I’ve just powered down the machine pictured to the left here. I’m trying to remember how old it is … I’m guessing around twelve years. It was purchased to replace an old Packard-Bell 486 that we bought with our first credit card, so that will give you some idea. It’s an old machine.

A pentium pro with (I think) about 256 megs of memory, it was running Windows 98 at the time of its last shutdown. It had been a primary desktop machine for me for years—at the time the only computer in the house. Then I purchased a pIII, and gave this machine to my reluctant wife, who had no use for it and didn’t really see the need.

God, I just realized I used this thing with dial-up.

Anyway, we networked them after we got broadband, which made even this old thing a lot more useful, even for someone who (at the time) didn’t really care much for computers. When it was time to upgrade again, we shuffled computers, and this machine was relegated to the role of a file server, which made sense when we were running a tiny publishing company (one of the last things I did with this machine running was to back up all the old data on it, including the layout files for the books we published).

It kept my own writing, photography, and digital artwork on it for about the past six or seven years, as well as my wife’s, and the work of about a dozen other people I worked with during that time. Looking at it now, it’s funny to think about the personal history that transpired during its use, and how this machine served as a conduit for so much communication and so much personal change.

The way I use computers now is fundamentally different—they’ve become an integral part of my life, and ubiquitous in general. They were already becoming somewhat mainstream the first time I powered this thing on, but they’re as commonplace and general now as cars or electricity.

I don’t know how many power outages this thing suffered, or how many years it ran without a proper surge protector, but the hardware is all original (I added a hard drive for storage sometime around ‘97 or ‘98) and I never had a problem with it. The only reason I’m transitioning away from it now is because it is over ten years old, and the files we’re working with now are so much larger that it no longer serves efficiently. Kind of amazing that it’s lasted this long, and performed this well. I’m surprised to find myself this reflective about a machine I’ve gotten in the habit of mostly ignoring. It’s outlasted at least two other, younger, computers, including our first web server (retired a couple of years ago).

I don’t know what to do with it next, but I’m open to ideas. For now, I’ll disconnect it and move it to a closet until we finish shuffling work spaces around here (I’m currently sitting at a small white table in the living room). It’d be interesting to put something on this machine that gets accessed fairly regularly to see how long it lasts, though I think I’d be traumatized when it finally did stop working.

…FIRE WEATHER WATCH IN EFFECT FROM WEDNESDAY MORNING THROUGH WEDNESDAY EVENING FOR MUCH OF MARYLAND WEST OF THE BAY AND EAST OF THE ALLEGHENY FRONT…NORTHERN VIRGINIA…EASTERN WEST VIRGINIA…AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA DUE TO STRONG WINDS…LOW RELATIVE HUMIDITY…AND DRY GROUND…

Just got the above alert from my weather service. About ten minutes before the weather started to turn over (the wind started keening and bitching around the apartment building and rattling the windows, looking for bigger holes to pour through). A car alarm in the parking lot below started going off—obnoxiously loud, we should be allowed to shoot holes in cars that wake us up at night—and some kind of engine somewhere kicked on with a low moan that made me think the dead were finally on the rise. Total horror movie growl, dry and disused protest from a throat full of dirt. Twice. It was pretty awesome, after I got over the “holy shit” of the first initial seconds. Whoever was responsible for the noise finally got it right and the engine turned over—a motorcycle, probably a Harley—and faded out as it drove off. I’d hate to be on a bike with the wind out there right now.

The weather’s been hot, for this time of year. In the mid 80s yesterday (28, 29C), which means it’s been about 86 or 87 in the apartment at times (we’re on a higher floor, heat rises, math). Back to the 50s (10-12C), then cooler in the next few days. Just a matter of time before the heat’s back. I feel like I got ripped off this year—winter was brief and warm.

I had intended to write a bit about the process I’m going through with my current most active—the novel I’m calling “Ice Fishing” right now—but it’s like 6:20 AM and I should think about getting to bed. Maybe tomorrow night.

I’m trying to get a little more civil with the sleeping schedule, too, but the heat gives me a good reason to put it off. I’ve always hated sleeping when it’s warm indoors.

The Phantom Limb, as I’ve begun referring to my hand, is (I think) starting to recover. Either that or I’m getting used to having no feeling in it. Ice seems to help (well, cold pack) and I’m getting to rely on wrapping the elbow pretty tightly when it’s really bothering me. I’ve become a bit of an expert in wrapping my left elbow with an ace bandage, which is tricky if you a) can only use your right hand and b) have to keep the elbow straight. Looks pretty butch, too.

I’ve got a compressed ulnar nerve in my left arm. It’s the nerve that “supplies,” in informal medical parlance, the little finger, half of the ring finger, and the corresponding part of the palm. This condition’s also called Cubital Tunnel Syndrome, which is also known as Super Fucking Annoying. I probably bruised the nerve by pressing on my elbows too hard while I’ve been writing the past couple of weeks. I’m hoping it’s a bruise and not the nerve being like “yeah, enough of your fucking shit, I quit.” Oh, yeah, the upshot is I can’t really feel anything in half of my left hand. Makes writing weird. Thankfully, I don’t use the tab key that much.

From the research I’ve done, I shouldn’t start worrying about it for another couple of months. I’m “following a regimen of conservative treatment,” meaning ice, anti-inflammatory drugs, and immobilization. When and if I start to lose strength or muscle coordination, I’ll run to the doctor and get all cut up. I think it might be getting better (today is day eight of these really acute symptoms). This is yet another side-effect of my computer blowing up in November—I’m writing at a desk which is tiny, so I’m leaning on my arms a lot more than I used to.

Fucking scintillating, aren’t I? Next up: details of a lovely cup of tea I just had.

Flickr has a new feature, a tag they’re calling “interestingness.” I find it a little too cute (Brits have a great word that means “a little too cute”: twee), but it’s a pleasant way to waste a few minutes over lunch. In addition to a lot of interesting landscape and weather photography, there are the predictable images of people’s pets and kids, some obviously staged stuff, and the obligatory and ubiquitous nude model shots.

I find the pets and kids a little boring, but cute enough (pets more so than kids). The staged stuff is generally boring, but again, cute … and the nude models are really just amazingly boring. Oh, look, a young woman with perfect skin and wet hair and nipples. Interesting? No, seriously, not at all. Pretty girls are a dime a dozen. What’s the story there?

Ugly’s interesting. Ugly’s compelling. Show me an ugly girl squatting on a sand dune holding a sea shell. Is she a witch? Is she ship wrecked? An ugly girl sipping coffee in a café and looking wistfully out of the window is intriguing. What’s she thinking? Is she lonely because she’s ugly?

Or old. An old woman cradling her sagging breasts? That’s interesting. That’s got some drama. A young, pretty woman doing it is like “look! titties!” Who cares?

A fat chick pouring milk over her breasts? Way more interesting. Is it a statement on abundance or fecundity or plenty or gluttony?

Pretty girls have a way of injecting vapidity and triteness into visual compositions, and photographers and artists who are just starting out should learn it and embrace it and get with it. And nudes? Seriously, if nudity isn’t developing the plot of your staged composition, have the balls to avoid it. Such a cheap trick.

Pretty girls out there need to suck it up and get over it. Enjoy what you have while you have it, but it’s a cheap and fleeting commodity. Hate to be the one to break it to you.

It’s funny, almost everyone who knows me knows I’m a writer, and almost no one has read anything substantive I’ve written. This, I’ve decided, is stupid and untenable, so I’m going to be posting more and more stuff here.

Then there’s the whole “omg u need teh password lolz” thing. I password protect my writing for a variety of reasons. There are people out there who steal writing and pass it off as their own. Big deal, kind of, because I’m so jaded and bitter about the publishing industry that I’m not sure I’d ever try traditional channels to get my writing published (if you’re interested, let me know, but I can go on and on to a boring degree about why the publishing industry sucks). And “self published” is an appellation like “community theater,” as far as I’m concerned. Most self published things suck, and I don’t want to be in that club. No offense to community theater folks, but if you’re honest, you know what I mean. Most guys running off copies of their shit on office copiers after work are doing it because that’s the only option they have.

But there are other reasons to password protect shit. The stuff I post is usually first or second draft, and raw, and I don’t necessarily want strangers coming along and sticking their fingers in my uncooked cake batter and then cunting off to me about how it tastes like eggs and sugar.

I also occasionally write about things I don’t necessarily want family to find—for instance, I’ve got a couple of sex scenes in some novels I’m writing that I could use feedback on, and I don’t think I could handle a conversation with my parents about “that first blow job scene in the Oak Island novel.” There are also questions. If I write about a character who smoked heroin in his twenties, all of a sudden I’ve got concerned siblings and cousins sending me email or something, right?

If you’re family and you’re reading this, I love you, but I think it’s important for writers to have boundaries of accountability in their writing. I can’t necessarily be a good writer and a good son or brother in the same breath, and there’s some shit I write that may make one or both of us uncomfortable. If you really want to read my stuff, get a free hotmail account and lie about who you are—say you found my livejournal account and you’d like to read my writing. I’ll send you the password and maybe you’ll be horrified and concerned, but we’ll never talk about it, and that’s kind of what I’m after. If I ever publishing anything major, we’ll have to deal with these issues then, but while stuff is still incubating, I can’t have the additional distraction of worrying about upsetting my mom with my subject matter.

That said, and here’s the important part, I realize the whole password thing is a huge pain in the ass. I realize it’s a big boundary to getting my stuff read by the people I know, and by the people I don’t know, and just in general. You have no reason to jump through this hoop to get to my writing, and I don’t expect you to tolerate what is probably just my neurotic bullshit. I’ll make it as easy for you as possible—just reply to this post, or any other I might make mentioned protected writing, and I’ll email you the password. It’s best to list your email address as like “kris at menace dot com” to avoid getting spammed, and you don’t need to register to make comments now (note to all you shitmouthed spammers: I do have comment moderation turned on, so your ads for shitty websites and fake viagra will never be seen by anyone but me, and every time I mark your shit for deletion, I hate you).

I’m posting, in a few minutes, an excerpt from a novel I’ve mentioned (I think) called Ice Fishing. It’s more or less about a guy who becomes convinced that the serial recurring dreams he has are really just another reality, and the people there are doing the same thing—dreaming the same dreams. There are a lot of other issues, but that’s probably enough of an introduction to the writing I’ll be posting.

I’ll be writing more about this project and some possible influences it may have in the next few days.

(Postscript: it’s a few minutes later, here’s the link to the writing.)