It Came From Outer Space…

For a few days I will be without a computer. I’m able to use my room mate’s computer for a few days and then she goes on vacation, and right about then is also when Toshiba should send the box to take the laptop to their repair center. Except it’s really at the point where I can’t use it at all, the near constant scrolling is just crazy-making.

I was talking to an associate who said that he might be able to fix the desktop, and spoke about the possibility of connecting it to a Samsung HDTV, but the monitor itself and all the peripherals work fine, it’s just the desktop which is dead. I have some prospects which are very heartening, that I will write more about when I’m not sneaking time on Kore’s computer, but if my various blogs are rather quiet right now, that is why; but it’s giving me a nice break from the hussle of the internet and really helping me kick the Facebook app addiction, so that’s a good thing to come out of this. I think.

Also I have 19 hand-written pages of the story I’ve been working on and more knocking their way around my brain, so that’s good too. I’ll have a ton to write up once I have a functioning keyboard again.

I remember another of my step-father’s brilliant career ideas for me was writing greeting cards. He came up with this after I did our personalized photo graduation invitations on my step-sister’s computer so that he didn’t have to order them through the school and pay extra money.

He also thought I should be writing books for children instead of the stories that I normally write. That I would be a great children’s book author. I don’t know why he thought that considering most of the stories that he ever heard me read sections of involved war-torn alien landscapes, people being taken prisoner and their families dying (though that would be appropriate for Disney); but that’s not appropriate for children. He kept saying I could take the things I write and tone them down, make them educational and all these other things which would have meant diminishing my creativity.

As I get older I’m not saying that I couldn’t write children’s books, it’s just not something I’m interested in. My husband has often joked that I should make a book series called “Helpful Declan” about our son and all his attempts to assist me with household tasks that end in comedy, and maybe that would be something, but I have a lot of other crazy stories that have to get out of me first.

I’ve not written anything since the blurb the other day, but that’s because I’ve had a lot of things to focus on at the house, between making jewelry and a calendar to be gifts for family, looking for health insurance leads because my husband’s company are really screwing with the health insurance over this next year, and trying to get over my nerves about making a video for something I’ve been pretty busy.

I’ve had some ideas percolating but I’ve just been jotting down notes here and there to come back to after the holidays, or in a little bit of downtime. I’ve almost got most of the presents made. I just need to take some snap shots of the munchkin for this year’s Yule photo and get them printed, and then write up the explanations of the semi-precious stones I used in the jewelry and get that printed too.

So, despite my writing being slow I’m crazy-busy.

I’m sorry to see that I’ve lost a lot of readers and subscribers over the past few days. My sites have been up and down for a little while but that should be over now as I’ve been able to get things sorted again, for the most part.

I’m still fixing the widgets and things, but I’d rather get all the sites back up that I can and then get the widgets sorted than play around with that right now, the feed subscription is back up and that’s the main thing as far as I’m concerned.

What happened is that on Friday a person in Sheffield initiated a scam of PayPal and to do so had hacked into one of my other domains using my password which they had somehow phished. My host is incredibly wonderful and incredibly on the ball (seriously you guys should ALL host with drak.net and tell them I sent you!) and had everything locked down within a few minutes, but that’s still meant that they had to lock all my sites down in case the person had been messing around in all of them and also that once they got me fixed I decided to take everything down and put it back up in pieces anyway because I’m paranoid like that and thought it would be a good time to weed out anything that was up on the server that probably shouldn’t have been because it was old, stale, and not being used (like my old Joomla installation).

Anyway I hope that I can regain my readership and breathe new life into everything like a Phoenix rising from the ashes of this disaster.

Thanks to those of you who’re sticking with me!

I’ve been watching a lot of the show ‘Criminal Minds’ lately. I saw a few episodes of the second season and it intrigued me the way that it works. The more I watch I can see the formulaic parts of the show, but the dynamic between the main members of the BAU and their intelligence and dedication impresses me to see more, especially because they’re shown as fallible, people have been shot, there have been screw-ups and some have resigned, and the core tries to pick up and carry on, rather than just moving on they’re shown struggling and coming to terms with every case, and how deeply it not only affects them but their families given they’re having to deal every day with the dregs of humanity and people doing extremely depraved things, especially as they try primarily to catch serial killers.

It also shows a lot of very accurate procedures, when children go missing they put up amber alerts and have certain protocols to go through, they’ve used school alert systems and police, and also I like the fact that despite the fact that they’re a branch of the FBI unlike many cop shows where there’s such rivalry and horrendous portrayals of the local law enforcement if the show is from the FBI’s perspective and vice versa, the people from the BAU always teach the local LEOs with respect, and in one recent episode one of the BAU members actually called her superior to task for being disrespectful to a LEO.

I may be a bit biased on that one being married to law enforcement, but it’s nice to see them being accurate. I do also have a soft spot for Garcia, the technical analyst. She’s a Geek Goddess the way I would love to be.

I’ve been a bit out of it for the past few weeks because I’ve been sick. At first I thought it was the fibromyalgia acting up but after things got so bad that I could hardly move for the pain my husband took me to the doctor.
It was a strange sitting in the doctor’s office. There were people in equestrian apparel next to pensioners, and children.

In the end it was established that I have a virus which is aggravating the fibromyalgia because a lot of the symptoms of the virus mimic fibro, but with the added bonus of dizziness and nausea. I’m on a course of antibiotics, and am hoping that the plague will be knocked out of me soon so that I can feel better and be more up to catching up on work and things.

…they make it hard to do writing and also do work. My room mate has graciously let me borrow her computer for the evening to try and get urgent things done, but after that I’m going to be depending on whether or not it’s the video card and therefore an easier fix, or the mother board, which means their by the grace of the Gods go I as far as getting it sorted out.

The mother board is expensive and as old as the computer is then it’s not really worth getting it replaced. I’d be better off getting a new computer. That’s prohibitively expensive though, unless the repair place will let me pay in installments for a Frankenstein computer made from parts of the old one which still work and other parts that they have. Maybe I can get a second job selling or testing hgh releasers to earn a bit of extra cash in the mean time.

I’m so ticked off right now. The computer was fine last night. There’s not really be any warning that anything was going wrong. It just wouldn’t work this morning. Normally I back the computer up every few weeks but with us going to the wedding a couple of weeks ago and me playing catch up I let that slide. So, silly of me.

If this place is quieter than usual for a while though that’s why. Wish me luck.

There’s been a break in getting phone calls for “Look Beyond Mirrors” where we’re now getting phone calls for the people who used to have our phone number, again.

This is at the point of ridiculousness because we’ve been in this house going on two years now and we’re getting phone calls for them. It’s not nice calls either. I’d almost rather it was someone wanting to offer them the Blue Advantage health plan, or mortgage insurance, but instead it’s “Do you know who these people are?” “Are you sure?” “You have NO contact information for them, really?” and things like that.

I’m not sure if there’s something I can file formally. I need to find out because I’m sick of it.

I’ve had several people over the years, including my therapist (yes, I have a therapist) suggest to me that I should write the story of my life. One of the first I recall doing this was my now-ex step-father. Boy, would he not like the way I would write about him! Which makes it extremely tempting to do so, but at the same time it’s extremely daunting.

I remember when I was still in college and my parents went on a trip in their rv. My Mum chronicled the entire journey and wrote it up after they got home. However, writing about things which have gone on with me are nowhere near as easy. I have actually started to write things several times, but I usually grind to a halt even more quickly than any of my fictional pieces. I feel as though I’m going on too much about things or being too whiny. I think part of my problem is not mapping things out. I have this misguided notion that because I lived my life I don’t have to map it out like I would one of my other stories.

I realize this is a silly notion and I should rectify it, but at the same time I also realize that I’m not quite ready yet to write this sort of thing. There are certain things which happened to me that I am not in the right frame of mind to expose even myself too.

I’m still not quite sure what I’m going to do with this place. I had some ideas, mostly that I was going to shut it down, but now due to a mix-up I have the blog for a whole other year–and I don’t want to just leave it static.

At the same time I don’t want to resort to something that turns this into just some weight loss pill reviews or some thing like that.

I’m wondering about converting the entire domain into a show case for the writing stuff which I want to try and make a stronger focus upon and make use of my time since I’m out of a job again. We’ll have to see what I can make layout wise to fit the domain name, and also my writer’s mentality. I’m sure the graphics wouldn’t be too much of a problem really, more exactly how I would set up the content so that it showcases things properly without leaving me wide open to plagiarists.