Yearly Archives: 2006

Christmas 2006

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.

Kid's memories

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!

Another week, another…

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.

I'm Still Alive

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.

I need routine

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.

Wow!

Hey, I have a blog! Who knew? I guess I should start using it more often (again).

You Should Be a Science Fiction Writer
Your ideas are very strange, and people often wonder what planet you’re from.
And while you may have some problems being “normal,” you’ll have no problems writing sci-fi.
Whether it’s epic films, important novels, or vivid comics…
Your own little universe could leave an important mark on the world!

Conversion Complete? Nope!

Well, it has been a long time, hasn’t it? I guess the reason I haven’t been writing (here or on my WIP) is a mixture of Life is what happens while you’re making plans and Computers have the magical ability to suck me in and spit me out.

Whatever the reason, both the blog and the WIP have suffered for it. And I’m done with that mess! Time to get back on schedule and finish all of this work!

So, what have I been doing? Well, it may make me sound slow, but it took a couple of days to get SpamAssassin to do bayes filtering on my email. Truly, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. It’s fixed now, and 99% of my incoming spam is now caught and put off to the side. I had that before, using a client side app. Now it’s all done on the server.

I also decided to convert my laptop to Linux instead of Windows XP. What caused the switch? Well, I recently re-installed XP, since my boot times were atrocious, and I can’t stand slow computers. Before you know it, Windows was slow again. Aaaargh. I absolutely hate that.

It took me a couple of days to get Gentoo working on the laptop (why is it never easy). But now it all seems to be running smooth. I still need Windows to sync with my Dell Axim x51v, and Outlook syncs better with eGroupware than some Linux programs I’ve found. I kept my original Windows XP install, and I use VMware Workstation to boot into XP from Linux. I don’t know what changed, but XP boots about 4 times faster under VMware than by itself, and it’s the exact same install.

The Linux install is still not 100%, but I like it. Linux never makes it easy, especially for laptop owners. I think next time I’ll get a Mac. So, whats missing so far?

  1. hibernate to ram (sleep) works, but when restarting, starts the shutdown processes (Whhhaaa?)
  2. hibernate doesn’t work.
  3. I have a fan that stays on all the time.

That’s about it, I think. Now, back to work!

Nostalgia Reigns Supreme

A couple of weeks back, my bro came in from Calgary. One evening we sat down, had some beer, and went through some really old photos (I had hair!). Since then, I’ve been on a semi-depressive nostalgia kick. I’ve been thinking of all the missed opportunities, the times when if I put in a bit more effort the result would have been awesome. You know, that kind of stuff. I think it’s time to get my head out of my *ss and get back to real life.

One of the things this nostalgia kick has done: it made me want to look at all the old computers I used to own or use. It’s quite a list. So, I downloaded programs like mess and vice which emulate old hardware. Watching a Commodore 128 boot into CP/M 3 is still cool to watch. The Kaypro II boots and runs. I can’t do anything with them, since I have no apps, but it’s cool to watch.

As an offshoot of mess/vice, I’ve also been playing with mame and uae. Once again, it’s fun (although time consuming) to look at all of these old games.

Still, as I said earlier, time to get back on track. Time to look forward instead of backward.

Weekend Update

Hey, I actually wrote over 1600 words today. If I keep this up on a daily basis, I should have entered NaNoWriMo this year. Oh well, maybe next year. For those keeping track, I’m currently at:

[pfmeter id=1 target=90000 progress=15548]

Which is not too bad.

I have some friends that entered NaNoWriMo this year. If they read this and say ‘thanks for mentioning me on your blog’, I’ll know that they’re fooling around instead of writing. So, to save myself the hassle of harassing them, I’ll skip the names and just say Get back to work!.