starshadow_rivaulx | Little things

It's been another long while since I did one of these, hasn't it? Mid-month hormonal adjustments are creeping up on me, I think. That, and I've been occupying myself with any number of things.

Anyway, ping.fm has been a wee bit wonky, which put me off writing a post. Nothing like pasting something into an interface multiple times, only to be told that something borked along the way. Eurgh. So now that I've worked myself into the writing this, what have I been up to?

One of things I did recently was to weed through my bookmarks. I discovered that when you export Google Bookmarks into an html file, and you have labeled said bookmarks, you end up with duplicate entries. Oh, yuck. Also, you end up with some weird coding at the end of the URL, double yuck.

This irked me to the point that I spent most of a day tweaking things through judicious HTML editing and the Manage Bookmarks function of Firefox, to come up with a clean file that is now on Google Bookmarks and Opera and Firefox. Figured that for my purposes, I didn't need labels or tags, since each interface has a handy search function. Guess what? I was right, and now I am a happier browser.

I also edited some DVR files preparatory to burning. Once I post this up, I will go edit at least 10 more for today, and by the end of the week, all things being equal, I will be ready to burn movies that have been inside the DVR since JANUARY OMGWTFBBQPOLARBEARETC. Total fail, or what?

One of our hoses still needs a fitting. *sigh* Really, I have to get myself moving on certain things!

Much progress has been made in the area of downloading torrents. *bounce* Am current on most of the series, and have, not surprisingly, broken my resolution to download more anime. GAH. However, since the new series I'm downloading appear to be short ones, and pretty. At some point, I will get to enjoy them.

Turned in a writing assignment ahead of schedule. *grin* It's practically my last assignment for the year's lineup, so that makes me happy. Got a bit of a jolt when my managing editor asked for the article I'd already sent, but it was easy enough to re-send it. So I had a clear conscience coming into the Easter Triduum.

My Twitter life is flourishing like weeds in the summertime. Curiousity now has me with three Twitter apps in the laptop: DestroyTwitter, Spaz, and TweetDeck. Don't ask. Please don't ask.

Discovered the lyrics of some of Ramon's favorite Spanish songs and printed them out for his enjoyment. Now I can't get "Adelita" out of my head. *grin*

Ramon and I discovered the renovated Andok's Lechon Manok (I'll have some pictures on my photoblog: http://ping.fm/oGQ6E) and after having dinner there, decided to try the breakfast menu after Ramon went in for his regular blood test. The food is good. We know that the lechon manok and the liempo (pork belly) will always be top notch. Discovered that the breaded pork chops were good also, ditto for the sinigang na baboy (pork cubes+vegetables in sour broth).

While cruising down memory lane one night, I discovered fan sites and fanfic for one of my first loves: a TV Western called Lancer. It starred Wayne Maunder and James Stacy as the two sons of a rancher played by Andrew Duggan. The basic premise is this: Andrew Duggan played Murdoch Lancer, who had married a rich young woman named Catherine Garrett, who died in childbirth. Their son, Scott, was taken in by Catherine's father and raised with all the comforts of wealth in Boston, while Murdoch tried to defend his ranch from land raiders. At one point, he was about to take on Harlan, his father-in-law, in a custody battle, but then realized his ranch at that point was no place for a child. So he went home, and then married a Mexican woman named Maria. She gave him his younger son, Johnny, but just as the child reached his second birthday, Maria ran away with a gambler and told Johnny that Murdoch kicked them out of the house.

The series opens when Murdoch has asked his sons to come home - so here you have blond Scott, genteel and well-educated; and dark Johnny, who had been on the run since his mother passed away when he was about twelve, then hired out as a gunfighter named Johnny Madrid ever since. The rest of the series traces the adventures of the family as they learn to live with each other and make themselves into a real family. Other characters include Teresa O'Brian, the daughter of Murdoch's late foreman Paul (shot by land raiders); Maria, the cook/housekeeper; Cipriano, the new ranch foreman, or Segundo; his wife Elena; the Baldemoros who run the general store.

I have been devouring the fanfic ever since - it was a fandom I used to write for, at the age of about twelve, when the words "fandom" and "fanfic" hadn't reached my ears yet. It led me to dredging up from memory the old plots, and as a writing exercise, trying to tweak the Mary Sue bits out and some sense in. The prose is still a bit purple, and the timeline still has knots, but the writing flows, and I'm happy.

I also found a Yahoo!Group for Lancer, and now am engaged in happy discussions about the series. So that's fun.

That's about it for now. Will write up a post about yesterday's Easter Sunday events later. Ciao!