Life in the fast lane?

MOVIE: We had two movies on our list to watch this weekend, Friday was Little Fockers. To be honest, I was playing Civilization V and didn’t even watch the movie. The wife said it was cute. I always loved Robert Di Niro when he plays tough serious guys, and the humor he does in those roles makes me laugh, but I thought the first one was stupid and I knew this one would probably be worse. I find it hard to believe they made three of these movies. I never could get the humor of Ben Stiller and I simply hated Zoolander. I know sometimes a silly stupid comedy is what you need. I suppose this is something I never really got into. I have always gone by the theory that if a movie doesn’t make me laugh in the first ten minutes I won’t like it. Maybe I should change that to thirty. I bought Civilization two nights before just so I would be ready.

LIFE: Saturday morning, as I was trying to conquer the world instead of writing, my mom called and said she wasn’t feeling good so I took her to the ER, alone. To make a long story even shorter than it needs to be, she was admitted and is currently having a large amount of tests done to figure out why. The thing about Medicare is that since she doesn’t have to pay for it the hospital insists that they run every test they can, she doesn’t pay for it but they get their money either way. And they wonder why Medicare is having financial problems. She has improved since she has been in. This isn’t the first time she had heart issues that the hospitals never seem to find anything when she goes in. I was there from 10 AM until 5 PM, and I needed to be. When I got home – the wife couldn’t come because she was playing taxi service – we settled down and watched another flick:

MOVIE: Unstoppable (2010) is the tale of a runaway train speeding through Pennsylvania. (This is based on the true story of engine 8888 from the CXS stables which ran away in May of 2001. It traveled from Walbridge, Ohio to a town about 55 miles north of Columbus reaching speeds of up to 47 MPH.) This had enough nail biting suspense I had to stop playing my game and actually watch it. Chris Pine and Denzel Washington star as the two heroic engineers, actually Washington was the Engineer and Pine was the Conductor. (Is that type casting from Star Trek?) They ended up stopping the train and saving a city from almost total destruction. Type casting again? This is a great movie with enough action and suspense to keep your heart racing and your toes tingling. Writers did take advantage of a few plot twists I am sure, like making it go faster and carrying more than just two cars of dangerous chemicals, not to mention a steep curve they had to negotiate. I’ll have to dig a little deeper to find out more and wonder if my favorite line in the movie was real dialogue:

“How’s Will (Pine)?” Connie asked when he made it back into the cab.

“He’s ahh…He’s different. Over” Frank (Washington) replied perfectly straight.

Guess you will have to watch it. I did find this new clip from the real incident:

And this trailer:

TELEVISON: Sunday was a little different too. This time the wife was gone all day and I was stuck at home. You would think I would get more writing done wouldn’t you? I watched my Star Trek marathon; I’m just now finishing up the second season since the kids have an issue with Sci-fi, as I continued conquering the world on Civilization V. I think I have three more nations to kill before I manage it.

WRITING: As I might have mentioned in a previous post, I signed up for the NaNoWriMo, the grueling month of November when the only thing I will be doing is writing. I have three plot lines in mind:

1)      A sequel to Journey of Tara where Dirk and Tara search for someone behind the killing of thousands of people.

2)      A Sci-Fi story that involves time travel and dimensional shifts.

3)      A Fantasy that sends a Prince on a journey to find the murderer of a King that leads him into a land of dark black magic (maybe – I think this has been done before.)

One thing I have been trying to do is type at least 1667 words per day, that is what you need for 50,000 a month, and I got close Friday on a small piece I was working on, 1250 words. Need to do better.

As a side note, I would like to thank everyone that downloaded my books last week – it was a record breaking week for me and that always makes me feel good, as do positive reviews. (Hint) {If there are any negative reviews please send them to me so I can add comments as needed and I will return them.

Just kidding…

Really…

It was a joke. }

Answer me this;

Are you signed up for NaNoWriMo? I’m looking forward to it myself, just need to do it!

Corporate opulesnce

A few years ago I got a little upset at my computer virus software when it developed a minds of its own, it liked to do things sporadically like scan when I was in the middle of playing a game or trying to write, Of course it never let me set the time for this labor of protection –it just figured, “Dude – while that human is in this instance would be a great time to run a complete scan!”

It basically refused to do anything the way I wanted it to. This was free software that for a while seemed to work excellently, until it needed an upgrade. The upgrade included a fee of $25 a month. I deleted it and went in search of the perfect anti-virus software. I found one,

Norton’s 360. I could even put it on more than one computer. (yippee) The price was right, so I went for it.
I was impressed by how well it worked, quietly in the background and not disturbing me at all – which is how all things should act – including kids. Until last week.

Every time I turned on my computer I got a nasty message from Norton telling me that my subscription will be expiring soon and I should really upgrade or else! I ignored it since I had no spare cash at the time.

As the days went on, the messages continued, getting bolder and closer together, I thought for sure that they would soon send someone to my house dressed in skintight black suits with hoods covering their faces and physically force me to upgrade their product.

This morning, my time was up. When I turned it on this morning it slowly came to life, then a full screen size message all in caps, “ATTENTION! YOUR SUBCRIPTION HAS EXPIRED AND WE HAVE YOU LOCKED OUT OF EVERYTHING YOU NORMALLY DO. SO PAY NOW OR WE WILL SEND THE MEN IN BLACK SUITS – UNTIL THEN – YOU ARE UNPROTECTED SUCKER!” It wasn’t kidding either. I thought I heard a knock on the door, but it was only my dog sliding down the steps. (He is okay; he does that all the time.)

World of Warcraft was so slow I moved around like an old Worgen walking through mud. I did the next best thing, I clicked “Upgrade now.” This took me to a payment site where they wanted me to fork over more than a days’ pay so I could have protection for another year!

I went on the search for another software program, free again. (Yeah, I’m a Scrooge – deal with it) I was pleasantly surprised that the old one let me download and install its replacement before I removed it from my computer.

After I removed the dead anti-virus I did check everything out, including WoW, and everything worked perfectly. My take on this is, if you buy a program for your computer you shouldn’t have to pay to make it work after a year – games don’t do that. It is another way for someone to get as much money as they can with what they have. Some people call it business, I call it corporate opulesnce = simple greed.

My other experience with it this week has been Microsoft Word. A month ago I downloaded their free trial software and all week I have been warned I was about to expire. I was expecting a call from Mr. Gates any minute.

Before getting that, I was using OpenOffice, which I thought was a good program and would work for me, until I downloaded DocumentstoGo on my phone so I can write at work (I didn’t think OpenOffice was compatible.)

It worked out pretty well; I managed to flood my email boxes by moving stories from my phone to my computers. I also began writing more.

When Microsoft Word finally expired Monday night – I couldn’t do anything with it, I’m sure I could have typed something, but that was all I could do. A few years ago, with an older version, I downloaded a trail and once it expired I could still use it but I couldn’t access some of the more special features.

I wasn’t about to pay for this, more $$$ out of mine and into Bill’s. (Fortunately I discovered that Openoffice is compatible with DocumentsToGo, you just have to save it in the write version.)

Now I am happy!

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