A Little Update

Wow, has it been that long since I last posted? It's been a busy busy two weeks for me with writing a business plan, buying equipment, working out problems, and so forth. I'm not quite ready to announce the business to the world--I need a bit more time to put together a portfolio with pro bono work--but I will say that it involves video. I did a little work on that today and the result looked okay--not completely satisfied with it, but I'm still learning the tools. I can't post anything here yet, but eventually.

In a mish-mash of other news--

Writing has completely stopped now, and I don't know how to get it started. I've tried to redo a story that has promise but haven't been able to get more than 50 words at a time, usually less. Codex Writers Group is having the annual Codexian Idol short story competition starting March 1st. Hopefully I can use that to get the fire lit again.

Sam's Dot Publishing has delayed the publication of my trade paperback novelette Winter by 3 months. I'm told there was an issue with the cover art, but I know no further details.

My mom likes "Come to Slaughter, Pig!" You can read it here and discover whether her opinion is right.

Last weekend, we took the scouts to Karchner Caverns. It's mind-boggling that a virgin cave was discovered in my lifetime and kept a secret for another 15 years. Well worth seeing, but also very limited access--make reservations of you want to go.

Last night, we took the scouts on a field trip for our weekly troop meeting. We visited KSLX and watched Susan Stone work some on-air magic. AND they played my ring-tone, Funk #49.

Also this week, I had the great and unwanted adventure of upgrading my computer. It really isn't all that hard, but I hate doing it because I always have terrible luck. I had to upgrade because the setup I had on Monday, although it was the best computer in the house, didn't have the horsepower to run my video software. That was a show-stopper (literally) for the business.

I upgraded to a dual-core AMD chip, got a new motherboard, new power supply, and a graphics card with about 10 times the recommended minimum video RAM. I don't want any more problems with video. What should have been a couple hours turned into days. first, I discovered that today's motherboards only have 1 IDE socket. I need that for my hard drives, so I also had to go buy a new DVD drive. While I was there, I did buy an IDE-to-SATA converter, but I still can't get the old DVD drive to work.

that would have been okay if it were the last problem, but the fan for the CPU didn't work. I got that replaced (and this is exactly the reason I spent $6 to let Fry's insert the CPU--I didn't damage it) and when I tried to put the motherboard back into the case, a capacitor fell off. Finally, after 4 32-mile round-trips trips to Fry's, I managed to get all the hardware installed. I spent yesterday morning installing all the drivers and reactivating windows and all that fun stuff.

I shall try to keep this blog moving more frequently...