legitimate. And businesses do tend to cluster. There's a half block in the upper 20's that's wall-to-wall florist. Of course, if you can't afford the prime space you take what you can pay for.
You may just have to do some research on this.
