David's Boring Blog

 I have skipped cooking supper for most of the last week. That isn't to say that I have not cooked. I have been getting up and making breakfast every morning. I have had a series of delightful sausage and egg sandwiches on wheat that left nothing to be desired. Lunch and dinner have been a lighter fare skewing toward cold sandwiches and snacks.  I just have not really wanted to get out and go to the store. I don't really have a reason to have avoided it beyond just not having a real taste for anything. I have been tightening up my grocery spending by making smaller meals and shopping more frequently. It is helping to limit food waste and save money.  When I did finally get a craving for something it was time to order some pizza. There is decent pizza to be had here. Read that as the pizza can be good but rarely great. There are a few places where the pizza is a bit like ketchup and rubber over wet cardboard. There are a few places to get a consistently good slice. I haven't

 I have found myself lately thinking over an interesting conundrum. I have a hobby that I really enjoy pursuing (one of many), but for the past few years I refuse to do business with any of the local businesses that deal in that hobby. I am not going to go into the reasons behind that because I don't want to cast any negativity. What I feel isn't anyone else's fault or responsibility.  The thought occurred to me that I would rather stop my hobby than to deal with any of the businesses that I have dealt with before. I have been dealing online. It works. It is a little pricey. It is a lot impersonal. It prevents me having a negative interaction with the afore mentioned local shops.  The truth is that once a relationship has gone sour to the point of a parting of the ways then it is best to not ever go back there. Trust me on this. Nothing good comes of going back for a reunion tour when the band broke up on bad terms. I had to ask myself if I was being immature about this. Ho

 I decided that I needed a video game break. Since Diablo IV  dropped I have been playing quite a bit. As luck would have it my Dad's plans provided me the perfect getaway. He opted to spend a week at Indian Boundary camp ground. I don't recall that I had ever camped there before. It is possible we did when I was a kid, but if so it did not stick with me.  I had work, but I also had a powerful need to unplug. One of the great things about Indian Boundary is that it is outside cellphone reception (mostly), internet, or TV. It gets a lot easier to disconnect from the electronic world when accessibility is impossible where you are.  Work ended Friday around 6. I tossed the rest of mine and the kid's gear in the truck and set off. The campground is a couple of hours from the house. I needed ice for the coolers and some supper on the way. We opted to hit the Dairy Queen as a treat.  The ride out was pleasant enough given the Friday traffic. We made camp about twenty minutes befo

Tempus Fugit is the Latin phrase which translates to time flies. I have a lot of affection for Tempus Fugit. I got a bit obsessed with Latin as many nerdy kids like me were want to do. Puberty shifted my interest to trying to look and sound cool to impress the fairer sex and I took French instead. There have still been plenty of times that I have found myself muttering," Tempus Fugit," under my breath in response to the quick and inexorable passage of time. This is usually done in moments of great hustle or in looking back at an event that still feels fresh and is in fact some years gone from the present. I have yet to have a single person hear me say it and understand what I am talking about.  Much more popular is Carpe Diem. I think it hits in a more positive frame of reference. Few are the people who like to examine too closely how quickly the sand is passing through their hour glass. Seizing the day, the English translation of Carpe Diem, can be cast as making the most ou

 I have been a video game enthusiast since my early childhood. Honestly, like so many other things in life I thought that the interest would fade as I grew up. Given that I have 173 hours and 39 minutes in Diablo IV that launched on 5 June this year, I suspect I will game in life as long as I am able. I find it relaxing and as I have logged most of those hours playing with some combination of Taila, Tyler, Ashley, and Whitneigh I cannot be upset about that time investment. I might also have had some fun along the way.  I really wish I had an accurate count of the endless hours I have put into games going back into the early 1980s. I write a lot about video games because I spend a lot of my time in those other realities. I should have vacation homes in the Mushroom Kingdom, Hyrule, all of the realities of Final Fantasy (I did have an apartment in Final Fantasy XI) , Sanctuary, and the province of Skyrim on Tamriel (these I have built more than a few times.)  Not every video game takes h

 It is bad when one thing becomes two. One should not look for anything else in the Way of the Samurai. It is the same for anything that is called a Way. Therefore, it is inconsistent to hear something of the Way of Confucius or the Way of the Buddha, and say that this is the Way of the Samurai. If one understands things in this manner, he should be able to hear about all Ways and be more and more in accord with his own. Tsunetomo, Yamamoto. Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai - Unabridged and Fully Illustrated (p. 25). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.  I discovered Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai  when I was thirteen. This was a very reverent and philosophical time in my life. I was a year past my baptism. I was a few years yet from my frustration with the Baptist church. I was hungry for a way to live life. I cannot claim that I found that in the Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai, but it is safe to say that the book has had an impact on my life and my thinking. The above passage particularly

 I always have a few projects that I am working on. These little ideas of mine probably aren't interesting to anyone except me. Over the years I have toyed around with different things. I got pretty obsessed with the idea of building a catapult or trebuchet that I could pull behind my truck once upon a time. I spent days working on different designs and working on the math for figuring the approximate distance I could throw various objects with a four hundred pound counter weight on the trebuchet. I put a lot of mental effort into imagining people flying only to land safely in the deep water of Norris Lake.  I strongly suspect the forces involved would have caused serious bodily injury or more likely death even not accounting for the need to be healthy enough to swim a long way to shore. Einstein used thought experiments to envision time travel. I use them to realize that with 400 pounds of counter weight I could clear a few football fields with a single watermelon. I wanted to try

 I haven't been writing. Oh, I have been blogging twice a week. I can even say that my white board has the broad strokes of a story on it, but that only happened as the result of an idea I am about to unfold for you here. Things were not always so.  I once wrote fiction constantly. I filled up notebook after notebook and legal pad after legal pad of stories. I wrote by hand because I couldn't bring my computer to work with me. I kept an accordion file folder full of stories, plots, research, and ideas in my backpack. It was amazing and awful at the very same time. I would finish a story, novel, or outline and then I would type it all up. I even once committed the sin of having a friend type things up for me. I kept, and still have, those files just in case my computer hard drive bit the dust. You don't risk your creative work and computers were not always as reliable or backed up to the cloud the way they are now. I had a few jobs where I could work from a USB thumb drive t

At the end of the work day this last Friday I was tired. I stretched out to read a bit more of my book and found myself tapping out for a nap. I figured that Sheriff Walt Longmire would be waiting for me when I got up. I had dreams of knife throwing. About an hour later, I woke up and decided to make those dreams a reality.  I warm up my throwing arm with throwing hatchets. The Smith & Wesson Bullseye throwing hatchet is a lot of fun to throw. If you can get it lined up on the target it is likely to stick since it is sharp on every edge of the axe head. I mean literally every surface. The top edge of the axe is sharp. The rear of the hatchet ends in a point. The cutting edge is obviously sharp. Even the bottom of the handle comes to a chisel edge point. That makes it easy to stick and also helps build throwing confidence. It also doesn't make it necessary to be diligent about your throwing form.  I can take practice with the bullseye seriously if I want to. I can mark my distan