Author Archives: jrmurdock
Feast or Famine
We’ve all heard the saying before. It’s either feast or famine. You can guess what’s happening around the Murdock Family Household these days.
Some days, feels like I barely have a moment to breathe before I’m headed off to do something else. I’ve got lots of plans and currently everything is being derailed. Yes, we took a bit of a breather in Palms Springs, but I don’t have what I need to record when we’re not at the house. I don’t have what I need to write. I’m missing many things. Beyond that, I’m on vacation and I’m not thinking about getting those things done. I’m thinking about relaxing, as one does.
Let me stop here and say, family will always come first. If Hijo or My Favorite Daughter or the Mrs need anything, I’m right there, full stop. I will attend to their needs. That’s just how I was raised. And this week, there’ve been a number of things that have needed doing and I’ve been there, taking care of those things.
That means other things have slipped this week. Like recording audio and video. Writing. Preparing the Golden West Trilogy as a hardcover compilation. Working on a ‘by the numbers’ for the end of October and restructuring it to be a little more informative. A whole lotta things that need doing. I’ll get to them.
I also have been reading this week. Been too tired when my head hits the pillow. I haven’t even made it through a short story. I also wanted to assemble a list of the books I wanted to finish before the end of the year, of which there are several.
Even at work, it’s been abnormally busy. I’m attending to many conference calls, that I don’t have time to get my regular duties done. When I do have ten or fifteen minutes, I’m too busy trying to collect my thoughts to have the opportunity to jump into one of the larger projects that I need to complete. I’m not neglecting my work, it’s that other things are eating up my time and preventing me from getting to those other assignments.
I know this stretch will pass and things will slow down once more. Then it’ll be full speed ahead. There’s a lot of words that need to happen before the end of the year. NaNoWriMo is around the corner. We can do this. I know we can!
Until Next Time!
Stay Awesome!
A new (to me) game.
One neat thing about having a gaming PC, I can play pretty much any game my heart desires and my pocketbook can afford. So I picked up Quake for $1. Well, I picked up nearly the entire Quake collection for far less than the original game cost.
I’d never played this one.
Or Doom. Or Tomb Raider.
I’d never really had a decent gaming PC to play games over the years. I played Half-Life, Sim City, Return to Castle Wolfenstein. That’s about it.
One of the things I wanted to do when I built this new PC, aside from recording audio, video, and doing lots of writing related work, was to play games. Even if they were older games I’d missed out on back in the day.
So, tonight, I played a few levels of Quake. The version I’m playing has the updated graphics so it looks far better. It’s still blocky and clunky, just better looking textures overall. It’s also better lit. I know this because I can switch between the original version of the game and the new version. It’s fun to see the differences.
Much like with Crysis, I want to play though the series to see how it’s changed over the years. Unlike Crysis, I don’t think I’ll go there every level of ever game. Quake isn’t really a linear game with a story the way Crysis is. Unless I miss my guess, Quake is much like Doom, levels to blow up demons, get to the end, get some trophy, done, do the next. I’m NOT saying this type of game is bad. Not at all. All I want to do is get the flavor of the game and move on to the next in the series.
If a game has a story, for example, like Far Cry, I want to experience the story. Though I’m having issues with Far Cry 2 in that I play it and I feel ill. I’m trying to figure out how to correct that. It’s not a smooth game. I’ve searched the web and I’m not the only one to have this issue.
But I digress.
I’m having fun getting into some older games. Sometimes it’s nice to cruise through a level and blow things up. I may do it again tomorrow.
I’m excited for Halloween this weekend. I can’t wait to show you what we did with the house this year and what we’ll all be wearing. It’ll be a hoot. Our neighbors think we’re nuts, but that’s not anything new.
Until Next Time!
Stay Awesome!
The Luck of My Favorite Daughter.
When I was much younger, I used to play cards. A LOT! With my mom and my grandma. Both loved spending time with me teaching me all the card games. At the same time, they hated playing cards with me. I had an uncanny luck. I’d get the perfect card for my hand in Rummy and BAM!
Grandma: Are you uncomfortable?
Me: No? Why?
Grandma: I thought you might be uncomfortable with that horseshoe up your ass.
It wasn’t just games of chance. I was also rather good at chess. My dad taught me to play chess when my brother and I moved out to live with him. He showed me how all the pieces moved and some basic strategy. After I won my first game, I honestly thought he let me win. He assured me that I’d won fair and square.
Then we started keeping track of the games we played. And we played a lot of chess. Nearly every night. I won 99 games in a row against him with an unorthodox style of play. One game I’d be overly aggressive, the next, I’d hold back, play defense, and set traps. Now, I don’t know why I played the way I did and I doubt I’d ever hold my own against a professional player, but I had a blast playing against my dad.
When my dad won that 100th game, he declared it was over. He was never going to play chess with me ever again so he could end with a win under his belt. We had a good laugh about it, but over the years, I found out he was serious. I had some weird crazy luck combined with great teaching to learn the fundamentals.
But this isn’t a story about my luck. This is a story about My Favorite Daughter and her current luck. We joke from time-to-time that we need her in the car when going somewhere in a hurry because with her in the car, we seem to hit far more green lights, less traffic, better routes. It’s a running joke, but it happens so often that it’s funny.
Case in point, this evening, she needed my help going and picking up a weight bench with weights. We took the truck and got the bench, no trouble at all. After picking up the bench, she said she wanted to stop at a nearby thrift store to look for a jean jacket for a project she’s working on.
This was in Hillcrest. A rather busy part of town and parking it miserable! I mean a complete challenge to park within a block of your destination. That’s on a good day. This was in the afternoon with heavy traffic heading up and down the street where the thrift store waited. As we turned the corner, she said.
“I hope we can find…”
That’s all she got out of her mouth as we’re looking at the endless row of cars parked along the street and what happens? A car starts to back out. not near the store. Not somewhere on the same block. No. The spot directly positioned so once we were in it, there was the front door. Right there! We couldn’t have gotten closer without driving up onto the sidewalk.
It doesn’t end there. Oh, no. She didn’t find the jacket, but I found a couple of purchases and away we went on down the road. She’d already put in directions home to get out of the area and we’re coming up to a red light.
“Is that another thrift store? Oh, I think they’re open. Can we stop?”
“Well, I don’t see…”
We’re coming up to the red light and the car parked directly in front of the store has its blinker on waiting to pull out.
Seriously. Again! The perfect spot at the perfect time. Both times there was still time on the meters so we didn’t even need to worry about that. This is her luck. I’m not kidding.
The second store she finds the perfect jacket, I find a couple of hard back books for $2 each (Armada by Ernest Cline and My World by Pavarotti). We leave happy with our purchases and start to head home again.
We discuss her luck in finding the bench at such a great price and her superior luck finding parking. Luck that should not be believed even though this happens so many times.
During the bench discussion, I mention that I was looking for a basic bench so I could start going some weights during my workouts with my dumbbells. I didn’t want to spend a lot and didn’t need barbells like what she’d gotten.
Out comes her phone. “I’m going to give myself a challenge to find a bench before we get home.”
In 30 seconds, we hadn’t even gone a quarter mile, she found out. It wasn’t quite what I was looking for. She scrolls down. There! That’s what I was looking for. $25? Great price.
She sends a message. The person responds. She asks if we can go right then. They say ‘sure’. She asks if they have change. They say no, but if we were interested, they also had an over-the-door pull-up bar. I’ve also been looking for one of those but had held off on both of these purchases due to price and not really having a place to set them up just yet. Soon, I’ll have room. They wanted $15 for the pull-up bar as well. $40 for both? Done deal, we were on our way.
Oh, and it was on our way home! We needed a couple of miles out of our way to pick them up. They were moving so gave us a couple of other workout gear they had. Everyone left happy.
Got home, unloaded, and regaled our tale to the Mrs of another typical day of My Favorite Daughter’s Luck. Go Figure.
I’m off to make words happen.
Until Next Time!
Stay Awesome.
Star Blazers aka Space Battleship Yamato.
![Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2199 The Complete Series [Blu-ray] - Best Buy](https://pisces.bbystatic.com/image2/BestBuy_US/images/products/6395/6395701_so.jpg)
When I was far younger than I am now, I used to watch Saturday Morning Cartoons. I’d wake up as early as I could and sneak into the living room, turn on the TV, and watch anything that was on. Usually, very early in the morning, Looney Tunes would be on. There were times when I figured I’d seen them all and would flip the channels before anyone else would get up.
Now, I’d seen Star Trek on our color television. I was sucked into anything scifi and set in space. So, while flipping between the three channels we had, remember I grew up in the sticks, I remember that PBS was also available as an occasional 4th channel to watch, though it didn’t always come in. Sometimes we’d have to go outside and turn the antenna to get some channels clearer.
Oh, you kids have it so easy these days.
If memory serves, Star Blazers was on PBS very early in the morning. Before Sesame Street and the Electric Company would come on. This would be my first exposure to a new art style I didn’t recognize and was taken in instantly. The music wasn’t like anything I’d ever heard on a cartoon before. They talked about things I didn’t fully understand. Going back and watching it now, it’s all nonsense, for the most part, but as a kid, I was amazed by the new words and terms.
Until this point in my cartoon viewing, I’d only been exposed to standard cartoon. Where a plotline was summed up with a joke in 10 or 15 minutes. Star Blazers was a 30 minute cartoon and that wasn’t it. It kept going. There was more story! I had to see more. How could they show only one small part.
Now, at this time I’d been exposed to Jason of Star Command. I knew that sometimes a story would carry over. That some threads carried from show to show. That much I understood. But Jason was a live action show. Not a cartoon. It was also quite limited in what it could show on screen. Even Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica had limitations of camera angles and explosions. Limits to exposing you to the size and scope of the world. Again, those were all live action.
Star Blazers, for me, didn’t seem constrained by those limits. Sure, I’d read comic books. Lots of them. This wasn’t anything like that either. It was an entirely different experience. That’s the best way I can describe when I first started watching Star Blazers. I didn’t watch it. I experienced it.
Oddly, I don’t recall any other kids in school watching or enjoying the show back when I first started watching it. Most likely because it was difficult to get the channel to come in. I missed episodes by oversleeping as well. I knew there was a bigger story and watched when I could, but I had holes in the story I could never fill in. This may be why I stopped watching the show. I got frustrated not knowing what happened from one episode to the next. Sure, there were snippets to get you caught up, but that was the same as watching the entire episode.
Several years ago, I had gotten a copy of Star Blazers. I’d intended to watch the entire thing, start to finish. It’s not overly long. Why wouldn’t I? I never watched it. I let it sit, unwatched, for years.
Well, I’m watching a lot of shows I missed. I figured, why am I not watching Star Blazers. Is it because I don’t want to ruin the memory of it? Did I want to wait until I’d all but forgotten about the show? I have no idea.
So I recently watched a few episodes. I feel like a kid again.
Sure, I get a lot more nuance. The show isn’t grainy and I’m not straining to hear the dialogue because the channel won’t come in properly. But I remember that kid that would sit in the living room, alone or with the dogs, and watch my show. My cartoon. Something no one else I knew was watching.
As an adult, I’m seeing a few things Star Trek: The Next Generation, grabbed from this show. Like the Holo Deck, called the Holography Room in Star Blazers. Full 3D printing of anything they need. Even their chief engineer, Chief O’Ryan. I laughed when they introduced him. I’m sure there are many more similarities, but I’m just getting started on the re-watch. There are so many more events to come.
It’s interesting to go back and see this with an adult’s perspective. To see the political issues around a WWII battleship being sent into space. It’s also interesting seeing the little snippets of the show I do remember. The character names. The ship names. All those little things that might have been lost to time, but are somehow stuck in my mind. I’m going to watch another episode, then I need to get to writing.
Until Next Time!
Stay Awesome!
Almost missed
I wanted to keep the streak alive. Today we drove back from Palm Springs. I will relate to you the adventure tales tomorrow.
Tonight I made vegetable soup with dumplings. Why haven’t I tried making these before? Other than I ate a big bowl and suddenly needed a nap.
Working from a different location.
The Mrs and I are having a little time away. We headed out last night and I worked from here. It was odd working from a different location. We headed out to dinner after work. Had a relaxing walk, and it’s been a good day. Oh, and we drank these.
Yes, this will be a slow blogging week.
This week I’m doing some mental health refreshing as I prepare for next week and beyond. I’ve got plans-a-plenty and I need to be ready to execute them. Much like when I started doing the YouTube channel, I did much planning. Unlike the YouTube channel, I won’t wait months and months before jumping in and getting started.
If you watched any of the videos I did over the past year, one thing I stressed again and again: I’m learning as I go.
That means, to me, the past year wasn’t a waste. I learned a lot. Not just about producing videos, but about myself and how I prepare for doing those videos. I learned how to set up my camera and start talking from the moment I hit record. That, though I may be a bit self-conscious, I can do it. I can hit record and jabber on for several minutes about a topic and, for the most part, stay on topic.
It’s a lot like this blog. Yes, I do put some forethought into what I’m going to write, but this isn’t a formal review or essay. Nothing I’ve ever done on this blog has been anything more than me sitting and putting down words. Were I to look at this as my sole means of making money, yes, I’d put a LOT more time and effort into doing this blog. Mostly, this blog is for me to get my head straight. If others enjoy following along, thank you for being here and reading.
Speaking of reading, that’s one thing I noticed. When I post only videos, my hit count went WAY down on this blog. When I take the time to write something up, I see a significant uptick in blog hits. Be they bots or real people, I don’t know, but it’s nice to see traffic once more. Welcome!
In publishing news, Murdockian Tales V1 is out! Yes, there was an older version of Murdockian Tales and that one has been taken down and replaced with this edition. This collects the first 9 short stories I published this year. If you’ve been waiting for a collection, here is the ebook edition. The print edition will be available next month.
All the stories in this collection will be recorded and uploaded to YouTube and I will also publish the full text on this blog. There is no obligation to purchase the book, but it does help me know what you’re enjoying of my work and, of course, helps me in getting new works written and out there.
I’m off to go do that work thing.
Until Next Time!
Stay Awesome!
Finishing books…Reading and Writing.
Are you like me? Do you have a TBR pile that reaches for the sky? A dozen or more books that you’ve started reading but never got around to finishing?
I set a goal at the start of this year to read 40 books. I’m confident between kindle books and physical books, I’ve passed that goal some time ago. Now, with two-and-a-half months left in the year, I’m modifying my goal slightly.
I’m going to finishing reading as many books that I started as I can. First thing I’ll be doing it making an inventory of books I’ve started and haven’t finished. Then, jumping in and reading as much as I can. It bothers me that I have so many half-read books.
To that end, I’ll also be writing as much as possible through the end of the year. Starting Monday, I’m going to work on getting 2k a day through the rest of the year. On average. Yes, I’ll still read, still spend time with family, and still play a video game or two, but I need to get my butt back in the chair and start typing again.
I was typing a message/email to someone today and was amazed as just how fast I can type. It’s time to put my fingers to work and get stories told.
Something else I need to do before the end of the year: Record a number of stories and get those prepared for YouTube. Short Story Saturday will live once again.
I also need to record an episode of Hey! It’s Jay! That’ll be more fun to do than what I was doing with 5 a Day With Jay which was become more of a downer and not as upbeat as I’d like the videos to be. Given that no one watched those last few episodes tells me all I need to know 🙂
Yes, I’ve got big plans for the rest of 2021. I’ve got bigger plans for 2022. It’s time to get off my duff and sit on my butt. In this chair. And get reading, writing, and doing all the things.
Until Next Time!
Stay Awesome!
J.R. Murdock 