Author Archives: Kyle Kimberlin

it was a dank and sultry night*

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Here’s a thought for the day, spotted over at Jessy Ferguson’s blog.

Ideas won’t keep; something must be done about them.
~ Alfred North Whitehead

Sure, I feel that way sometimes: as if there is something I’m discovering, and if I don’t use it – find a way to express it – I’ll lose it. Of course, on dank and sultry nights like this, such a concession just raises the question that begs to be asked:

What’s the big idea?

Right now, I’m working on a piece in which the narrator – protagonist – describes a painful few days in his life. The narrator’s grandfather, who has been a close part of the narrator’s entire life, rapidly develops pneumonia, then senile dementia, and enters a nursing home. Our hero confronts his life-long fears of losing members of his family, and his abiding fear of solitude.

Cut off from his grandfather, he feels increasing alienated from the rest of his family too, and helpless to be of meaningful service to them. Narrator’s younger brother, a sucessful academic, returns to the family farm for a crisis visit. The brothers discuss the changes impending in their lives, and the narrator’s assertion that his house is haunted, but not the way you think.

So my ideas are these:

It is daunting to face life with an abiding fear of inadequacy and abandonment, and the certitude that one must go on in spite of fundamental changes in the form and structure of life as he’s always known it.

Being an integral member of a family in such calamity is painful. Being kept at arms’ length by loved ones at such a time is worse.

Often our memories just won’t give us any peace. They are what goes bump in the night.

Fortunately for me, the narrator’s brother is an associate professor of psychology. So he can help me with the pathologies implied above for the writer. … Free!

*Sorry about the post title. I couldn’t help myself.

feeling restored

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I got a new desktop computer recently. It’s very cool. It’s so fast I can post this tonight and not even worry about having the idea until a week from Thursday. Anyhoo, once I got my many gigs of goodies safely ensconced on the new machine, it seemed like a good time to reformat my HP dv5000 series laptop, the machine I’m using at this moment. Just wipe the hard drive clean and start over. It’s 3 years old and getting a little gummy and wobbly.

Don’t worry, this has a happy ending. The laptop is all restored, good as new, and running fine. We writers gotta keep our tools in working order, right?

In the good old days, a few years ago, a person who wanted to restore his computer used a disk that came with the machine. You bought the expensive thing, and it came with a genuine Windows disk, with a certificate of sanctity signed by Bill Gates. But computer makers are going cheapass on us, kids. My laptop gave me the option of creating my own restore disks when I first turned it on in 2006. Wow.

On the hard drive, there is also a partition – a special section, set apart from the rest of the computer’s contents – which can be activated to restore Windows XP on the computer. But here’s the problem:

There’s no instruction anywhere on the computer, or anywhere on the HP Web site, or really anywhere on any site on the Internet that a person can trust, that tells us how to use that partition. I even downloaded the technical manual for the laptop from HP, and it’s not mentioned. It has complete diagrams for reducing the beast to a pile of plastic and screws and putting it back together, but no restoration.

So today I put in the disk (there are two DVDs) and started the reformat. It warned me that I was erasing the hard drive, but I forged ahead. Then it told me what you – if you have found this post looking for the information – need to know:

It said this restore is going to make a partition on your hard drive for restoration of your computer to factory condition. If you ever need to use it, press F11 while booting up.

It told me this after the disk had started erasing my hard drive. Too late to go back and use that option. Then the disks took well over an hour – around 90 minutes – to do the job. With the set up business afterwards, it was close to 2 hours.

Sunuffabish. I have to believe that was not the fast way to do it. In fact, I’ve reformatted 2 other computers in the last week for other people – also Windows XP – and it took more like 30 or 45 minutes.

So here’s the poop:

To restore an HP (Hewlett-Packard) dv5000 series laptop (notebook) using the restore partition on the hard drive, press F11 during start-up. … Probably … that’s what it said to do.

Now, the information is googleable on the Internet, permanently. At least, that’s the premise of a blog post. It has a permanlink. (On a blogger blog like this one, the link is the time, at the end of the post, and it’s also the title of the post.) You’re welcome.

Oh, and by the way, my new computer is also an HP, with Windows Vista. It came with no disks at all. Just the partition on the hard drive. Which does not make me feel very secure.

hey, moron

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Doesn’t it make you feel lousy to steal somebody else’s stuff without them even giving you permission to use it? People always do things like that, and nobody stops them. People are crumby. They really are.

“The New Times’ Art Beat blog has been covering J.D. Salinger’s attempt to prevent an alleged sequel to his famous “Catcher in the Rye” from being sold in the U.S. The book in question, “60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye”, was written by the Swede Fredrik Colting under the pen name J.D. California.

Colting’s lawyers are calling “60 Years Later” both a sequel and a parody—both are legal ways of using another’s work in conjunction with your own. But the courts are calling it plagiarism and thus far Salinger is succeeding at keeping the book off American shelves.”

“Sequel” to Catcher in the Rye Banned — Big Think.

So how was my Holden impression, above? Not too lousy? Anyway …

“All morons hate it when you call them a moron.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 6

not a drop to drink

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Should Water Be Legislated as a Human Right?

“UNITED NATIONS – The growing commercialisation of water – and the widespread influence of the bottling industry worldwide – is triggering a rising demand for the legal classification of one of the basic necessities of life as a human right.

‘We definitely need a covenant or [an international] treaty on the right to water so as to establish once and for all that no one on earth must be denied water because of inability to pay,’ says Maude Barlow, a senior adviser to the President of the U.N. General Assembly, on water issues.

‘We’ve got to protect water as a human right,’ she said, pointing out that the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva would be the most likely venue to propose such a covenant.”

My initial reaction to this was Yes, of course it should be an established human right. Companies that investment in the means of pumping, purification, storage and transport should be compensated by the public. That’s only fair. But people who can’t pay should have clean water to drink.

My second reaction was OK, what other enumerated human rights do we need to establish? Food comes to mind, and shelter. Health care. And how about … call me crazy, but what about Peace?

rainbow day

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I posted a couple of doggie related things on the blog today. There’s a reason. Today is the fourth anniversary of the day my Tasha went on to wait for me in a clearing up the road. Some say beside a rainbow bridge, where the pets wait for their people to catch up.

If you don’t know Tasha, you can meet her here.

Tasha was my best friend and sidekick for 14 years, and I still miss her very much.

Be patient, little friend. I’m coming, by and by.

yikes

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Wanna see one of the most daunting sights for a writer?

click to enlarge

Pretty scary, huh? Completely blank. Whatarya gonna do?

There was supposed to be ideation for a chapter there by now. It was in my head when I went into the other room a few minutes ago, but when I got back it was gone. Dang.