His Name was Logan

My Cocker Spaniel… a permanent fixture in my home for 15 years… died last night. It wasn’t unexpected for me, but my wife (who has been recovering from an extended illness) didn’t know he was on his way out until last night. Thankfully she got a chance to say goodbye. Hopefully she’ll understand and not hate me for keeping it a secret. I don’t think dogs are capable of hate, but if they are, I hope Logan understood that there was nothing I could do for him. He was increasingly erratic and annoying in his later years, but he was our friend.

That’s about all I can say right now, other than that this has turned out to be a pretty shitty week.

What’s this popup? Oh hell… OH HELL!

Since Saturday night I’ve been involved in an epic battle against the trojan that installed itself on my machine. Well… it didn’t install ITSELF, I was a bit too quick while surfing the web; my hands were faster than my brain and I clicked on the WRONG DAMN THING…

…next thing I know, my machine is literally going insane right before my eyes. My anti-malware app gives a brief warning and then promptly shits itself. To Death. Certain security websites are unreachable. I get repeated authentic-seeming windows popups telling me that I have been infected with every species of malware known to man. Some random new “anti-malware” program attempts to install itself every five minutes. Every few seconds, the (authentic-seeming) Windows Security Center screen opens in an attempt to lure me into buying more security software. The machine locks up every time I try to boot into safe mode.

And, while I’m busy googling and virus scanning… my computer shuts down. No, it didn’t crash… it SHUT DOWN.

So.

Yeah.

The rest of the weekend and the last two days were interesting. I got my computer to at least ACT as if it were under my control, and it passes scans from the handful of malware-scanners I’ve thrown at it since. Of course, I can’t be 100% sure it’s clean until I try a few more things, and even then I can only be about 90% sure, so I may end up re-installing the OS.

Needless to say, not a lot of writing got done over the past few days. Not a lot of writing will get done in the NEXT few days, and the weekend may be devoted to port scanning and other attempts to break into my own machine just to see if there are any holes still open.

Fortunately, no data was lost YET. I’ll get back to writing when I can trust the machine that I write on.

Back from Vacation

The wife and I are back from 7 days in Hawaii. I’m not a beach person, but she had a good time so that means I had a good time, too. Right now we’re both dealing with jetlag… and I’m flying out to Maine bright and early tomorrow morning. And I DO mean early! I’ll be there for two solid weeks; won’t even be coming home on the weekend like I normally do.

Obviously there was no new content today. Barring some sort of emergency, there will be a new page of “The Forgotten” on Wednesday. There *might* be one on Friday; that depends on how work and jetlag go over the next couple of days.

Thanks for your patience.

Next Few Weeks

There hasn’t been much in the way of updates recently due to issues at work. Unfortunately, this situation is likely to continue through the end of August. There will *probably* be an update this Wednesday, and that’s it for this week. The week following that is my company’s convention, which will have me dedicating my every waking hour to not stabbing people entertaining clients. Whether there will be updates during that week or not depends on how much (if any) writing I can get done between now and then. Things should return to normal after that.

The Forgotten: Page 30

So I was a bit off when I said the story was halfway done. You should have known by now never to believe me when I estimate story lengths! ;) But this time for sure, we’re (probably) not going to see another 30 pages of this one. Maybe.

Anyway, here’s Page 30 of “The Forgotten”.

The Internet has Discovered Mother’s Day.

For the past three days, my old science-fiction story Mother’s Day has enjoyed a huge spike in traffic, all of which is from stumbleupon. I guess somebody “discovered” the story and a lot other people seem to like it. I don’t know why I’m posting about it here, but unexpected traffic spikes are always fun to watch.

Coincidentally, while stumbling random sites just yesterday, the service brought me to the “Mother’s Day” page, making it the first time I’ve stumbled upon one of my own pages. I gave it a thumb’s-up. ;)

Too Much of a Good Thing

The wife is off visiting her mother, so I’ve had the house completely to myself for most of the day.

It just so happens that I’ve recently come into possession of a large number of H.P. Lovecraft stories in audio format. Some are dramatizations; others are standard audiobooks. So I loaded up iTunes and spend nearly the ENTIRE day enjoying some really good stories.

…just recently, I finally took the headphones off. It’s dark outside. The house is empty and totally silent except for the whirring of my computer. No TV. No radio. No background noise of any kind. Even the neighbor’s annoying dogs are suspiciously quiet. Before I realized what I was doing, I had spent a good 15 minutes wandering the first floor of the house, peeking out of random windows while trying to mentally account for every single gun, bullet, and knife that I own.

…man… THOSE are some good stories!

For Future Reference:

When you sprain your ankle and they put one of those fiberglass splints on it, they tell you not to get it wet.

Well, “Don’t Get It Wet” actually means:

Don’t get it wet or it will bond to your flesh and become a permanent part of your body requiring power tools to remove.

Knowing is half the battle.

…no, I did not sprain my ankle. My wife is now a cyborg. Fear her. I sure do.

NonFiction Horror

Okay, not exactly ‘horror’, but pretty surreal nonetheless.
Last night I was at a client’s office in Montgomery after hours along with a co-worker. It was dark, and a nasty story was brewing outside, and we started hearing some alarms. They’re these little clock-radio sounding things scattered throughout the building, and they’re going off.

I ignore them, of course.

A little bit later, a member of the cleaning crew wanders in and asks us if we know our way to the basement.

No. Why?

Those are the tornado warning alarms.

A few seconds later, we notice a new sound: air-raid sirens. Yes- Air. Raid. Sirens.

Co Worker: Ummm…
Dark Icon: uhhhh….

Those bad boys kept going for about fifteen minutes before they stopped. Then we left. They started up again twice before the end of the night.

ONE of them happened to be RIGHT outside my hotel room window, which was very pleasant.

Never did see a tornado, though.

Kinda obvious, really

I’m sorry.
I’m really sorry.
But when I saw the following photo and headline on CNN.com just now, I immediately knew why the supposed ‘crime’ was committed:

BOOM! Headshot! It’s the only way to take ‘em down.
Of course, if all you’ve got is a machete…

(I really AM sorry, but it honestly WAS the first thing I thought of!)