So its that time again, 11 days from now and I’ll be 39. It seems that this time a year for the past several years I can’t help but see where I’m at and where I want to be, and how far apart those seem to always be. I’ve given up comparing myself to my Father, in many aspects I’ll never be able to compete there, for instance by the time my Father was 39, I was already 15, and I currently have no one in my life that could be seen as a remote possibility of having kids with.

So here is what I am hoping for. On the totally outlandish scale, I’d like to make at least part-time money from writing by the time I hit the big 4-0. At the more reasonable level I hope to have at least one book (novel or novella) out in e-book. To this end, I have already purchased Chris A Moody.com which is a total replacement for my former: http://fiction.chrismoody.net.

Beyond that I don’t really have much.

So Nanowrimo just ended a couple of days ago. Did you win? I had decided to hold off till this month as my idea wasn’t thought through enough. Now I’m not so sure.

I’ve recently discovered that one of my problems is being that I do chat tech support for a web hosting company (a job that especially through the Holiday period) I may write pretty close to 20k to 30k words in a shift. By the time I come home and can even think about being creative it feels like my word count for the day is used up.

Do you ever feel this way? How do you get over your Word Count limits?

Every so often Amazon has a deal of the day for downloaded games. These (as far as I can tell) are the full games, which you could burn the install to a blank DVD, if you so wished.

Today they are offering the Mac and PC download version of Assassins Creed: Brotherhood. This is only good on 10/15/2011!

Get it now for $11.99!

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood [Windows Download]

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood [Mac Download]

So a while ago, Office Depot announced they were going to be getting Kindles on the 25th of September.  Well now being the 30th you would expect they’d have them right? Checking their website, they ask if your meaning “spindles”, though in the side bar it does show tablets, so at least they have some idea.

So wanting to get more information about this I went into their chat to see if I could find more information, here is what I learned:

Please wait while we find an agent to assist you…
You have been connected to Danny.
Danny: Hi Chris
Danny: Please allow me a few moments to research your request.
Chris Moody: Hi Danny
Danny: Chris, I am sorry to say that we do not have any official infomartion with us about Kindles.
Danny: I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.
Chris Moody: OK
Danny: I request you to please check back a later to see if we have any information with us.
Chris Moody: Ok will do. Thanks for the help

First thoughts on Google+.

Hello everyone, Chris Moody here. Tonight I’d like to discuss another tech toy that has recently been rolling out. Today we talk about Google+, if you don’t have your invite yet, I hope to see you on it soon!
If you have been following the buzz of Google+ you will realize that this certainly isn’t the first post recently about Google+. Everyone right now is debating “Is Google+ a Facebook killer, or just another competitor.

Many people think that nothing can take down Facebook, but if you have been in the social media game long enough, people said the same about MySpace, which was just sold at a huge loss. When it was hot, MySpace ruled as king in the social space, and everyone had Tom as a friend. They of course were not the first to play in this circle, though I never had anything to do with their predecessors.

So what sets Google+ apart from Facebook? As you have probably heard by now, its Circles. While Facebook has groups, those require two (or more) people to join in order for them to really work. However in Google+ circles is how you see your friends. Your able to send your message to just the people in the group. So for example instead of needing all of your Family to join a special Group, in order to have inner group just drag your family members to this circle. Then when you tell Google+ to send a message to your Family group, it instantly will go to all of them.

However probably the bigger thing to set them apart, even with the new connection between Skype and Facebook, is Hangout which allows you to have a conversation with 9 people via video / voice at the same time. This is opposed to the one on one that Facebook/Skype allows you to have. I can see this as being huge when Google+ allows businesses coming on. Imagine being able to have small intimate groups of people learning about a new product and able to ask questions. For most people however, this will make it easier to share images of babies, or plan what your going to do during your next visit. Text can only take you so far.

Now if your one of the people who spends hours on Facebook playing various games from Zynga or others, you probably won’t be to happy with Google+ unless your wanting to quit. Currently there currently no way to make a Google+ app. Many people are currently very happy with this. Google does promise an API is coming, so we will just need to wait and see what kind of things are generated from that.

For this to really be a Facebook killer, a lot of people are going to need to switch to it. This currently is the big question. People in the Tech site of things are very unhappy with how Facebook handles privacy, however a good portion of the users, don’t seem to care to their default “opted-in” environment.

I’ve started writing a series of 10 short stories that will be at minimum podcasted, and sold as ebooks. For at least the first story, I’m looking for people to help voice the different roles. For this first story there will be some roles that are possibly recurring, others will be only this one time.

These stories are based on an alternative earth where Vampires had been in control for a few centuries at least. Humans are now free of their control, and a special group Vampire Hunters are after their former masters for crimes against humanity. In present day humans have roughly 1940 Western World technology. This means no desktop / laptop computers, no cell phones (however two way radios do exist).

This first story is mainly a flash back story to the year 1141 to give a glimpse of what life was like back when humans thought Vampires were just a myth.

Possibly recurring in this case is based on if the rest of the stories are podcasted as multiple voice, or if I make them a solo read. However at this point the additional 9 stories have only been started on, so its possible that a role that is possible recurring now may not recur.

Guest Star roles (these are the only time this role will appear):

Mr. Waterfall: is a church deacon for a religion close to the Catholic religion in some ways. He is the person in charge of the community he lives in religiously. He is a very by the book kind of person, who while he really loves his son, has no issues with not sparing the rod. (Note: there are no spanking scenes in this story however the person acting in the role should come across that its not impossible to happen if his son displeases him).

Mrs. Waterfall: she is a mother and wife.

Mr. Williams: A respectable towns person, his daughter Melissa is betrothed to the Waterfall’s son.

Melissa Williams: Is an 11 to 13 year old girl, who is betrothed  to the Waterfall’s son. They are scheduled to get married when he turns 15.  She wants to save his eternal soul by getting rid of his virginity.

Female Vampire: This is the vampire that turns the young Waterfall boy into a vampire. Physically she appears to be in her 40′s however her true age is unknown.

Male Vampire: This is the lord of the vampires for this region.

Recurring Roles:

Andrew, Sam, Frank, Larry: These are men in their 20s who are on the vampire hunt group with Rebecca their leader.

Sam is in the medical field, the others are highly intelligent muscle.

Main Star:

Rebecca: She is the leader of this specific Vampire Hunter team. While in this story she doesn’t have many lines, in future stories she will be the main character. She is in her mid 30s and doesn’t take any BS from anyone.

Interested?

Interested in filling any of these positions? Please send me a twitter message @chrispodcaster or email me at fiction [at] chrismoody [dot] net (subject line: ‘Golden One’) with what character you think you would be good in. Also if you have a podcast or previous voice work, please include where I can hear you. If you don’t have recorded voice work publicly available please include a small (1 to 3 minute) audio sample of why you think you would be a good fit for the role.

So want to watch Netflix on your Evo after you have upgraded to 4.24.651.1? And find that Netflix still tells you there is an updated version that it can’t find?

Here is the fix I stumbled across:

1. Launch Netflix
2. It prompts you about the upgrade, tap cancel.
3. Tell it to stream your option.
4. The streaming starts.

Do keep in mind it will constantly prompt you to install the new version which doesn’t seem to exist yet.

Can’t promise this will work for you, but it did for me.

So today Rockstar Games released L.A. Noire on PS3 and on the XBOX 360. While I haven’t finished the game yet, thought I would give you my review so far of it.

This game takes place in Los Angeles shortly after World War 2, during what is called Hollywood’s Golden Age. If you have seen the movie Changeling with Angelina Jolie , then you know what LA was like at the time.

As the game starts you are Cole Phelps, a beat cop. After a few successful cases where you show that you know how to think on your own you get promoted to Detective.

In many ways this game is like Hard Rain, however most of your choices is deciding if a witness or suspect is telling you the truth or not. This game does also have racial slurs that fit the time period, gun battles, F-Bombs, and several other things which tells you this is how it really was.

After I finish the game I’ll give a full review, but this is just a snippet of what I see so far.

So about a year ago I gave a new national internet provider a try, one called Clear Wireless. I figured they had to be good if they provide the 4G support that Sprint who happens to be my cell phone carrier is using.

Unfortunately once they “officially” launched in Houston service dropped like a stone to my apartment who after a year is still barely in their service range. However if I take my laptop to the nearest Starbucks which is only a mile away by car (so even less as the crow flies) I get a really good speed, using their mobile internet device.

So starting this Tuesday I will be trying the cable provider that seems to do at least quite a bit of the apartments here in Houston, its a company called Wavevision. Hopefully it will be much better, I don’t think it could be any worse. As of this writing my speed is 1.62 Mbps down and .57 Mbps up according to Speedtest.net.

Of course your probably wondering why I didn’t ask about these slow speeds? Well I did repeatably, in fact that is pretty much all I ever called them about during the last year, and it always boiled down to “you’re not really in our service area.” And after a year, there is still no plans on their site at least to put up another antenna that would serve me better.

So this past Friday I bought a PlayStation 3 160 GB and a used copy of Heavy Rain.

My first thoughts of Heavy Rain is that its very much like Interactive Fiction, which is traditionally a text based game such as Zork.  This has been fully upgraded and with the exception of having to use your fingers to play Twister around the controller its a very fun game.

About to start playing it again, this time however i hope for a much better ending. My first time through if I didn’t the worst possible finish it was mighty close.