I changed my mind, not going to put the blog here. So if you want to see the blog, go here RonnMcCarrick.com/log
This page is ugly. This page won’t be here for long.
Archive for the ‘blogging’ Category
I Changed My Mind
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010Blog Stays at /log
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010Remember when I said I was going to move the blog under the main page, I lied. Or rather, I changed my mind. I’m going to leave it right where it’s at /log. I mean, it’s a blog, it should be off on the side and the main page should be something flashy and cool. Now I just need to come up with something flashy and cool. Maybe I’ll even put up some more pages.
I’m a big fan of the way my posts get imported into Facebook with that giant RSS feed logo or my PSN card. Makes every update doubly annoying. Gotta figure out how that works/why it’s happening and make it stop. And I didn’t really do anything, but the twitter posts are getting imported once again.
My brother picked up a PS3, and unlike when he had a Xbox he’s online with it. I’m thinking I’ll be getting my football on… nope, not gonna happen. He doesn’t want to buy Madden 10, he’s going to wait for Madden 11 to come out next August. That’ll work nicely for me, in that Kevin and Jay have probably decided never to buy a Madden game again. Without them I won’t have the leverage I need to get Denis to buy next year’s game. Joel might be coerced in if everybody else was playing, but without them, it ain’t gonna happen. So all my football dreams are shattered. It’ll probably end up being me and my bro playing Madden come next year… I love it when a plan comes together.
Zachary is involved with a girl now, according to his Facebook page, I have no other details. Haven’t heard anything more about Tyler and his lady friend, beyond him wanting to borrow the car. Karin… yeah, I don’t know what she’s up to. Kirra is making noises about coming to stay with us, she’s saying end of April, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Rascal (Crooktail) is doing better, swelling is gone and he’s actually got some flick in his tail at this point, but it does have a nice crook in it about an inch-and-a-half from the base. I keep meaning to take a picture, but I’m lazy and forgetful.
Tasha and I have decided not to move. We’re going to stay put for another year. We’re in a nice enough place and the rent isn’t going up all that much. It’s mostly a financial decision, seems like the bills always roll in when you’re saving your pennies for something. We don’t hate it here, we’d like a house, but Tasha is just getting regular paychecks again and we’re going to just sit tight for another year. As a plus, none of our friends will have to relearn where we live. I am toying with the idea of getting a second carport, it’s silly but I think the one next to us is available and that’d be almost like having a two car garage and as such my bike wouldn’t be nearly as crowded and I wouldn’t have to worry about the neighbors bumping my car.
That’s it for now.
Saturday in the Apartment
Saturday, February 27th, 2010I think I’ve got everything working on the homepage blog, so might just as well start using it. That’s where all the new stuff will be going, after this post that is. I removed the redirect from the index, so now if you type http://ronnmccarrick.com you’ll end up at the new blog page. Change your bookmarks as is appropriate. I have mixed feelings about putting it there, but mostly that’s a residue of the before-times when I had an actual web page with content and what not… now it’s pretty much just a blog. So there is no real reason to keep that spot reserved. The WordPress theme on the new page is Clementine1, it’s got a very industrial feel to it which reminds me of Black & Decker tools, so I guess it’s apropos given what I do.
Tasha headed out to the east side of the state to visit Karin for her birthday. I was going to go with her, but then we have the fiasco that is traveling with the dog. Where does the dog stay? Where do we stay? How much time to we have to set aside for dropping the dog off and picking the dog up? And then there’s the problem of each of us wanting to do different things and only one car. So despite what I told my boys about coming out there, I’m staying home with the animals. Maybe I’ll go out next weekend, and definitely the weekend following, I’ve gotta teach the boy how to drive a stick and give him some practice time. Doesn’t that sound like fun… nerve wracking, parental fun.
I was going to get up and do some calastetics, eat some breakfast, and then start writing. That didn’t happen. Instead, I got up made coffee, played some Xbox and got caught up in creating custom paint schemes in Forza Motorsports III, then started fiddling around on the internet and playing with my webpage (tweaking WP Themes can be an all day thing), before I knew it the dog was asking to be let out and it was 5:00 PM. So we went for a walk, had some dinner, and here I am now putting up a blog post. Not exactly the day I had planned, but not a bad day by any stretch. Just not as productive as I’d imagined.
I finished listening to The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett today, I didn’t enjoy it as much as The Maltese Falcon. It jumped around too much, at a couple different points I had to check my files to make sure nothing was screwy, but everything was okay and I just had to listen twice to get the gist. I’m not sure but I had a real problem differentiating the hero in this book, Ned Beaumont, from the Falcon’s, Sam Spade. Maybe it was the narrator, but they seemed pretty interchangeable (distractingly so) to me. But that noir was still there and it was a nice change from the paranormal and fantasy stuff I’ve been listening to of late.
Now the dog wants to go out again… Probably wants to get rid of that pepper. Ha ha. Later.
I Sense the Winds of Change a Comin’
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010Happy Birthday to Karin, the young lady is the ripe old age of 20 years old today. Damn, kids are getting so old… at least I’m staying young. Ha.
Yesterday, I finished listening to J.R. Ward’s Covet. It’s the first book in her fallen angels series, but I’ve got to say, there was quite a dearth of fallen angels. It wasn’t really what I was looking for, but then none of the angel stories ever are. I was happy that there wasn’t a lot of religion in the story. Which makes me happy. It was good, but not what I expected and I’m not sure I’m sold on the whole premise of the series. I’ll finish Malach at some point and then all will be right with angel fiction in the world. Or at least I’ll think so.
Today, I listened to A Werewolf’s Guide To Life: A Guide To The Newly Bitten by Bob Powers and Ritch Duncan. It’s written as a user’s guide to lycanthrope and I thought it was pretty well done. I expected something a bit more tongue-in-cheek, but it wasn’t at all, it took it’s subject seriously and I think it was better for it. I didn’t get much out of it that changed my ideas of what a werewolf is and isn’t, but it did give me a couple of ideas that may find their way into my writing.
I’m looking at WordPress themes and toying with moving the blog out of the /log directory and right into the main domain page… I’ll keep you updated on any changes. Later.
Some Good, Some Bad
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009Managed to get 2,131 new words last night on novel.
Lost my fantasy football game by 4 points.
Not feeling all that great tonight, I’m a little worried that I might be having a set back on the road to recovery from this weekends cold. I’m going to try and get some sleep before this gets any worse.
NaNoWriMo Countdown
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
One month until the start of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The 11th annual word chase to see if you can wrangle up 50,000 words between November 1st and November 30th. They call it a novel, I call it a good chance to get back into the eb and flow of writing and get half a novel done in one month. I’ll be participating, will you? Come on. Give it a chance. You know you always wanted to be a writer. It’s only one month out of your life and you know you’ve got enough of an idea for a book to get 50,000 words down. Join the fun.
I’ll be doing a detective story, crime fiction, whatever you want to call it. Tentatively titled “Crazy, Deadly, Cool”. It’ll be my first attempt at first person narrative and I think I’ve got a pretty good feel for the story at this point. I’m going to take the month of October to frame up a loose outline of the story, flesh out my characters, and toss around some ideas with Doug to get the old juices flowing. The basic idea of the story involves the problems that three women (his gun-happy partner, unstable ex-wife, and a teenage gypsy) cause for our good detective as he attempts to earn a living doing routine casework. I know that’s a pretty crappy synopsis, but I don’t want to give it away until I’ve gotten it nailed down. So that’s what you’re left to work with.
Now, go on. Go get yourself ready, there’s only a month of planning left. Later.
Do You Want A Little Company?
Sunday, August 16th, 2009So I’m sitting in the hotel eating my Domino’s Pizza when the phone rings. A pleasant enough female voice ask’s which room this is. I tell her. She says that she got a call asking her to call my room. I tell her that it wasn’t me and it wasn’t anybody else because I’ve been here two weeks. She says, ok. Then asks me if maybe I want a little company. I decline politely and wish her a good night.
I just got called by a whore. An actual whore, prostitute, call girl, hooker. I don’t know how to feel about that. Does this kind of crazy shit happen to anyone else? Just thought I’d share. Later.
Yo Joe!
Sunday, August 16th, 2009In my efforts to stay in the Tallahassee area so as to avoid a repeat of last weekend’s T-Mobile fiasco (I was at St. George Island when their AC went down.), I went to another movie this afternoon. This time around I saw G.I. Joe.
This is not the G.I. Joe I grew up with. That Joe was the size of a Barbie and had fuzzy hair and beard and looked a lot more like the U.S. Military soldiers than this Joe does. This Joe is based on the little Star Wars sized action figures that my kids had. A Joe that was far more technically advanced than my good old boys were. The movie was pretty much exactly what I would expect. It was a CGI spectacle. A rock ‘em, sock ‘em action fest. Damn near one big explosion with just a dash of story to make it all make sense. Not make it plausible mind you, just make it make sense. I can’t say that I was impressed. The CG was exactly what we’ve come to expect from this sort of movie, good in places, not so much in others. I was entertained and I’d go see another one if/when they make it. Like I said, this isn’t my Joe, but the kids in the audience seemed to like it.
I only have two real complaints about the film, given what it was, a popcorn-action adventure. One, does everything have to blow up? I mean really! Can’t some stuff just get crushed and broken? At some point in one of these movies I expect to see somebody crumple up a piece of note paper and throw it over their shoulder and have it take out a skyscraper with a huge fireball. Two, Marlon Wayans needs to settle it down and play it a little less for the laughs. I’m okay with a little bit of this sort of thing, after all it is for the kids, but come on. The guy ends up reminding me of Jar Jar Binks the way he over reacts to everything and goes out of his way to get the laugh. I blame the director. His character was alright and could have been good, but they chose to go over the top with it. Everything was just as I would have expected.
I enjoyed this way more than I did District 9, but I can’t say that it was great. I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie that hit all my buttons to be considered great. But in all fairness, I don’t really like movies; they always leave me thinking about how I would have done it had I been in charge. Maybe the Count of Monte Cristo (2002) would be the last movie that hit all the right buttons for me. Later.
District Boring
Saturday, August 15th, 2009I just got back from watching District 9… I was disappointed. I didn’t have any real expectations going in, just saw that it was getting better reviews than G.I. Joe and it looked interesting. So the aliens are bugs who live in a South African slum. The aliens were well done and the weapons made a big fancy mess out of the stuff they were fired upon. But I was bored by the film, annoyed by the camera work, and found nobody to sympathize with in the whole movie. And to top it off; it looks like they’re suiting up for a sequel. You can count me into the ‘don’t care’ crowd for that one.
The reviews are comparing this film to Blade Runner and Alien. Two movies that are good, this one’s not. They’re saying it’s got vision, grit, and realism. But I found it boring, slow, and not at all compelling; a complete waste of my ten dollars. I should have gone to see G.I. Joe, at least that movie knows that it’s all about the popcorn and action and doesn’t try to be something that people don’t care about. I’m annoyed.
Where You At, Ronn? Where You At
Monday, August 10th, 2009I’m in Tallahassee, FL, have been since the 2nd and will be until either the 19th or 20th. I was in Columbus, GA from July 13th to the 26th. Both trips for work. So I was home for 6-days, five of which were spent rushing around trying to get the month’s end work done. So I feel like I haven’t really been home for a month. It’s not a good feeling. I miss my place, my girlfriend, and my pets. Living in a hotel is the pits.
I really thought that with these trips, and the relative isolation, I’d do more blogging and maybe even some writing. But that hasn’t happened. I feel very out of my space. In Georgia, the hotel internet was flakey and about as fast as a dial-up connection. Here in Florida I have a better connection, but I had none for the first week as I had the hotel and guest services working to get the internet working. I think it finally came up solidly on Saturday afternoon. But it’s not wireless and the chair I’m sitting in has a broken height adjustment and sits too damn low for comfortable typing. I’m just full of complaints tonight. Sorry.
Georgia was interesting for the simple fact that I realized that the area I was talking about in my Thane novel, the rural Atlanta area, wasn’t at all what I thought it was like. So I’ve got to make some minor changes to that. Good to know. I was covering an area from Columbus to Augusta, so I saw a lot more of the state than I expected too. And now that I’m in Tallahassee my route includes Albany, Tifton, Moultrie, Thomasville, and the surrounding areas… so I’m seeing even more of Georgia. And it’s given me some new ideas.
I’m not anywhere near the part of Florida that I envisioned myself. But I’ve made it to the Gulf and seen places that I could see myself living. You know, I’ve determined that it’s the sound of the ocean that does it for me. But I don’t think I can pull myself away from this union goodness that is my job anytime soon. It gives me something to shoot for. But I’m going to have to slim down again if I’m planning on living here… it’s too hot here for a fat man.
So I’m feeling very out of place and as such any ideas of productivity have flown out the window. Ah well, at least I got this post done. Later.
