Gerald Brandt

I’m not sure whats going on with me. For the last 2 or 3 weeks, I don’t think a day has gone by where I didn’t snap at the kids. It started when they truly did something bad, but now it can be just about anything. This morning I told my youngest he had to clean his room today. He said “I don’t want to.” SNAP. I yelled something along the lines of “I don’t care what you want, you WILL clean your room today.” Before that we had a great morning… laughs, giggles, etc. Dunno whats gotten me into this funky mood, but I’d better get out of it quick.

Writing

Paperback Writer has an article on free online writing courses:

Thanks to the internet, writers can now attend classes and workshops from any spot on the globe. No classrooms. No spine-rearranging desks lined in wads of used gum. No snotty teacher to grab you by the sleeve and say, Well, Miss Smartie, why don’t you stand up and read whatever you’ve been writing to the whole class?

Read more over here.

Well, my laptop decided it didn’t want to be nice anymore. Truthfully, it is my fault. I tried to use some very experimental software to sync my PocketPC (with Windows Mobile 5.0) to Linux. It required various kernel modules and user space software, which eventually really hurt the system.

I ended up with a load average of over 4.5, and no tasks using the CPU. I removed all the kernel modules and software, and could not solve the problem. Boom crash.

So, I lost about a 1/2 weeks worth of time, but everything seems to be working again just fine.

I backed up /etc and /home, and installed Sabayon  on top of my stock Gentoo. Sabayon is Gentoo based, and so far, I love it. All the work I put into setting up my Gentoo laptop was done automatically. A nice distribution that I would recommend. True, it installs way more than I actually want, but really, hard drive space is cheap.

My only problem turned out to be VMware. I have Windows XP Pro installed on a partition, and I either dual boot, or use VMware to run Windows under Linux. Under Sabayon, the drives (yes, IDE drives) are ‘sda’ instead of ‘hda’. Whether that’s the problem or not, I don’t know. What I do know is that VMware crashes while loading GRUB. Great.
The good news is that Codeweavers Crossover Office 6.0 runs most of what I need. Microsoft Office 2003 and Quicken 2006. I can’t sync my Pocket PC, but oh well.

Some of you may have noticed that the blog is slowing down a bit (and yes, by some of you I truly mean my one or two (gasp!) readers. It’s not that I’ve lost interest… it’s more like I’m not sure where I want this blog to go. A lot of the entries have been personal in nature, with the occasional entry pertaining to writing or computers, etc. I’m not sure if I want to turn this into a personal blog as much as I want to turn this into a Writers Blog. If I become a published writer, I’d assume that a few of my readers would come here. What would they want to see? Would they want to see details about my private life and kids, or would they want to see information on my writing and the Science Fiction/Fantasy world at large? Heres a small writeup about the dilemma.

How about some examples for y’all (an * is beside the blogs I read):

Writers Blogs

• * JA Konrath
  
• Neil Gaimen (somewhat mixed)
• * Heather Brewer
  

Writers Personal Blogs

• Piers Anthony
• * Wil Wheaton
  
• Stephanie Klein

So, that’s the state of the blog. My question to you is what would you like to see here? Leave a comment and let me know, please.

Writing

The Anshi Legacy

words: 20,196 / 90,000 (22%)

Reading
The Ruby Knight by David Eddings

The holidays are over, and life must get back to normal. My “holidays” are over now that Marnie is back at work. Holidays in quotes simply because I’m always at work, that’s the life of a stay-at-home parent. It was nice to share some of that over Marnie’s holidays, and we both got some extra work done because of it.

We got a cat shortly after Christmas. A brown and black tabby that looks exactly like the cat used in the opening scene of the first Harry Potter movie. We named her Minerva. (The reference isn’t that weak, so I know you cn figure it out!) I grew up with cats, and both boys have played with cats extensively. I knew Marnie was allergic, but she didn’t tell me how badly! As it turns out, everyone in the family is allergic. I’m starting to feel better as time passes, as are Jared and Ryan. Marnie on the other hand is battling a cold, so no one knows how much of her plugged up nose is due to the cat.

Why a cat? Well… At some point over the last 3 weeks, a mouse or two got into our house. Don’t ask me how, if I knew that I would solve the problem at the source. We caught 3 mice, and thought that was the end of it. No mice in the traps, no sign of mice anywhere. Everything was nice. One night last week, I woke up to a noise on my nightstand. I looked and saw two beady eyes looking back at me. The beady eyes formed into a baby mouse that jumped from the nightstand onto the bed. I screamed like a girl, and Marnie yelled something about buying a cat. I did.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas (and for those that don’t celebrate Christmas, a wonderful Holiday Season), and brought in the New Year in an entirely excellent way.

Writing

The Anshi Legacy

words: 19,128 / 90,000 (21%)

Reading
The Ruby Knight by David Eddings

This is the second book of the series, and I’m truly finding it a grind. The protagonists never really seem to have any serious difficulties. There are set backs, and since the premise of the novel is time based/constrained, it certainly adds a level of tension, but it doesn’t really work for me. Everything just seems to be lining up too nicely in The Quest, and I find myself quite bored at times. I’ll finish the trilogy, but it’ll be tough.