Bryce Moore's Blog, page 75

Upgrading My Home Theater Speakers

It’s been 12 years since I first got a surround sound system. Back then, it was a huge leap for me, and I found a good deal on a quality Onkyo system (something sort of like this one, though mine was a 7.1 system.) And for those twelve years, things have been good. My AV receiver had to be replaced about six years ago (and I expect to have to upgrade it again at some point), but it was great to have the surround sound going for my media viewing experiences.

That said, when we switched the movie room to a larger space, I noticed that the small speakers I’d gotten back in 2008 were no longer really cutting it. Especially for the voice track on films (which runs through the center channel): I had to have subtitles on for almost everything to be able to always understand what people were saying. Also, the subwoofer wasn’t as woofy as I really wanted.

So I started looking into ways to upgrade the sound. From my research, bumping up just the center speaker wouldn’t be a good idea, since it would create a really bad conflict with the front left and front right speakers. You want those paired if at all possible, so that the sound at the front of the room (where most of the sounds come from) is balanced. A bigger subwoofer is easier to get on its own. So I started looking into potential speakers and deals (because who wants to pay full price on anything?)

For a lot of the research I do into things like this, I use Reddit pretty heavily. Reddit does a great job of connecting people who are interested in the same topic, giving you a place to ask questions and read FAQs that aren’t influenced by paid reviews and salespeople. Is it perfect? No. But it’s an easy way to find quality information quickly. There’s a Home Theater reddit with a great FAQ that gives a number of recommendations around speakers.

Once I started looking at the actual recommendations, however, I discovered it was much more complicated than I initially assumed. I didn’t want bookshelf speakers–I wanted tower speakers that would be more robust. But when I looked at the actual dimensions of those suckers . . . they’re huge. Some of them are more than two feet deep and a foot wide, and the idea of having such big speakers in my room was . . . less than ideal. (Funny side story: I kept seeing the abbreviation WAF, and I had no idea what it meant. People talked about how important it was, and how it was necessary to make compromises in some cases due to WAF, but no one said what it actually meant. After some googling, I discovered it stood for “Wife Approval Factor.” Which makes a ton of sense . . .)

For a while, I was thinking I’d have to compromise with nicer bookshelf speakers, just because of size issues. But in the end, I went through all their recommendations, paying attention to the dimensions. I found some potential speakers that would work, and then checked their Black Friday deals. (Checking out the subwoofers, as well.) Long story short (too late), I found some tower speakers I liked (these, with the accompanying center speaker), as well as a subwoofer, that all were on a good 30%+ off sale, and I pulled the trigger.

Actually installing the speakers was pretty straightforward. The wiring was all there, and I just had to take off the old speakers and hook up the new ones. The difference (to me) is remarkable. The sound is much fuller and I no longer need subtitles for everything I’m watching. (Huzzah!) The subwoofer really shakes the room now when it’s called for, and it’s made my home theater feel more like a real theater.

This essentially bumps up my speaker system to “mid-range” for the primary speakers. (I’m leaving the surround speakers as Onkyos for now, because I just don’t feel like they need the extra kick.) It’s hard for me to believe I’d ever want to go to high end speakers. The cost would be 5-10 times what I just paid, and I don’t think I’d get that sort of use out of them. So for now, I’m happy to have my system where I’d like it to end up, from an audio perspective. (Ultimately, I see myself upgrading the AV receiver to an 8k model and getting a new projector at that time, as well. But that’s for the future . . .)

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

What Makes an Ugly Sweater?

In discussion last night, the topic of ugly sweaters came up, and there was a bit of debate over what, exactly, an ugly sweater consists of and (more importantly) if it’s possible to ruin an ugly sweater. In other words, is there some sort of ideal, platonic form of ugliness in regards to sweaters, and anything more or less than that is veering from that ideal?

Now this is a topic I think we can really sink our teeth into. Something that can help us come together and bring us up out of the endless squabbling of the past. So, friends: what makes an ugly sweater?

On the surface, I realize this seems like a pretty straightforward question. After all, you can go to Amazon this second and buy any number of ugly sweaters. You’ve got pop culture references to Christmas Vacation or Home Alone. You’ve got Christmas llamas and Christmas tree substitutes. But I would argue that these aren’t really ugly Christmas sweaters, mainly because they’re ugly on purpose. Tacky Christmas sweaters? You betcha. But to me, I think ugliness has to be something that’s more an accidental byproduct than the point itself.

In many ways, my approach is probably influenced by my experience with ugly ties on my mission. Any novice can go and buy a tacky tie. Something with an idiotic picture on it, or something that was made to be ridiculed. But it took a real connoisseur to go through thrift stores and find a tie that was made to be stylish, but which had either gone horribly wrong, or long since fallen out of favor and into ugly-dom.

So to find a truly ugly sweater (by my definition), you’d have to find one that’s made to be stylish, but is most definitely not. I believe the Ursprung of the ugly Christmas sweater can be traced back to the Norwegian sweaters. The ones with the snowflake-esque patterns on them. I happen to like a lot of them, and you can look through Dale of Norway as a sort of sampler of what’s available. It is here, amidst the sweaters with aspirations to greatness, that you might have hope of finding nominees for the truly ugly. The models have to look like they mean business, rather than that they’re kidding around. Ideally, an ugly sweater would be so bad that you can almost tell the model is reconsidering their career choice, just for putting the thing on. And yet they wear it anyway, because this is fashion.

With a bit of browsing on their site, I think I’ve come across a potential candidate. The Snohetta Unisex sweater.

It’s either a decapitated reindeer head, stylish bleeding snowflake patterns, or . . . some sort of post modern statement on the commercialization of Christmas? I’m not really sure, to be honest. But I do know that it will set you back a cool $420 to buy a new one. You have to admire a person who, when faced with the decision of buying a new iPad or a Godfather-Meets-Christmas olive green monstrosity, goes with the Godfather. This is no gag gift. This is a sweater that wants to be the real deal.

(As a side note, I have to also observe that for a sweater to really be ugly, it has to be potentially beautiful to some people. Otherwise, you’re just boxing with kid gloves on.)

So taking this sweater as our exemplar, is there anything that could be added to it to make it uglier, without going too far? I mean, you could add a red nose to the reindeer, but I think at that point it would veer off into “subtly comic” territory, ruining its pure ugliness. Likewise, picking a different color palette might also ruin it.

The more I think about it, the more this sweater persuades me that somewhere out there, there truly is the world’s ugliest sweater. One that would make all those pretenders on Amazon weep in shame. It’s probably resting at the bottom of some donation bin, or maybe at the back of someone’s closet. But it would be perfect.

Anyone got any real nominees?

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Newsletter Hiatus

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Every year since we moved to Maine, I’ve made an annual family newsletter filled with joke articles about what we’ve been up to for the past year. I also throw in a short Christmas story for good measure.

This year I just don’t have it in me to take a reflective look back at 2020. Some of that is that I just don’t have the energy to put the project together. Some of it is that I have no real desire to reflect back on the year. Some of it is that when I started the tradition, I had a whole lot more time available to me.

So this year I’m just acknowledging that my life circumstances have changed, and it is what it is. It’s not easy for me to stop doing things once there’s a tradition behind it. I’m a completionist at heart, and giving up on something feels . . . wrong to me.

But I also have to acknowledge that forcing myself to go through with it anyway would likely be worse for my mental health this time around. Maybe next year will feel better, or maybe I’ll be going on a prolonged hiatus. Who knows.

I am still working on a short story this year, and since I won’t have a newsletter to send it out in, I’ll post it as a blog entry as a gift to all of you. Not sure how it’ll turn out just yet. I’m about three thousand words in. It’s funny in parts and upsetting in others.

Maybe too close to home for 2020 . . .

Anyway. In case you, too, need permission to not do some tradition this year, know that you’re in good company if you feel the need to step aside. And to those of you who are used to getting my newsletter, sorry. Maybe next year . . .

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Location, Location, Location

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Back when Denisa and I were house hunting (over 13 years ago), we had never bought a house before, but we had a few ideas about what we really wanted. Most of those were centered around things like the look of the house and having some property to go with it. The house we ended up choosing was nice in many ways, but one way I wasn’t a big fan of was its location: right on the path to the high school, just a half mile or so away from the main road in the area.

There would be traffic all the time! There would be noise! Light from Wal-Mart in the distance. Lots of things concerned us at the time, but in the end, the price and the other aspects of the house ended up convincing us to turn a blind eye to the location. It wasn’t perfect, but nothing would be, right?

It’s interesting to me, then, to see how in the thirteen years since we bought the house, my perceptions have changed. The house’s location obviously hasn’t, but I now look at that location as one of the biggest assets of the place as opposed to a liability. Yes, we still get traffic in the morning when school is starting and the afternoon when it lets out, but that’s minimal as far as nuisances go.

On the other hand, we’re just a mile away from Wal-Mart and very close to the main road in the area, so we can get around places quite quickly, and our road gets plowed very frequently. We might have to worry about icy roads, but usually it’s a bigger concern about wherever we want to get to, rather than being able to get out of our driveway in the first place. And being so close to the high school and the main road (and the hospital just a mile further) means that when the power goes out, it almost always comes back a few hours later. The longest we’ve had to go without power in the thirteen years we’ve lived here is probably a day. Maybe a bit more once? But nothing that sticks out in my memory. Over that same stretch of time, we’ve had many friends be stuck without power for three days or more, multiple times.

This is in no way meant as a taunt to the people without power right now. We had a snow storm that brought a lot of heavy snow and downed tree limbs on Saturday night, and there are still many people in Maine without power. But every time a storm like that happens, I’m reminded again about how much I thought the location of our house was a problem, and how wrong I really was.

Sometime I guess it’s better to be lucky than smart.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Puppy Update: December

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Hard to believe Ferris is already over five months old. It’s been a bit since I gave you all an update on how Mr. Drooler is doing, so I thought I’d fix that right now.

All told, he’s settling in very well. He’s got a routine that he sticks to for the most part. Up around 7am, lunch at noon, dinner at 5, and to bed at 8:30pm. Lately he’s been teething, with little puppy teeth coming out left and right. This also means that his mouth is hurting him, and so he likes to gnaw on things a bit more than normal. (The real trick is convincing him that MC is not a chew toy. He still views her as his peer instead of Someone to Listen To.)

Tomas trained Ferris to ring a bell by the door whenever he needs to go out. This was a very good idea in theory, and Ferris picked it up very easily. However, it also gave Ferris a tool to tell us that he pretty much always wants to go out. If we’re not being entertaining enough, he’ll just go over and ring the bell. Multiple times. Have you tried reasoning with someone whose trump card is “I will poop on the floor if you don’t do what I want you to do”? It’s very difficult, especially when the only way they can communicate is by ringing a bell, barking, or lunging for your seven year old.

Still, we haven’t had any accidents in a long time. (Except for one, when the kids were all trying to get ready for the bus, and Ferris was freaking out. We thought it was just because he was sad they were going. It turns out it was because he had to poop . . .)

He’s very affectionate, and still likes to come sit in my lap, even if he doesn’t really fit anymore. (He’s getting very big, very quickly.) He will happily play fetch with anyone who’s up to the task, and he loves going on runs. That said, he also tends to be frightened pretty easily. We were watching Alone the other day, and there was a bear on the screen. Ferris was not a fan of the bear at all, and wouldn’t calm down until the bear left. Of course, it was on our projector, so the bear was bigger than he was. I guess we can’t blame him.

The older he gets, the easier he is to have around. It’s great having someone there who’s always up for some camaraderie, though it’s true that sometimes I’d rather just sit there and relax instead of entertaining a five month old puppy. But between the five of us, we’ve usually got him covered. Really, if we can get the nipping completely under control, I think we’ll be sitting pretty. We had been yelling at him a ton when he nipped, but I’m beginning to think that’s the wrong approach. It’s like ringing the bell. He knows he can get attention if he does it, so we have to try distracting him instead.

It’s a learning curve, but we’re getting it down. Still very glad we got the little bounder.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

An Overview of My Current Editing Process

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Over the holiday, I took some vacation days (the first vacation days I’d taken since January, believe it or not. It’s been a crazy year). But one thing I couldn’t take a vacation from was the PERFECT PLACE TO DIE copy edits. For those of you who don’t know what copy edits are, allow me to explain.

The editing process for a book goes through many, many stages. There’s the first draft, when it’s just me and my computer, bravely hammering out something that hopefully mostly resembles the story I’d like to tell. These days, I typically start with an outline that’s two or three single spaced pages, painting a basic picture of what the main conflict is and how the protagonist goes about solving it (or succumbing to it). However, during that first draft, I still find out a ton about the book. Who the main character really is. What makes them tick. It’s like when you plan out a vacation and have an agenda of what you want to do, but then when you get to the city, you find it’s rarely just what you expected. You make changes to your plan based on how things go in real life.

These days, I take that first draft and throw it to my writing group. If I had more time, perhaps I’d do a second draft before I send it to them (that might be nicer to them, I suppose . . . ) but they’re hardy readers, and they can take a first draft just fine. I get feedback on what’s working and what’s not. Often, I get even more ideas about things I could do in the book. New directions to explore. Settings. Conflicts. I also reread it myself when I send it to them, and I inevitably see things I don’t like about it as well.

So then I take all that feedback and make a second draft. It’s usually very different from the first. I’ve found out through the process of writing that the story I thought I wanted to tell might not actually be the one I really want to tell. (The end goal is to tell the best story I can.) I get that second draft ready and then send it to my agent. We might have some back and forth drafts that happen then until we get it to the point where we feel like it’s ready to go on submission.

Assuming an editor likes it and buys it, then there’s always the next round of edits, where my editor opines on ways to improve the book even further. Once again, there’s usually some repeated rounds of drafting, with each pass getting easier and easier, as the final draft gets closer.

Once my editor and I agree we’ve got the book in top form, then it’s time for the copy edits. The copy editor looks through the book for grammar errors, factual errors, and inconsistencies. So in THE PERFECT PLACE TO DIE, for example, I found out from the copy editor that the giant Ferris wheel at the Chicago World’s Fair held 60 people per car instead of the 40 that I had put in there. That’s a factual error that’s now correct. An example of an inconsistency would be a spot where Etta (my main character) is sitting down at one point in the book, and then a few short sentences late sits down again. (Kind of hard to sit down twice, you know?)

And then there’s finally the grammar errors. I don’t usually have too many of those, but I definitely have my share. This time through, I discovered that I had a tendency to include a lot of interrupters which, grammatically speaking, needed more commas than I was comfortable with. Specifically, I’d include interrupters right after a conjunction. Technically, they’re supposed to have a comma around the entire interrupter, but I felt like that was just too many commas, and so in the end I decided to stet almost all of those commas. This might make my text more grammatically inconsistent, but . . . I just didn’t have it in me to leave those commas. They read wrong to me for the voice of my character.

In any case, the manuscript at this point is back with my editor, and they’re working on incorporating those last changes. I’m glad to be done with them, because it means I can go back to the first draft of THE AXEMAN, and the circle of life of a manuscript can continue.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Netflix Movie Review: The Twelfth Man

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Sometimes I just get sick of everything I’ve been watching or that I’ve put on my list to watch. I start itching to see something totally new and fresh to me. Something I haven’t heard of at all before I start watching it. Now, I’m not completely insane, so I usually at least check the IMDB scores before I start a new movie. (If I want something really good, I want that score to be a 7.0 or higher. If I’m feeling more loosey goosey, I might bite on something in the mid to low 6’s. Anything lower than that, and I’m just not going to waste my time without someone’s solid recommendation to persuade me otherwise.)

Last week, I was back in that spot. I wanted to watch something new, and so I started looking through the action offerings on Netflix. I came across The Twelfth Man, the true story of 12 Norwegian saboteurs fighting against the Nazis in Norway after the country had been invaded in WWII. The saboteurs were ambushed. 11 of them died, and one of them escaped. The movie traces his efforts to get out of the country alive. It’s got a 7.4 on IMDB, and it’s Norwegian made. I hit play as soon as I read the total rating.

I was really impressed with the movie overall. I had never heard of the story of Jan Baalsrud before, and so it was incredible to see what he went through, and even more surprising to read up on it afterwards and see how much of what’s depicted actually happened.

I have to put in a disclaimer, however, because the movie is pretty brutal. Let’s just start off by saying that any movie that begins with the hero jumping into sub-zero ocean water and then fleeing into the Norwegian wilderness in mid-winter (with one bare foot!) isn’t going to be all sunshine and strawberries. And the film doesn’t shy away from showing exactly what Baalsrud had to do to stay alive. So if you’ve got a thing about gore, then either watch something else, or be prepared to clench your eyes shut a few times.

But if that doesn’t turn you away and you’re into tense war films, then definitely watch the movie. It was riveting from start to finish. My only critique would be that it came across as almost propaganda at times. The Germans are simply so bloodthirsty that it’s hard not to feel manipulated. I would have suggested pulling back a bit on that side of things, though I suppose for all I know all of that was true to life as well. But other than that, the movie was very strong throughout.

If only all the random movies I chose to watch ended up being so good. 8.5/10. Great stuff.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Gift Idea List: 2020 Edition

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It’s December, and that means we’re fast approaching peak “buying stuff for people” time. I’ve spent the last few days doing just that, knocking off the present buying for the family for the year. (I don’t have it in me to wait very long to get the present purchasing out of the way. Knowing that it’s there waiting to be done is just way too disturbing.)

Of course, the problem with presents is that sometimes you end up buying something in the heat of the moment that, in hindsight, wasn’t really worth it. Presents that see use for a few days or even a month, and then get tossed in a drawer or closet, never to see the light of day again until you give them to goodwill or sell them in a garage sale. No one likes to have those sort of present buying experiences, right?

I’m here to help.

Here’s a list of the best presents I’ve bought and received, along with links to the present in question, when possible. (Amazon links do earn me a small commission through the blog, but none of these recommendations are sponsored in any way.) And if you have any recommendations of gifts that have done really well for you. I’m all eyes.

Ready? Here we go.

Blendtec Blender: My family uses this high-end blender at least three or four times a day. There’s a counter on it that tracks how many uses it’s had, and ours just passed 3,000. It makes smoothies, hummus, milk shakes, and more. It doesn’t have sharp blades, so you don’t have to worry about cutting yourself, and the end results are smooth and wonderful. When this breaks, I’ll replace it in a heartbeat.

Boot/Glove Dryer: If your family is outdoors in the snow a lot, this is a must. For my family of skiers, this gets used constantly in the winter. It lets you properly dry out boots and gloves without having to remove linings or wait for hours. Denisa frequently talks about how handy it is. Score!

Nintendo Switch: It’s gone with us to Europe. It sees constant use in the house by my kids. It’s family-friendly and easy to use. Games that are favorites are Animal Crossing, Breath of the Wild, Pokemon. MarioKart, Smash, Mario Odyssey. But man, the prices for the Switch on Amazon right now are through the roof. A new one should only cost you $300, in case you were wondering what a fair price is. The Switch Lite is also a good alternative, but think of that one as strictly portable. (At least the prices aren’t bloated for those right now.) The Pro controllers were also great gifts for it (I can only vouch for the official Nintendo ones), as was the carrying case and screen protector.

Oculus Quest 2: The Rift I got for the kids three years ago was well loved, though it was hard for me to wholeheartedly recommend one, just because you needed a high end computer to go with it. Well, now Oculus has the Quest 2, which is totally stand alone. No cords. No sensors to set up in the room. Just pure VR action. You can even hook it up to a nice computer to play more robust VR games, but from what I’ve seen, it provides a great VR experience even without that. I would get the one with bigger storage, even though it’s more money.

Board games are big at my house, but not all board games end up being played. Ones that have been played many times by my family in the last few years include Kingdomino, Splendor, Ticket to Ride Europe, Seven Wonders, Sushi Go, Hanabi, Azul, Kingdom Builder, Seven Wonders Duel, and Codenames. Terraforming Mars is a new one I’ve really enjoyed. If you’re looking for something more strategy based, Gloomhaven just came out with a simpler version that’s supposed to be much more easy for dabblers to catch onto: Jaws of the Lion. It’s a standalone prequel to the original game.

Amazon Echo and Dot: These home assistants (or the Google or Apple variety) are pretty ubiquitous at this point. Yes, it’s still a bit creepy to think that those things are always listening, but then again, so are our phones, so . . . . Embrace our robot overlords? We’ve got them hooked up to work as an intercom system in our house as well, which is really useful. MC uses them to tell her how to spell just about anything, and they’re very handy as kitchen tools (timer, conversions, music, etc.)

Stove Fan: It runs even when there’s no power, and it does a great job distributing the heat more evenly throughout the room and house. I got the higher end one, and I’m glad I did. I would recommend these to anyone who uses a wood stove.

Snow Blower: For that matter, I have no idea what I’d do without a snow blower. (Actually, I do. I remember the first year in Maine without one. It wasn’t pretty.) If you live in a place with a lot of snow, and you don’t want to pay or rely on someone to plow your driveway, a high quality snow blower is a must. My Honda has been dependable and a life saver, year after year. 11 years and counting now! (For that matter, don’t forget a roof rake, either.)

High-end Rechargeable Batteries: I love my Eneloops. I bought a few to see if I’d like them and they were reliable. I’ve bought a ton more. These are so much better than the old style that you never could rely on to actually be charged. The Amazon Basics brand of them work very well too, and they’re much cheaper.

Home Theater Projector: It’s been a bit since I got mine, so I’m not sure what the latest and greatest is these days, but getting a projector (and an actual screen) has been so much easier than I thought it would be, and I love mine.

Apple TV: Who needs cable when you’ve got Apple TV? I especially love how it feeds in my pictures for a screen saver, so we can see all our favorite pics from over the years whenever there’s a lull in using the TV.

Kindle Paperwhites are a favorite for the whole fam. Easy to use, and great for reading at night. They’ve also been a boon to helping us fall asleep easier. I got some for Tomas and Daniela, as well. Having them have iPads or phones in their room at night can lead to some pretty bleary-eyed kids in the morning. Paperwhites remove all the distractions and just let you read, which I’m fully in favor of.

Rainbow Loom has been a hit with all of my kids when they were around 8 years old. Go figure. Cheap, and hours of entertainment. A good combination.

My favorite remote control of all time is easily the Harmony Smart Control. Operates tons of devices easily and effectively. And you no longer have to point the remote at the device you’re trying to control. I’ve set up 4 of these puppies, and they all just keep working. (Though it looks like they’re in short supply on Amazon right now. A normal price for one would be around $150. A good price would be $100. Anything lower than that is a steal.)

Our family started a handmade Christmas present challenge a few years ago, and that continues to do well. We exchange names, and the one requirement is that whatever you give the other person has to be handmade. Great way to make things less money, and have it be more about love than stuff.

And of course, my favorite mop. (Read my review here.)

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Explain Watch Parties to Me

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Okay, hive mind. Over the course of the pandemic, I’ve seen some of the various online streaming services promote the fact that they can do watch parties. And while at first glance, that sort of seemed intriguing, I can’t for the life of me figure out what you’d actually use it for. I mean, maybe sports? If I could talk to my friends while watching a BYU game or something, that might be fun. But talking to my friends in the middle of a movie . . . doesn’t sound like the bestest thing ever to me.

Have any of you actually done one? And I suppose more importantly, have any of you done a second one after the first?

Yesterday we tried out our first real “Zoom visit” with friends or family, and I have to admit that it worked much better than I thought it would. I mean, heading into it, I was really skeptical any other Zoom anything would be enjoyable. (This, despite the fact that the get together was my idea. Desperate times, my friends. Desperate times.) Denisa suggested we hook up the laptop to our home theater system so that everyone could see the screen easily, and that worked like a charm. The audio was great, and the picture was easy for everyone to see. I’m not sure how our mic situation was, but next time I might try using an external mic to make it even better.

In the end, it worked out and felt quite like a family visit. The only real drawback is the fact that it’s hard or impossible to have any side conversations over a Zoom broadcast, and it’s not like people can just peel off and head into other rooms to visit. (Though I suppose I could make that happen. I’ve done breakout rooms, after all . . .)

Of course, it would have been good to find out that Zoom visits can actually be fun back in March or April or May, but then again, maybe they wouldn’t have been. Maybe it’s just to the point that anything other than what I’ve been doing is fun in comparison . . .

Anyway, after that much-better-than-I-thought-it-would-be experience, I wonder if maybe there’s something to “Watch Parties” that I just haven’t understood yet. So if any of you have actually tried one (for better or worse), I’d love to hear about how it went.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

#GiveThanks

Last Friday, President Russell M. Nelson posted a brief YouTube message (posted below), asking people (members of the church and non-members, alike) to make a switch in their social media approaches. Basically turning the attention to things they are grateful for, one post a day for a week, with the #givethanks tag.

I don’t know how big of an impact this has had for people outside the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but I’ll say that for me personally, it made a tremendous difference in my feed on Facebook. Suddenly all the contentious posts disappeared, replaced by a stream of people talking about their families, their hobbies, their pets, and more. Granted, it comes at a good time, when many people are focused on thankful posts in the leadup to Thanksgiving, but that had already been happening before President Nelson’s message, and the flood of posts after it was still night and day. It’s been especially nice to see some people start posting who I haven’t seen posts from in years.

Of course, I have to admit that I haven’t participated in a #givethanks post. I planned to write a blog post about it (that you’re reading right now), and I think there must be something inherently contrarian in me. I really don’t like doing things everyone else is doing, and I didn’t want to do it just out of a sense of obligation. (I don’t know. I’m on vacation this week, so I’m not going to take the time to psychoanalyze myself . . . Is it hypocritical to appreciate the #givethanks posts and not be participating in them myself? Perhaps. But I also write this blog each weekday, and I’ve only got so much in me I suppose? Who knows.)

In any case, the posts have helped me reflect on what, exactly, social media can do well. Connecting people is definitely a strength. Changing minds? I don’t think it does that well at all. It’s more of a forum for argument. If there were one holiday Facebook would typically represent, it would be Festivus.

Big on feats of strength and airing of grievances, light on warm fuzzies (sometimes, at least.) I’m confident everyone posting these #givethanks posts still has the same beliefs and opinions about masks, Trump, politics, and everything else that they had a week ago, but because we’re not constantly shoving those opinions into other people’s faces for a bit, it’s easier to start viewing people as friends and family again instead of as enemies or wrong-headed. (I’m overstating it, but probably not by as much as I wish I were.)

When we can view other people as people and not as debates waiting to be won, we’re much likelier to reach compromises with them.

So as much as I typically don’t like to follow the crowd, I’m going to put that feeling aside and follow suit for the week. I really do feel like there’s something beneficial there both for myself and for others. I invite you to do the same if you haven’t started, and if you have, thanks for making my week a bit brighter.