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Well, everyone, I’m at a crossroads. One I’m not happy to face, one that I hoped would never come. Alas, here it is; and I am faced with a horrible choice.
Those of you that know me to any degree know that I bore easily. With each and every blog I’ve had (and there have been as many as four, albeit with identical content), I’ve become quickly and horrifically bored with the theme. I’ve changed it to suit the seasons, the mood I was in, the things I was writing about … whatever excuse I had on hand.
How would you sum up your life if you only had six words to do it?
That’s the theme of the latest meme with which I have been tagged, by Leafless over at Pen of Passion. It’s based loosely on the “world’s shortest story” of Ernest Hemingway fame.
Well, another glimmer of hope today. One on Monday, one today, and more good news from another source when I got back. I’ve been incommunicado all afternoon, but I’m back now. I hope things have been well with you all while I was away.
Well, at least it’s not … fecal in nature. It has nothing to do with sticking a hose into any orifice and flushing like a car radiator. Or doing so in a public facility, either. So, those are all positives, right?
Still … it’s getting a little strange. If I stop and think about it too long, it leads me down Stephen King-esque pathways. I probably could squeeze a story or two out of it if I tried.
It’s just weird, though. It makes me stop and wonder what is going on in someone’s head. My suggestion to the searcher: try WebMD first, and a general search later.
So, I found something else weird in my search terms here. I wish I could tell you this is completely foreign and wrong, that it has no bearing at all, no business being in my search terms, but I can’t do that. I just can’t. Why?
Well … it sorta fits. Sadly.
What is it you ask? Gaze and wonder, oh blogosphere, upon the ultimate description of me:
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I remain the world’s undisputed champion. Oh, there are others that will make that claim, I’m sure, but they probably use effort and actually work at keeping atop their game. Me? I do nothing. Nothing at all. I sit back, and let it all come to me, baby. Every bit of it.
And it just keeps on coming.
Several weeks ago (couple of months now?), I applied for a job as a technical writer. I don’t have any formal technical writing experience, but what I’ve done I enjoyed, so I thought maybe it would make a suitable career option. Not knowing much about it, though, I wasn’t sure what sort of credentials I’d need.
Here’s one I found in my search terms today:
This is an easy one.
First, download FireShot here and install it per the instructions (pretty easy). Then, navigate to the page you want to take a snap shot of, and then have FireShot open it in the Editor. You can do that by right-clicking and choosing “FireShot - Take screen shot and …” from the context menu. Then select “Edit …” from the submenu. Just like that, the picture opens up in the FireShot image editor, and it’s a snap from there.
Well, I’ve gotten some unusual search terms in my search terms section on the dashboard here — all of you blogulars here know that. I like to chronicle them for you, and maybe offer a helping hand, if I can.
Well, the last couple of times something strange has come along in my search terms, I haven’t been able to help, just out of the sheer weirdness of the request. You know, things like “publ1c restr00m en3ma”, and things like that? Well, I got another, albeit much milder, one today. Check this out:
I felt it caress my mind, like the breath of a lover’s whisper on the ear:
Don’t you want to know?
Okay, first off: I have to tell you, those of you that played the Flash-Fiction 2-paragraph game did an outstanding job! Am-AZING work, y’all! Thanks for playing! And if you had fun, the LOML has a site just for this kind of thing. She wants it to be a fun, creative place for writers to go when they need to loosen their writing muscles, slap their muse around, or just take a break from their projects. That site is:
She’s going to work hard to make it fun, so stop by and get involved. Tell people about it, too; if you know writers that aren’t hanging around in other places and doing those sorts of things, let ‘em know they’re welcome and can come by. They can make suggestions, too, if they have a favorite game or a good idea they want to share. All are welcome, so spread the word!
Technically, FireShot’s not software. Well, it’s not stand-alone software. It’s a FireFox add-in.
As a semi-regular blogger (for as long as I can be, at least), I often find myself blogging about things in the blogosphere or on the web. It’s not unique; I think most of us do that. But when I’m blogging about things like weird search terms (which are some of the most popular posts I do) or doing software reviews, having tools at my disposal for the task makes it much easier, more enjoyable, and faster.
I still got nothin’. But I’m workin’ on changing that.
I’m going to write something … tonight. It will be up tomorrow. Shame on you if you don’t follow your blogs over the weekend. What’re you, a person? What, you think you gotta life or somethin’? Sheesh.
I may just do some flash fiction to warm up. How about a game? A two-paragraph game. I’ll write two paragraphs. You follow in the comments with two more of your own. We’ll see how many takers we have by Monday morning. I’ll post the full story by Monday evening. Wanna play?
This is the sort of thing we’ll do over at The Writer’s Nesst when it’s up and functional. LOML tells me it’ll be soon, but she says we’re gonna be rich and thin too. That magical “someday” never seems to arrive, does it?
Anyway, I’ll have something for you. I promise. Something.
God bless, and keep praying for us, you all. We need it. We’re praying for you too, just so you know. 
-JDT-
Technorati Tags: blogging, life, random thoughts, writing
Yeah. This is one of those entries. You know, the ones where the author clearly has nothing, whatever, to say, but goes ahead and posts anyway.
I got nothin’.
Yeah, I’ve had some doozies come up on my search term items, and I’ve tried to blog about those here to make you all smile. I hope it worked. But the one I found today was just … well, it was just sorta weird and scary.
Normally, I try to help people out with their search terms. I don’t think I can help this person, though.
My thing at 10:00 a.m. this morning went well, despite the hazardous driving conditions. My thanks to all of you that prayed and supported me during that time. I won’t know how it pans out, but that’s another matter all together.
As for me, I’ve been doodling around with Linux today for the most part. I’ve downloaded a bunch o’ LiveCDs and spent some time today burning them to CD. Some of them actually failed, just DOA. I think those may have problems with the image. I’ll download it again when I can and give it a second try … maybe. They don’t give CDs away.
So far the only one that goes off without a hitch is Mandriva. Fedora worked too, but not as nicely. Nothing has detected my wireless card, either. I can’t get on the network via live CD, so hopefully the actual installation will give me a better chance to configure the Windows driver with NDISwrapper or something. I hope. I pray.
Pff. I should be writing. I’m sorry, but that’s going to have to wait until tomorrow, y’all. I hope that’s okay.
I might have new fiction by then, or I may have more Witch Hunt. I hope to edit a couple of more chapters of Ghost Hunters too.
Oh, and I’ll try and give you more detail on what happened with my Linux try-outs later this week. If I have time between all the running around and writing I’m going to do. (I’m trying to pressure myself into being productive.)
Anyway, thanks to all, and God bless.
-JDT-
Technorati Tags: writing, blogging, life, work, software, linux
Well, based on my search terms today, I’ve got some folks poking around my blog. My hit count’s not phenomenal, but I haven’t updated with anything truly interesting today, either.
So, let me address some of these things. I love to help a body out when I can.
We’re getting into some tense times, now. Things are very dicey for us at the moment. Those of you that know our situation, I’m afraid I have to call on you again to support us, if you will, in prayer.
Tomorrow is another glimmer of hope. It’s a thin thread, and we really need it. Tomorrow at 10 a.m. if you have time to pray, please do. I want to thank you all in advance for your loving kindness and suffering through posts like this one.
Our situation has to change, really soon. Really soon.
Anyway, I hope to have something less cryptic and depressing later. For now, I have to try and prepare for tomorrow.
Thank you, everyone.
-JDT-
Technorati Tags: life, random thoughts, work
Well … I was going to give you an indepth look at ScribeFire, which is a browser plug-in blogging client for FireFox. I know a lot of you are using FireFox for your browser, and it starts becoming everything a blogger, researcher and general ‘Net junkie needs when you extend it with the add-ons available to it. (Get them here.)
This post is coming to you from Deepest Sender, an inline integrated blogging client for FireFox.
Now, I love my WLW. Always have, always will. Would have no other. But the product name says it all: Windows Live Writer. I want to remove myself from the happy Kool-Aid drinking Microsoft cult that is sweeping the world (right under the rug, may I add). While I admire big Bill and his Billions, I don’t want to contribute anymore to
his fund until he contributes to mine. So there.
Well, I’m already the blog enema king. I guess I can start adding “outhouse” to my list of accomplishments too. I found this search term in my blog stats this morning:
ran out of outhouse with her pants down
Well.
That certainly is a predicament, isn’t it?
Being a traffic whore, I simply can’t leave well enough alone. This post comes to you courtesy of Bleezer, a Java-based, cross-platform capable (supposedly) blog client editor. It’s kind of like Windows Live Writer, but will work with Linux and Mac as well as Windows. So they say.
Click here to read the rest of the review
Yeah, we’ve all seen the cute commercials with the laid back comedian and the uptight comedian bantering about how much better a Mac is than a PC. I’ve been contemplating this issue literally for years, and in doing some of my homework, I have some legitimate beefs with switching that I either don’t hear about from other switchers, or that don’t seem to come up with other people. So, being that I well could be the odd man out again (as is so often the case), I present to you a few issues that spring to mind in the Mac vs. PC decision.
Read the rest of this entry »
… my computer is back up and running again.
I had a major issue that occurred when I tried to upload a post to my WordPress blog. I got an error stating there was a problem logging in due to an RPC-XML issue. I’d been testing some blogging clients and wanted to do a software review of them (which never happened, by the bye), but when I tried to post, nothing.
WHUH??