Ribbons in the Air

Around here we have toll roads. These toll roads are usually very long and very straight, but there are certain exits and parts where it changes from one toll road to another that become long, curving, swoopy roads that sit high above the ground. When there isn't any traffic (which is frequent), I tend to take these curves at speeds around 65 to 70mph. It was never anything that bothered me before. Usually it can be a beautiful thing, especially at night when you can see the lights of the town spread out below. Sometimes, though, I notice just how thin the concrete walls look when I'm going around those curves. They don't really look like walls; more like thin concrete barriers that are put up before the walls are put in place. When you're speeding around these turns, at night, about six stories above the ground, they can look woefully inadequate to stop a car from plunging over the edge. I'm sure they are, though.

I was walking around a shopping mall, for lack of a better word, when I came across a used book store. I dropped in and gravitated towards the fantasy and science-fiction section. There's a fairly hefty stock of books in that section and a lot of it was pretty old. Old enough that they were old when I was a kid. I suddenly felt very sad and wondered why I don't read as much as I used to.

Sure, technically I have less time to read. I work, I take care of animals, and now I have a girl friend to spend time with. Surely, though, I can find a little bit of time between this and that to actually read something. I really spend too much time watching TV shows or movies, though. I don't listen to music very much either. In fact, the only time I listen to music is when I'm driving in the car. I find this very depressing because when I was growing up listening to music while reading was something I did frequently.

At one point I started buying some of the older sci-fi books I'd wanted to read but never had. I bought them digitally so that I could read them on my phone or tablet, wherever I was and whenever I got a chance. Whenever I was standing in line or waiting for a movie to start I read through, say, For Love of Mother Not by Alan Dead Foster. It was written in 1983 and is considered a part of Foster's more famous works (the Flinx and Pip adventures). I believe it was a favorite series of my older sister's. Anyway, I'm reading through it and I liked it, but it didn't seem very well written. To me, it seemed very simple.  It was easy to read, though, and very entertaining. But while I was reading through the book it occurred to me that I could write something like that.

And that makes me sad, too. Not that I think I could write something like that, but that I don't. And won't. It's just never going to happen because I don't have whatever spark it is that's needed to actually do something. That's very depressing, too, and I'm sure there's a lot of people who are tired of hearing about it by now.

There are a few people who get genuinely upset when I say that I'm going to give up even trying to write. Even giving up on the tired old blog that I write on every once in a while. I don't know why they get so upset, but I'm grateful for it.

It's a lovely Saturday afternoon, though, and there shouldn't be time for maudlin musings about a past that can never be changed or a future that won't be changed. I reckon there'll be time enough for that when I'm bed ridden or something.

A New Way Of Thinking

Something that’s always bugged me about television series is how they can start to get tedious.

This mostly revolves around dramas of one kind or another.  Sitcoms are usually self-contained episodes that don’t really rely on a back story.  Although, sometimes they do.

When I was a kid watching cartoons, for instance, it was always annoying that when watching “Battle of the Planets” the villain was going to get away.  Not the minor bad guy, the dude piloting the weird ship that looked like one kind of animal but was called something else, but the top bad guy.  G-Force would never, ever, knock down the Spectra organization.

Shows that have a back story where the main character or characters are looking for something, running from something, or have some kind of goal as its background story are going to become tedious.

Following a character for year after year just to see them fail, in the long run, is a bummer.

If I were given a chance to create a television show I would do it differently.  It would be designed to be contained in one, maybe two, seasons.  All the scripts would be written ahead of time to create a uniform and believable story.  Nothing is worse than when writers start pulling ideas out of the air to make things that happened in the past fit with what they want to do in the future.  Anyone remember the eighth season’s cliffhanger of “Dallas?”

The season would have a definite beginning, of course, but also have a definite ending that has a definite resolution.

If there’s enough enough clamoring for another season, then it can be done.  A new story line can be written up, again with the idea of going through an entire season.  Kind of like a long mini-series.

This would also let the actors involved decide if they want to keep going for another season.  Everyone knows how fickle actors get when it comes to being stereotyped.  If they have another project they want to do they don’t have to worry about renegotiating their contracts in mid-season.

So, if you’re in Hollywood and reading this go ahead and drop me a note.

 

Tales of the Computer Hardware Repairman

   There was a long period of time in my life when I was a computer hardware repairman.  I started as a simple printer repairman and worked my way up.

     Along the way up that ladder I encountered many strange people who had many strange problems, some of which were computer related.  I sometimes pull out these stories while sitting around the fire on cold winter nights to amuse the children. 

     The anecdotes you are about to read are all true.  I know they’re true because they happened to me and now, for the first time, I will document them on my blog.

     Gather around now and listen to…

Tales of the Computer Hardware Repairman

     During my time of being a printer repairman I was going to begin work on a new (yes, new) dot matrix printer.  The first thing I had to do was remove the power supply.

     I touched the screwdriver to the screw and sparks flew, a loud bang was heard, and the lights went out.  My boss stormed into the work room demanding to know what happened.  I explained that I touched a screw with a screwdriver.  He looked at the printer and saw that it was still plugged in; a stupid mistake on my part, to be sure.

     After yelling at me and flipping the circuit breaker (or possibly changing the fuse) he came back and loudly explained that one has to be very careful when working with electricity and power supplies.  One must always make sure a unit is not plugged in before working on it.  He grabbed the screwdriver from me so he could properly remove the power supply.

     He touched the screwdriver to the screw and sparks flew everywhere, a loud bang was heard, and the lights went out.  The tip of the screwdriver was also melted.  My boss had forgotten to check to make sure the printer was unplugged.

---

      I received a call for an HP LaserJet II or III that was having chronic paper jams.  When I arrived at the cubicle I saw that the printer was kept on the floor, which wasn’t all that strange back then.

     The woman explained that when she tried to print the printer would feed in part way and then jam.  She showed me; it did jam.  I got down on the floor and opened up the lid and pulled the paper out and started digging around to see if I could find the problem. 

     “By the way,” I said, “Did you ever find your other earring?”

     She looked at me oddly because, at this point, she had never seen me before.  “What?” she asked.

     “You lost an earring.  Gold with a pearl?”

     She just looked at me.  I could tell she was trying to figure out when she had told me even though she knew she couldn’t have.  Perhaps she thought I was psychic.  I lifted my hand and showed her the gold earring with a pearl I had pulled out from between the broken transfer wires.

     She was overjoyed; a working printer and a recovered earring.

---

      A call came in for a broken keyboard.  This was during a period of time when, for some reason, everyone was dumping a beverage into their keyboards. 

     When I arrived I looked at the keyboard.  It looked fine.  I picked it up from the desk, keeping it horizontal. 

     I looked at the woman who made the call.  She was very pretty; nearly model material.  She had a big blog of cream cheese on her cheek and she was unaware of it.  “Did you get any coffee in here?” I asked.  It wouldn’t have mattered if she did or not because everyone got the same level of service from me regardless of what happened.

     “No,” she said.  “It just stopped working.” 

     I tilted the keyboard so I could wrap the cord around it and about half a cup of coffee came pouring out of it and onto the carpet.

     “Maybe I spilled a little bit in there,” she said sheepishly.

     I did not tell her about the cream cheese on her cheek because she was untruthful to me.

---

      My consulting company sent me to a new location that would become my temporary permanent spot.  My new boss wanted me to show my chops so when a call came in for a malfunctioning monitor he took me down to have a look at it.

     I stood at the edge of the man’s cubicle, my boss behind me.  The man gestured at his wildly flickering monitor and explained that sometimes it did that and sometimes it didn’t.  Sometimes it flickered badly, and sometimes it was not so bad.

     Without moving I asked the man to turn off the little fan he had sitting on top of the monitor.

     “Sure,” he said.  He turned the fan off.  “Hey!” he exclaimed, “It’s working again!” 

     I took the time to explain that the magnet in the fan messed up the electronics in the monitor.  The faster the fan was set to, the worse the flickering would be.

     The man was happy; my boss was pleased.

---

      I received a call for a flickering monitor.  Normally I suspect a fan to be the culprit but when I arrived at this location there was no fan.

     The woman who entered the call gestured to her monitor and said, “See how it flickers?”

     I looked at the monitor.  It wasn’t flickering.

     I looked at her.  “Um, no?” I said.

     She pointed at the monitor.  “You don’t see that flickering?” she demanded.

     I looked at the monitor again.  It looked fine.  I began to wonder if she was just very sensitive to the fluorescent lights.  I wondered how I was going to get out of this one.

     I looked at the woman and was about to mention the inherent flickering of fluorescent lighting and how she just might be really sensitive to it when I noticed she was chewing gum.

     “Could you stop chewing your gum for a moment,” I asked her.  She gave me a reproaching look, wondering why I would be that bold.  But she did stop.  I said, “Now look at your monitor and tell me what you see.”

     She turned to the monitor and said, “Hey! It’s not flickering anymore!”

     I tried to bump up the refresh rate on the monitor but it was already as high as it would go.  I explained to her that her jaw movements were in sync with the refresh rate of the monitor and that’s why it was flickering.

---

      I received a ticket for a mouse that wasn’t working.  This was back when mice were new.  Back when Microsoft made bus mice, a kind of precursor to the PS2 mouse.  Mice were just becoming popular in the Intel world, even though they were already in use on the Apple Macintosh, Atari ST, and Commodore Amiga.

     I arrived at the desk expecting to clean the ball and rollers.  I tried out the mouse; it worked fine.

     “Ugh,” she said.  “It never works for me.

     “Well, show me how it doesn’t work for you.” I said cheerily.

     She furiously tapped the right mouse button with her index finger.  The mouse pointer drunkenly travelled to the right.  Then she furiously tapped the left mouse button with her index finger and the mouse pointer drifted erratically to the left.  “See?” she asked.

     For a fleeting moment I thought about the story of the person who had thought a mouse was supposed to work as a foot pedal (yes, that story is that old).

     I patiently, and kindly, explained to her how to use the mouse and she was satisfied.

---

      It was early in the morning and I received a ticket.  Before I had even finished my coffee.  The call was for the trading floor; a location that I dreaded. 

     I arrived at the trouble spot.  A trader greeted me by complaining about how loud his computer was and that he was afraid the hard drive was going to crash.

     Getting close to the computer I listened for any unusual loudness and, perhaps, some weird hard drive grinding.  I heard nothing unusual.

     “I came in early today to get some work done,” he agitatedly explained.  “Now, I can’t do anything because my computer is really loud and you’re telling me it’s fine.  It never sounded like this before!”  He was angry.

     It was early.  Early enough that the floor was fairly empty and the usual trading floor hubbub  hadn’t started up yet.

     “What time do you normally come in?” I asked. 

     He had no idea why I asked that.  He probably didn’t think it was relevant but he answered anyway.  His normal working time was close to when the trading floor opened.  When the noise level of the trading floor was pretty high.

     “You never heard it before because when you normally come in everyone is already making a lot of background noise.  Your computer just blends in with it.”

     He started to protest.  He stopped.  He thought about it.  Traders are not dumb people, for the most part.  His face turned a slight shade of red.  I started the computer back up.

     In a last ditch effort he said, “Do you see how long it’s taking to load up?  Do you have any idea of how much money I’m losing?”

     I didn’t know.  More importantly, I didn’t care.  “That’s NT, sir.  It takes a while to load up.”  He waved me away.

     I turned around and saw my boss standing behind me.  He gave me a smile and a wink and we walked back together.  Again, he was pleased.

---

      Sometimes, as a computer hardware repairman, you hear the same things over and over again.  Sometimes it’s unintentional and sometimes people think they’re being clever.  It’s enough to make you snap.

     Showing up at a desk responding to a trouble ticket I was asked, “Are you the computer guy?”  one too many times.

     “Negative, human!  I am as human as you are!”

---

      Riding the elevator to respond to a scheduled trouble ticket a man asked me if I fixed the computers.

     “Yes,” I said.

     “My laptop modem stopped working.  Could you look at it for me, please?” he asked.

     “Sure,” I said.  “Tell me where you sit and I’ll come by when I’m done with this call.”

     “Could you look at mine first?  We’re going to the same floor.”

     “I’m sorry, but I have an appointment to keep.  I can come by as soon as I’m done, but I can’t miss this appointment.”

     He begged for a bit more, but I wouldn’t budge.  I explained that if he had sent up an appointment then I would not miss it by going to someone else’s desk either.  Finally, he relented and gave me his location.

     When I finished with my appointment I found the man’s office.  It was larger than my apartment.  His modem was a Megahertz PCMCIA card with the X-Jack.  The two wires in the jack were mangled.  Carefully, with the help of a flat bladed screwdriver, I straightened the wires out.  Then I scolded him because he would just yank the phone cord out when he was done with it.  I showed him the wires and how fragile they were.  He thanked me.

     I went back to my desk and told my boss the entire story.  He asked for the fellows name  and I told him.  His face blanched.  He went totally white.  Evidently the man was very high up the managerial food chain.  Very high up.

     There were no negative repercussions.

---

      I got to work and my boss grabbed me before I could go anywhere.

     “We have a problem,” he said, seriously.  “There’s a guy on the Xth floor with a printer problem.  It keeps jamming.  I sent Joe Fakename up there last night but he didn’t fix the problem.  This guy is mad.”

     What better way to start the day could there be?  So we went to the Xth floor and my boss introduced me to the customer.  The man was annoyed and, after the initial pleasantries were done, informed me that, “You will not be leaving here until this printer is fixed.”

     I was introduced to the printer.  It was a rather large form feed dot-matrix job.  I knew Joe Fakename did good work; I learned a lot from him when I started out.  I trusted his work.  For the sake of appearances, though, I double checked everything that he would have done: cleaned the platen, made sure there were no paper bits laying around, the belt on the form feed mechanism.  Everything checked out, just as I thought it would.

     Many times people think I’m not doing anything because I’ll sit there and stare.  The truth is that I’m thinking.  Thinking has saved me, and a lot of other people, a lot of problems down the line.  So I sat there and I thought.  Also, I ran paper through the printer continuously.  It never jammed.

     I decided to look for a more mundane problem.  I investigated where the printer was.  It was sitting on a wireframe stand with the paper fed up from a box, behind the printer and up until it was threaded between two of the wires before entering the back of the printer.  There was nothing to block the paper’s path. 

     I went out to where the administrative assistant sat.  Joe Fakename had told me earlier that they were using a multipart form as paper.  They had given me standard paper to test with. 

     “Is this the paper you usually print with?” I asked her.

     “Oh, no, we use a form with carbons and everything.  But I can’t let you use it because it’s very expensive.”

     “Well, the printer isn’t jamming with this paper so I won’t be able to fix it unless I have the paper you’re using.  It could be that the printer isn’t set for the thickness or something.  I don’t need to print anything on it, just run it through the printer.”

     Finally she relented and gave me a box of the forms.  And it was really thick stuff.  It had about five copies with a carbon sheet between each one.  I began to think it really was a thickness problem.  I threaded the paper through the wire stand the way she had showed me and ran it through the printer.  The first few sheets went through okay, so I knew there was enough room between the platen and the print head. 

     Then, suddenly, it jammed.  Great.  I investigated the printer, looking to see if part of the form had become bent and was blocking the works.  No, that wasn’t it.  I re-adjusted the paper and started to feed it through again.  No more jam even though I hadn’t really done anything.

     I did this for a while.  Every once in a while it would jam.  I stopped, sat on the floor and did some more thinking. 

     It occurred to me that there seemed to be a set amount of time that it would feed properly until it jammed.  I tested this idea.  Sure enough, it would feed a certain amount of pages and then jam.  I let it jam again but didn’t touch the printer or the paper.  I followed the paper trail back out of the printer looking for something it may be stuck against.  Nothing appeared to be stopping the paper.

     I was stymied.  I followed the paper back further, intending to go all the way to the box looking for why it was stopping.  Gently I poked at the paper as I followed it back.  Then I realized that the paper didn’t move when  I poked it.  “Ahhhhhhh,” I thought.  There’s problem something on the wireframe that’s stopping it.  Maybe they printed labels, too, and some of the glue got on the stand and that was sticking the paper to it.  So I removed the paper and checked out the wire frame thing looking for old glue.

     There was nothing.  Now I was totally flummoxed.  I re-threaded the forms and started form feeding the pages through until it jammed again.  Then I got my face right up on the paper and tracked it back until I saw what the problem was.  After a certain amount of pages were fed through, and because of how the paper was threaded through the wires, at one certain point the fold between the forms would form a ‘V’ and hit one of the wires exactly in the middle.  Somehow the tension and thickness of the forms kept it wedged there, even against the force of the printer’s tractor motor.  Incredible.  I took the paper out and moved it one spot higher than where they were threading it.  I ran a bunch of forms through.  It didn’t jam.  I removed the forms from the printer and went and got the admin assistant.

     “Is it fixed?” she asked.

     “It sure is.  Now, thread those forms for me, please.”

     She set the paper up the same way she had shown me before.  I held down the Form Feed button on the printer.  After the first few pages went through it jammed.

     “You said it was fixed,” she told me.  “It still jams.”

     “Right.  See here, where the paper is hitting this part of the printer stand?  Take the paper out and re-thread it so it’s one spot higher,” I told her.

     She did it and I held down the Form Feed button.  Pages passed through without jamming.  She was ecstatic.  She went to tell her boss.  He came back and we demonstrated how the printer was working.  He was very pleased and promised me that when he needed his HP LaserJet Classic fixed, he would call me personally.  I didn’t know why I was being punished for doing a good job.

---

      My switch from being a computer hardware repairman to a computer software technician came when I got a call that said the site director’s computer needed a new video card. 

     This guy was the highest up the manager chain that you could get.  The high muckity-muck.  The software techs had gone over it several times in the last week and now, as a last ditch effort, they brought me in to change the hardware in order to please him.

     He wasn’t in that day, which is good because I generally don’t like working on people’s systems when they’re around.  My methods could be a little unorthodox and it made people nervous.

     I rarely trust what I’m told so I took out my video card test program and booted it up.  Then I ran a full suite of tests on the card.  Everything passed.

     I booted up the computer.  Everything went fine until Windows 98 started, then the video became seriously messed up.  “How odd,” I thought.

     I went through the boot up files and started commenting things out and gave it another reboot.  It was fine, except for missing everything I took out.  I knew it wasn’t a hardware problem.

     A few minutes later I had narrowed it down and had a fully working, booting system with the correct video. 

     I went to my supervisor.

     “Did you replace the video card already?” she asked.  She was used to me having to order hardware and waiting a couple of days.

     “I didn’t have to.  The problem was a VESA driver that his golf game installed.  I just took it out and now it works fine.  I don’t know if he’ll be able to play the golf game, though.”

     She was impressed.

Dunkin’ Donuts

     Some of you may remember that I was lamenting the lack of a Dunkin’ Donuts in my area.  That situation has now been remedied with the arrival of a Dunkin’ Donuts in Round Rock, TX.

     Personally, I’m ecstatic.  Even though I won’t get there very often it’s nice to know that the option is there if I ever feel like going.  The store is pretty nice and it has places to sit at.  It’s different than the one I used to go to in Parsippany, NJ, in that you can’t sit at the counter.  That’s kind of a bummer, but I suppose it’s the way it is here in the 21st century.

     I did get a donut, though.  I had to.  And it’s just as good as I remembered them being.  I’m not a big fan of Krispy Kreme (and their close-by store has shut down), and the donuts at my grocery store are pretty horrendous when compared to a DD.

     Some other changes, since the last time I was at one, are the inclusion of “value meals.”  When I went to DD the only value meal they had was, “bowl bread donut.”  Or, a bowl of soup, a piece of bread, and a donut of your choice.  Also, there’s specialty coffee (even though I think their coffee is good enough that they don’t need them).

     Now I have my pizza place, and my donut place.  Wicked.

The Moon Hits Her Eye Like A Big Pizza Pie

      I come from New Jersey.  That may not mean much to you, but it means something to me.  It means that since I am transplanted certain things that I have gotten used to are denied to me.  That’s right, I said “denied.”

     When you live in New Jersey you’re never more than 20 feet from a pizzeria.  Austinites may be thinking, “So what?  We have plenty of pizza places here, too.”  But that’s a lie. 

     Pizza Hut, Dominos, Papa Johns, Cici’s, Little Ceaser’s, and all those places that sell frozen pizza that they shove in the microwave for three minutes are not pizza places.  Real pizza’s do not have pineapple, or eggplant, or other weird and exotic ingredients. 

     A real pizza has a somewhat thin crust, but not thin and crispy like a cracker.  It’s thin and floppy.  You fold the slice so you can eat it, but first you hold it over your paper plate and let the grease just drip off, but make sure the molten cheese doesn’t slide off with it.  If you don’t get that grease drip, it isn’t a real pizza.  And if it ain’t floppy and foldable then you’re not holding a real pizza.

     I found another pizza place in Austin that makes pizza similar to what I’m used to.  The only downside is that it’s New York style pizza, not New Jersey.  There is a difference.  However, Nikki’s Pizza is quite passable.  I don’t care for the crust at the edge because it’s too thin for me, but the sauce is spot on.  It’s not made with a ton of sugar and way too sweet to eat.  And that’s important to me.  I’m so sick of this sugary crap that all these other places throw on their pizza.  I hate sweet tomato sauce.

     The only other problem I found was that their sausage pizza used some crumbled sausage meat.  That’s a shame, but I can live with it.  

     So now I have to pizza places I can order from and get an almost authentic NJ pizza.  Nikki’s Pizza and The Original Brooklyn Pie Company.

     By the way, size does matter.  Most of the chain places have small pizzas and they try and make it look like they’re normal by calling them “large.”  They’re not. 

     For instance, Dominos sizes are thus: Small (10”), Medium (12”), Large (14”), and Extra-Large (16”). 

     Nikki’s sizes go this way: Individual (10”), Small (12”), Medium (14”), Large (16”).

     Brooklyn Pie Company? They are: Small (10”), Medium (14”), and Large (18”).

     See that?  Domino’s (and probably Papa John’s and the rest of them) “large” is the East Coast equivalent of “medium.”  Brooklyn’s 18” large makes Domino’s Extra-Large look like a Personal Pan Pizza. 

     And finally, price.  A Domino’s X-Large (16”) Cheese pizza with the “Brooklyn” crust?  $17.99.  This is according to their website, by the way.  Which is a major pain in the ass to use when you just want to find out the cost and size of a pizza.

     A large cheese pie from Nikki’s?  $9.25.  And their large is 16”, the same as Domino’s extra-large.  And Brooklyn Pie Company?  The largest large with 18” will cost you $14.95. 

     I’m not sure what the point of all this is anymore, but I feel better for ranting.

The Big Four-Oh

     So, you’re sitting around one day with your friends, maybe.  Then some old clunker goes driving by.  Maybe it’s an old Cadillac.  One of those tan ones, with the rusted panels.  The trunk lock is missing, along with a headlight.  It bangs down the street past you, backfiring and spitting out brown exhaust. 

     You and your friends watch it, amused by the sight of such an old, dilapidated piece of crap rumbling along and you wonder how it manages to keep running because, let’s be honest, it’s almost 40 years old now.  Forty years old.  Wait, a minute, you think, I’m 40 years old!

     And your mind casts back to the things that are breaking down in your house.  The toaster is dead, at five years.  The curtains are ten years old and your wife is sure it’s time to replace them.  You have a 20 year old computer that your kids routinely laugh at.  All these things are crap now, garbage.  And the oldest thing is half your age!  And it’s considered ancient!  A car is generally considered a “classic” at 25 years.  Oh, me oh my!  Time for you to putter around the house shooting out exhaust.

     Today, November 2nd, is my birthday.  I was born in the year 1968, 40 years ago.  Four decades ago, I was brought forth unto the world.  Ten years shy of half a century.

     The world has gone through a lot of changes in forty years.  Computers have gone from the size of a warehouse building, completing calculations in days or weeks, down to being in tiny MP3 players and decompressing Britney Spears songs on the fly.  Televisions have become to dump the tube and gone LCD or plasma.  Cars have gone from being complex mechanical objects to hyper-complex mechanical objects with computer controlled bits.  Airplane travel has turned from a semi-enjoyable experience to the worst method of travel next to the bus.

     But, that’s all right, people tell me.  40 is the new 30!  According to who?  And how does that make much of a difference?

     Although, to be frank, I don’t feel forty.  I make goofy sounds to my bird.  I talk to my cats and believe they understand me.  I like most of the music my kids listen to.  And, in a little while, I’ll be booting the kids off my computer so I can play Fallout 3 (which I got as a gift from my mom; thanks mom!).  I don’t have aches and pains when I get up in the morning.  I could run down the street if I were chased by a dog.  Meh.  I don’t see much of a difference yet.  Inside, I’m still the young guy who wants to do a lot of stupid stuff.  The only difference is that I’ve been on this planet going around the sun 40 times.

     So, maybe it’s not so bad.

 

    

On Halloween

     Halloween was my second favorite holiday when I was growing up.  Halloween meant being able to dress up as your favorite hero (or villain) and not having to worry about people thinking you were nuts.  It meant eating as much candy as you could cram into your gullet.  It meant being able to walk around at night, in the dark. 

     A Halloween night in New Jersey was generally quite chilly.  Breezes caused the fallen leaves to rustle and fly around.  Wood smoke from fireplaces lent a certain taste in the air.

     It was a magical night.

     It also occurred two days before my birthday.  By the time I was over being sick on candy it was time to be sick on cake and ice cream.  But that was all right, because I’d have plenty of new stuff to be sick playing with.

     Back then, having a costume that was made was bette

r than a

store-bought costume.  It showed ingenuity, intelligence, craftiness, and creativity.  To buy a costume was a cop-out.  Of course, most purchased kids costumes consisted of a mask of some characters face and a plastic smock that announced who you were supposed to be, as if Casper the Friendly Ghost actually had his name printed on his chest.

     And it didn’t matter if the costume wasn’t an exact replica of whoever you were supposed to be.  Imagination filled in the gaps.  That Boba Fett rocket pack was a shoe box and a red “L’eggs” top, but to everyone that knew who Boba Fett was, it was a rocket pack.  Kids who had

parents that were really good had a problem.  While their costumes were wonders to behold, and everyone would admit that the costume was awesome, there would still be a hint of resentment in there.  It could be too good. 

     Why did it matter?  Because in the 1980’s and before, you were allowed to go to school in a costume.  You were expected to show up in costume.  Complete with mask, if necessary.  And everyone had fun, and there would be a parade so that the parents could see how cute everyone looked (God knows why, though; those same kids would be knocking on your door in a few hours anyway).

     Now, it seems that if you don’t buy a costume then you suck.

If you try and make one then you’re too poor to buy one.  And if your pre-teen daughter doesn’t look like a prostitute then you’ve got problems. 

     Does it matter, though?  To me, it looks like less and less kids go trick-or-treating every year.  Even in neighborhoods where kids are abundant, nobody seems to walk around that much.  Even to me, an adult who does nothing but pass out candy, Halloween has turned into a disappointment.

     So, what happened?  I would say fear got the better of everyone.  Schools don’t want costumes or masks in school in case someone goes nuts and shoots the place up.  We’ve all lived with the Halloween candy scares: apples filled with razor blades, candy corn and other candies injected with drugs.  Don’t eat anything home made, like popcorn balls or candied apples because you never know what’s inside of it.  Trust only candy that’s still in a big company wrapper.  And even then, inspect it for tampering. 

     But now we’ve reached a whole new level of fear.  Kids being abducted, kids shooting other kids, and other horrors that we’re inundated with throughout the years that just builds, and builds, and builds.  Maybe our communities aren’t as close knit as they used to be.  Do you know your neighbors?  Do you see them often?  Is the limit of your interaction a half-hearted wave while you’re mowing the lawn?

     It’s another piece of Americana that has slowly eroded.  Or maybe it never really was that way in the first place.  The problem with history is that the more you know, the less different everything seems to be.

How I Spent My Time

     It looks like I’ve been a bad boy this month.  I’ve hardly done any blogging at all.  I’ve done even less writing.  So, you’re probably wondering, “What’s he been up to, anyway?”  At least, I hope that’s what you’ve been wondering.  So, let’s go down and see what I’ve been doing.

     First, if you’ve ever read my blog before you know that I’m stuck in some melancholy loop that revolves around the 1980’s and the computers of yesteryear.  Well, I dusted off the old Atari 8-bit emulator and thought I could finish some games that I never finished before.  Then I remembered just how many games that I started that I never did finish.  And that’s a lot of them.

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Dunzhin – By Screenplay

     I am one of the few people I know that bought Dunzhin.  All right, I’m the only person I know that bought it.  I loved role playing games and the idea of running around a dark dungeon with a sword.  The graphics are, um, functional.  Even for the Atari 8-bit, they were a bit lacking.  But that’s not the important part when it comes to RPG’s.

     The premise of Dunzhin is that you’re sent into the Dunzhin to find an object and then bring it back.  An awful lot like the games Nethack, Moria, Rogue, and a few dozen others.  While searching different rooms for your quest object, which I must add was a randomly chosen thing with ridiculous names like “The Screaming Hand of Obyxx,” you could run into a variety of trouble.  Pits could open beneath your feet, you could fall flat on your face tripping on a trip wire, noxious gas could fill the room, or you could be attacked by enemies.

     Ten minutes after starting Dunzhin I remembered why I never finished it.  It’s insanely hard.  Your character is very weak when you start and, unlike many games, you have different body parts that can be attacked and each part has its own health.  While, overall, you may have 35 hit points, your right arm may only have two.  So, if you were unlucky enough to get scratched on your right arm, well, then it’s game over.  And that happens a lot.  If that weren’t bad enough you frequently get teleported all over the place.  Some disembodied women decides she doesn’t like you and bam!, you’re off somewhere else.  Usually deeper in the

dungeon where you don’t stand a chance of surviving.  And just when you think you’re getting a handle on all of it, bopping dwarves on the head, lopping off zombie arms, and whatever, you wade into battle and have your sword bust on you.  And that happens a lot, too.

     Don’t get me wrong, though.  Dunzhin really is a good game.  In battle you can target different body parts of the enemy, and some enemies have some nasty weak spots.  For instance, a zombie won’t have any armor on his right arm, so if you start fighting one that’s where you want to aim.  But if it wasn’t for the “Save State” feature of Atari800win Plus or Atari800 I think I would have given up a long time ago.  Again.

     Perfect example.  I just started it up so I could get a screen shot.  I walked about ten steps before being attacked by four zombies.  My first attack missed.  A zombie’s first attack hit my neck.  Whoops!  Game over.  Total time spent in game before dying?  One minute.

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Kaiv – By Screenplay

     Dunzhin was the first game in the “Warrior of RAS” series.  Kaiv was the second.  Since I actually did like Dunzhin, despite keeling over dead the moment I walked into it, I picked up Kaiv as well. 

     Kaiv is similar to Dunzhin in that the game play is nearly identical.  Some differences are that instead of walking through a dark dungeon, you’re walking through a dark cave.  The graphics for the walls are different, too.

     But it does have some interesting points that make it an evolution over Dunzhin.  For one, you can buy more than one sword.  So, when your sword breaks you can switch to a back up.  You also have to buy your own armor.  And, unlike Dunzhin, you need to buy torches.  You can probably guess that your torches have a tendency to be blown out frequently.

     There were two other games in the “Warrior of RAS” series: Wylde and Ziggurat.  I’ve never seen them for sale, though, or else I would have bought them also. 

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     There are a couple of other games, but I’ll get to them later because they’re much bigger and grander.

     Joost.com has a bunch of episodes of the television show, “Have Gun – Will Travel” starring Richard Boone.  I’ve been watching a lot of these and, despite the fact that I don’t care for Westerns all that much, I have to say that I consider this one of the best shows ever written.  The character of Paladin is just amazing: part scoundrel, part nobleman, part Robin Hood.  Some people may be surprised to know that Gene Roddenberry (Star Trek) was one of the writers for this show.

     The stories aren’t just “gun slinger kills guy” stories, either.  There’s a lot of subtlety in how he goes about his business.  They’re old, from the 1950’s, but I highly recommend them.

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     So, there you go.  A minor update into what I’ve been doing lately.

 

Just the BASICS

** Nerd Alert **

    Yes, this post is quite nerdy.  Feel free to skip it or read it as you see fit.  We’ll be going back in time again, so if you can’t handle that you may want to move along peacefully.

     Turn off your computer, disconnect the hard drives and floppy drive (if you still have one), remove any bootable USB keys you may have.  Now, turn on your computer again.  What did you get?  Nothing, right?  Maybe a bunch of errors?  But you certainly didn’t get anything even vaguely useful.

     You may as well hook all that stuff back up.  Now, back in the old days the majority of home computers were still useful, even if they didn’t have any devices (except for the TV or, if you were rich, a monitor) attached.  Most home computers had some kind of BASIC programming language built in so turning on the computer brought you to some kind of prompt.  While this may not be quite as useful as being able to check your email or listen to an MP3, it’s a lot better than nothing.

     On every computer I have, I have an Atari 8-bit computer emulator.  Every one of them.  You wonder why I do this, right?  You think, “Geez, the guy has a 64-bit, 2.2GHz processor what the devil does he need an emulator for an 8-bit, 1Mhz, 48K of memory computer for?”

     And the answer is simple: BASIC.  See, sometimes I just need to write a quick program that doesn’t do much.  It may be a one-off thing that I need to do.  Simple, short, ready to go.  Modern computers, for all their speed, complexity, and bullshit lack in this area.  I mean, really lack. 

     If I need a quick program to calculate something, I don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on a developer kit.  I don’t need it to run in its own window with menus and crap.  I don’t want to have to write headers and compile the stupid thing.  I just want to type it in, type ‘RUN’ and press the Enter key.  But, while my computer can run Oblivion in all it’s 3D hardware accelerated goodness, it can’t do the simple task of running a BASIC program.

     The irony is that there are many computers from the “Golden Age” that have BASIC built in and their BASIC was written by a guy named Bill Gates and is copyrighted to Microsoft (sometimes Micro Soft) in 1982 or earlier. 

     It would be lovely if Microsoft could include a Microsoft BASIC with Windows.  Even if it’s the same version from 1982.  Just something simple that can be quickly typed in and run.  No sheet designers, no labels, just good old line numbers and GOTO’s and GOSUB’s and stuff. 

     Until that advanced day reaches me, I’ll keep my emulators for the sole purpose of having a simple BASIC around in case I need it.

     I guess I’m the only person who feels this way, though.

Booger & The Dr Pepper

     I got my bottle of Dr Pepper this morning.  Checking the cap, I saw that it was a winner so I hurriedly plugged the code into the website.  I wondered if I were going to win another screen saver?  Maybe the same wallpaper I’ve already won?  Would it be a ringtone I couldn’t use?

     No!  None of those things.  I won a Dr Pepper keychain!  Now I have to wait ten to twelve weeks to get the thing.  Sheesh!  I want it now!

 

    For anyone interested, my Pet Society pet, Booger, has hit upon some sad financial times.  He sure could use your help, if you were so inclined.  Could you let this poor dog bear animal live on the street with nothing more than a tin can, a tire, and a rubber ducky?

     It looks like Playfish has a new game out now, too, called GeoChallenge.  I’ll have to take an in-depth look at that one, too, pretty soon.

Facebook Games Review III: Pathwords

     Pathwords is one of those games that’s great if you have a good vocabulary and a pretty good eye.  It also helps if you’re playing with friends that don’t have a good vocabulary or good eyes.

     When Pathwords starts up you’re greeted by a hexagonal grid that’s covered in letters.  The object is to start on a letter by clicking on it and then dragging your mouse over the other letters until you form a word.  The letters you have selected are also reflected on the bottom of the screen and are colored red, if you don’t have a valid word, or green if you do.  When you release the mouse then the tiles you used are destroyed and new blocks fall to take their places.  It’s a timed game, too, so you have five minutes to find as many words as possible. 

     Overall it’s a pretty good game.  There’s nothing spectacular about it.  Really, it’s quite utilitarian.  I

can’t recommend playing it on a laptop with a touchpad, though.  Sometimes the cursor can go all over the place and you end up trying to spell a word just to get gobbeldygook out of it.

     Like most Facebook games, Pathwords keeps track of your score and taunts your other playing friends with how great you are. 

     There is some strategy that comes into play.  If you see a big word coming up but you can’t quite get to it yet then you will need to settle on lesser words to let the other letters fall into place until you can get your big word complete.

     So, grab your dictionary and try it out for some interesting times.

Facebook Games Review II: Pet Society

     Pet Society is another SIMS kind of game.  Or maybe more like Little Computer People that’s more interactive.  It’s a side-view game where you make a “pet” and name it then let it loose in a house.

     And this is where a grown man should stop if he wasn’t totally

crazy.  I, of course, pressed on. 

     If Pet Society has a goal, that goal is to amass trophies.  You get trophies for visiting friends, playing ball, buying clothes and other things.  The secondary goal is to amass money so you can get the trophies for buying things.  Along the way I suppose you can also buy furniture and flooring and stuff to personalize your house.

     Essentially, Barbie with quasi-animals.

     Your pet isn’t just stuck in his house, though.  He can wander

around town.  Passing through trees can net you an occasional coin.  There are stores to visit, like a grocery store and furniture store.  There are also empty lots where, if you’ve got friends and invite them to play, a construction marker marks there spots.  If they actually join then the spot turns into another house.

     Walking into a friends house gives you a menu where you can engage in activities with your friend’s pet.  Dance, tell a joke, or whatever and you can earn points to level up (giving you money and different goodies) and money. 

     Also in town are two areas that aren’t active yet.  One is a coffee shop which, I guess, will be a place where you can interact with other players.  The other is a stadium.  I’m hoping this is where pets can battle to the death for fun and prizes.

     There are a couple of things I don’t like about Pet Society.  One

is that it’s harder than Hell to make money unless you have a lot of friends or cheat somehow.  The easiest way to get serious coinage is to buy it with your PayPal account.  Even in Yoville, you can “work” for $200 or so every six hours. 

     The other thing kind of disturbs me.  If you hold down the mouse button and rub the cursor over your pet, they make some weird purring noises.  If you keep rubbing then a coin pops out of their head.  Ummm…  Kind of phallic, you know?

Random Crap

     I’m using the new Windows Live Writer Beta now.  I’m not seeing much of a difference and I still can’t figure out how to change the default font.  And the ‘tab’ key still puts it into block quote mode instead of giving me a damn indent. 

     It’s actually sometimes raining today!  I haven’t seen rain in forever.  I’ll have to write it in my journal so that future archeologists will know what the weather was like today.  Yeah.

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     Despite the fact that I’ve been using computers forever, sometimes I just never get around to figuring out what stuff is on the internet.  I’m still not totally sure what a “podcast” is supposed to be.  I’ve only recently gotten around to using Twitter.  You know, stuff like that.  My photo albums on every site that use is an absolute mess.  I’m afraid to see what my Picasa site looks like.  It all makes me feel so behind the times.  But at least I have a Facebook and MySpace account. 

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     Tomorrow is Talk Like A Pirate Day.  I don’t think I’ll be able to participate on account of me not being good at talking like a pirate.  It would probably be a good day to release future “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, though.

A Daily Dairy Diary

     Are you one of those people that keeps a journal?  An adult version of the diary?  If you do, do you ever write in it while thinking that someone in the future, like a thousand years in the future, might read it one day?  Does that affect what you write, like make things clearer and document stuff better or do you sanitize it just in case some futuristic academic decides to judge your life?

     Or are you one of the people that does keep a journal but doesn’t give a hoot who reads it or when?  Or maybe you don’t keep a journal at all.

     During those times in my life when I do keep a journal (which I never keep up on and abandon at some point) I can't help but think that someone is going to read it in the future.  Like, some archeologist in a few hundred years is going to dig up my notebooks and read through them.  I wonder if the language will still be the same, or if it will change significantly that my writing is unreadable (which it would be anyway because I've got sloppy penmanship penpersonship). 

     So, I think should I put in a bunch of details about the weather is stuff, just in case the future would find it interesting?  Should I explain any idioms or let them try and figure it out?  Will my diary journal be a Rosetta Stone for future generations?

     In reality, though, they'll probably all end up in the dump.  Or, more scary, be recycled.  Why would recycling be scary?  Think of it this way, if the ancient Egyptians or Greeks were keen on recycling, what would we know about them today?

Attending Mass.

     Since the infamous events on 9/11 I haven’t been very keen on flying.  It’s not because I’m afraid something is going to happen to the plane, but because I hate going through all this security stuff they have in place.  I remember what it was like to fly in the late 1970s and 1980s. 

     But my nervousness about something going wrong was mostly in vain.  Sure, I had to nearly strip down to get past the metal detector but the people in Austin were quite pleasant about it.  For some reason we weren’t allowed to bring our $2.00 Dr Pepper bottles through the checkpoint.  I didn’t know they were so dangerous.

     We flew on Jet Blue airlines.  After reading about the things a lot of airlines were doing, I wasn’t very keen on flying at all.  But Jet Blue rocked.

     The flight took off ten minutes early (sucks to be you, Late Guy!).  The seats had TV’s in the headrests, which also had XM satellite radio (which I don’t like as much as Sirius but I guess that won’t matter much longer).  They didn’t give away headphones, but you could use your own or buy theirs for $1.  They had free snacks (blue potato chips being the company mascot, I guess) and stuff to drink.  Oh, and it only cost $15 to check your first bag.  The crew was awesome.  It was easily one of the best flights I’d ever had.  Oh!  And the seats were nice and roomy. 

     So we land, wait in line for 45 minutes to get the rental car, then puttered over to the hotel.  As soon as we got the keys to the hotel room, the fire alarm goes off.  We waited outside the place for another 45 minutes waiting for the police and Fire folks to show up.  45 minutes!  Thank God the place wasn’t on fire.  Scuttlebutt has it that someone was microwaving popcorn and left it in too long.  Anyway, all that got sorted out.

     The room is great.  Because of all the inconveniences we got upgraded.  We’re now in a two bedroom suite with a full kitchen.  Sure, that sounds awesome, but there’s only two of us and we’re only staying for two days.  Still, it’s pretty cool.  But their wi-fi coverage SUCKS!  I’m lucky to keep a connection at all, and it’s really slow when it is connected.

     Now that I’m on the East Coast, there’s some things that I’d like to do.  One of them is to go to Dunkin’ Donuts.  Oh, for a donut!  And coffee!  There’s a store right down the street.  Everything is stupid expensive around here, though.  Dinner ended up being two expensive bowls of soup. 

     Time to get this day rolling.  There’s a lot to do, and most of it needs to be done early. 

Tragedy In Trailers (movies)

     Anyone who reads my blogs should know that one of the reasons why I love going to the movies in a theatre is because I really love watching the movie trailers.  One of those reasons is because I more or less grew up listening to the guy who reads them.

     Sadly, Don LaFontaine, the guy that did all those movie trailer voice overs, has died at age 68. 

On Shopping

     I have a long history with shopping.  When I was a youngster, back in my formative years, most of my shopping time was spent in the company of my mother, my sister, and my grandmother.  Three females.  And me – a boy.

     At an early age I learned to cope with traveling in a band and hanging around clothes stores, and shoe stores, and the like.  Most of the time it involved using my mind to go to a happy place, filled with candy and video games.  If I was very lucky the store would have a toy department.  You’d be surprised, though, how many clothing stores don’t have a toy department.  Or video games.

     So now I’m an adult male and while I don’t get ecstatic over the idea of going shopping with the woman-folk, I go along because it’s not that bad.  Do I look like the harried husband, dutifully following his wife carrying shopping bags and boxes?  I sure the hell do.  But, thanks to my early training, it doesn’t bother me and I can carry a handbag around without feeling like everyone in the store is laughing at me.

     See, it’s not all bad.  For one thing, there’s the lingerie department.  Any man who feels embarrassed walking through a lingerie department or Victoria’s Secret or the like is a fool.

     But I also go because my wife makes me feel important.  She constantly asks my opinion, you see.  And I learned, long ago, that not having an opinion is a Bad Thing.  Not having an opinion means that you don’t care.  While the male brain has a ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ not caring mode, women always see it as the negative version.  You need to care, to have an opinion, and to be able to provide some kind of input even if you’re spreading around the bullshit.  That may sound bad, but you never know what you can find in bullshit. 

     Women’s shoes are a world in themselves.  And this is my horrible secret:  I don’t know what makes a pair of shoes ‘cute.’  To me, they’re foot wear.  They come in different colors, materials, and styles.  Show me two pairs of shoes and I may think they’re identical only to find out that one pair is hideous and the other pair is cute.  What makes that difference?  I have no idea.

     But every once in a while I’ll point out a pair of shoes that’s acceptable.  Or find a pair of earrings that match the target ensemble.  Sometimes I can even find the shirt that matches.  And, strangely, that’s a pretty good feeling.  An “I done it right!” feeling.

     Oh, yes, one more thing.  Thanks to my dad, of all people, I can also do things that might be too embarrassing for other men to do.  My dad has been known to do some pretty traumatizing things to me in the interest of fun.  Things like, buying play sand and telling the check out girl that he’s making a sandbox for me (at 19 years old) and would she like to come over and play sometime.  Or having me pay for training bras for my little sister at Bradlee’s while he was “in the bathroom.”  You know, stuff like that. 

     Yesterday I was asked to go through a table full of panties.  I don’t know if she meant it as a joke or what, but while she was trying on clothes I was going through the panty bins looking for undies.  Was I embarrassed?  Nope.  I just rooted through the stuff looking for the right size.  I did get confused as to which way was up on a few items, but I managed to get through it.

      So, while I wish I was like James Bond or Jason Bourne (huh, I never noticed that the two fictional Super Spies had the same initials – how original) and could assess a woman’s proportions and accent her make up professionally, I just muddle through the best I can without the help of government training.  And even if I don’t get it right, she makes me feel like I did.

Move Trailer Reviews

I’m too busy to link everything, so I’m not going to.  I got all these from Apple’s site, though.

Knowing (Nicolas Cage) – This is a movie trailer that looks interesting.  Kid finds a paper full of numbers in a time capsule and Cage matches ‘em up with disasters that happened then begins looking at the new disasters.  Kind of “23”ish in a way, but it looks good.

Stealing America: Vote by Vote – This looks like another scary documentary about the US government.  This time it’s about how YOUR vote doesn’t matter, after all.  Probably a must see.

Fly Me To The Moon – Computer generated movie about a trio of flies who go to the moon and end up saving everything.  I probably should not have mentioned that, but it’s in the trailer so I figure it''s fair game.  I'm not sure why they're giving that away in the trailer, but there ya go.  Also in 3D, but the trailer isn’t.  Looks okay.  I could probably wait until it hits DVD.

Yes Man (Jim Carrey) – A guy who says “no” to everything learns to say “yes” to everything.  It looks all right.  Kind of like Liar, Liar I guess.  Again, I could probably wait for the rental.  By the way, Jim is getting a little old these days.

Appaloosa – Vigo Mortensen and Ed Harris are roving marshalls who help take back a town.  Oh, it’s a Western.  The trailer is filled with violence so the movie should be pretty good, in a violent kind of way.

High School Musical 3 – I refuse to even watch the trailer.

Max Payne – This might be the best videogame to movie conversion yet.  The trailer looks decent.  Seems to keep kind of true to the game, from what little I can tell.

Television

     It’s time for school to start around here.  The kids start earlier here than in New Jersey, where I went to school.  There, we started in September; the fall.  The weather turned cooler, the trees began to change color, and one of the ways to cope with the impending doom of  a new year was to check out what new shows were coming on TV.

     Fall is Spring when it comes to television.  Script ideas burst from the cocoon to emerge as a new show.  It may not survive, but at least it had its shot on the boob tube.

     I used to know what all the new shows were.  I used to have my favorite shows picked out and I would make time to watch them.  Many times the entire family would sit down to watch a particular show.

     Now, I barely know what’s on.  Entire shows have come and gone and I never knew about them.  The Pretender ran from 1996 to 2000.  I just started watching it the other day, in 2008.  Eight years after the show ended! 

     I don’t even get to watch my favorite show, The Simpsons.  Either something is going on and I can’t catch it, or I just plain forget it’s on.  And that’s a show that I made sure I was home to watch.

     Lately, though, I’ve been trying very hard to watch Eureka and Burn Notice.  I have to try really hard to remember that they’re on, though. 

     I still don’t know what’s in store for the new season.  Hell, I’m not even sure we have “seasons” anymore.  Now there’s half-seasons and replacement shows and stuff.  Is Fall still the time for new shows to really shine?  Or does it matter anymore?

     I used to love reading TV Guide, or the newspaper, and seeing what new shows were coming up.  Now, it doesn’t really impact my life at all.  I suppose I should be happy about that.  My time is chained to one less object, but I miss having that feeling of expectation.

    

Letter To Sandy

Dear Sandy,

     It’s been a long time since we’ve written back and forth.  There’s been a few changes in my life, so I figured it was high time to write another letter. 

     I moved down to Texas, finally.  I was living in the city for a while, right downtown, but it turned out to be too much of a distraction.  So I decided to scrape up all my money and buy a large piece of land out in the middle of nowhere.  In Texas, it can be easy to be out in the middle of nowhere and still be close enough to something to not feel like you’re completely isolated. 

     During my time here, I have driven around quite a bit.  When I was looking for my land and stuff, or going between cities.  Sometimes I would drive on a long stretch of straight road, looking at flat grassland dotted with stands of trees, sometimes a watering hole, a bunch of cows and fences.  When I say fences I don’t mean white picket fences, or chain-linked fences.  No, I mean, back to the basics “shove a stick in the ground and wrap barbed-wired around it” fences.  Sometimes I wonder just how old they are.  Are they from the 1800’s or whatever, or did someone recently grab a bundle of sticks and make a fence?

     But this is the amazing part (amazing to me, anyway):  sometimes I’ll be driving and I’ll see some land and there’ll be a house on it.  I know, a land with a house!  Big deal!  But it’ll be an old house.  A ramshackle shack, with a deteriorating roof, crumbling porch, peeled and faded paint.  Sometimes it’ll have windows, sometimes they’ll be busted.  The front door might be on it and closed, or it could be gone completely, or hanging open, on one hinge, in a lonely kind of way.  I wonder, then, do the people that own the land know that there’s a house on it?  Does anyone own the land?  If they know the house is there, why do they keep it? 

     Anyway, I bought a big piece of land.  Not to sound like I'm bragging (I'm really not, I'm just in shock), but the land is big.  Large.  HUGE!  Jack would say it was "Fucking enormous!" if he saw it.  And then he'd say it again once he realized he was only looking at a part of it.  The real estate agent wanted to know if I was going to raise a large contingent of cattle.  I laughed and said I was just going to write.  He shook his head.

     So we took a tour of the land, but we didn't go over all of it.  Just a piece of it.  It's got a modest (I swear!) house set pretty far back from the road.  My driveway is a long dirt road!  And you know what?  It's got one of those fences made of sticks and barbed-wire, too!

     I know you're itching to make fun of me so let me tell you right now that, yes, I did buy a pick-up truck.  Go ahead and fall over laughing.  I'll wait.  Just so you know, I kept the Lincoln, too, but now I also have a big ass pick-up truck.  I also bought an ATV to scoot around the "estate."  Hell, I might need to use the pick up.  I could run around my yard naked, and nobody would ever see me unless they were in a helicopter.  I did not, though, buy a cowboy hat.  Or boots, either.

     The other day I was working on my new project, the book about the man who's haunted by his dead wife, and I just hit that writer's block, you know?  I just couldn't work for anything.  So I did what I normally do, which is unpack a few boxes, re-arrange some furniture, straighten up around the house, have coffee on the back porch, anything to shake that block loose. 

     Nothing was working, so that's when I decided to take the RAM into town and buy the ATV.  I figured there was a lot of land I hadn't seen, so I was going to ATV my way across it.

     When I was a kid, even a small yard was a kind of adventure.  There'd be the one corner I don't ever remember being in, and I'd go there.  In a very small way it was kind of exciting.  Not that I'd expect to find anything, but I could just think to myself, "I've never touched this fence post until now!" and it would be an amazing thing.

     Well, imagine that on a much larger scale.  I took the ATV and zoomed off in one direction, figuring I'd drive a straight line to the edge of the property. 

     I know that when you think "Texas" you equate it with flat, barren desert.  That's so untrue, though.  My land has hills and grass, at least one pond, and a fairly large number of trees.  They aren't big trees, like up North, but small and stunted trees.  But sometimes they grow thick.  I headed for a stand of these trees near a pond and over a small rise so it can't be seen to easily from the house.

     As I got closer to the trees I saw that there was -- get this -- a house!  No, I didn't get lost and circle around to my own house.  This was different.  Smaller.  It was, in fact, one of those ramshackle shacks I mentioned earlier!  What amazing luck!

     I stopped the ATV a fair distance and stared at it.  It was obviously old.  The once white paint was peeling off and showing gray wooden boards underneath.  Actual wooden boards, not particle board or sheet rock.  There's a porch.  The windows looked whole.  I guess since it's so far back from the road, and hidden by the trees, no teens ever came by to vandalize it.  I got excited, I could feel my heart beating a bit faster. 

     I went closer to it.  It looks so lonely, sitting there by itself.  The windows were all dark and the front door was closed.  I have to admit, I got a little nervous.  I half expected some crazy old coot with a shotgun to come out blazing out the front door.  Some old guy who had no idea that he didn't own the land he lived on anymore.  You know, like those Japanese soldiers that got lost on deserted islands for years and were never told that the war ended.

     Luckily, no old armed men came storming at me.  I carefully walked onto the porch, which I thought would collapse.  It held, though.  The door wasn't locked.  It's one of those old locks, which the keyhole underneath the knob.  I would've peeked through it but, being a horror writer, I could just imagine something poking through it into my eye!

     I just let myself in.  My God, it was beautiful in a horrible kind of way.  No electricity runs out there.  No water.  No anything.  It was dark inside, especially coming in from the bright outdoors.  Everything looks intact, like someone lived in it and then just up and left.  Or died in bed, never having relatives come and check in on the occupant.  I worried about that, actually.  But everything was there, even if it was rotting and falling apart. 

     Heavy curtains still covered the windows.  There are old end tables and chairs.  A big, green, velvet covered couch with big ornate carved wooden legs.  I wanted to sit on that so bad, but I'd rather check to make sure a family of rats or something isn't living in it first.  The kitchen has a wood burning stove!  It's fully furnished.

     Mold climbs up the walls and my allergies, which I never had until I moved here, kicked into high gear.  I figured I should come back and explore at a different time.  Maybe get a mask or something.  The house has two stories.  There's a very narrow staircase that goes up (or down, if you're already up, ha ha).  There's a  bedroom on the ground floor, with an iron bed.  Thankfully, the bed is not occupied.  I suspect there are more bedrooms upstairs, though.

     It's really neat, but also kind of creepy.  I poked around for a bit, even though I didn't get very far.  There's lots of stuff still in that house and I wonder why.  I'm definitely going back there.  It's my house, right? 

Your good friend,

Austin