The end of the beginning

Hi.

It’s me again.

I just know that there’s going to be an uncountable number of posts just like this one, all getting posted sometime in the last twenty or the next twenty four hours…

Thus, I’ll try to keep this short and simple.

First, I’ve taken up a challenge, and if you’re reading this, then it might (or might not, could just be fair warning) it might be relevant to you as well.

Here is the link to the challenge, essentially it means to try to get at least one post up per day.  I’ve been at it for a month now, and failed the daily bit horribly, so into the breach once more good Spartans…

Oh, bad reference, the Spartans all died in that battle…  anyhow.

Aside from that, I’m not really in the right frame of mind to post today, I’m just kinda worn out, it’s the end of a long year, I’ve made some resolutions (no I’m not going to post them here, if I know you personally then I’ll tell you…)

And in other news, I tend to waste way too much time trying to keep up with ….

 

Nothing.

 

Yep, that’s it.  I keep checking e-mails and forums I haunt through, etc, etc…  and today it’s been a huge waste of time.  Frustrating when I catch my self doing that.  Really Really Frustrating.

So now I’m going to go shopping with my boys, and then home to spend some good family time together with boys and wife etc.

Until next year.

 

 

 

Smack!

Afternoon everybody.  (ok, not too many everybody’s out there, but you’re all somebody to me, else why would I do this blog thing?)

What was that?

What was what?

That SMACK! referenced in the title?

Oh, that..  Well, that was the sound of my hand hitting my forehead.

Why?

Well, because I deserved a smack, no, wait!  Hear me out.

I made a decision to start writing a while back (can we say August or so?)

Yep, I did, it’s in a back post here somewhere…  Lemme see…http://wp.me/p17aO9-1

And so since then I’ve… well I’ve dropped the ball.

I blamed NaNoWriMo, I’ve blamed work, removations, etc.

The truth?  I spend way too much time playing around on WDC, Writing.com, a writer’s website.  I justified it by saying I was learning, but the truth is that I am spending far too much time that I don’t have just working over’s other’s works, trying to find good and bad points in it.

What do I get out of this?  I learn some things, kinda, and I can see for free what really works fairly well, and what really doesn’t.

I was hoping to get what I write, read and analyzed so that I might get better.  That’s not happening thus far.

For your public entertainment, here’s the link to the online portfolio.

http://Writing.Com/authors/danielocasey

I have to get back to work here, oddly enough this post ties into the other one I was also working on about multitasking and productivity.

I have to some thinking before I can continue the thought track I am on.  In short I need to find some middle ground where the actual writing gets done.

Until later,

Dan Casey.

P.S.  I don’t know how many of you are waiting for it but the next segment of Adrift will be posted by sunrise, or thereabouts.

 

Death of a Snowman

I’ve had some really good ideas for blog posts over the last few days, but I really can’t figure out how to justify the time to set them up when in essence they’re just personal rants.  Thus, you’ll never see them.  Sorry about that.  Here’s the short version.

1- kids are wonderful but really should earn the privileges they get, not like the brat down the road that gets a new quad just because he’s somewhat spoiled.

2- random acts of pointless vandalism is NOT A GOOD THING! See kid from point 1.  Using new toy quad to destroy the snowman my boys and I made on Christmas Eve.  See pics of finished snowman.

This snowman lasted only a mere eighteen hours. we made it on Christmas Eve, and by the time we got back from an amazing dinner at my wife’s Aunt’s place the kid down the road had destroyed it, for no reason at all that I can figure out…

Why would somebody do something that hurts the feelings of my boys so much?  What does a person gain from such malice and spiteful behavior?

Anyhow, I guess that’s about all I was going to say on this.  I’ve got another topic percolating right now, about productivity and multitasking and focus, but it needs to gel before I can get it out to post.

Cheers and I’ll see you later.

Dan Casey.

(I’ll leave you with some pictures of the last couple of days, just because I can.)

The Campaign

Tyrel patted the munitions, eying his enemy’s fortifications with trepidation. Winter battles were tricky, the cold was the worst at first, but then as the battle dragged out and the casulalities mounted, then things got really bad.

“Incoming!” Sarah’s voice from the far end of the wall sounded panicked. She was usually so calm and collected that to hear her like this shook Tyrel’s nerve more than any single attack could.

“I’m coming Sarah!” Breathless, Tyrel scrambled out of his foxhole, darting furtively through the night like a flittering snowflake.
The last month or so had seen a running series of battles, some were lost but most of the time he and his team of crack commando’s had won the day.
Pressing forward with each victory, they had just about rounded up and cleaned up every last one of these blasted invaders, but this last battle was going slowly. His star had set, the enemy had better munitions and more manpower although where the extra bodies came from was anyone’s guess. This battle was going to be close.

“Sarah! I’m here, you ok?” Tyrel checked to make sure she was still breathing, heaving a sigh of relief when he saw the frosty puffs of steam from each breath she let out. As he sat there looking at her, he couldn’t help but wonder about other settings. What would it be like to catch her under the mistletoe?

“Yeah, they’ve just got us pinned, we can’t move up to fire back. Each time we do they get closer to taking one of us out.”

“Alright. Give me a minute.” Tyrel thought carefully about the situation.

A voice called out from the distance…

“Kids, hot chocolate’s ready, come in and warm up before bed!”

Planet Bound

Hiya,

This is a reply to the post originally found over here>>>  http://blog.bookviewcafe.com/2010/12/09/reading-for-fun-were-things-better-in-the-past/
Were things better in the past?  No, different yes, but not better.  Maybe quieter, and less polluted, depending on how far back we go.
Competition is good for what it was used for, small scale stuff like getting things made better faster and more efficiently, but I’m going to have to agree with you on the flip of that coin.  Without Co-operation we’re not going to be given the chance by the Galactic Federation (everyone saw “The Day the Earth Stood Still, right?)  Ok, maybe they won’t wipe us out, but letting us come play in their back yard?  Probably not.

So, if [BIG IF] we manage to do something right and clean up our personal relations (realizing all humans are humans and mostly equal is a good start, if we can keep that progress) and then get our act together before we eradicate ourselves from the planet, then working together we might just be able to get our collective butts off the planet…

Dang, now I’ve gotta go write another short story before it drives me nuts….  (muttering to self >>  Conflict, national govt’s mostly working together, somebody’s trying to rig game….  sigh)
Dan Casey

Blatant Reposting with new thoughts…

Lead in:  I was just going back over some of my old posts and re-read this poem….

And I am moved to repost it with some new thoughts on it…  so you get to hear me ramble on from the soapbox again.

Written by William Wordsworth (what a good name for a poet hey?)

The World is Too Much With Us; Late and Soon

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. – Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

*****

So in this poem I am reading a plaintive cry to hearken back to the simpler days when things you could not (and still can’t) buy were valued more highly than material goods.

Who’s been to church?  Who has felt the love from a small child to their parent, who has felt the warm glow of a parent’s tempered love aging with that parent, but still as strong as when you were young.

Wordsworth was maybe a little heavy handed in his imagery, most wouldn’t know what half of the references he makes are without first Google-ing or Wiki-ing it, but such is life.  Time moves forward at all costs, regardless of our desires.

If we wast that time pursuing those things that mean much to others, we debase our own value to ourselves.  Or in red-neck speak, “Housework will wait, c’mon honey, the neighbors will always find sumthin’ they don’ like ’bout us, stop trying to make them happy and let’s go fishin’.”
“Getting and Spending, we lay waste our powers”  What does this line mean to you?  I am seeing the capitalism of the turn of the century running rampant,  will we learn in time, or is humanity doomed to despoil it’s only nest before we become mature enough to leave that nest and conduct ourselves responsibly?

Oh my, I’m going to have to stop this here, I’ll make a note to follow up tomorrow with another post about what I just stopped,   but please, if you can manage it, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.  I promise if I see them I’ll try to respond.  This is a conversation I’m looking forward to having…

Dan Casey, Signing Off.