Get a dictionary. Look it up.
Welcome to Chapter Two of Life Bytes. I’m not entirely sure why I’m calling these things chapters when they’re really just a series of blog entries, but I am. So deal with it. Anyway, continuing with the ‘if this was all a novel’ theme, click here for the back-of-the-book description of what this particular bit of insanity is about, or skip ahead and click here to jump straight into Chapter One. The choice,...
Read More
If you missed the introduction to all this and have no idea what the hell is going on, there’s a brief prologue sort of thing over here. I know I promised to start this series last week, but Major Life Developments happened of the sort that require significant life changes and a much-need boost to my salary. But more on all that later. Right now, lets get down to Life Bytes. In The Beginning… I missed the first generation of...
Read More
It’s 2011. Photorealistic video games featuring alternate realities and fully realized artificial worlds line the shelves of game stores everywhere. I can start up a game, hop online and kill, shoot, stab, beat, maim, assassinate, decapitate, dismember and just plain murder my friends around the world. I can log in to an MMO and live a virtual life as a fearsome orc or a noble hunter in a mystical realm filled with magic and wonder...
Read More
0 comments
It’s time to talk about The Christmas Problem again, which I did last year and will repeat a bit this year, but most of it’s fresh. Or at least not dead-horse-beaten quite yet. Or maybe it is. I can never tell. Last year, I was in the dumps mainly due to a lack of both funds and sons, with the former having been stretched like a sheet of elastic putty over the newspaper comics so thin that the fat kid from Family Circus went...
Read More 0 comments
I’ve been meaning to write about the Occupy protests for awhile now, but I was busy being unemployed. You’d think that would make me a perfect candidate to embrace the 99% and bang my outrage into my keyboard and onto the web as soon as possible, but it didn’t. Probably because being unemployed has its side effects. Like making the dollar store my exclusive shopping destination. Or having to shut off my Internet access for...
Read More 3 comments
. `+.+'+++++,`,'' ;` #@#@###+#####+` ';#' ::+++'' :+ +#@@@@#+###+# ,+###' ++##+;@#++++ '; .`+@@@@@##' #+: @#@' +++###; #''+++#; .+####+ '' '#@@# ++#++, ` ++##+ :+##+ ` ...
Read More
Kristian Bland
Writer
Occasional Geek
I'm a previously-laid-off-but-rehired journalist, former tech geek, indefatigable stepdad and inventor of nothing useful. I once thought I could recreate Spider-Man's web fluid, but only ended up staining the driveway of my friend's parents when some of it spilled out and went runny. Eventually, I became a caustic tech geek, which I'm pretty sure inspired the character of Dr. Gregory House, although the bastards never credited me. Later in life, I'd go on to have a horrific experience in publishing that I don't talk about, except to talk about how I don't talk about it. Later still, I became a web editor and columnist for a Hearst newspaper, where I excelled at being Me until my entire department was unceremoniously laid off. After that, I spent about six months being pretty busy not being busy. It sucked. Then, after missing the light of my radiant glory casting its warmth upon the newsroom for long enough, the paper called me up and asked me back. And here we are.
