Monday, August 25, 2014

All better now

Order has been returned to the universe.


I'm amazed at how much smaller (and thinner!) the Paperwhite is compared to my old Kindle.

...but I'm also amazed at how long it takes to re-do all the organization. Too bad that information isn't stored online... and when there's over 350 books to sort through, it's difficult to remember what folder/category they all originally went in.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Quick change

FYI, I changed the 'comment' settings because I was getting 300+ spam comments every day.

If you're having any problems commenting, please email me and I'll switch them back.

1000th(dot)monkey(at)gmail(dot)com

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

I don't have bad habits...

...I have idiosyncratic character traits.


During this past month, I've gone through the archive of posts and done something I've been planning to do for a while, but had never gotten around to:


Yup, it took a while.

Some stuff is still there, like when I did a series of nerdy posts last summer as kind of a 'this is how/why I write first-drafts the way I do', and I left all the flash fiction and (the long extinct) Six Sentence Sunday stuff since that particular story (Project #2/aka Simon's Oath) will be heavily rewritten when I get around to it.

One of the small reasons this took me so long to do was my arm was so bad there was no way I could hold a pen/pencil, and I wanted to post a fun little image as a consolation prize, like the Dead Monkey Day pic, and a few others I've posted.

As part of my re-hab/physio, I'm now at the stage where I'm 'allowed' to either write (with a pen) or draw for 1/2 hour every day to re-strengthen the muscles and get the blood flowing since my nerves are no longer as restricted.

...and since even I can't read my own handwriting, it makes a lot more sense for me to draw silly cartoons instead of scrawling out pages of unreadably scratchy sentences. They'll probably appear sporadically on Bailiwick in the future, and they won't involve more than 10 minutes of cleaning up/throwing colour on in Photoshop. These are very basic sketches. More for practice at controlling my hand than anything.


As a fun little fact, though it's nearly impossible to read, the text in the image is from a fairy-tale I wrote, which was part of the mythology of Project #1 (the 'near-pemanently-retired' trilogy that was so incredibly dark I found it suffocating to work on).

And yup, my hair is getting pretty long, actually it's nearly touching my shoulders. It was only an inch long at the back when I donated it back in November, and was about nose-level at the front. Since it's past chin level now, I guess it's grown about 5+ inches?

Rest in Peace/Pieces, Kindle

It's an open secret that I love my Kindle, my very old 2nd generation Kindle... that's right, it came out in February, 2009.

This thing has taken a beating. Just to clarify, I don't use it to discipline my dog, or other drivers who refuse to 'stay right except to pass' on the highway... what I mean is, I've burned out 1 Macbook and 2 Macbook Pro laptops since I've had the Kindle.

It was repaired at one point, 'cause the screen went wonky, but this thing has been great. The screen is chipped, the plastic casing is cracked in several places, but it would not die.

Until last night.

Soft & hard resets did nothing, and I eventually did crack open the back and pushed a pen into the 'reset' hole inside. Yeah, technically that voids the warrantee, but I'm pretty sure that warrantee ran out four years ago.

Unfortunately, my Frankensteinian ambitions were for naught.

So, rest in peace, fair Kindle.

I promise to love your replacement as faithfully as I did you.

 Before the hard reset...
...and after. Doesn't look too healthy, does it?

Thursday, August 7, 2014

...after 6 whole years...

... my dog is no longer afraid of water...


Seriously, I know my voice sounds super weird in this video... that is not my normal voice. For some reason, if I make my voice high, or strange (with a lot of range), it's easier to get her to do something she doesn't want to...

...like go in water that's deeper than her ankles...

This is after 2 days of luring her into the water, inch by inch, but pretty good, eh? Eventually I got her out past the boat, so the water would have been about 4-5' deep. The funniest was, a few times, it's like she'd forget to paddle and would suddenly sink until just her face was visible.

I'm hoping (maybe) I'll eventually get her to jump off the dock... but that might take another 6 years of encouragement.