Another grab bag of stuff, since it’s been a while…
I know it’s been a while since I made a post. There are many reasons for that including my father having another heart attack, computer problems, depression, boredom, lack of ambition, etc…
My father recently had another heart attack. Not a regular kind of a heart attack, but one where his heart gets severely out of rhythm and it beats so fast that it can’t pump the blood properly. He had a pacemaker with a defibrillator put in, for the second time. The first one he had a year ago or so had to be removed when it cause a massive infection that almost killed him. This time around, he’s doing really well, and if this thing functions as advertised, he shouldn’t have to worry about those kinds of heart problems anymore. As soon as it gets out of rhythm, the defibrillator will hit it with some voltage and shock it back into rhythm. The rest of the time the pacemaker part should keep it beating regularly. I hate seeing him have to go through all this again, and this time he almost didn’t make it, but fortunately, he’s doing just fine now.
Now, on a different subject. To all you global warming cultists out there, I’d just like you to know that it’s FREAKIN’ COLD HERE! Like, colder than it usually is at this time of year. Guess you wouldn’t care about that though since you’re too busy drinking your Kool Aid and preaching your climate change religion to everyone, even though the corruption and lies have been exposed for all to see and people are starting to wake up finally.
Next thing…
Second, Stargate Universe sucks massive ass. I mean, what the HELL were they thinking taking Stargate Atlantis off the air just to replace it with that crap??? Atlantis was a great show with great characters. Stargate Universe is more like a freakin’ soap opera. It’s like they tried to combine Stargate with the feel of Battlestar Galactica, and it just isn’t working. First of all, there are way too many people on that ship, and second, there’s nothing going on except for interpersonal B.S. and trying to find stuff to stay alive and keep the ship going. Whoopie! Where’s the enemy threat? They’ve gone through a full half season now and they’ve encountered nothing except for some bug things on one planet and some kind of a sand whirlwind thing on another that got on the ship. Other than that, the show’s been a total dud. It was bad enough when the idiots canceled SG-1 to make those lame ass SG-1 movies, but then they doubled the piss off by canceling the only other good Stargate just to replace it with this crap. LAME!
Ok, next…
My computer died. It happened to die about a week before I had to get out this month’s issue of the magazine too, so I had to order the parts to build a whole new system and have them 2nd day shipped here so I could build myself a new computer and get it up and running in time to get the new issue of Rogue Cinema out. Naturally it happened at a time when we’re severely broke, so if you enjoy this site or Rogue Cinema and would like to make a donation to help me cover some of the expenses of that, I’d really appreciate it…a LOT. Here’s a link where you can make a donation. It took half of what we had left for emergency money to get myself back up and running again so I could continue to bring Rogue Cinema to our readers with as little delay as possible, so like I said, anything any of you can donate to help out would be appreciated.
Let’s see, what else can I talk about…
It’s Christmas, and it’s been even more depressing this year because we couldn’t have a Christmas thanks to our money situation. I did manage to scrape enough together to go buy Sharon a small present so she wouldn’t have to go with absolutely nothing, but man it’s depressing, and has only added to the depression I’ve otherwise been feeling. If I could figure out some way to generate some kind of income it would help, but every time I try to come up with something, I come up empty. I thought about script consulting, but there are already tons of people out there doing that, and the people I’d be doing it for generally don’t use script consultants, so that’s out. I thought about selling sex toys again, but we have no money to get back into it. I can’t afford to go back to school, and school never really worked all that well for me anyway. I really have no clue what to do with my life or how to get an income coming in. The work for PC techs dried up. Pretty much everything out there I’m either overqualified for or have no qualifications for at all. I don’t know what to do.
Anyway, enough of that. I don’t need to keep sitting here bitching about how crappy my life’s going at the moment. I’ll move on…
So when I rebuilt my computer, I installed Windows 7, 64-bit version. I was kinda worried about going to 64-bit, but I didn’t need to be. It’s been working pretty much flawlessly. Windows 7, once you finish making a few tweaks to it to remove some annoyances, is a really solid operating system and a worthy successor to Windows XP, unlike Vista, which was basically a turd apparently. The only thing that hasn’t worked as far as peripherals is my USB MIDI interface, a M-Audio Midisport 2×2, which M-Audio has been too damn incompetent or lazy to release some working drivers for. The only other thing I couldn’t get drivers for was my old PS/2 Logitech Mouseman mouse, so I finally had to pry it out of my cold dead fingers and switch to a Logitech Laser mouse, which I’m finally starting to get used to. Actually, the old mouse would have worked generically, but this new motherboard only has one PS/2 port, which I needed for the keyboard, so I had to switch to a USB mouse anyway. Figured I might as well get a new one since I couldn’t get software for the old one in Windows 7. Everything else either had drivers or worked right out of the box. The long and the short of it is, I was up and running without a massive amount of hassle, and now that I’ve been running it for almost a month and becoming familiar with it, Windows 7 is starting to feel as comfortable as XP did. I’d say in another few months, I’ll be totally comfortable with everything in it and won’t really miss XP at all anymore.
So what else… Not gonna talk about politics. I’m depressed enough and the facism, corruption and waste in our government is enough to make me wanna throw myself off a freakin’ bridge.
Man, I had a lot to catch up on when I sat down here, but I’m drawing a total blank now. Oh, I know. I’ve started reading all the Harry Potter books. I just finished the third book and I’m about to start on the fourth. I’ve always been a big fan of the movies, but I used to get really annoyed when people who had read the book would be sitting behind me in the theater saying, “That’s not how it happened in the book!” or “They left such and such out completely and changed this and that!”. I have to say though, now that I’ve been reading the books, I fully understand why people are like that. Aside from the first movie, which was really close to the book, the second and third movies have been so different from the books and left so much out and changed so many things, it’s like you’re watching a film written by someone who never read the book and was only told about it in general terms by someone who had. The key points are there, but man, to really understand everything and get the full story, you really need to read the books. I’m still a huge fan of the movies, because taken on their own, they are great movies with wonderful characters and beautiful visuals. However, as I said, if you want the real story with the full details about everything, you really have to read the books.
Honestly, I used to read incessantly. I would plop down with a book and literally read it all day until I finished it, even if it took me until well after midnight, I wouldn’t stop until I was done. It taught me how to be a better writer, both grammatically and in terms of style, and it also allowed me to escape my problems and depressions for a while. I was able to lose myself in another place. I guess that’s why I’d lock myself into reading for such extended periods. I didn’t want to have to go back to focusing on all the problems in my life, and losing myself in a good book was a perfect way to get away from it all. I lost that passion for reading for a long time after I got on the internet. I’d read something once in a while, but most of my reading and attention was focused on the net, so I really didn’t have the extra time or desire to get away from things here to lose myself in books anymore. In the recent past, I’ve buried myself in The Complete Sherlock Holmes, which, as a fan of the Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes movies, I found particularly fascinating. It was wonderful to actually read all of the original Sherlock Holmes stories and having the benefit of being able to imagine Basil Rathbone right in the thick of it. For me, Basil Rathbone will always be THE definitive Sherlock Holmes. Anyway, now I’ve been losing myself in these Harry Potter books. I’ve actually lost a lot of sleep lately because I spend so much time at night reading them. I’ve really missed reading, and it’s something I’m going to do a lot more of from now on.
I know I had other stuff I wanted to talk about, but I can’t remember any of it now. It’s almost 5 a.m. and I’m finally starting to get sleepy, which sucks because we’re supposed to go out to my parent’s house for Christmas dinner today. I’m kind of dreading that because our dog Buddy hasn’t really been socialized around other people, so I’m hoping he’ll get used to them quick and be ok with everything, but I’m not sure. We’ll just have to see how it goes. How he behaves will determine how long we can stay. We have to take them with us because Missy is diabetic and needs her insulin at a certain time and since they’re both house dogs, we can’t leave them alone for extended periods because they have to be let out to go to the bathroom and such. I wish my parents lived closer to us, but they’re an hour away, so it’s not like we could just pop back home, let them out to pee and then shoot back over. Anyway, hopefully everything will work out ok.
Anyway, that’s it for now. I’m gonna go get a snack and watch some TV. See ya next time.
(Current Mood: depressed
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