John Madden was one of those people who you thought would be a part of the football landscape forever. What was football like before Madden? Did it even exist? What will it be like now that he's gone?
He wasn't just an announcer. He was also a huge fan of the game. He never had to fake his interest the way some younger sports journos do. For them, it's just a job. For Madden, football was his life.
R.I.P., sir. You're already missed.
I had my fourth consecutive day of headaches today. That usually doesn't happen. I'm feeling good right now, though, so hopefully tomorrow will be a good day.
I haven't watched any of my Christmas movies yet. I need to do that soon. Only a week left. It's not Christmas until Hans falls off the Nakatomi building.
The supply chain issues are bewildering to me. Not the fact that they're happening--I predicted that as soon as the first lockdowns were announced--but rather the timing of them. I thought this stuff would have manifested much sooner.
I've learned that different kinds of wood react differently to my efforts to plane them. Pine works well. Whitewood, not so much. If I try planing whitewood, then I inevitably end up with gouges wherever knots appear. The wood near the knot simply prefers to break away rather than be cut. I suppose this is why furniture and stuff is usually made from trees like walnut and cherry.
It's been just over thirty years since the historic rock concert in Moscow just a month after the August Coup. And that was just a few months after the Gulf War concluded. It's kind of crazy thinking back to that time. I'd go back in a heartbeat, though. Technological advances notwithstanding, everything was better back then.
This will probably be my last blog post before Christmas, so Merry Christmas, everyone! :)
...and I'll be glad when it's over. Can I get 2019 back? Pretty please?
The good news is that I've stayed ahead of my seasonal chores to a lot better degree than usual. Christmas shopping, leaf removal, and so on. I'm pleased with my accomplishments in that regard.
The bad news is that I haven't written much at all. I really need to give myself a good kick in the pants about this.
The other good news is that some of my health issues have resolved over the last few months.
The other bad news is that I've fallen out of the exercise habit yet again.
The other other good news is that I don't think global hostilities will break out until after the February Olympics, so we've got a couple of months of peace, or so I'm betting.
The other other bad news is that I fully expect a major war to break out some time next year, probably in late summer, but possibly earlier.
So there we are.
In any event, I hope you all are doing well and living satisfying lives, and I hope you have a great Christmas/Hanukkah/whatever season. Make sure to get together with family and/or friends at some point, because that's the sort of thing that can keep you sane in a world that is doing its best to drive you batty.
And read a book at some point. Preferably one of mine. ;)
Got the last of my Christmas gifts wrapped. This is crazy. I've never finished this particular chore this early in the season. It's not even Thanksgiving yet.
Glad to have it out of the way, though.
I've seen Dune, and it was good. I thought it was a very faithful adaptation of the book.
I have not seen any of the Wheel of Time series, nor do I have any plans to watch it. From what I've read on the internet, it takes way too many liberties with the source material including altering the basic plot of the entire series. *smh*
One of these things will go down in history as a fine piece of art. The other, not so much.
The lesson, as always, is to stay faithful to the book. If a book is adapted for a movie, it's because the book is popular in a big way. It's the height of hubris for some movie-producer guy to think that he can do better than the author at telling that author's story, especially when the book has already proven its worth in the marketplace by selling millions of copies.
This sort of thing should be the easiest slam-dunk in the history of money-making. A popular book already has a built-in fan base. Just give those preexisting fans what they want and rake in the cash. It's as simple as that. If you do right by the book fans, then they'll shout your movie's praises from the rooftops, and word of mouth (or internet) will work its magic, and you'll have a box office smash.
I've wrapped the first Christmas gift of the season. It's insanely early to be doing this, but with half the nation's imports currently languishing on container ships with no off-loading in sight, I felt the need to get this stuff done as quickly as possible.
I suspect many people will wait until the last minute to do their Christmas shopping. It's an easy thing to procrastinate. And I suspect many of those folks will be unable to purchase what they want. Or if they can, then the delivery will be well after December 25th.
I further suspect that there will be more fights at stores than usual.
It promises to be an exciting and interesting holiday season. :/
Congratulations to the Atlanta Braves, 2021 World Series Champions.
Their last World Series title came in 1995. In each instance, the Braves won the series four games to two and pitched a shutout in the sixth game.
Way to go, fellas. :D
I'm usually pretty good about safety when it comes to using tools. I learned how to safely use a knife when I was a boy, and I rarely cut myself.
Yesterday, though, I stabbed my index finger with an X-Acto knife. It's not bad, but it's a good reminder that it only takes a moment of carelessness to draw blood. Or worse.
Be careful with the sharp stuff, folks.
I have seen Villeneuve's Dune, and it was very good. Recommended.
That's the short version. Now for the longer one...
***Warning: Spoilers!***
The first thing readers want to know is whether the movie is a faithful adaptation of the book. Well, it is. It's one of the most faithful book adaptations I've seen. There are no weirding modules like in the Lynch film. The movie didn't add anything that made me roll my eyes.
The movie did subtract some things, though. The dinner scene was omitted, and that's unfortunate, because that gives us some background about the political situation on Arrakis and the various factions involved. In fact, it seems like the Harkonnen attack occurs practically the day after the Atreides get there. There's no "settling in" period for the newcomers, nor do we get to see much of the Fremen in a peaceful environment.
In the book, each chapter has an epigraph written by Princess Irulan. These don't make it into the film. I doubt putting these up on screen would have added more than five minutes to the running time, but I guess that's too much to spare. I would have liked to have seen them, though.
No baliset playing from Gurney Halleck. :( And Brolin even talked about it a year ago!
Maybe it got cut. Who knows...
Now let's talk dialog. Or, rather, the whispering and mumbling and gasping and muttering that passes for dialog in modern movies.
I know Hollywood thinks this sort of thing adds emotion and depth and whatnot to the lines, but there's also something to be said for being able to actually understand the words coming from the characters' mouths. I want clear enunciation, dadgummit! If I can't understand the dialog, then what's the point? Stellan Skarsgard put on a voice so gravelly and guttural that it might as well have been a cement mixer. Rebecca Ferguson was gasping and whispering everything.
A thick accent can be a problem, too. I had a hard time with Javier Bardem's accent. And Chang Chen's.
Jason Momoa and Oscar Isaac spoke their lines well. I understood them without struggle. The Mentats did well, too, but they were barely on screen for any length of time.
I blame the director for all this, by the way, not the actors. It's the director's job to tell the actors how to speak their lines.
Comparing the actors, I'll go ahead and say this: Oscar Isaac had the best performance in the movie. Totally believable as both the authoritative Duke and as a loving family man.
On the subject of Momoa, I'm not really a fan. The first time I saw him was in North Shore, and I can't get the image of the "surfer dude" out of my head. Sort of ruins it for everything else I've seen him in. I think shaving his head would go a long way to counter that image, but if he was ever going to do that, it would have happened by now. He did shave his beard after arriving on Arrakis, though. (He's bearded on Caladan.) I imagine a clean-shaven face gets a better seal with the mouthpiece of a stillsuit, and I'd like to believe Duncan Idaho came to the same conclusion.
As for Jessica...
*smh*
Book Jessica is a trained Bene Gesserit. She has a high level of mastery over her facial expressions and body language. That's what they teach in Bene Gesserit school. No matter what happens, they're supposed to look like they're in control of themselves.
Movie Jessica was an emotional wreck. Complete opposite of Book Jessica. She spent half the movie looking like she was on the verge of a panic attack. I don't know whose idea it was to play it like that, but it was a terrible disservice to the character.
Timothy Chalamet did pretty well, I thought. He whispered/muttered too many lines for me to say his performance was great, but it was good enough. He didn't look totally clumsy in the fight scenes, and that's always a plus.
We only hear the Fear Litany twice, and it's from Jessica both times, and she's gasping it out in a way that makes it difficult to discern. I was disappointed about that. I wanted to hear Paul recite it, especially during the gom jabbar scene. This was one instance where an internal monologue voiceover would have been both warranted and potentially really cool.
Now let's talk effects...
The ornithopters were absolutely badass. My favorite scenes in the movie were the ones involving ornithopters. They looked like a dragonfly mated with an Apache helicopter. The effects guys totally nailed it here.
Sweeping vistas and all-around impressive visuals. It's an epic movie, and it looks it.
As for the sandworms, we really don't see them that much. I expect we'll see more of them in part 2, though, if that movie gets filmed and sticks to the book as well as this one does.
On the subject of costumes, it seemed like everyone wore either black, white, or gray. :/ I would have liked to have seen a little more color. They have dyes on Arrakis, right?
There were no internal monologues like in the Lynch film and the book. They're not missed, either (except for the Fear Litany already mentioned). Everything is communicated via dialog, visions, hand signals, etc., and none of it seemed like clunky exposition to me. This is one of the challenges of making a Dune movie, and Villeneuve met that challenge very well.
The movie ended right after the fight with Jamis, but I think I would have saved that for the second part. I would have ended this movie with Paul and Jessica alone in the desert and about to set out to find the Fremen. I then would have filled that extra time with the dinner scene from the book and the epigraphs.
The music was good. Not great, but good. I enjoyed it. It was mystical and sort of Arabesque, so it totally fit the setting. My main criticism of it is that it was kind of monotonous. Not as much variation as I would have liked. And that lack of variation often resulted in a mood that didn't quite fit the scene as much as I would have liked. For example, when the Atreides first set foot on Arrakis, we get this bagpipe type stuff:
This music creates a vibe of mystery and tension, but it's not triumphant. It almost sounds like it could be a funeral march. I think the mood here should have been triumphant. This is the high point for the Atreides family, after all. They're together, they've got their army chanting their House name, they've got the locals praising Paul as the potential messiah... everything feels victorious. After this, it's all downhill. Let the audience feel that triumph of the moment so that the later catastrophes will feel more catastrophic by contrast.
For an example of what I'm talking about, consider this scene from Jurassic Park. Pay close attention to the changes in the music throughout the scene.
Hans Zimmer is a fine composer, but John Williams is a master of the craft. (For more on the music of Jurassic Park, check this out.)
The film ends with the Fremen leading Paul and Jessica to Sietch Tabr. They're toting Jamis's enshrouded corpse. We then get our first glimpse of a Fremen riding a sandworm in the distance, Chani tells Paul it's just the beginning, and they all walk off into the sunset. The rider was a cool effect, and it made for a nice way to end part one, though like I said, I would have ended it sooner.
Well, that's it. Like I said, Dune is a very good movie, so give it a shot. And keep in mind that it's just part one of two, so don't expect a satisfying conclusion. That comes later (hopefully).
Another year is almost gone. They're flying by too fast. Or too slowly, I guess, depending on my mood.
I need to start buying Christmas gifts for family members. With the global supply shortage, there's no telling what will be in stock a month from now, if anything.
I usually enjoy the Halloween season. There's real value, I think, in acknowledging the existence of evil and monsters and whatnot. It reminds us of the dangers out there. There aren't many serial killers in hockey masks running around, but there are dangerous men and animals out there that will kill you if you're careless. The hockey-mask villains plant that seed in our brains. They keep us on our toes.
The last couple of years, though, have been bad enough so that I don't need Halloween to remind me of anything. The daily news is reminder enough.
I hope a time comes when I can enjoy the season again.
My books will be available on iReader soon. I had never heard of this store when I got the announcement about it from PublishDrive. My guess was that it was an Apple thing, but that doesn't seem to be the case. It seems to be a Chinese mobile reader app that serves Southeast Asia but not China. I don't know how many English-language readers there are in Southeast Asia, but my expectations are that I won't move a single copy of anything.
It also seems to be focused on romance, another strike against me.
The money seems to work on a coins/page subscription basis, not unlike Kindle Vella.
Meh. We'll see what happens.
The big rumor over the weekend was that air traffic controllers and perhaps pilots and other airline workers have walked off the job as a result of vaccine mandates. I have no idea how true or false this rumor may be, but I did look at a weather map, and the "bad weather" excuse for canceled flights seems awfully flimsy in the face of almost completely clear skies over the lower 48 states. Very little green on that Doppler.
We'll have a big clue when the stock market opens in a few hours. If the traders think the rumor is legit--if they think air travel is about to grind to a halt--then the market should plummet. We should especially pay attention to airline stocks.
I think this must be the rainiest year I've ever experienced in my life. I simply can't recall it ever raining so much in one calendar year.
It's done nothing but rain all week, and it's supposed to keep raining through Friday. Crazy.
Rainy days make me drowsy and lethargic, so I've basically been a zombie for a good chunk of the year.
But it's still better than drought.
...between China and Taiwan, then I don't expect it to happen until at least March and probably April. I know the Chinese have been beating the war drums lately, but I doubt they'd do anything to screw up their Winter Olympics in February. The weather becomes favorable for an amphibious assault in April, so that's when I think it'll happen, assuming it happens at all.
My advice? Spend the next few months stocking up on whatever goods you need to get you through some tough times. A war in the Pacific won't remain localized to the Taiwan Strait. It'll spill over into the rest of the region, and then the whole world's in for some hurt.
In the meantime, enjoy Christmas with your loved ones, and count your blessings.
The CW network is going to reboot Babylon 5. Gizmodo article about it:
https://gizmodo.com/j-michael-straczynski-explains-why-babylon-5-had-to-be-1847759308
Normally, I'd be aghast at this. I generally hate reboots of things I like. And I like B5 a lot.
However, they've got JMS on board as both producer AND writer, and it sounds like they're going to give him a lot of latitude to basically manage his baby the way he wants. I'm optimistic.
If you haven't seen the original, I'd encourage you to check it out. The first season is a bit rough in spots, but the show finds its groove somewhere in season two, and season three really hits a home run.
Here's a taste:
About a week or so ago, I bought a harmonica from Amazon. It's this one. Only thirteen bucks.
I've already learned O Susannah. I can't play it flawlessly every time, but I'm getting there.
I saw my niece a few days ago, and she wanted to try it out. She seemed to enjoy it.
If you've never played a musical instrument in your life, then this is a cheap and easy way to get started. All it takes is practice.
Making music is fun. Don't let that experience pass you by.
Well, I knew those sunny, pleasant days couldn't last too long. It rained again today, all day, and it's going to rain Thursday and Friday, too.
I swear this is the rainiest summer I've experienced in my entire life.
Starting Saturday, though, it's supposed to be very pleasant. Sunny and temps in the upper 70s. Which will be perfect for sawing and chiseling outside. (I'm building a work bench.)
In unrelated news, comedian Norm MacDonald passed away recently. He was one of the last--maybe the last--professional comedian who wasn't afraid to offend anyone and everyone. I personally found his humor real hit-or-miss, but when it hit, it really hit. One of his Conan appearances back in the day had me in stitches.
He was a heavy smoker who died of cancer, so I assume the cigs are what killed him.
Don't smoke, folks. Better not to ever start, but if you're already in the habit, then please try to quit. My paternal grandmother died of emphysema due to smoking in her youth, and I watched her gasp away her final years while hooked up to an oxygen tank. It's not a pleasant sight.
Anyway, R.I.P., Norm.
The first (of two, hopefully) new Dune movie hit Venice a few days ago, and some early reviews are in:
https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a37490215/dune-remake-reviews-divided/
I must admit that I'm encouraged by what I've read there. Of course, it'll all be for nought if there's no second movie to complete the story, so any praise for this one must be tempered until filming starts for the second one. Still, though, it sounds like it might not suck (as Hollywood's book adaptations too often do).
I'm optimistic. :D
Hurricane Ida is now in Tennessee. Here in north Georgia, it's been raining on and off all day, but no major wind or flooding in my area. For me, this storm has been no different than any ordinary rainstorm.
On a related note, I found an article that claimed this summer has been Atlanta's ninth-rainiest in the last hundred years. I don't live in the city, but I'm pretty sure my area has had at least as much as Atlanta if not more.
Twenty-one years ago, we were just emerging from a long and severe drought. Very little rain in the 1998-2000 time period. It seemed like everything was going to turn to dust. Even massive oak trees with deep roots were losing their leaves early and looking stressed. Then the drought broke in August 2000, and it rained almost non-stop for two weeks. We haven't had a drought like that since.
I swore back then that I would never complain about the rain again. I've mostly kept that promise. Most of my talk about weather has just been of the observational sort, not the complaint sort.
Because I know that a period of severe drought will come again. Maybe next year, maybe in twenty years, maybe not for another century... but it will come. It's the nature of things. And I'd much rather have too much rain than too little.
Watch out, Louisiana. Hurricane Ida is now a category 4 hurricane. It's heading right for Baton Rouge according to the latest projections. LSU folks, please get Mike to safety if you haven't done so already. I remember what happened to a lot of animals during Hurricane Katrina, and I'd hate for something similar to happen to the tiger.
And to all you folks in the path of the storm, take care! Take whatever precautions you can in the little time that's left. Here's a site that will give you some ideas.
Best wishes to everyone out there.
I had a covered call option exercised on Thursday. The option expires Friday, so it was exercised a day before I expected it. I've never had this happen before. Options are usually exercised when they expire, not a day before.
It's no big deal. Just weird. I went ahead and bought the stock back and sold another option against it.
Another strange thing is the hummingbird action around here. At least a dozen of them--and maybe closer to two dozen; they're hard to count--have staked a claim in the backyard. They're fighting over the two feeders, and it's absolutely bonkers. They've always been territorial over food sources, but these past couple of weeks have been different. It's like they're on crystal meth or something. I've never seen them this aggressive before.
To make it even more weird, almost all are female. I think there's only one male in the bunch. Where are the other males? Have they already left for Mexico? It's awfully early for migration, but that's the only thing I can figure.
When it rained a day or two ago, one of the hummers just sat on the feeder perch and bathed in the rain. She raised her head to the sky and fluttered her wings. It was pretty neat. It was like the hummingbird version of this:
It must be time for the hummingbirds to start putting on fat for the long flight across the Gulf of Mexico, because they've been particularly active lately. The aerial jousts have been crazy. There's a whole swarm of the critters flying around and chasing each other nonstop.
There's also a dragonfly that has a patrol route in the same area, and he occasionally gets a close buzz from a hummer. He flinches and dodges for a moment before resuming his patrol pattern. I can almost see him shaking his little dragonfly fist at the hummers. "You're screwing up my hunt! Why can't you lunatics just eat seeds like normal birds? Get off my lawn!"
Watching nature is fun. :D
Well, this is something you don't see every day.
German pensioner given hefty fine for WW2 tank in house
Here's the best part:
Local media reported that the man had been seen one winter using the tank as a snow plough.
Heh. :D
I must admit to some envy here. I'd like to have a tank. I mean, who wouldn't want a tank? Tanks are awesome. I'd drive that sucker everywhere. I'd be like FPS Russia going through the White Castle drive-thru.
The only question would be how I should paint it. Black with flames? Red, white, and blue? Something else? Hmm...
According to the defendant's lawyer, a US museum is interested in purchasing the Panther tank.
Yeah, no kidding. I'm sure plenty of American civilians would like to purchase it, too. The demand from wealthy collectors is greater than the supply of Panzers.
I hope this elderly German fellow can get that fine reduced. The courts should be a little lenient towards an 84-year-old guy. I mean, he's just a harmless collector. It's not like he's going to invade Poland or something.
It seems like it's rained every day for the past five weeks or so. It's crazy. The insect population has exploded, particularly the mosquitoes. It's like a swamp.
Finally, though, there's a string of sunny days ahead. Hot days, too. If that forecast pans out, then the plant life is going to absolutely go insane. The whole Deep South will look like a jungle practically overnight.
But it's still better than drought. I remember the drought of 1998-2000. Back then, it seemed like everything was going to turn to dust. Even full-grown oak trees were stressed. They started dropping their leaves in July of 2000; that's how bad it was. In August, though, the drought broke, and we had two weeks of non-stop rain, and then the yard was full of mushrooms. We haven't a drought like that since, thankfully.
Such a time will eventually come again, of course. Weather and climate are cyclical things. Right now, though, it's just afternoon showers every single day, and I'm looking forward to a few sunny days.
My favorite part of the Olympic Games is the Opening Ceremony. I'm a sucker for that stuff, and I'm excited to see what the Japanese do. The people have a rich and beautiful culture, and I really hope they put that on full display.
The ceremony can be watched live starting at 6:55 EST on Friday morning, or you can catch it on the replay later that night.
I just got done browsing through the "Buy it again" page in my Amazon account. I was curious to see what current prices were like for products I'd purchased in the past.
To my surprise, they were pretty much unchanged. I expected otherwise. After all, the lockdowns created disruptions in the supply chain to the extent that we're now seeing shortages of all sorts of things. Prices outside of Amazon have certainly risen, so why hasn't Amazon followed suit?
I don't know the answer to that. But whatever the reason, I'm glad Amazon's prices haven't risen.
It sounds like the Battle of the Somme here at the moment. My neighbors are putting on a fireworks display that is at least the equal of any of the televised displays.
I hope everyone who celebrates this holiday does so in a safe and enjoyable manner. Happy Fourth, y'all!
Well, all those warning signs I pointed out in the previous post haven't amounted to much. The stock market continues to push higher.
Did I mention that I suck at market timing? Yes... yes, I did. And I'll keep saying it, because it's true.
On an unrelated note, Kindle Vella is scheduled to go live in mid-to-late July. So at least three weeks away, I guess.
Things are finally starting to look toppy in the stock market. The Dow Transports has historically been something of a canary in the coal mine for the broader market, and it's been in decline for a few weeks.
The NASDAQ, meanwhile, has gone basically nowhere since February. Also, it looks to have made a triple top recently, a bearish signal. There's serious resistance at about 14,200, and it just can't punch through.
I estimate support to be somewhere in the 13,300-13,500 range. If it drops below that, well, it'll probably be a long way to the bottom.
The S&P has been in a bullish pattern all year. The past four sessions, though, have all been in the red, with the last one closing below the 50-DMA, so this may be the beginning of the end of the uptrend. Then again, it broke the 50-DMA back in March, too, and nothing became of it, so who knows...
Now, I should state for the record that I'm terrible at market timing. I've only successfully timed the market once in my life. So I'm probably wrong here, too, about the market having topped out. There might be weeks, months, or years of a bull market left to go.
But you might want to keep a close eye on your stops just the same.
I have no idea how Kindle Vella is going to play out. Maybe it'll be a huge success. Maybe it'll crash and burn. Maybe something in between.
But I'm intrigued with the idea. I'm toying around with a fantasy story right now. If I can write twenty episodes without writing myself into a corner or otherwise failing, then I'm going to give Vella a go.
I'm building a cart for my table saw. I built one for the miter saw in April, so this is the second such piece of furniture I've built this year.
One of the reasons to do this--besides the obvious fact that my saw needs a permanent home--is to practice my wood joinery. I decided to attempt this one with all drawbored mortise-and-tenon joints and no wood glue.
I've... somewhat succeeded.
I blew out two mortises, so I had to glue the splinters back in place, and it looks like that's actually going to work. I also buggered up a drawbore dowel and was unable to extract it, so it looks gross and may or not be sturdy. Those were my three major failures.
The rest of the joints, though, actually worked as planned. I ended up 17-for-20 on that, and that's a passing grade, so I'm begrudgingly pleased.
The next step is to paint. After that, I'll attach the table top with L-brackets. Last will be the retractable casters.
Then it'll be on to the next project.
I mentioned on a forum post that, when considering possible futuristic technologies, I always consider how it might be misused. After all, evil men have always existed, and there's no reason to think they won't continue to exist so long as humans remain human. And those evil men are attracted to power like moths to a flame, so any sufficiently powerful technology will be coveted by them.
This is something that many science fiction writers either don't understand or willfully choose not to understand. They write stories about highly advanced societies bereft of crime and vice and corruption. It's as if the technology itself provides atonement for us, making us all angels and saints in the process. And it's ridiculous. As Solzhenitsyn wrote, the line between good end evil runs down the center of every human heart. Machines and other technological advances are morally neutral. They are force multipliers, catalysts for human action and the will, nothing more.
I actually envy those with such a Pollyanna-like outlook. I wish I had their optimism. I'd be a much happier person, I suspect.
In summary, I try to consider the negative ramifications of new tech because I consider the alternative--the techno-utopian future--to be unrealistic and completely contrary to everything we know about humans. If a writer is going to open Pandora's Box, then I would hope he'd show all hell breaking loose.
This week is forecast to be sunny and warm. Perhaps summer is finally on the way.
Baby bluebirds left the birdhouse on Sunday afternoon. I actually watched a few of them leave. They stick their heads out for a while, working up their nerve, I suppose, before finally taking flight. They're cute little things, and I wish them well in the big bad world.
Trying to manage my diet, my sleep, and my headaches is a constant struggle. I'm not losing ground, though. In fact, I think I'm slowly improving. If you're the praying sort, then I hope you'll pray for me. Health stuff is scary and debilitating, and I'd rather be doing productive things.
I've acquired a table saw. I've made a few practice cuts. The good news is that I didn't saw off any of my fingers. The bad news is that I'm still sort of terrified of it. But that's actually good news, too, because that fear will go a long way towards keeping me safe. I don't want to get too comfortable with the saw, because that's how carelessness happens, and carelessness is how catastrophes happen.
I've been mulling over the idea of writing something for Kindle Vella. I still haven't decided. But the idea of a serial is intriguing.
That's all for now. Take care, folks, and thanks for supporting my work.
Lots of rough weather has blown through the southern states lately. Here, it's rained for a couple of days straight. I last saw the sun on the appropriately named Sunday. If you're in the path of this stuff, I hope you're taking the necessary precautions and whatnot.
I haven't been feeling so hot, too. I don't think I'm sick, but I've been fatigued. Some of it's probably the weather, but I suspect some of it is my body still not having recovered from my January illness. I may never get back to the self I was a year ago.
Thanks to all you folks who downloaded Clouds of Venus as part of my recent My Book Cave promotion. I hope y'all enjoy it.
Take care, folks, and be kind to one another.
I finally gave in. I've upgraded my StoryOrigin account to the paid level.
I doubt I'll make that money back, but I'm giving myself the opportunity to see what happens.
In other news, I finished the cart I was building for my miter saw. Retractable casters rock. :D
I have no doubt that our forces will make quick work of the hapless Martians. We have already achieved air superiority. Our stealth assault helicopters have annihilated the enemy in the main theater of operations.
Now that we control the skies, our main battle tanks will subdue any remaining resistance.
We do not yet have accurate numbers for casualties and prisoners, but I have been assured that we have completely dominated the enemy so far. We have reduced his cities to rubble, as can be plainly seen in the photos above.
The Martians struck us a grievous blow in the 1930s in New Jersey, but we have finally paid them back. And we won't stop until their entire planet is ours.
Long live Terra!
I'm currently building a cart for my miter saw. I'm just using cheap 2x4s.
I say"cheap," but these things are nearly twice what they cost a year ago. The lockdowns affected sawmills, too, and that created a lumber shortage.
I browsed a sawmill forum (never been there before, but Google showed me the way) and saw where one guy said it would be eighteen months before lumber prices get back to normal.
Eighteen months. :/
In the meantime, housing prices will climb accordingly. Actually, they already have. Almost everything has risen in price already.
We're going to be feeling the economic pinch of the lockdowns for years to come. Tighten your belts, folks.
Once upon a time, there was a made-for-television Star Wars movie called The Ewok Adventure. I actually watched this when it aired. I haven't seen it since.
But I always remembered that giant spider. That thing scared me. Yeah, the effects are primitive by today's standards, but I was just a kid in the 1980s, so... *shrug*
I'm not sure why I thought of this movie just now. But it serves up some useful lessons... lessons like, "don't stick your hand in places you can't see."
Thanks for everyone who bought my books that were in the recent Kobo promotion. I hope you enjoy them.
If you live in the south like me, then keep an eye on the weather, because it's been violent.
I still don't have the energy I had in early January. My illness from that month knocked me down a bit, and I'm still trying to climb out. I'm hoping the warm weather of spring will help energize me.
Bought some lumber to make a cart for my miter saw. Lumber prices are insane, and the supply is small and of dubious quality. I hope the sawmills are running 24/7 to make up for lost time from last year's lockdowns.
I'm still keeping an eye on the Gamestop saga. I've heard that the April 16 option expiration is going to be an important milestone. I don't know how credible that rumor is, but I'm watching the stock price just the same. That whole phenomenon is fascinating.
Life is tough for a lot of people. Take care of yourselves, folks, and be kind to others.
My Caverns of Mercury and Cities of Mars are 40% off at Kobo. This sale ends March 29th. Get 'em while the gettin's good! :D
It's tornado season now, and trouble is brewing all over the Doppler radar.
Y'all batten down the hatches out there and stay safe!
Just wanted to publicly thank Jay Toney and Carolynn Gockel for organizing their group promotions. Indie publishing has a number of unsung heroes, and they're a couple of them.
Cheers, you two! :)
Valuations are high, and long-term charts are looking parabolic; these suggest things are too hot. Stimulus bill should already be baked into the prices, so I'm not sure what else is left to drive stocks higher. I'm not very good at timing the market, so take my words with a grain of salt, but I'm getting a bad feeling here.
Wednesday's action saw the S&P close right at the 50-DMA, a support line. It's already tested that line a couple of times in recent weeks. If it falls through that line tomorrow, then look out below.
Even if it bounces up, though, the last several sessions are still in a converging triangle, which means a breakout in one direction or the other is coming, likely within the next two weeks. My bet is on a breakout lower. Next support after that is the 200-DMA (currently at 3462).
In unrelated news (or is it a portent?) I watched a rocket blow up today.
The launch was still a success, though, and I love-love-love these SpaceX events. Daddy Musk is gonna take us all to Mars. :D
UPDATE: Market sell-off today. I didn't know some Fed guy was going to have an announcement, but that's what happened, and that sparked the sell-off. Assuming there's not a miraculous rally in the next twenty minutes, support at the 50-DMA is broken. I don't know where the Fibonacci support lines are, but due to the parabolic nature of the chart, I'm guessing they're way down below the 200-DMA, so that's the next support line.
I'm not convinced this is a new bear market, though. It could just be a two-week correction. We could easily bounce right off the 200-DMA and head higher as the economy opens back up from the lockdowns. But whatever happens, the 200-DMA is now the level to watch. It'll continue to creep up a little, so it'll probably be at around 3500 by the time it meets the candlesticks.
UPDATE 2: Stocks rebounded on Friday. A small rebound wouldn't have surprised me, but I would have expected the 50-DMA to act as resistance, and it didn't. Friday's close was higher than Wednesday's close.
So I'm not sure what to think. I'm still wary of this market, but that doesn't mean it can't go higher in the near term. We'll just have to see, I guess.
I still can't really believe it, but my laptop successfully installed the updates from Dell today. It hasn't done this for about a year and a half.
Apparently, the automatic update program had a bug in it that prevented updates from working. There's a way to do them manually, but I'd kept putting that off.
Now, though, Dell seems to have fixed the issue. So that's good, especially since it means I don't have to try to do this stuff manually and risk screwing something up.
In other news, I'm back to working on Wheel of Fire #5. This book has taken forever, and I hate that, but there have been... ahem... extenuating circumstances. Barring any further health issues, though, or other personal/family distractions, I hope to make a lot of progress on it in the coming weeks.
Tomorrow's high is supposed to be 74. In February! Crazy.
And Sunday is projected to get up to 78. :o
The downside to this is that the plants might start blooming too early. Then, if there's a freeze later, it'll kill off the flowers.
The upside is that it's great weather for being outside, and that's what I intend to do.
I really hate modern gadgetry. The smart phone was the beginning of the end, I think. Now everything demands to be interconnected, but nothing works the way it's supposed to.
Why do kitchen appliances need Wifi? All it does is add an extra layer of things that can go wrong.
Who thought touchscreens were a good idea? They suck! A mechanical button is far more precise. There's nothing like a nice positive click to let you know that you have, in fact, pressed the button and sent the signal you wanted to send.
Yes, I'm in a foul mood right now. Thanks, modern tech.
His book was promoted without his knowledge, so he decided to pay the favor forward. He has now promoted my book on his Facebook page without asking anything in return.
Thanks, R.C.! :D
Y'all be sure to check out his books. Here's his site:
Check out Jaxon Reed's books, too. He's the one who promoted R.C.'s book.
I wrote a few hundred words last night.
Also, I walked some today. First time in a month I've walked. I took it slow, but I still felt it in my hamstrings. I'm looking forward to getting back into this habit.
They're baby steps towards getting back to normal after my illness, but they're positive steps nonetheless.
I wrote about 2200 words last night. Best writing night I've had in a while.
I'm still sick. I'm trying to ease back into my exercise routine, but I'm still weak and tired and coughing. I did some curls yesterday with the exercise band. Not many. :( And I'm still not eating right, but that's fine. I gained weight in 2020, so I could stand to lose a few pounds.
At least I got a new story off to a decent start. A fantasy story, not SF. :o Yeah, I'm a wild man.
Special thanks to Dan C. Rinnert for inspiration.
Okay... I'm still sick. I'm weak and tired and coughing a lot. It's been three weeks now.
The good news is that I haven't gotten any worse. I might even be slightly better than I was a few days ago.
I'm taking cough syrup and sucking on zinc lozenges. I'm eating a fair bit considering my condition. Illness usually kills my appetite completely, and this one did in the beginning, but I'm eating now.
My chores have been neglected. My writing has been neglected. My marketing has been neglected. This year has sucked so far.
Crossing my fingers for February.
It's nice to be able to look at a computer screen for more than a couple of minutes again. I think I'm past the peak of my illness. I still have a lingering cough, and I'm still tired and weak, but I have a little more pep now than I've had in recent days.
Last year started off with my toe abscess and snowballed from there to become the horror show of 2020. I really hope this year doesn't follow a similar pattern.
Old-timey investors and traders will be familiar with the story of the Hunt Brothers. As the official story goes, they tried to corner the silver market, made some powerful enemies, and ultimately got squashed by the finance-government machine. They were dragged in front of Congress and officially scolded so that the people would know without a doubt who the real villains were.
Of course, the official story and the true story are two different things. Plenty of people think the Hunt Brothers were the victims of the whole event, not the villains. But even if that's true, it doesn't matter, because that "truth" didn't help the Hunt Brothers. They still went down. In the end, all that matters is who gets bailed out and who gets squashed.
We're now seeing a similar setup with GameStop. There's a short squeeze on, and someone will end up paying the piper on Friday when the options expire. The longs are confident that they'll come out on top, but I'm not so sure. History shows that being on the right side of a trade isn't enough. You also must be on the right side of those who make the rules, because the powers that be will change those rules on a whim if that's what it takes for them to protect themselves from the unwashed masses.
I think there's going to be a lot of bitterly disappointed investors next week, and I don't think they'll all be on the short side.
But perhaps I'm wrong and this time will be different.
It's been a long week. It started on Friday. I felt weak and tired and achy all day. In the early evening, I started getting chills, and that's when I knew I had a fever.
Saturday morning, the fever broke. I was surprised it only lasted as long as it did. I was eating bacon at the time that I noticed I had started sweating (signifying the fever breaking), so perhaps that cured me. Bacon is magical stuff.
Since then I've been coughing. It's a dry cough, not a wet one, but it's persistent. I've still been achy and tired and weak.
No, I haven't been tested for the covid, nor do I care to get tested. If I've got it, then I've had it long enough by now so that I know it's not going to kill me. (But I knew that anyway due to my age and general health level.) I'm treating the symptoms with cough syrup, cough drops, and pain killers. I'm not eating much solid food, but I'm trying to force myself to drink plenty of fluids.
The sinus infection I had two years ago was a lot worse than this. So I'm not worried, and you shouldn't be, either.
Anyway, that's my status. I haven't spent much time on the computer. In my sensitive condition, focusing on the screen makes my eyes water. Strangely, my Kindle Fire doesn't have that effect on me, so I've been reading a lot, working through some of my to-be-read list.
Hope y'all are doing better than me. Take care.
Been sick for the past few days. I came down with a fever on Friday, but it broke the next morning. Shortest fever I've ever had, I think. Even without the fever, though, I still feel weak and tired and have a slight cough.
Hope y'all are doing better. :(
Just wanted to say thanks to all the readers who have joined my mailing recently and downloaded or purchased my books. Y'all are my lifeblood, and I appreciate every one of you.
Take care folks, and thanks again. :)
My short story Mr. Wilson is a free download in a couple of group promotions. Check it out:
Direct link for Starlight: https://storyoriginapp.com/to/phV5EST
Direct link for Mind-Bending Sci-Fi: https://storyoriginapp.com/to/0vBUdO1
These promotions are a great way to try out new-to-you authors. Give them a click and take a moment to browse around. Some good stuff there.
Thanks for reading!
