General Update

You would think that with forty-two days at home that I would have gotten more done on my websites, blogs, on the house, or in the shop.

Now that I'm back at work for thirty to forty days I feel that I should have done more than I did but with my mother did pass away on June 25th which accounted for some of my lack of motivation.

But now I think that I can get off my lazy ass and get somethings done provided I have the money to get the jobs done. However some of the things only cost me a little time.

Like this blog and a couple of books that I started to write a while back, I think that after reading over them that I can make some decent changes to them.

With a little luck I should be done with one before I go home then I may try something different, I would like to attempt to write a collaborative effort online a story that can evolve depending on how much each person adds to the mix, people would be allowed to change of correct other people's work but the original parts would be saved and used as alternative plots if it's a good sized change.

Sounds like a headache waiting to happen, but sounds fun and exciting at the same time provide the people act like adults and not children which is asking a lot of some people but it would be great.

Such a work with many authors would not make anyone wealthy mainly because I would have to pay each authors a fee for their work if sales are good. However if the story is great then it could become a movie and that means more money for everyone involved in the project.

But as far titles go for such a project I have no idea what to call it... well that's not quite true I do have a few ideas for names but am open for suggestions and the idea is to write a fantasy novel of several of them depending on how long it turns out.

However it could be an action book, horror,  si-fi, or a combination of them all. Now that would be a very odd mixture a si-fi - action - horror - fantasy.

Any ideas please share in the comments...

Update

I only rode two weeks, we had another death in the family. That makes three this year my uncle James, my mother, and my uncle Fred. Sometimes life just sucks but you still have to keep your chin up and move on because there is so much to live for especially if you are married, have children, pets, or some good friends.

Hootsuite

I know Hootsuite is nothing new it's been around for a few years now but I just started using it again and after playing around with the free trial I am now paying for it. Why? Well because I happen to like being able to work on my blogs and social networks from one place. How ever there are just a couple of things that would make it better for me and they are as follows...

1. I know about the mobile apps and the browser plugins but a stand alone program from windows, mac, and Linux, would be great. One that can allow you to draft posts off-line and post them later would be outstanding.

2. Easy setup for more social networks so you can get what you have to say out to more people would be nice.

I currently am a member of 20+ social networks, but I am only active in two Twitter and Facebook, if there was some way to connect them all I would be very happy about it and a lot more active. Anyway check it out for yourself and get started with a 30-day free trial of Hootsuite,,, Just go to www.hootsuite.com and no it's not an affiliate link yet.

Thinning Out Blogs

Sometimes working on one blog can be a real headache and 20+ is a royal pain in the rear. So in an effort to reduce my work load and increase the quality of my work I'm cutting the number of sites that I work on down to just three.

The three that I'm keeping are this one, my guild blog, and my main website.

Having problems with my main website due to an oversight on my part. But I have a new website <a href="http://www.lovemmorpgs.com">Love MMORPG's</a>.

When A Server Crashes It Sucks

No matter what kind of server your on be it a web server, media server, or game server when they crash it royally sucks... sometimes its nothing more than needing a simple restart and other times it can be rather costly when you have to replace the server hardware.

I had a web server crash about a week ago and it was nothing wrong with it, it was not under a heavy load, or really even being used so I just shut it down and restarted it and its been working fine... but that does not bother me as much as the World of Warcraft servers crashing with out warning! A company the size of Blizzard should never go off line when the money they make even on maintenance days there should be backup servers in place to avoid any shut down and only a rolling restart when the main servers are done and patch the backups. 

Sometimes Writing Sucks

I enjoy writing my fantasy stories but sense I prefer writing them with pen and paper it sucks when I have to type it all into my computer. However it's not all that bad because it gives me a chance to do a little editing here and there, typically I end up making two to three extra paragraphs per chapter.

I really need to train my computer to type what I say, I really like speech to text but really have not taken the time to set it up on my laptop which goes almost everywhere with me. I have a fairly good but not great headset however it is a little too loud at work to use it anyway and my house is no different, I would have to finish up my shed so I could have a nice laid back place to take to my computer without feeling like a dumb-ass and getting interrupted. 

Riding Over A Couple Days

I'm at work and was supposed to go home in the morning but it seems my relief has gotten a little ill, along with his whole family. So I'm staying at work a few extra days so I can make a little extra money but still would rather be going home... now I have to unpack a couple sets of uniforms so when I take my shower tonight I have a fresh set to change into sense I won't be sporting my going home duds.

All in all its not a bad thing, I can always use a little extra money, and this time of year I can use a lot of extra money because I have Christmas coming up followed by my youngest sons birthday in January about two days after I return from a business trip to Louisville Ky.

Long Breaks From Post to Post

There seems to be periods where I have long breaks between posts, this is because I'm just lazy. Well some of it is because I'm lazy, the rest is because I try to stretch myself to thin working a full time job, working on about 8 blogs, trying to spend time with my wife and kids, playing online game, trying to write a couple books, making attempts to make money online, just to mane a few.

I'm going to try to narrow down the blogs some and focus on this one and my main website which I kind of been slacking on as-well. So please check back over the next week and I'm sure that I can produce something that may peak your interest. Even if its something dark and twisted that tears at the fabric of your soul... well alright so maybe dark and twisted is not my cup of tea but it sounded good.

Turn Windows Update Off/On or Set to Manual

Keeping Windows up to date is without a doubt a good thing but sometimes it can be rather annoying or if your like me and on a metered connection it can be rather expensive. So what to do? Well that my friend is up too you, but here are three things you can do.

Turn it off/on yes off at least until you want to update... simply press the Windows Key or click on the Start Menu if you have one and type update into the search box a list of options will pop-up just select what you want to do they all tend to do the same...

Also you can set it to manual allowing you to manually select the updates you want to install. This is the option I use when I'm traveling as I only have 5 gigs of data, When at home I have 25 gigs of date accept between midnight to five a.m. which is unlimited so that is when I do most of my updates, yep you can set your Windows Update to download at a set time.

This is not for everyone but for people on metered connections this may save you some data. I have this is of some help to someone.

Video coming soon FRAPS is not working for some reason guess I need to restart and as good as ezvid is I don't like that your only option to save your work is to upload it to YouTube,

What A Fun Night

11/01/13
It's been a rather long feeling night building this 13 barge tow.  With the wind, rain, and sudden temperature drop my deckhands have had nasty cold and damp time wiring this tow up with very little breaks...

I know how they feel, I've been in the same types of weather and worse but you just make the best of it. Can't say I would trade places with them. I don't miss that shit for nothing.

11/02/13
Yet another night and we are at it again, building an eight pack with 5 empties and 3 loads. It's not hard but it is rather slow because I only have two deckhands and no tugs helping us out.

So far it's almost 3am and my crew are almost done wiring two of the loads in, all empties are in place. I have no clue where the last load is at. Maybe if we get lucky one of these tugs will get it in the clear and bring it to us.

Getting 11 Barges

I'm sitting here waiting for my crew to finish up building my 11 barge tow here at CCI Reserve. It's definitely dark and it's raining so I know that the guys are not happy about it, but it is part of the job.

I seems to be taking longer than it would for my regular crew or myself back in the day when I was on deck, but I'm not in a hurry. Once they are done we still have to cross the river and pickup two more barges for a total of 13 to take back the our fleet.