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.

Christmas has come and gone. The Boxing Day madness is still here, and since most stores extend the ‘day’ into a week, it will continue. I think I’ll just sit at home and watch the kids play with their new toys. I got to do all the cooking and cleaning this holiday, which is fine by me. I watched as Marnie slowly went insane assembling various small pieces of Lego into ships and catapults and what not.

We spent Christmas Even with family. There were only about 13 of us this year, what with various members of the family having babies or traveling around the world. It was nice. Christmas Day I cooked a turkey. It was bigger than I thought, and we’ll be eating turkey for quite a while. I ended up falling asleep on the couch while everyone else played. Life is good.

Today, Marnie sent me down to the office to do some writing. I did a bit, and then felt guilty about the languishing Blog. Such is life.

I hope everyone had a wonderful time this Holiday.

I was just sitting down to lunch with my two boys, when the older one pipes up:

“Dad, is it true that when you jump on a couch it tilts the house crooked?”

I looked at him like he was an idiot.

“On the way to Saskatchewan, we saw a tilted house, and it was because the kids jumped on the couch too much.”

It dawned on me. Last June or July (about 6 months ago), Jared pointed out the window of the van and asked about a house that had partially fallen in on its foundations. The kids had made a habit of jumping on the couch, so I (being the father that I am) immediately said that the house tilted because, you guessed it, the kids kept jumping on the couch.

This kid can’t remember to put his plate away after dinner, yet has no problem remembering an offhand statement from half a year ago. Man!

Writing
And just for the record, I did 16 words today. Yay!

Writing
Yup, almost a full week since I posted. And, looking back, almost four weeks since I wrote anything major (that is, more than 100 words a day). According to my calculations, I now need about 4000 words a day to finish the first draft on my self-imposed deadline. Ugh. If I start now, I still think I can finish my draft “0″ by the deadline, but not the first draft. Draft “0″ is the really rough first piece of sh*t that my brain spits out. It’ll be about 1/2 the word count that I am aiming for, and contains POV changes, tense changes, point form scenes, etc.

So, that’s my new goal. Draft “0″ by the end of the month, and First Draft sometime in the new year. I won’t put a date on the first draft yet, I’ll wait and see how crappy Draft “0″ is first.

Good Morning
Ryan woke up this morning, with his usual muffled “I’m awake!” coming from his bedroom. This time, it was followed by “Dad”. Most of the time he wants Mom to get him out of bed, but this morning it was me. It’s a job I really enjoy, and today was no exception.

I walked into his room, the light from the open door showing a bundle of blankets in the middle of the bed. I could just barely make out the tousle of hair sticking out. I still wasn’t sure it was Dad that he wanted, so before I stepped too far into the room, I made sure I let him know it was me. There was no answer, but there wasn’t a sudden pulling of the blanket over the head scene either. So far so good.

I sat on the edge of the bed, there was just enough space for me, and looked down at him. He had pulled the blankets off his head and squinted up at me smiling.

“Dad,” he said, “did you put up the Christmas Tree last night?”

“No Ry, we’ll put it up in a week or so.”

“Good.” He smiled and rubbed his eyes. “I want to help decorate it.”

I leaned in and gave him a kiss on the forehead. “Don’t worry, we won’t put it up without you there to help.”

He gave me the squint and smile again, and wriggled his arms out from under the covers. They reached up and grabbed around my neck, pulling me into a hug.

“I love you, Dad.”

“I love you too Ry.”

“Can I have Dino Eggs for breakfast.”

“Absolutely.”

---

The kids help with the tree every year, and there’s no way Marnie will have it any other way. They have so much fun doing it, it’s a blast. Traditionally in my family, the tree was set up overnight, and when we woke up in the morning the thrill of seeing the tree was enormous. We loved the surprise. My kids will never have that, but I think them helping is a much greater joy for all of us.

Well, here we are, in December already. Life has been hectic and the writing has been almost nil. I really want to get this project finished so I can get onto the next one that is pounding in my head.

On the good side, I’m pretty much finished my Christmas shopping. I really only buy for the wife and kids, but I help with the other gifts as well. I’m hoping to get the inside of the house decorated this week, and the tree should be going up about a week before Christmas.

The boys have been… interesting… lately. It seems that the basic rules that we’ve had in the house since they could walk have all been forgotten. They run, they talk with their mouth full of food, they fight and roughhouse way too much. I thought Christmas would make them behave, with the threat of Santa so close. Ha! Santa used as a threat. Cool!

Anyway, with that, I’ll sign off.

So, my bro is gone. He hasn’t left the country yet, but will soon. For three months he’ll be traveling in the Philippines, Thailand, China, Taiwan,etc. He’ll have no laptop and very few Internet cafes. I miss him already. Doh! We don’t keep in touch as often as I like, but when all access is cut, I notice it.

Writing
I’ve been procrastinating a lot lately. A lot. Writing is really what I want to do. I even have dreams of supporting my family by it. Yeah, right. I can’t even sit down and write a word a day, for chrissakes. It always seems that something comes up and takes away my time. The kids, the house, the wife… whatever. I need to get back into a routine. I thrive on routine, pretty much like kids. I need it, and this stay-at-home dad thing really doesn’t want to give me one. Still, I’ll work on it. I’ll bring the wife in on it and see if we can’t finangle some sort of writing routine for me. Why the wife? Well, whatever time I take, it will take away from something else, like the kids, or her, or the house work. She deserves input into that.

I still want to finish the initial draft of the novel by the end of December, and I’m a long way off. I’ve also come to realize that I will be way short on my wordcount in that draft. I need to add more, so I can whittle it all down to something really good.

I may have said this before, and for the life of me, I can’t remember where I heard it last… Life is what happens as your making plans. Well, time to stop making plans and actually do.

I was procrastinating… again, and I came upon this link. Just type in your name and click on the link provided.