Trade A Smile With Someone Who’s Blue Now

 I just don’t get people. I really don’t.

I had something big written up here regarding the situation with my life for this. But I could not bring myself to press the “Publish” button…That way drama lies.

This particular range of thoughts will, end up being thrown into my little black book. You know the one…The one that will never be seen by anyone.

To My Amazement, There Stood A Raven

It’s been so long since I’ve sat down and read a damn book. So in the last four months, I have read forty-three books. So I’ve read the fifty listed below:

My “Currently reading” list is going to be where I start 2025:

I’m actively reading The Horns of Ruin (Not pictured. I forgot to mark it as in progress), Storm Front, Midnight in Chernobyl, Reed of God and Wrath of Poseidon. I need to finish The Shadow, Mike Nelson’s Mind Over Matters, Church of Cowards and The Citadel of Forgotten Myths. I’m going to treat those as stand alone books. After that, I’ll finish Prelude to Foundation.

Once I get through Wizard and Glass, I may switch over to audio for the last five Dark Tower books. The Fargo series by Clive Cussler is something I will be done with, after Wrath of Poseidon, so that clears those up.

The Horns of Ruin is a book I snagged once because the cover looked cool. I did the same thing with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Which I actually enjoyed. This one, however, I’ve started a couple of times but still haven’t been able to get it. I just moved it to my Kobo, so now that Storm Front is done, I guess I’ll get through it.

Upcoming for 2025, I would like to get through the following 30-ish books:

• Finish the Dark Tower – Stephen King
• Garrrett, PI – Glenn Cook
• The Martian – Andy Weir
• The Warrior of Mars trilogy – Michael Moorcock
• Relic – Alan Dean Foster
• The rest of the Derrick Storm/Nikki Heat books by Richard Castle
• Make Room Make Room – Harry Harrison

Those are what I want to read, There will be plenty more random, spur of the moment books. As much as I didn’t like the Havana Mysteries books, I might go ahead and read the last few of them. Wheel of time? Eh. I lost interest about halfway through the sixth book a few years ago. That series might be relegated to Audio for the next year.

I don’t know about Foundation. I have eyed the series off and on over the last thirty years, but…Man. I don’t know. I understand that it is supposed to be some sort of sci-fi masterpiece, but do I have that kind of dedication? Meh. Seems unlikely.

I’m tempted to write an elementary school level book report for each book I read in 2025, but I don’t know. That seems like more work than I want to put into this project. I think I’ll give it a go for Midnight in Chernobyl. That sounds like an interesting challenge.

Can You Feel The Thunder

I picked up an old Yashica FX-3 camera at a flea market a long time ago.  The "leather" started peeling the first time I tried to use it.

The pictures were great:

 

(Photos taken July 10, 2011)

 

But the camera itself looks like crap:

 

 

I didn't think much of the camera itself for a long time.  I occasionally pulled it out and used it, but I really didn't do much with it. Until recently.  I decided a while back that I was going to use all of my cameras.  When I was reading about the Yashica, I came across a website that was selling custom skins to replace the terrible leather.  After a great deal of research, voting, etc, I settled on a new finish:

 

I present, for your consideration: The Red Special.

 

Honestly, I'm pretty happy with it, and I'm pleased to note that despite sitting in the attic for years, I can still get amazing images out of it:

 

 

(Photos taken August 18, 2024)

 

But Gollum, The Evil One Crept Up And Slipped Away With Her

I’ve managed to sit down and start reading the books again. Hopefully this can be a daily thing going forward.

This turned into an insane thing. I finally went through and cleared up my Kindle device list. That involved removing something like a dozen various PCs and old phones from my account. I also saw fit to actually move my Kindle books onto my old, junk-tastic Kindle, because why not.

Which reminds me, I need to see if Calibre will let me sideload my Nook books onto my old, junk-tastic Kindle.

So far, I’ve gotten through The Great Gatsby (weird), and Magic Kingdom For Sale – SOLD! by Terry Brooks. I’m working on Whitley Streiber’s Majestic for the first time since the late ’90s when I was in middle school, and a Ben Shapiro book titled The Porn Generation. Because, well, I’m interested to see what he has to say about that.

My goal is to track this stuff on GoodReads as well. I might link it here, I might not.

We’ll see.

Past The City Limit Sign

[location | home, home on the range]

[have you had a violent moodswing today | tired]

[the sounds of | The gentle whirring of machine fans]

Back in November I said I would take some pictures with both my Nikon F and Minolta SRT-102. Today’s weather was very nice, so I did just that. I’ll develop and scan them (hopefully) later this week.

In the meantime, I have something like a 4 year backlog of entries written up in various documents. I’m working through said backlog now.

Ten Years Have Got Behind You

Recently, I’ve been trying to reconnect with the person I was twenty years ago. The me I liked, as it were.

I need to get back into the habit of regular blogging (I say for the nth time). With that, I may go back to the beginning of my blogging days. Yes. I mean DiaryLand. Obviously, I’ll cross-post, but there will be much lost in translation

I’ve got both of my LiveJournal accounts back under my control, and then there’s blogger. I know I started trying to move my Twitter musings over here too, but I don’t recall how that went.

I know I have a Tumblr and Instagram, and am considering using Tumblr again for my photos.  Although I hear Tumbr sucks because of AI something something.

Biggest drawback to Tumblr is that I cannot backdate posts and fill in the holes like I can on a typical blog platform.

Anyway, I decided to reach out to an old friend, and have been, much to their presumed annoyance, been keeping up via email. I’ve been reading actual books rather than ebooks or doomscrolling on the phone.

Idunno. I guess I should go clean some crap out of my car and get it reorganized.

I Can’t Decide

[location | home, home on the range]

[have you had a violent moodswing today | blah, bordering on depressed]

[the sounds of | The washing machine]

The title says it all, really.

I did a thing at work this week, and if it ends up where my boss thinks it is going to end up, he said I would have some serious freedom to advance quickly in ways that I wouldn’t normally think possible.

Is it bad that I just want my previous position with my previous people back?

Ambition? Screw that.

Although, I did finally figure out a decent way to get my old Location/Mood/Music lines from LJ to look here.

Trying To Remember Where I Left My Shoes

[the sounds of |Train True ~ Blue Oyster Cult]

Here we go again.

Does this begin the cycle where I claim to begin writing again, hold up my end of the bargain for a day or two or a week or two and then watch it die, or do I just do my thing and let it be what will be?

That, really is the question.

I look at life and find myself deeply unsatisfied.

Something I thought I’d never say…Work is fine. Home is miserable. I’ve thought about doing the things to change it, but at the same time, I now have other obligations, and doing what I think needs to be done does bad things to said obligations, which is not okay. I guess go back to the old die young plan is probably going to be the way it goes over because why not. Feelings, feelings are somewhat symptomatic of societal abrasions that conform electric static or something. And General Y. Carville. That one complicates things even more. Some days I think I’d rather go down that path, but at the same time, I don’t know that the gamble there would pay off.

Everything Under The Sun Is In Tune, But The Sun Is Eclipsed By The Moon

 Managed to take some pictures of the eclipse today and not ruin my camera.

Winning!

Imperial March

[location | home]

[have you had a violent moodswing today | accomplished]

[the sounds of | Walk This Way ~ Aerosmith]

Today I went to the Children’s Museum to, among other things, take some photos.

Of the several cameras I took, my chrome (?) and black Nikon Nikkormat FTn was the most fun to use.

Given that the lighting inside the museum is hot garbage, I stuck with the Nikkor-H 28mm lens. The max aperture of f 3.5 doesn’t make it anywhere close to the fastest lens that I have for a Nikon, but for what I needed it for, it worked.

I also slapped a cheap Targus flash unit on the thing, but since the camera does not have a hot shoe, I snagged a cheap adapter from Amazon that mounts to the cold shoe and has a plug-in for the built-in sync ports.

Anyway, the camera:

I absolutely love the way the camera looks. I don’t think I’ve seen a bad looking Nikon SLR from the late ’60s, but given this one or the near-identical black one that I have, I’ll take this one any day.

Anyway, here are three photos from the Children’s Museum that I took with this camera:

It has a built in light meter. It doesn’t work well with an external flash unit, so I had to sort of wing it with the Indiana Jones picture, but I feel like the lighting managed to capture the mood of the exhibit perfectly.

This setup has been my go-to for manual 35mm for a few months now, and I expect this trend to continue.