Blog With A Very Short Lifespan...

This may very well be the shortest lived blog ever. Okay, maybe not. But after two weeks, it is officially dead.

Not because it's not a good blog. No, people seemed to be enjoying it - both writers and readers. It's dead because I've built a new website site to replace it.

Fifteen Minutes Of Fiction

The new website is mostly functional. There are still a few features missing, and I'm sure a few bugs here and there, but you can do all the "important" stuff.

Any of the readers of this blog who want to give it a try, just go to the site and create a membership account.

Click the image below to visit my writing profile:

Computer Mayhem Part I

"Hey, pass me that nut driver!" I yell at nobody in particular - before remembering that today, I'm at the shop alone. With four computers to build, a computer with spyware, a computer that's not booting properly, and another computer that won't boot properly.

All within five measly little hours. Welcome to a day in the life of a computer technician. That's me.

I find the nut driver myself, and screw in the little feet that are supposed to hold the motherboard in place. One of them doesn't want to screw. I put the nut driver aside for a moment, and set up the computer needing spyware removal.

I set it up at one of the three stations on our counter. After plugging it in and turning it on, I wait for it to load windows. And wait. And wait. And wait. Finally, I go back to the computer that I'm building. I force the nut into place, and dig the mother board box out from the bottom of the box with all the other components.

I find the mother board, and place it on the nuts. The nuts are created so that another screw can be driven in top. I screw the mother board in, and get ready to find the CPU. My eye falls across the computer I just set up - finally fully started.

I go back to that computer. Clicking on the start menu, I see something that catches my eye - a little icon next to the clock that says "Norton Internet Security Suite." Great. Just great. Five seconds later, the start menu pops up. I run MSCONFIG and see what's running in the start up. "Contra-Virus Pro" catches my eye, as well as "Win Anti-Spyware Pro." Rolling my eyes, I disable them, and reboot the computer.

While the computer is rebooting, I go back to the one I'm building. After finding the CPU and placing it on the mother board, I put the memory, the video card, and the modem in their respective positions. I plug the cables from the power buttons and LED lights onto the mother board, and put the CD and Floppy drives in. I plug the power onto the mother board, and stand the whole machine up.

Taking it to a second station, I plug it in. It turns on, and I attempt to go to the BIOS to set the boot sequence. I get the following message: "Error: Keyboard not detected. Press F1 to continue."

This post was written in 15 minutes

Stay tuned for part two!

Phone Bill

This piece of foolishness is a follow-up to the post: Gregory

It's been two weeks now since I found out that my rock's name was not Gregory, but Willis. To be honest, I don't think he really looks like a "Willis". In my mind, Willis is a name for someone who could play in a DieHard movie.

And although Willis would certainly induce a great deal of pain if he was hurled suddenly at someone's head, he is neither photogenic nor athletic enough to star in an action-thriller movie.

Ever since I found out his name is really Willis, I've been careful to stop calling him Gregory. The change has been extraordinary. Now my rock is eager to chat - in fact, I would say he's downright talkative.

"Hey Willis, have you got my phone bill?" I asked him yesterday.

After a pause he said, "Hey, what's this phone call to East Timbuctu?"

"Just visiting with my cousin Ethel."

"For forty-five minutes? Do you have any idea how much that phone call cost?" He sounded a bit aggrieved.

"So?"

"So, I'm also sitting on your 2007 budget figures, and I guarantee we don't have money enough to be throwing around like that."

I glared at him. He seemed impervious to my stare. "We?" I demanded.

He didn't shrug, but I'm sure if rocks had the ability to shrug, he would have. "I live here too, you know," he said.

"I don't see you doing much to increase our net worth," I replied. "You want to start talking about our money, I suggest you get a job."

"I already have a job."

"Really? What are you? A brain surgeon?"

Sarcasm is lost on rocks - even intelligent ones like Willis.

"No, stupid. I'm a paperweight."

I hadn't exactly thought about it like that. I suppose, technically, he was working for me.

"You know the book of Leviticus, in the Bible, says not to withhold your neighbor's wages," he continued piously.

Leave it to Willis to bring in the heavy guns. The book of Leviticus. Considering carefully my options, I realized there was only one solution to my unfortunate dilemma.

I'm going back to calling him Gregory.

This post was written in 10 minutes.

Pumping Gas

"That'll be $37.52, sir."

Horace's hand, which had already half removed the credit card from his wallet, stopped abruptly. Horace looked up at the young cashier, dismayed.

Unshaven, greasy haired, with half-closed eyes, the cashier looked like more like a zombie than a living human being. Horace wondered when the boy had last slept, last bathed, last shaved.

"I bought a bag of chips and a soda," Horace protested.

"And gasoline. Pump Three."

Horace glanced out the window at a dark blue mini-van parked out fron. It was the only vehicle near the pumps.

"That's not my vehicle."

"I watched you stand out there and pump gas into it." The boy's eyes were now a little wider open; he sensed a fight, and was drawing on unexpected stores of adrenaline to wake himself.

Horace glared. "I most certainly did not," he said.

"Ain't no one else in the store, sir."

Horace looked around. It was true. There was no one in sight, which was unusual for such a large and successful variety store. He was beginning to feel like he was in an episode of The Twilight Zone, or maybe Candid Camera.

"Is this a joke?" he demanded.

The boy's eyes narrowed back to tiny slits, but now he looked more suspicious than sleepy. "Well I ain't joking," he said.

Horace looked around the store again. "Anyone in your restroom?" he asked.

The boy shook his head. "We don't got a restroom."

Horace shrugged. "Well, it's not my car, not my gas, and I'm not paying for it."

The boy pondered this for a moment. He couldn't remember anything in his training about a customer refusing to pay. "I'll need to call the manager," he said.

"Fine. You two have a nice chat. While you're at it, you can put these back on the shelf, because I'm not buying them here." He slammed his snack food onto the counter hard enough to crush most of the potato chips.

Without another word he stomped out of the store and around to the side parking lot. He stopped. He stared.

"Hey! Where's my car?"

This post was written in 13 minutes.

Life

Life can be funny.
Life can be cruel.
Life can be hard.
With effort, life can be fulfilling.
Life can seem like a boat on a stormy ocean on a dark night.
But the morning will always come again - and the sun with it.

(Authors note: This was written intended for someone, and if that someone were ever to visit this site, they should be able to know who they are.)

This post was written in 6 minutes

September Morning

Cold, damp, and dreary;
Soaked and chilled by the fall rain.
September morning.

This post was written in 4 minutes.

Starry Night Far From The City

The sun had set three hours ago, there on the side of the mountain, forty miles from the closest town, eighty miles from the closest city. The night was clear, and for the first time, James was able to see the lights in the sky that had always been hidden by the lights of civilization. The stars seemed to him to be cold, piercing crystals hung haphazardly on a black curtain.

He remembered visiting a planetarium once, and having constellations pointed out to him. Now he was unable to remember or recognize a single one - except he was sure he remembered those three stars in a row were a man's belt.

But James didn't care about constellations - for the first time in his life he understood how ordered his life was. From city streets to ticking clocks, from regimented school work to deadlines and urgent priorities, everything was neatly organized and blocked off in lists and grids.

But here was a stunning display of a random myriad of glowing lights neither designed nor dictacted by the power of man. Yet Man was not content to find a heavenly display over which He had no rule or power. So He crafted for Himself a story which explained the positions and orientations of each of these uncontrollable lights. In creating these stories, He could fool Himself into thinking He was in control.

Tonight, James had no interest in control. He just wanted to feel small in the vastness of an inexplicable, uncontrollable display of light and dark. For tonight, he felt a strange comfort just to be dominated by the violent display of disordered and uncontrolled lights.

This post was written in 15 minutes