Once again, I have taken too long between posts. But this time, technical difficulties contributed. My Macbook Air that I use at home for all of my non-work related writing has been giving me fits lately. I’ve taken it in multiple times and ultimately ended up replacing the battery entirely.
The issue was that it would suddenly stop holding a charge. The percentage of juice remaining and whether or not the computer was plugged in seemed completely irrelevant. With no apparent rhyme or reason, it would stop charging, eventually run down to 0%, and die. It doesn’t take a power user to determine just how frustrating that was.
Well, dear reader, I am here to report that it happened again.
So that’s why you haven’t gotten a post yet about my role in covering the UNLV shooting. I’ll give you this lovely preview: As if that day wasn’t bad enough, I started it off with a few hours of painful, unpleasant, unplanned dental work.
Not great.
So…I’m sorry. That post is saved as a word processing file on my computer that now doesn’t want to hold a charge. Again. It’s 2023 and I have absolutely no excuses for storing those documents in the cloud somewhere but I just don’t have the patience or emotional bandwidth to sweat that issue right now, so I’m letting the Mac sit dead and I plan to plug it in tomorrow and see if it randomly decides to start charging again as it has done previously.
For the record, I’m writing to you now from a desktop at my house that I rarely use. It’s main purpose was as a gaming computer for my 16-year-old son’s most recent visit. I didn’t pony up the cash to get anything remotely resembling his custom-built behemoth PC at home, but I think he was pleasantly surprised with the quality. Honestly, I’ve barely used it at all. The days of getting really into games and playing them for hours…I don’t want to definitively say that those times are behind me for good, but the memories are feeling a little faint at the moment. Those massive chunks of time are a lot harder to come by as of late.
Work continues to be A Lot. This G-Leaguer baller and his ex-girlfriend murdering someone and dumping the body not far from where I live in Henderson is the latest big story. In addition to still covering the high schooler that was beaten to death, the gangster charged in Tupac’s murder, the teenager that dropped a gun on a preschool playground, and half a dozen other high-priority court cases.
I’ll admit, there were days back in Arkansas when I headed in to the station with no idea of what I was going to write about on a given day, with genuine concerns about whether anything newsworthy would actually come along.
This is never a problem in Las Vegas.
Anyway…I’m sorry for this entirely mediocre post. I hope you’ll bear with me. I vow to post something more substantial, one way or another, by Christmas. I’ll leave you with a photo that I took many years ago that popped up as a recent Facebook memory. I was a stay-at-home dad in Little Rock, Arkansas at the time (the late 2000s), and I had bought an annual membership to the zoo, because I felt like walking around in the fresh air with my then very young baby boy and checking out the animals would be a solid way to pass some days. We went a lot, and we both loved it. The moment I got a shot of what I like to think of as a tiger smiling because he knew I was taking his picture sticks with me vividly. As the years fly by, a lot of things don’t anymore. But I recall this day like it was yesterday.
I hope the end of the year is going well for you. I’ll be back on one computer or another with a higher quality post soon.
Please take care of yourself first! We'll still be here when the computer gods decide to give you a break.
Merry Christmas CC!