Daily Update: a day off.
Jay is tired. He slept in ( until 7am ) and I got a lot of writing/editing done this week. My brain is tired so I have decided to take today off from writing. I will see you tomorrow when I shall write about ducks. Maybe,
Until tomorrow!
Woo Woo!
UWT 27 – Experience Something Big
There are big things everywhere you look. Some are far bigger than others and there are times when you might overlook something because you see it all the time. Stop letting things blend into the background and stop and take a look.
Big things came in a variety of different packages. Stop at that building you walk past every day. Is it a public building? Go inside and find out. Check out the architecture. Is there a security guard? Who is listed in the directory? Can you get on the elevator? Take a little tour and see what kind of people are there. Don’t just go inside and be there. Look at everything once you’re inside. Look at the ceiling. How are the security cameras arranged: hidden in smoky bubbles or in plain sight? Are there signs directing you to different room numbers? Does someone stop you and ask if they can help you? Are there a lot of people in the building or is it a ghost town?
Perhaps you don’t live near a big city where you can find a building like this to go inside. Maybe you live in a more rural area. I grew up in one as well. Back where I lived we would help with debeaking turkeys. You want to see something big, look at a turkey barn. Those things are massive, noisy, and smelly. There are so many turkeys in there you’d be amazed. Each year the owner would need to pack up one of his barns and he would call on his friends. Everyone would have a part to do. Those debeaking would have gloves and clippers, the cagers would just wear gloves. Turkeys are big fans on having their beaks clipped and are even more perturbed being shoved into a cage. I got my share of scratches. You want to see something big, check out a local farm. See if the owner will let you on, perhaps give you a tour. It doesn’t have to be a farm with animals, there are a lot of different farms and they’re all huge.
Don’t have a farm or a city nearby but still want to check out something huge? Check out a local monument. It doesn’t matter where you live, there are monuments anywhere you look. Get that smart phone out and do a search for monuments, landmarks, anything local. These can come in the form of statues, parks, bells, any number of different things. Seek them out, size them up. Read the story behind it and find out what its history is. You might be surprised at just how big the history of your home town is.
Got some time? Taking a vacation? Visit somewhere big. I’ve been to a lot of places over the years. The Grand Canyon, The Redwoods, Bryce Canyon, The Rocky Mountains, The Arizona Arches. The Southwest is full of huge and majestic natural places to go. The Grand Canyon is so big that to me it doesn’t look real. From one ridge to the other the distance is so great that it starts to blur into the horizon. The Redwoods are the largest and oldest trees in the world. You can only go through a small portion of the woods, but when you get to the observation platform the trees go on forever. At least it looks that way. So many trees. Even standing on a beach and looking out over a body of water. Watching waves crash in knowing that the water goes out beyond your sight. I’ve even been to Hawaii and looked down into a volcano. The power of nature is beyond my comprehension and I can only sit back and be amazed.
Got more time? Take a road trip. Drive from point A to point B and realize the distance you traveled. When I got out of the Navy way back when I had to travel from Florida to Colorado. It took me a couple of days and I was only able to bring across half my stuff. I had to go back, pick up another load, and head back again. Heck, even when I was in the Navy, I had to drive from Southern California to Minnesota to visit some family. Then after my leave, I had to drive from Minnesota to Florida. I hit a lot of states along the way. It still amazes me how large this country is and I still haven’t seen it all. When I say experience something, I mean it. Road trips are an amazing experience. Don’t just sit in the car and let the sights pass you by. Even if you’ve taken the trip dozens of times, there are still a lot of things to see that you might have missed or that just blended into the background.
As a kid I grew up in the sticks. Way back in the woods. We would drive down to the cities (The Twin Cities) a few times a year. It was a three hour drive and at different times of the year everything looked so different. My kid brain would be amazed with how different it all looked on that trip to grandma’s house. After dozens of times going back and forth there were still things I didn’t remember on the trip before, or had forgotten, or were just plain new.
When I say experience, I mean absorb all you can. Got a camera? Take pictures so you can remember some detail you might forget. I don’t recommend doing this while driving, but if you’re a passenger, take a lot of pictures. Look around, go where people don’t always go. Don’t be afraid to stop at that scenic vista to look around.
Until Next Time!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: It’s FRIDAY!
This has been a very long week. It looks to be a long weekend. Next week, we’ll take that one day at a time. Why stress out over the unknown, right?
Got some interesting news from work that I cannot talk about. It impacts me greatly, but not in a negative way. More of a “Hey, here’s more stuff to do” way. It shouldn’t add much to my current work load, but again, we’ll just take it day by day and see how it goes from there.
People will come into your life as people tend to do. People will depart from your life as they also tend to do. This happens more in a work environment than it does with friends and family. It’s inevitable. I, like most people, am adverse to change. Change is a scary thing. When people come and go, that’s a scary thing. Will I lose touch with that person? Will that person lose touch with me? How will I get by without that person to lean on from time to time? Is that person going to be alright?
In the Navy I transfered multiple times. Usually with the same batch of guys from Cory Station, Pensacola. I’ve been in touch with a couple of the guys over the years, but it’s not easy to stay in touch. I guess with Facebook I could go looking for these people again, but it’s been quite a long time. I’d love to know what the old gang is up to.
Heck, even my friends from ITT Tech and National University. I do still keep in touch with a couple friends from high school, but for the most part I just wonder what ever happened to some of the people I used to know. I’m bad at correspondence and lost touch with so many people over the years. It was never deliberate, but it’s happened.
I think starting next week I will begin a search for people I’ve lost touch with over the years. This might be weird. It might be cathartic. It might be totally insane and illogical. Heck, for all I know these people have completely forgotten about me. We’ll find out. I’ll post the first name of the person, where I remember them from, and we’ll see how many people I can track down. Should be interesting. I might even have to dig out my old year books to find friends from high school.
Could be interesting.
Tomorrow I’ll write about Ducks.
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: You just never know.
The wife has needed to get a refill for a prescription. The pharmacy said they needed to get a call from her doctor. They hadn’t gotten one after three attempts to reach her. The wife finally called her doctor and got a new number to call. She called that number and her doctor, due to health reasons, had to leave her practice.
Junior Seau was an excellent football player. He played in San Diego (his home town), had his own restaurant, a field name after him where his brother coached football (and the Millican’s son played). He had fame, fortune, adoration of fans, an awesome career. Yet he committed suicide yesterday.
You just never know what life is going to deal you. You also never know what other people are living with that they might not be telling you. I’m going to be sappy here for a moment. Take the time to tell someone you love them, you care about them, you appreciate them. It’s easy to go through life and act tough, but when you lose someone, those moments are gone forever. You just never know what sits around the bend.
On a lighter note, edits for Jack Kane are progressing nicely. I didn’t get much done yesterday as I needed to edit and produce the latest episode of the Action Pack Podcast. It’s now live so head on over and check it out. The stories are building. We’re only three in and things are just hopping along. If you haven’t dipped your toe in yet, you’ll have three episodes to listen to. Enjoy!
Other than that, I’ve been crazy busy with work. Hopefully things will settle down enough for me to get my head back on straight. It’s been a lot of early mornings. I’m hoping those slow down here soon. As I stands, I have plans through the weekend. Every day there’s something going on. Oh the joy of having kids. 🙂 Enjoy them while you can. The time flies by.
I have a lot to get done today, so just a short post. Ducks will happen tomorrow. Just you wait and see.
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: It’s one of those days.
This week started out with one of those days. It’s turned into one of those weeks. Every time I turn around there’s something else to do. I’m not complaining, mind you. It just seems like there’s always somewhere to be and something to do. Some days I wonder how I’m fitting all this in and still getting sleep.
Today was another up early day. Tomorrow will be as well. That’s why I get paid the big bucks, right? Been fighting with a coding issue for the past three weeks. I think I’ve finally gotten it nailed down. I’ll do some more testing tomorrow and we’ll see how it goes from there.
I had intended to record my episode of the Action Pack Podcast on Sunday. I was going to edit on Monday and get the episode assembled and uploaded. Guess what, it’s been one of those weeks. I’ve barley been how, but I did get the recording done today and I’m in the process of assembling now. I’ll upload, get the post together, and once Mike Plested is online, the post will go live. It’ll drop in the morning.
I’ve been editing as much as I can and making notes on jack Kane. I really like the story. I did find a continuity issue that I will correct. Seems out hero found something before the villain put it there. Should be an easy enough fix. So far that’s the only major plot issue I’ve found.
Mike and I did a good job planning this one out so it all flows well. We should be able to do similar work once we start on the second book. The characters are so much fun to write, I can’t see us NOT writing the sequel.
All this editing has gotten me even more excited to begin work on Of Gnomes and Dwarves. I’ve got all those characters running around in my head, doing battle, fighting dragons, saving maidens, and doing a lot of other things they’re not supposed to be doing in an effort to stop me from what I’m doing and get them on track for what they should be doing.
I’m like crazy tired, man. I so need to go to bed. My brain is struggling to keep up with my body at this point, but there are still some things that need to be done before I can slip off into slumberland.
I had intended to write my post about ducks today. I’ll have to get on that tomorrow.
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: Oh my mouse!
Yesterday was a busy day. A lot of work needed to happen and it did. Once I finished with all that work stuff, I picked up my favorite daughter from school and we headed over to my mother-in-law’s house.
She had a busy day with doctors opening her chest up just a little so they could replace her pacemaker’s battery. While they were in there, they poked around and everything looked good so they just replaced the battery. They didn’t go any further than that. Today she’s doing great. The outpatient procedure went without a hitch.
My father-in-law proved how sneaky he can be. With a bunch of us there he asked who would like something to eat from the taco shop. He took orders, called it in. I told my favorite daughter “Let’s go. We’ll pick up the food.” I know he had a stressful day at the hospital and I figured he needed a rest. He thanked me and said not to leave for ten of fifteen minutes. It’ll take a while for the food to be ready. I said, “Oh, ok.” My favorite daughter and I sat back down and he took the roundabout way to get out where I couldn’t see him and next thing I know I see his truck driving up the street.
I could only sit there and laugh. I guess with a waiting room filled with stressed out family members, he just wanted a couple minutes of alone time as all of them followed him home as well.
We ate, we talked, we laughed. My mother-in-law looked tired, but was in great spirits. Today she’s doing even better.
So today was an even earlier day than yesterday. I’m used to getting up at 5am or 5:30am. I’ve done that many times before. Today it was 4:30am because I needed to be in the office by 6am for an early morning call that, of course, got pushed back to 6:30am once I was in the office. Well, these things happen. I made good use of the time.
I was happy to be in the office. I have my mouse once again. A week without it and it feels like finding an old friend. It’s like riding a bike. It’s like sitting down and clicking all the right buttons and having the mouse do what I want versus not having the buttons I need at all. The bug mouse will be put back into cold storage until another day when I forget my mouse in the office again. I hope that’s not any time soon.
I’ve given serious consideration to getting a mouse with more buttons. I keep seeing gaming mice with a large number of buttons (one has a 12 digit thumbpad), but I’m sure more than I’d need, but I see other mice with a few more buttons than I have now. It’s one of those things that once you get used to the buttons, you miss them. I’ll keep it under consideration for now.
Another thing I’m thinking about doing it putting a SSD (Solid State Drive) into my netbook and upgrading to Windows 7. But I might make it a linux machine or even a dual boot. I’m not sure just yet. I’m still thinking about this one. I love the keyboard on the netbook so I’m not thinking about getting rid of it just yet. I also saw a way to replace the screen with a touchscreen for around $100. I might do that too, we’ll have to wait and see. Like I said, I like my netbook, it’s just a little slow. I’ll have to see what I can do with it first.
On the writing front. Edits for Jack Kane and progressing nicely. I’m about 8 or 9 chapters in. Probably 30 more to go (or less I’m not sure). There’s lots to edit, I don’t think any major rewrites will be required. There will be some new chapters needed to fill in a couple small gaps, but overall it’s looking good. Once I complete my edits, they’ll be over to Mr. Plested and he’ll be able to give them the once over and then it’s off to Beta Readers.
Speaking of readers, Don’t Eat the Bread is not out in the wild. It should be available on the Nook, Kindle, and Smashwords. Go pick yourself up a copy and let me know what you think.
There is a lot to do, so I’d better get to doing it. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll write about ducks. We’ll see.
Until Tomorrow!
Woo Woo!
Daily Update: I need a nap.
It was my intention to get up early this morning. Unfortunately I wanted to sleep in. I hit snooze on my phone (I use it as an alarm clock) and was prepared to sleep in a little bit longer, but my phone decided to ring anyway. I got an early morning wake up call with an outage for an App that I support.
Not being on call, this took me by surprise. Not being tier 1 support, I was doubly surprised. They had gotten my name from another system. I did the investigation, found the issue, corrected it, and then told them what to do the next time an incident like this happens.
As it turns out, they would have probably needed to have gotten a hold of me to correct the issue due to the issue. It’s just odd that they call me from the East Coast to have me correct an issue. Ah well. I put the early morning time to good use. I got the currently application I’m working on ready in our TEST environment. Got caught up on a couple projects that needed my attention. Now I feel like I need a nap.
Instead I’m going to make sure I keep organized today. This afternoon/evening I have several things to take care of. I need to record/edit/assemble the next Action Pack Podcast. I’ve got edits from Don’t Eat the Bread to review, implement, and get the file ready to publish. Hopefully that will be out later this week. I’ve already got the cover for that one. I’ve got Jack Kane edits to get on as well. Busy, busy, busy.
Combine that with a long drive to LA and back, up early each day this weekend and even earlier Friday and this morning, I feel the need for a nap. Perhaps I’ll get one, perhaps not. Tomorrow is also my day to head into the office so it’ll be another early morning.
I’m tired, I’m punchy, I need to get my head clear. Please forgive the short post yet again today. I will endeavor to be funnier tomorrow. Maybe I’ll finally write a post about ducks.
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: In a Land Far Away.
Okay not too far away. But we did head up to LA yesterday. My favorite daughter had a volleyball tournament today. Her and her friend swam, practiced, we ate and I slept great.
The hotel and area we stayed wasn’t the best and there was a huge party in the banquet room, but the rooms were nice enough. I relaxed enough to finish off In Hero Years I’m Dead.
We got early and much volleyball got played. Sadly not by my favorite daughter. Her ankle is still bothering her so she had to sit out. The team did well overall winning two of three matches.
This was the last regular tournament. The next will be a two day tournament in early June. She will be good to go at that time. Until that time it’ll be practice, practice, and more practice.
The drive home went smoothly and we decides to stop in and visit with the Millicans. So far we’ve eaten, watched The HULK ( the second one) and are now watching Iron Man.
Tomorrow I’ll be recording Episode three of Golden West. Scott and Mike will be getting their parts to me and it’ll get assembled and uploaded tomorrow evening.
Tomorrow will also see some more editing of Jack Kane. I hope to get through the edits quickly. It will then head over to Mike for a once over and then off to beta readers. Can’t wait to get reactions on that one.
I got the edits back for Don’t Eat the Bread. That will drop some time next week. You’ll that one drop. I also need to edit My Teacher is a Werewolf. I can’t wait for these stories to drop.
After those are done it’ll be off to Of Gnomes and Dwarves. I think the excitement has been driving me forward. I cannot wait to jump back in to this universe. Character sketches might be on their way if you’re lucky. 🙂
Until Tomorrow!
Woo Woo!
Book Review: In Hero Years I’m Dead – Deluxe Edition
I’ve been a fan of superhero comics since I was a little kid. I grew up with SpiderSpider and Batman and Superman in my house. Even though I preferred funny animal comics, I read the superhero books and enjoyed them and read all the way through the 70s 80s and 90s. I even read a couple superhero novels over the years.
So when I discovered Mike Stack pole had written a different sort of superhero novel, I had to pick up a copy. It sat in my to read pile waiting to be read. I had been rereading some classic comics and finally decided it was time to read this one.
When I say a different novel I mean different. Sure Batman has the dark and gritty covered, but villains making g plans and posting those plans so heros can bid on what they were going to defend. Heros scoring point to help them grow in popularity. A city that allows crime to happen so heros can save them. Color me curious.
Our hero has no name to start with. He’s had so many identities over that names are interchangeable. He is a hero out of time. 20 years he disappeared only to discover a new reality where thing are allowed to happen.
But he’s not ready to p,any this game. He’s retired. The life he left and the one he came back to are not the same. And someone is trying to break this new system.
Mike does a great job intertwining the tropes of traditional comics and dropping in parody, insight, and a twist all his own. The characters are fun, unpredictable, and wind their way along as best they can. Just when you think the story is going in one direction, BAM! You forced sideways and have to wonder if that was on purpose.
I really enjoyed this book. There were a couple lines that rubbed me wrong, but that could be said of any book. Overall this is a fun and fast read. Highly recommended.
I had read the deluxe edition. What did I get for my extra buck? Oh, just an essay explaining not only the behind the scenes of writing the book but the history, thought process, and little insights that made the story tick.
Do yourself a favor. If you’re a fan of superhero comics and have been looking for a different take, pick up this book and give it a go.
Daily update:a short post today
Today is a busy day. I got up early. Got an oil change on the truck. Got the air conditioner recharged. Got it washed inside and out. I am now washing the Tahoe and I will fill er up with gas.
This afternoon my favorite daughter has a volleyball clinic. Hopefully her ankle hold up today and she’ll be able to play in tomorrow’s game. Her team is the #1 seed and they do need her. It has been difficult for her to sit on the sideline during practice and not participate.
Tonight we will be heading up to LA. We have a two hour drive ahead of us. This will be the furthest tournament we have driven to. It is also the last ‘real’ tournament for the regular club play. So my favorite daughter is trying to deny her ankle hurts.
I went walking this morning again. I am not back to walking every day but I can do two miles in thirty minutes. It feels good to get outside and stretch my legs again. The shin splints don’t seem to be bothering me and that’s a huge plus.
On the writing front: I completed My Teacher is a Werewolf. I will give that an edit of my own before sending it off for further editing. While I let that one digest for a bit I have dived head first into the Jack Kane edits. Once I complete those it’ll be off to Mr Plested for his edits then off to beta readers. A lot is happening on the writing front.
I was thinking of changing the format of these daily updates. Thoughts? Opinions? I would love to hear them. I know there will be more book reviews in the future. I am heart done with Mike Stackpole’s In Hero Years I’m Dead. A review will follow.
There is still a lot to do today. So…
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
J.R. Murdock 