Dog Ear
February 4, 2021
ecades ago, a friend of mine worked at TRW. At the time they had a pretty pompous ad – something like “TRW – what does it stand for?” My friend laughed at this and said “Three Random Words”. But he also noted that, right out of college, it meant “The Real World”. The Real World. No more drinking every night. No more philosophic debates late into the wee hours. No more D&D. No more showing up for class only if you wanted to. The Real World was a small cubicle. Be-in-by times. Crummy coffee. Deadlines you didn’t agree to. Unfair, […]
January 28, 2021
’m a writer. And I’m also a model railroader. Yes, I play with trains. Actually, in my case, model railroading is every bit as story-filled as writing. For example, we are currently finishing up a Dairy Queen restaurant on part of our sectional layout. There was discussion on how to make it stand out, to be more than just a model of a road-side business. So the result was to put a whole bunch of motorcycles out front, parked in a row. And around the corner, before the outside “Men’s” room door, a line of a dozen desperate bikers, all […]
January 21, 2021
’m an avid thrice-a-week cyclist and my primary path out of the city is the Cady Way trail. There is one Ichabod spot, a place where the route punches through a stand of woods on a long curve (southwest of Baldwin Park). At night, it’s downright spooky. But this was bright daylight and I was returning home, four miles short of my thirty mile round trip. Looking up, I saw a curious sight – two people in white with conical hats. Given the turn and my blistering 17mph speed and the long curve, I didn’t have a whole lot of […]
January 14, 2021
’m happily working on a game, Solar Trader 2, which I’ll post in my links as it gets to a more playable state. But why the heck am I talking about that… in a literature post? The original Solar Trader was an Excel game, a massive attempt to bring near-future space ship maneuvering into a game format. It worked okay but never found any following – it had a very steep learning curve that pretty much killed it for most people. It’s been a couple of years and I really like the idea of its Expanse-like setting. During this time, […]
January 7, 2021
esides writing, I love coding games. Always a challenge. As far as versioning (making sure you have a backup copy), I always make sure that before I start coding for the evening, I save a copy with an incrementing number on it. So, we have “game1” “game2” “game 3” and so on. During Christmas weekend I had a lot of free time so I threw myself into my game. Wrote for six hours and managed to get a number of clever and interesting game paths done. Since the game saves on every compile, and it’s all saving to that same […]
December 31, 2020
rankly, it’s been a rotten year. Covid. Politics. Domestic stupidity. Really, these are the times that try mens’ souls (if they even have them – and given the mask-dodgers, I’m not so sure). As far as reading over my first full year or retirement, there were only a handful of books that really shook me (and another one just missed the cut because I just finished it today and it won’t post until next Sunday). As it stood out, I actually read only five books that really hit home (there were some other good ones but not as good as […]
December 17, 2020
t always surprises me what criminals (scammers, embezzlers, politicians) do with their ill-gotten gains. Generally they are arrested and the monies they so desperately stole has gone to “jewelry and lavish vacations”. And even that doesn’t cover it, since the vacation is usually to some place that is a vacation destination amongst beach idlers and discotheque-goers. I mean, really, what the hell? I think this is true of more than just criminals. People who know me know how much I scoff at the upper-middle class (I see your hand up, Denise). Like these ill-considered criminals, these are people who don’t […]
December 3, 2020
like anime – Japanese animated series, for those of you in the dark. It’s weird and strange and oddly informative. Sometimes you can see that slice of life, a part of what it means to be human. Other times, it’s just giant robots. When my niece Kirstin suggested Haikkyu!!, I was a little dubious – it’s a volleyball epic, a story about a short Japanese student who loves volleyball and wants his high school team to be successful. The thing is, he’s short, but he’s light, so he’s got this killer jump and this crazy spike. It’s fun to watch […]