Darkscribes Blog for Fifth Horseman

Ahh Life...What a bitch

June 28, 2008 | No Comments Posted

As I previously noted, my truck was the victim of a hit and run. Getting it fixed has proven to be a little bit of a challenge and between that and other needed repairs, the money is flowing like water.

I scheduled it for the body shop for June 9, a Monday. They were to repair the crash damage ( a new grill and hood, and refinish the front bumper.) I also wanted some rust repair work done on the rear fenders and a couple of problem areas with the paint elsewhere on the truck repaired, as well as replacing the recliner hinge on my driver's seat, which broke a couple of weeks before.

My share of the $2100.00 dollar crash repair was my $500.00 deductible, plus about $600.00 for the rust repair. (The seat hinge and other minor touch ups weren't factored in)

The appraiser was supposed to show up the morning the truck went in the shop. Until he approved the work for the insurance claim, the shop couldn,t touch my vehicle to repair anything else. Which would have been fine if he had showed up. Apparently my insurer's Adjuster, never scheduled the appraiser. After a few calls from the body shop they finally got him there on Thursday, too late for my truck to be repaired before I had to have it back.

Thus, I spent a weekof my vacation, sitting at home because the truck was in the shop, and none of the work got done. (Sadly, I wasn't smart enough to have Loss of Use coverage at the time of the accident, so I couldn't get a free rental car for the week) And now I have to waste another week of my next vacation time with the truck in the shop while I sit at home.

To make matters worse, the shop discovered the the rust damage was worse than first thought and I now have to replace the cargo box. $1500 dollars for a used, rust free box. That doesn't include the cost of stripping, priming, repainting, undercoating it, and removing the old box and installing the new one.

I also have top replace my windshield ($250.00) and the after market bug deflector on my hood which was busted in the accident ($100.00)

I planned on waiting until fall to put new tires on it, but that has been moved up to this week since I blew one and they're too worn out to bother repairing one.

Of course, my truck would have to have an odd size of tire. (It's a 2000 GMC Sonoma SLE Extended Cab sport truck with wide, low profile tires. No matter where you go, they have to be ordered in because they aren't a common stocked item) Best price I have is $500.00 for a set of Cooper's. Better that than $700.00 for another set of the piece of shit Goodrich tires that are on it now, or $1000.00 for Goodyear Eagles like it was originally equipped with.

The first six months of this year have been a real ball buster. It's been one frigigng thing after the other, but, that's life.

I'm going to be so fucking broke again this summer. I mean, how the hell is a guy supposed to afford his anime and his beer with this shit going on?

Sheesh!

Watch as the dollars gracefully fly away...

March 31, 2008 | No Comments Posted

Finished the claims process with my insurance company. The damage estimate for my ride is $2100, of which I'm on the hook for $500. Doesn't sound to bad but when you're already looking at spending $1500 plus for other things, it's an expense I didn't need. Still don't know who did it, I have a suspicion but sadly no proof.

Maybe I could extract a confession....

On a lighter note, I seem to be making progress again in my writing, now if I could just limit myself to working on one project at a time. I was hoping to have something done by now, but I should no better than to set any sort of a deadline for my writing. I never meet it.

Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I'll have something.

Son of a......

March 21, 2008 | No Comments Posted

And here I thought 2008 might be a better year than 2007.

I already knew I was going to have to lay out some cash again this year on my vehicle. Needs tires and most of the body work I had done in 07 needs to be redone. (Fucktards!)

Then, my windshield cracked. I half expected it becasue I had been skating along with a rather large blemish in it where it got hit by a rock a year and a half ago. One particularly cold morning it decides to rebel against the warm air from the defroster and cracks two and a half feet across the drivers side. Shit.

Now, some fucktard with the mental capacity of a cabbage and the driving skills to match, backs into my truck, in the parking lot outside my house, and breaks the grill, the bug deflector on the hood, and buckles the hood itself. Do they try to find the owner? Leave a note on the windshield maybe?

Noooo. The ignorant little pisshead fucks off.

I truly despise ignorant, irresponsible mouth breathers like this and would like nothing more than to stomp a mud puddle in them and walk the fucking thing dry. Make the world a better place, punch a dumbass in the face.

Yes folks, the gene pool is badly in need of a little extra chlorine.

Yes indeed, 2008 is off to a wonderful friggin start.

More Peeved Ranting

February 22, 2008 | No Comments Posted

Peeve #1: DS has 127 users currently registered, but you can count the number of people who post regularly on both of your hands and have fingers left. Plenty of people lurk, but hardly any post. Okay, so a lot of the regular posting going on lately is on spam threads, but hey, at least we're there.

Don't like the spam threads?  (as if a little silliness now and then is going to hurt you) Then post in something else, or, (gasp) create a thread of your own. You signed up to the site, so where the hell are you? 

Just get on the site and post. Be active. Associate with the rest of the loons.

You might actually like it.

Peeve #2: Once again, we revisit the topic of bad fan fiction. A couple of posts ago I hit several points that bothered me. Well, those offenses still persist, but I've been reading a lot of fics again and I still find myself shaking my head at several things.

I have to wonder sometimes if some of these authors have ever read a book, or attended school for that matter. Dialogue strung back to back on the same line. Horrible or no punctuation. Paragraphs that are forty lines long. Missing words, using the wrong form of similar sounding words, it goes on and on.

And the spelling..THE HORROR! How is it possible to spell that badly, especially when you wrote it on a computer and chances are very good that there is a spell checker present on said device?

I swear, some of these authors couldn't spell cat if you spotted them the c and the a. I have seen the word dirt, spelled d-u-r-t. WTF!. Someone was writing about a character being in a coma, and the spelled it a-c-c-o-m-a. Not once, but six frigign times!

And how the hell can you write fan fiction stories and not spell the characters names right!

AUUUGHHH! It's driving me nuts. My inner demon wants to go out and find these people and bathe in pools of their blood, toss their innards about like party streamers, and use their heads for bowling balls.

Peeve #3: Reviewers, and (some) of the reviewees. As authors we all hope to get a few lines from our readers telling us what they thought. We hope for constructive criticism if warranted. Barring that, we would at least like to hear if someone liked our work, or not, and the reasons why they liked or disliked it.

What we often get is, 'I like this, wrote more', or some variation that is badly spelled or written in net speak. Now, I'm not someone who spends a lot of time bitching about reviews. I'm glad to get them, I wish I got more of them, and I wish there was more substance to them. But a review is a review, and it's nice to know that someone liked what you wrote.

Conversely, I don't write a lot of reviews, because quite frankly I suck at it. When I do review, I really should read the piece more than once because I always find something else I should have said after I already submitted my review.

When someone reviews my stories, I always try to send back at least a thank you. (Unless the review is anonymous, of course) Sometimes, I will discuss a point about the story that the reviewer had a problem with. 

But, not too many people tend to return that courtesy. A little politeness goes a long way. If you can't be bothered to acknowledge the people that took the time to review your work, then why should they be bothered to continue reading and reviewing for you?

I could go on. Let's see, the proliferation of yaoi stories (how I hate thee!) and the insanely ridiculous pairings therein, stories with lemon content that is wholly unrealistic, authors whose stories are nothing but thinly veiled mediums for their fantasy to fuck a hot anime chick etc, etc, etc. We've all seen it and continue to see it and you don't need me to remind you of it.

So, thus endeth the peevish ranting. I feel better now, though I really could use a drink.

On another note, my writing seems to be at a strange stage at the moment. I started working on a new story, and then found myself trying to work on two at once. Right now, I find myself working on a side project that will not be anything thing more than a story for my own amusement, as well as a device to push my brain in a different direction for a little while. Hopefully, I'll be back to work on my fan fics soon.

New Story Out

January 10, 2008 | No Comments Posted

For the very few of you that may actually care, I do have a new story out. Currently it is only posted at FanFic.net, but I will liekly get posted here to DS sometime this weekend.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4000625/1/Broken_Devil

Most people who have reviewed so far like it, while a couple weren't real impressed. Eh..whatever. It is what it is. I like it and if anyone else likes it, it's gravy.