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i tried turning it off and back on again.

Posted on By Wil

A few months ago, the hardware in my iMac shit the bed one final time. Rather than replace it (Apple hardware is not that great, and certainly not designed to last), I decided to convert this epic Xidax gaming rig I have into my primary production machine.

It worked like a dream for a long time, and Windows 10 began to feel like a pretty decent OS, even if I missed some Mac OS UI features (hitting space to preview files, and easy keyboard screen shots were the two I missed the most.)

But about a week ago, something went wrong. Everything started slowing down like crazy, Chrome just quit working entirely, and even Firefox ran so slow, I felt like I was using a 386. So I used every bit of computer learning and troubleshooting I’ve picked up in thirty-five years of computer use, and I turned it off and back on again.

It wouldn’t start up.

So I booted from the DVD, and told it to repair the problem. That didn’t work.

So I attempted to reinstall Windows. That didn’t work.

So I formatted the drive that C: lived on, and tried to reinstall Windows. That didn’t work, and I lost a ton of media by mistake as a bonus (I have it backed up on a Seagate drive, but it’s still a pain in the ass to lose it).

I went to the Internet, and I downloaded a few Linux utility distros to check the hardware integrity on the machine. I booted from those CDs, ran their tools, and confirmed that everything was working correctly.

At this point, my lungs were aching for air.

I got super frustrated, because all the diagnostics I ran appeared to work, and every test told me that there wasn’t anything wrong. It just turns out that Windows won’t install, and it gives me the super helpful advice to check the install logs that I can’t read because when I boot from the Windows DVD, it won’t let me write to any of the mounted file systems.

So I’m moving my opinion dial from “Windows isn’t that bad” back to “Windows is awful garbage that is an affront to all good people in the world.”

Also, one kid seems to really love the Speedo Guy.

Spinning the dial was satisfying, but it didn’t give me a working OS that I could use to get my work done, so I grabbed the latest release of Debian Linux, and booted from the resulting live DVD. It felt familiar, and unlike my Windows nightmare, it Just Worked(tm). For longtime *nix users, especially the subset of us who started using Red Hat or Debian or Mandrake or whatever back in the late 90s, this reality — that Linux worked effortlessly and without any configuration hassles — will likely prove to be quite pleasing.

I wondered if there was a hardware problem that I hadn’t uncovered, maybe a failing HDD or something, and I decided that the best way to test it would be to attempt a Debian install.

About seventeen minutes later, I booted my machine from GRUB, and like a magical leprechaun, Debian just worked. I had to install a couple of drivers to get the most out of the graphics card, to get Flash and Java to go, and to update Chromium, but that was it.

I’m still annoyed with Windows and its lack of useful error messages, and I am confident that I’m not getting the most computing/processing/graphics/awesome power out of this epic machine, but I have an OS that is solid and stable, that is making it possible for me to do my work, browse the Internet, and read and send Email. There are some idiosyncrasies that I’m not crazy about, and there are a few mild frustrations (I can’t easily watch Netflix or Hulu because of stupid DRM issues, and some websites like Twitter are painfully slow), but I’m definitely turning my dial toward “Linux is awesome.”

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the focus is sharp in the city

Posted on By Wil

I needed new headshots and publicity shots, so I asked my friend, Kaelen, to come over to Castle Wheaton and help me out. We took a few dozen pictures in a few different locations, and I’m super happy with what we got. Here’s one of them:

When we finished shooting for the day, I had a realization that probably means more to me than it will to anyone else, but since that’s never stopped me from writing about something before…

I hate having my picture taken. I feel like I have ugly teeth, my forehead is too big, and my eyes always reveal how deeply sad I am inside. If you wonder why I’m usually pulling a face in pictures, now you know why. It’s like my armor, I guess.

This started early one morning when I was seven or eight years-old. I had to have headshots taken for commercial casting agents, and my mom took me out of school one day to meet with a photographer she knew. I remember feeling like I was getting a free day off, because I didn’t have to go to school (I don’t know why we didn’t do this on a weekend. Or maybe we did and I don’t remember that part of the day correctly. It’s not the important part, which I’m getting to, anyway). On the way to wherever we were going, my mom drove us through a McDonald’s, and let me get an Egg McMuffin. This was a big deal for me, because my parents never got us fast food. So I remember getting that, a greasy hashbrown, and that concentrated orange juice that came in the plastic cup with a foil seal. I wasn’t allowed to eat in the car, so I kept my bag of fancy McDonald’s breakfast in my lap until we got to the park and met the photographer.

He made me uncomfortable right away. He was just too wound up, too excited, had way too much energy. I was so little, I didn’t know how to vocalize any of these feelings, and my parents were very much into me and my sister following rules, so I just behaved myself and sat down at a picnic table to eat. I can see and feel it now: it’s cool and a little damp, probably late Spring. The picnic table is made of wood, and someone has scratched their initials into the bench. I have carefully stabbed the straw through the foil top of my orange juice, and my hash brown is still in its little cardboard holder, sitting on the carefully unfolded bag that I’m using as a placemat. I have my Egg McMuffin in my hand, ready to eat it. The photographer grabs it out of my hand, takes a bite, spits the food out on the grass, and hands it back to me. “Okay!” He says, with terrifying enthusiasm, “act like you just took a big bite of this and you love it!” He begins taking photos.

I don’t remember anything else with any clarity. It was almost forty years ago, but I can still feel — right now I feel — how upset that made me. One of my overwhelming memories from being a kid actor is that I didn’t have a voice in my own life, and that I had to do what the adults around me wanted me to do. That guy, who I’m positive didn’t mean anything cruel and was just excited to get to work, snatching my breakfast away from me and turning it into a prop for a photo shoot I didn’t even want to be part of, perfectly encapsulated everything I ever felt about being a kid actor. For the next few hours, I had  to pose like an idiot, doing exaggerated expressions and changing my clothes a dozen times, because that’s how it worked in the late 70s.

Flash forward about four or five years. (My god I can’t believe it was only four or five years later, but that’s how fast the childhood that was stolen from me went by.) I’m in a studio with the other kids from Stand By Me. We’re posing for some publicity shots that will eventually make their way into teen magazines. I feel so awkward and uncomfortable. I am not cool like River, I am not famous like Corey, and I am not funny like Jerry. I am just sad and weird and self conscious and I want to be anywhere else.

Flash forward another year or so. I’m trying to figure out who I am and what I’m doing in my life. I’m at some party at Paramount, where I work every day on TNG. I’m only fourteen or maybe fifteen. There are no other kids my age there, and I feel sad and weird. I can’t relate to kids my own age because I never get to be around them, and I can’t relate to the adults I am always around, because I am a kid. I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do at this party where nobody is paying attention to me, when a photographer comes up and takes my picture. He doesn’t ask, he doesn’t give me a chance to get ready. He just calls my name and when I look up, he takes this shot, which of course goes into a teen magazine:

Maybe you don’t see it, but I can see how sad I am, even though I’m trying to do this smile thing I’ve settled upon where I don’t show my ugly teeth that I hate.

They say that the camera doesn’t lie, that the camera reveals what’s going on inside a person, and I think that’s accurate. In all these pictures of me from the 80s and 90s, you can see how weird and awkward I am, and I can see how much I wanted to be anywhere else. Maybe I didn’t like pictures because they made me feel so vulnerable, since I was forced to just be me, instead of putting on the mask of a character I was playing. Maybe I just didn’t want to pose for pictures because it was yet another thing that normal kids didn’t do, and I wanted to be a normal kid (for values of “normal” that I didn’t really understand, but heavily romanticized. Thanks, John Hughes).

Anyway. This is all context that, like I said, probably doesn’t matter to anyone who isn’t me. It is context that matters to me because the photos we took are only the second time in my life that I have asked someone to take my picture, because I wanted it taken. I realized that when we were finishing up, and it made me feel happy.

I love the pictures that we got, and I love that I’m at a place in my life, finally, that has allowed me to feel a little more comfortable in the camera’s eye.

blog

…and then Pete Townsend says, “Can anybody play the drums?”

Posted on By Wil

I was thinking about reinstalling Rock Band again recently, but I decided that, even though I really loved playing it back in the day, I am at a point in my life where I would rather spend that time actually learning an instrument, instead. I have played bass guitar and ukulele in the past. I also played guitar in the way that every lame college dude does, which means I never learned any theory, but I memorized some guitar tabs and chords, and sort of faked my way through a few songs for friends who were either too polite or embarrassed to tell me how bad I was.

I was sort of thinking that doing it as a game would be fun, so I gave Rocksmith guitar a try, but after about two hours of different game modes, it’s not for me. It was like all the frustration of Rock Band or Guitar hero, but without any of the fun of pretending that I was a rock star. I may plug in my old bass guitar (which is now a vintage instrument because I’m old) and try that mode, but for now, I’m going to try something different.

I have always wanted to learn to play the drums, and I was pretty good at the Rock Band drums when we played all the time, so I decided to pick up a small, inexpensive, student kit, and use YouTube videos to master the basics. While I was shopping around about a week ago, there was a shiny little kit on sale at woot, and it had more pieces and cost less than the three piece kit I was looking it, so I bought it. It was delivered today.

I’ve been putting it together, which is really fun, but murder on my old hands and knuckle joints, so I took a break to write this dumb post about the new experimental hobby thingy I’m doing: Is it possible for a 45 year-old dude like me to learn how to play the drums, using only the resources available online?

I intend to find out. I’ll document the process here.

blog

who lives who dies who tells your story

Posted on By Wil

The airplane shakes as violently as I have ever experienced in a flight, and I can hear the engines whine as the pilot cranks them up. I push down into my seat just a bit as we begin to climb. Two years ago, this kind of turbulence would have terrified me to the point of white hot panic, but I am calm. Ever since I got medical treatment for my depression and anxiety, I have been able to rationally accept things that I was once irrational about. I am able to react to things the way I imagine a normal person would (my doctor discourages me from saying “normal” in this context, because it makes me sound abnormal. He wants me to say “healthy” or “non-depressive”, but he’s not the boss of me). I know what’s happening: we are flying through the leading edge of a storm front that is on its way down the Pacific coast. The winds that are pushing and pulling that front are shaking the plane, so I imagine that I’m on a boat in heavy seas, or in a wagon on a rough dirt road.

We dip slightly, and my stomach goes weightless for half a second before we resume our climb. Anne grips my arm so tightly it hurts a little bit. I glance at her, and she frowns. She does not enjoy this. I close the book I haven’t been able to read, lean my head back, and shut my eyes…

(more…)

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thanks for listening.

Posted on By Wil

I wrote this on my dumb Facebook yesterday:.

At least three blogs linked to my blog about the minifigs today. All three of the ones I saw essentially quoted the entire thing, and then added commentary that misrepresented what I said, and what my intention was when I said it.

Another blog, home to one of the most pathetic, sad, empty, angry, hateful failures in the universe also linked to it.

The resulting flood of toxic and cruel and hateful people into my life has been appalling and revealing.

Unsurprisingly, when a shitty person is shitty, they attract other shitty persons to their blog. When a blog that presents itself as news writes shitty posts that are intended to make shitty people feel better about themselves by attacking and tearing down other people, those sites attract shitty people.

And now a lot of those shitty people are all up in my business. I can ignore a lot of it, and I block and move on, but it’s frustrating and disheartening to see so much hate and cruelty projected from people who I don’t know and wasn’t writing for in the first place. It’s gross and it makes me feel … well, the only word I can come up with is “icky” and that’s not the best word. I just feel like the stink of toxic, terrible people is around me today, and it makes me grateful for the millions of you out there who are not that, who choose to spend a little bit of time in the same virtual space as me.

Dickheads are gonna be dickheads, and I have to be better at just ignoring that (Hardwick is the Zen master of this, if you’re looking for inspiration). But those news blogs that reprinted exactly what I wrote, but then recontextualized it (and me) to create a false narrative … that’s frustrating to me. Maybe I wasn’t clear enough in my post, so I left it open to interpretation. Maybe I didn’t make it clear that I was answering a question, sharing a raw and unfiltered emotional response to something, and concluding that I was disappointed. I wasn’t mad, I wasn’t ranting, I wasn’t furious, I didn’t call for a boycott. I just said I was disappointed, and I explained why. I thought I was clear, and I thought it was dispassionate (as much as it can be when it’s talking about something that has been a bit of a raw nerve for thirty years). So if I wasn’t extremely clear, I guess that’s on me.

But I can’t help but feel like these blogs deliberately used sensational language to create a narrative that justified their writers essentially quoting everything I wrote, adding no new information or informed analysis, and collecting the ad revenue. That’s frustrating to me, because they get to move on to their next bit of sensationalized bullshit, while I spend days dealing with the trolling and associated garbage from people who will read their sensationalized headlines, accept their sensationalized framing, and then come after me on social media or in the comments of my own blog. It’s ironic that I had to block some shitty people here, because one of the founding principles of my blog, over ten years ago, was for me to have a place to speak for myself, after a lifetime of being spoken for by publicists. It was to give me a place to set the record straight, after years of being talked about by people who knew little to nothing about me. And here we are, a decade later, and I’m doing the same thing I was back then: speaking up to say, “that’s not what I said, and you know it’s not what I said.” There’s an argument to be made for just ignoring it and moving on, and there’s an argument to be made that I’m doing this all over again ten years later because I’m screwed up, emotionally. Maybe that’s the case. I have to live with this brain that lies to me all the time, and I’m coming off of 24 hours of shitty people telling me to kill myself, so maybe I’m not the most objective observer in this regard.

But all of that is prelude and context to what I hope will be the real takeaway from this stupid thing: I am genuinely grateful that I interact with kind and good people in real life and online almost every day. I am grateful that we work with intention to create a positive and uplifting place when we are together, and I am grateful that, even when I was a shitty teenager, I never would have wanted to be around cruel, unhappy, nihilists who have little to no empathy in their lives, and use anger to give their lives meaning.

Thanks for listening.

Note: Because I’m dealing with trolls and dickweeds right now, I’ve set comments to go into moderation, unless you have a previously-approved comment. Thanks for understanding.