One step forward two steps back.\u00a0 Ah, the slings and arrows or outrageous fortune.\u00a0 Last week the mainframe that I keep my photos and editing software on died a terrible death.\u00a0 I had hoped at first that maybe the power supply had given out.\u00a0 I sent it off to the local computer geeks with this dream of a call back the next day about how a wire had come loose or a fuse had blown and all was well.\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 Not so much.<\/p>\n
I received the dreaded news that, \u201cThe motherboard is fried and all you can reuse is the case, drives and the fans.\u201d<\/p>\n
The horror.<\/strong><\/p>\n Well, at least my photos didn\u2019t go up the chimney so that\u2019s good.\u00a0 But this has put a kink in my photo-editing schedule.\u00a0 For the last week I\u2019ve been scouring my camera memory card for stuff to post and I\u2019m reaching the bottom of the barrel.\u00a0 I\u2019ll need some more stuff really soon.\u00a0 Plus, I can\u2019t use my favorite editing software or the big monitors I usually use.\u00a0 Well maybe I can, but I\u2019d have to fiddle around with the wires and I\u2019m too lazy to do it as a one-off.\u00a0 But I must be stoic.\u00a0 As the bard reminds us, “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;\u00a0 They kill us for their sport.<\/strong>”<\/p>\n Or something like that.<\/p>\n But not everything was bad this week.\u00a0 I decided on a path forward for my story.\u00a0 If you remember in the last installment, I had my good guys strike back at the vicious President of the United States who had hurled a 10-megaton nuke into their underground retreat.\u00a0 As a counter attack they undermined the White House, the US Capitol, the Pentagon and a few other key federal buildings and sent them hurtling hundreds of feet into the underground abyss.\u00a0 This effectively decapitated the United States federal government.\u00a0 Specifically, the president, vice president, the congress and the cabinet secretaries are all dead.<\/p>\n What I\u2019ve decided to do is arrange for the only honest man in the FBI to be selected to succeed the president.\u00a0 And this is the guy who I\u2019ve been using to track down my protagonist and his sponsors.<\/p>\n So, the antagonist I have who has been hunting for the sniper is selected for succession to the presidency.\u00a0 In part he is selected for the knowledge he\u2019s gained hunting the sniper and the organization supporting him.\u00a0 But because the head of the FBI had been assassinated earlier, he was also the acting head of the bureau.\u00a0 Of course, that isn\u2019t technically in the line of succession for the presidency but with all the legitimate successors dead, the military and the supreme court put their heads together and after doing an inventory of who was left and who was willing, they chose my guy.<\/p>\n Now this is an outrageous scenario.\u00a0 And so, it\u2019s really a lot of fun to poke around with.\u00a0 And because it\u2019s so outlandish I can do more or less whatever seems like fun with it.\u00a0 I have the poor schnook summoned to a military base and he\u2019s thinking that he\u2019s about to be blamed for the catastrophic failure of the manhunt for the sniper and instead he\u2019s being asked if he will accept the presidency.\u00a0 That\u2019s a pretty great scene.\u00a0 I think I\u2019m going to have him ask if he can work remote from home.\u00a0 That would be a nice touch.\u00a0 I think that\u2019s what I would ask for.<\/p>\n So anyway, the story is moving forward.\u00a0 So that\u2019s good.<\/p>\n Camera Girl laid down the law today and had me put the weatherstripping around the basement door.\u00a0 She found where I had hidden the supplies and brought them out to me.\u00a0 So, I grumbled and dragged myself over to the door and did it.\u00a0 And you know, it really made a big difference.\u00a0 But I really did a lousy job installing it and I\u2019m planning to redo it and add a sweep to the bottom of the door.\u00a0 Funny how these home improvement projects can grow on you.<\/p>\n And looking around at the Trump juggernaut I see he\u2019s making headway in all directions.\u00a0 He\u2019s travelling to North Carolina and Los Angeles to get involved with the hurricane and fire victims.\u00a0 And tonight, JD Vance was the tie-breaking vote in the Senate to confirm Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense.\u00a0 Collins, Murkowski and good old Mitch McConnell were the holdouts that made Vance\u2019s vote necessary.\u00a0 Well, that\u2019s why we needed the other Senate pickups last November.\u00a0 But things are looking up everywhere in Trump world.<\/p>\n So that\u2019s my post, a little this and little that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One step forward two steps back.\u00a0 Ah, the slings and arrows or outrageous fortune.\u00a0 Last week the mainframe that I keep my photos and editing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[660,552,5,3366,551,1289,1263,659,6],"tags":[3269,300,4776,3184,4484,16],"class_list":["post-32016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-camera-reviews","category-country-music-reviews","category-current-events","category-life-in-dunwich","category-music-reviews","category-fiction-by-me","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-photography-reviews","category-trump","tag-american-archipelago","tag-camera-girl","tag-home-improvements","tag-j-d-vance","tag-the-american-archipelago-book-1-the-sniper","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"\n