Well, the year has ended, and new year begins... you know, it happens every year about this time! Not sure what the year will hold, but it isn't boding well on a personal level. Household angst is reaching a boiling point. But I'll leave that be for now...

My commitment to blog every day for 2009 ended successfully. The whole year's worth is archived here on the site - I just imported the whole thing from eBlogger. What that means is now I'll have more time to dedicate to other things, like this website here. Plenty still on tap. I also have 2 novels in the works. 

But as usual, the way I handle stress and angst isn't the most productive. Instead of diving into productive avenues of release, I turtle up and find solace and safety in frittering away time playing games or browsing funny videos online... this can consume hours, and I have nothing to show for it, like I would if I spent the time revamping this site, or writing. But maybe something will happen and it will change, who knows. We'll see.

In the meanwhile, all I can do is try once again to commit to spending time doing productive, encouraging, beneficial things with my time. Grow up, in other words. It's rather exquisitely difficult, considering, shall we say, certain details of my marital situation.

All that to say, Hi, I'm Dave, it's a new year, and with your permission, I'm going to hope for the best.

Dave

The year is winding down. I'm actually enjoying the Christmas build-up for the first time in many years. Not sure why, exactly.

I hit my 50K word count goal for November, for the Fantasy novel I'm writing. It was/is a lot of fun. I hope to post samples up here pretty soon (meaning, in December some time).

The year coming to an end also means the end of my commitment to blog every day for 2009. Once that's over, I'm not sure what I'll do, as far as blogging. I may just use the daily blog time to work on this site. I'll archive the whole year's blog here for safe keeping - you know, in case I'm long dead and my grandkids all want to know what I was like, lol. By that time, all the video links will be broken, no doubt...

Work is going well - plenty to do this December, as opposed to last. The rug shop has some great opportunities ahead of it for 2010. Let's hope the economy doesn't implode any time soon. When it does, it will be ugly. And I'm not sure what the good ol' USA will look like when it's over...

Well, until then, I'll keep plug, plug, pluggin' along.

- Dave

Hey, I bet you're surprised I updated here, ain't ya? Well, it's not like you don't have a hundred better things to do than to check this site... I mean, once you've seen all the funny videos, and taken a quick peek at the devotional and the scripts (without reading any of them, mind you) and skimmed the blog archive (which I haven't updated either), what's the point?

I may have grand plans for this site, but unless I actually do something about it, what good does that do you, O Random Lurker? I need to find a way to trick myself into working on the site more... perhaps hold out a reward or something, or maybe actually pay myself to work on it somehow... otherwise the site will slip into that netherworld inside my mind where worthwhile projects go to die of neglect.

I need inspiration!  I need a muse! I have *no clue* where to find it/her! I leave unfinished projects in my wake at an alarming rate! Dear Lord, please don't let this site be one of them!

Speaking of unfinished projects, I also hope the fantasy novel I'm writing doesn't become one of them. Again, a worthwhile, enjoyable project. Again, I'm going great guns on it, like I normally do. Right now, the fire is there, and I'm running with it. I must must MUST find the self control, discipline, honor, resolve, whatever, to see it through.

IF YOU HAVE ANY SUGGESTIONS, PLEASE LEAVE ME A COMMENT!

I hate to sound all negative, but it's a very disappointing, distasteful, distressing aspect of my personality, and I don't know how to change it. How do you deal with the parts of you that you don't like? Is everything about us changeable, or are some things set in stone, and we just have to deal with them?

I'm an inquiring mind, and I want to know...

- Dave

 Greetings! I need to throw an update in here...slow going on updating the site lately. Added a new video or two, added a new book review (A Shadow In Summer, by Daniel Abraham), and I'm gathering some work samples so I can get the work section up and running...

I've joined up for the NaNoWriMo challenge this year, and I'm working on an outline for the Fantasy novel I plan on writing for it. The challenge is to write a 50K+ word novel between November 1 and November 30, regardless of quality or polish. I've had an idea for a fantasy book/series for a year or so now, I figured it would be a good time to take a stab at it, even if it ends up just being a lengthy prologue. I'm stoked about it - I hope it lasts...

Also on my plate are the Christmas play (which I have no ideas for yet) and the camp slideshow, which should have been done in August. I know, I'm lame.

Well, onward and upward.

- Dave

Greetings, random traveler! I've made some changes and additions to Wagnervana here lately, including the following:

I added a Book Review page, to collect the Book Reviews I've written this year so far. Stop by and check them out, if you are so inclined. More to come.

I overhauled the Videos section, adding a bunch more clips, as well as dividing them into groups, based on general theme (Sports, Humorous, Animal, Music and Just Plain Awesome). Good for wasting some time with relatively mindless entertainment.

I started the upgrade to the Links page. Gone is the generic list of links, and in it's place is something a little more palatable, with art, banners, links to related content, etc.

I added another Cool Photos gallery. These are awesome photos I've collected over the last year or two, not pictures that I've taken myself. Well, I guess you can say I've taken them... I've taken them from Photosig!

Next up, I'm going to add the movie I made back in '04 up here, called Pursuing Peace. It was my first attempt at film-making, and not bad for a debut effort with a camcorder and some lame Windows editing software. I hope to do another film sometime soon. Anyway, look for Pursuing Peace soon, but make sure your expectation level is appropriately moderate...

I'm also going to start collecting Work samples for the Work section, so I can begin driving prospective clients here.

All in all, things are moving along! Thanks for showing a modicum of interest!

- Dave

Greetings! Time for a quick update. You know, for a site that only has a relatively small percentage of the content I want up here, I'm really proud of this site. The only changes over the past week or two have been in My Blog, where I continue to update it daily. Of course, you won't see many comments left on the posts, since all of my followers still read my blog over at it's eBlogger home... but I hope to have this site hopping with more activity soon...

Christmas approaches, which means I'll need to focus on a new script for the church Christmas production. Been chewing on ideas, but nothing has gelled yet. When it does, I'll share it here. Hope it's soon, since we'll need all the time between now and Christmas to work on it, whatever it is...

Of course, I still haven't finished the camp slideshow from back in July! Funny how some things work out that way. Some things I can get right on and finish immediately. Others, well, finding the motivation is occasionally elusive...

Gonna run for now. Next on my list of changes to this site includes trying to find a new way to display the web comic.

Adios for now,

- Dave

Greetings!

Thought I'd pop in and update the front page here, since I've been working on the rest of the site today...

I added more plays to the Theater Pieces Archive... it's an interesting journey, since there seems to be no set way that the text will display when I copy/paste it from MS Word into the editors here... sometimes the text imports really big, and I can't change it... until I save, exit, open it up again, and give it another go. Sometimes it takes several attempts before it let's me fix the formatting. Occasionally, a single line of text will display really big, which is funny, in a way, but ultimately not what I want, for obvious reasons... also, sometimes it locks in italics and/or bolding... and even hitting "remove formatting" doesn't work. Ultimately, it does, though...

Bah, how boring was that to read? Obviously, if that's my biggest problem in life, I must be doing pretty darned good. I have no complaints about the Square Space template system - it rocks.

I also added a smaple chapter (Chapter 1) to the My Novel page. The book is called The Master's Program, and I'm about 95,000 words into the first draft. The first chapter really only sets up half the story, but posting chapter 2 strikes me as too much info at this point... if you'd like to, give Chapter 1 a read and leave a comment here. I'll gladly receive any feedback, positive, negative or indifferent, with enthusiasm. You'll find it under the My Writings tab...

Of course, I update My Blog daily, so be sure to check that out - I think you'll like it.

Until next week, adios.

- Dave

Greetings!

Here's the latest Wagnervana News: I uploaded one of my plays (called Shift) to test formatting, etc. and I also got up all 60 days of my 2 month Devotional (called Convinced). I set up the devotional in a blog format, so if you want to leave comments on any of them, you can.

Still lots of things in the pipeline, especially the Work-Related portion of the site, so I can send prospective clients here, to see samples of all that I've done as a Graphic Artist over the years.

Plus, I want to get some Game-Related stuff up, as well as a few of my T-shirt designs. The problem with the T-shirt designs is that I lost my art files in a hard drive crash a while back, so I'll need to recreate them from scratch. Who knows... it might yield better results. Plus, I want to get more of my skits & plays up here, too...

Should be a busy Fall, if I can focus.

- Dave

Thought I'd chuck another quick website-related update up here, just to keep things from getting too stale...

Been working on some Writing-related pages here the last day or two. I want to get things looking nice before I activate the pages. That's another cool feature here on Square Space... you can work on sections of the site, but keep them disabled until you're ready to spring it on an unaware and unforgiving public. Hey, surprises are good for you... they let you know you're still alive!

I have some more video clips to add to my clip archive as well.

Not much else to add at this point. Thanks for dropping by. Now go read My Blog, dangit! And leave a comment! Or I'll hold my breath until I pass out into my bowl of chili!

Dave

A little King James for ya in the title there. Just thought I'd toss in another update. I'll try get a new post up here every week, discussing the site and my plans for it...

I guess I should disable the pages that have no content until I actually have something to display... my Inventions page and my Game Stuff page, I was thinking... Dangit, I have so much I want to do, I get overwhelmed thinking about it all, and I just bail and go read or play a game or surf blogs instead... Discipline! I need discipline! And some beef jerky! Discipline and beef jerky, that's all I need... and a frap...

Anyway, for the scripts, I suppose ultimately I'll figure out how to make uneditable PDF's that can be downloaded... but I always balk at downloading stuff from websites, so I doubt anything like that would ever be read... I guess the easiest thing would be to make a page for each script, and a link at the bottom of the page to download a PDF. Yeah, I'll do that.

Oh, I almost forgot! I got an email today from a dude that wants to turn one of my scripts into a machinima! What's a machinima, you ask? Well, the guy says it's "where we take a script and make it into a movie through a video game engine, like Sims 2, Halo or Super Smash Brothers." Apparently, he and his crew have done a bunch of them, and they wanted to make a Christian one, and found my script When World's Collide somewhere, and wanted to use it.

How cool is that? When it's available, I'll post it in my blog for sure.

Anyway, I'm trying to come up with a plan of attack for the site. Again, my plans might be bigger than my stomach, so to speak, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway...

Until next time,

Dave