Well, this was quite an interesting entry to the ol’ blog to make. My monitor blew out on Wednesday, leaving me where I have to hook the computer up to the TV in order to see anything. If you’ve ever tried to use a television display on your computer, you’re well aware of what a jerkofftic operation that is. In order to see what I’m typing, I had to set the font size to 36-pt, then shrink it down before pasting into the site. Oi.

If you’re wondering, I had a really nice time in Los Angeles with my boys as well as Matt, Ann, Dave, and everybody else who we saw while I was there. The “Hollywood Adventure” blog, which had just the one entry, is more complete now, and can be accessed by following the link up there on the Web Ring.

Related to that, you may have noticed that I’ve taken down the “Website Version 1.0” link, which I figure most people had little use for. Some of the pictures that were exclusive to that site will, in time, find their way here, but the only feature I decided to move immediately was the first volume of Interesting & Factual Tales, which look a bit better now that they’re not all on multiple pages and whatnot. I actually shuddered when I was clickin’ through a few of those oldies out in LA.

In 36-pt, this small entry has already taken up six pages.

Make sure you take note of my new phone number; the old one is being disconnected tomorrow (3/24).

I’ve sampled several bottles of the beer I made at home, and it’s pretty good. It’s very bubbly and filling, though. Which is too bad when you wanna sit down for about four of ’em, but not so bad if you wanna quit at two. I must’ve siphoned a little too much out of the fermentation bucket, because I drank a couple that had some sediment in the bottom. Not that it’s gonna kill you or anything, but it’s just sort of gross to look at your beer and see little things floating in it. First try, though, so…

It’s been really warm in Bozeman since I’ve been back from CA, although it snowed a little last night; everything was covered this morning. Most of it has melted now. Personally, (especially after a West Coast trip) I am so done with winter and snow and all that crap. Anxious for springtime I am.

I only did three loads of wash today, but it still took me 3.5 hours.

OK, so, a lot of you have heard about this already, so bear with me, cuz some of you haven’t…
My Grandpa Bock’s health has deteriorated significantly over the past week. It was last Sunday that he was admitted to the hospital after losing consciousness and falling in his house. Tuesday afternoon, he had surgery to remove a fist-sized tumor from his brain, which the doctor determined to be a very malignant cancer. Wednesday night, as he recovered in the ICU, with a rough but not very hopeful treatment regimen on the horizon, Grandpa had a severe stroke, which, if treated, would leave him at the mercy of life support machines the rest of his days. Grandpa and Grandma made the decision well before this sequence of events to not put the other or the family through a sad and stressful time like that. The fact is he’s not going to recover, he’s not really responsive to outside stimuli, and so it’ll just be a short matter of time until Grandpa passes away.

Obviously, since I live in Montana, I wasn’t able to be there with the rest of my family this week, and I really wish I could’ve been. I also haven’t gotten much else done all week long, because, as you can imagine, my thoughts have been monopolized by Grandpa and Grandma and the support I could only offer over the telephone.

Clearly, anyone can look at these, but mostly for the benefit of my fam, here are three high-quality photo scans I did of Grandma & Grandpa. Any other photos I have are at home in Eagle River.
– photo one
– photo two
– photo three
(you should right-click these links and choose “Save As…”)
Thanks very much for your continuing thoughts and prayers for Grandpa, Grandma, and all us Bocks.

Well, what else? The next video could be a while in coming, just because I don’t know what my schedule is going to be like for the near future, and I want to do some “production” on the stuff I shot in LA. Interesting & Factual Tales should be coming around with a fair degree of regularity, though; I had several good ideas on my trip.

I had waffles for breakfast and lunch today, and I think I might have them for dinner, too.

Hey, so I’m leaving to fly to Los Angeles in about an hour… wanted to give a quick heads-up on that, and say that I will be keeping a log of stuff that happens on this trip, for sharing later on.

Don’t know if I’ll get to update at all next week, but if not, I’m coming back to Bozeman on March 17, so I’ll see you then at the latest.

So I’ve recently re-installed this voice recognition software package, something I haven’t used since I was living at Grandma’s house last summer.

If you’ve ever used that sort of software, you can appreciate how hilarious it can be to try to do dictation with it. No matter how “accurate” a given software package claims to be, there is no way you can successfully dictate as quickly or accurately as you can type. I’ve had quite a bit of success with it with one- or two-word commands; stuff like “print document,” or “start Word,” these are easy things. But you start barking whole sentences at this thing, forget about it.

I’ve done about 10 or 12 “training” sessions with the voice software now, so it should be fairly well acquainted with my voice. Take a look at this, though: the italicized text below is what the computer wrote while I was talking to it. You can download an mp3 of what I actually said here.

one of the things I need to get about wish to gain is to make this topic again can now buy some underwear and the reason I need to buy younger wearing his study ’cause I won’t happen now to last through my entire trip to los angeles next week , once I get to l.a. and I figure I’ll need now approximately eleven pairs of underwear and in order to well have enough underwear the last through those eleven days I’ve been really going to need to purchase more sense that I will I be fox series ended half the best I thought it was a reasonable to go into the gap and now I know two or three you’ve there’s the ones that I get from again I simply the most comfortable love the way stand does in chief at all and dying so that’s what I’m going to build now going to the get for underwear the set. to

So I had some suggestions yesterday afternoon and today about what the problem might be with the dry, red, flaking skin on my arms (which is still gross, make no mistake). And I got to thinking, we all had so much fun last week with the Top Five Saddest Songs Ever Written, why not try to replicate that? (That’s what they do on TV, anyway.)

So, get out your stethoscope and white coat, scroll down to the “3/3” blog entry, and then write with a diagnosis and remedy for whatever this skin condition might be. The person with the best suggestion (criteria for what defines “best” I reserve to my discretion) will receive an honorary diploma as well as license to introduce him- or herself at parties as “Your Name, M.D.”

Winter has been less than good to my skin. I think my extensive inactivity and daily showering, combined with the general dryness of the season have come together to create some irritating issues, particularly on the backs of my upper arms. I’ve been on a moisturizing soap now for about 2.5 weeks, and that seems to have helped a little; at least they’ve stopped flaking so much, which was gross.
My solution to this problem has been to wear long sleeves when I go out of the house. However, I’m flying to Los Angeles on Thursday, and there will probably be less of a call to wear my winter wardrobe.

I’ll keep you up to date on how this shakes out.

I finished a new draft of Blender over the weekend. If I had to give drafts names in computer software terms, I’d say that the one currently online here is version 1.4. The one I got done with Saturday night is version 2.0. I’ll post it as soon as I give it a read-through start to finish, making sure there’s nothing that needs a real stiff polish (like, with a dust rag, not like a sausage).

Ok, well, things to do, things to do… I think I’ll go pay my rent maybe. It finally stopped snowing.