Lifebook 1 | Belated New Year’s Brief

Hello! And, um, Happy New Year!?!?

Yeah, I know, I’m really late. I guess it’s been a long minute since I’ve posted a proper update. A New Year has come and gotten well underway since the last time I discussed my life activities, or confessed in stark detail my ongoing creative struggles – or what I like to call the Writer’s Plight. The latter I will get into more this coming week, and the former I will touch on in this quick rundown of notable events this year so far:

January 3rd – New Guitar

Started the new year off with a instrumental acquisition: a 2015 Epiphone Les Paul Custom Pro electric guitar with silverburst finish, special humbucker pickups with coil-tapping feature, a thin neck and decent string action on a rosewood fingerboard with medium-jumbo frets. This beauty — I named her Silvestra — made her debut in the next event . . .

January 16th – NTA’s Debut

My band Neglect the Alarm made its live debut on the Punk Rock Night stage at the historic Melody Inn in my native Indianapolis, IN. Many thanks to PRN curator Rich Barker for booking us in a pinch, and the three other bands on the bill: The Last Standing, XXX Smut and Roberta Sparrow. Videos and photos from the show can be viewed on the Neglect the Alarm Facebook page.

After the show we promptly went on hiatus as our drummer continues to land job opportunities working on independent films in various entry-level capacities, building his CV. We’re all old men in our forties so it’s almost a certainty that our little band is a transient thing, whereas Tommy’s goals in filmmaking are bit more far reaching into the long-term future. The plan is for NTA to resume operations as a proper four-piece in the month of April.

February 2^nd – Traffic Accident

So I was involved in a car wreck on my way home around 6:30 PM. My 2014 Kia Forte Sedan was rear-ended by an elderly fella who seemed a bit out of it. I was at a stop light, perhaps 4 cars back when BAM! My world was jolted, jostled, rattled, rocked – whatever synonym you want to use. I was unharmed, miraculously, I suppose because he obviously wasn’t going too fast, but obviously the rear of the car took the brunt of the impact and the collision forced my car into the SUV ahead of me, hardly even damaging it, yet crunching the frontend of my car pretty good. Long ordeal short, my car wound up being totaled (the estimator got up to $10k in damage and knew another $5k was likely and thus I got a call from an adjuster and was happy to’ve had GAP insurance as well). So this unfortunate event eventually lead to . . .

February 13^th – New Car

I now have a 2016 Honda Civic Sedan, easily the best, biggest, sexiest Civic they’ve ever made. I wanted a dark gray one with dark interior, but since that was not in the cards (they only had the light interior) I got yet another black car with dark interior – my third in a row, also my third new car since 2011 because in I had traded in the 2011 Kia Forte Koupe in for the 2014 Forte Sedan. I had been with her quite two years yet before we were forced apart. I was quite fond of her. But I can’t deny I may be even happier with the Civic. The music streaming technology and sound system alone make it the most enhanced ride ever. Also happy to have a sun/moon roof again.

February 27^th – New Laptop PC

A week ago I finally upgraded my PC operations with the ASUS Q552UB, a 2-in-1 with 6^th Generation Intel Core i7-6500U CPU @ 2.50 GHz, 12 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD, Windows 10 (with touch). Also has an NVidia Geforce dedicated graphics card.

Looking at my last ASUS which came out in 2010, it’s amazing how fast micro technology changes and the insane efficiency they’re able to achieve nowadays. The elder machine has huge vents on the back to help cool itself, because it has a Core i7 along with an ATI Radeon processor — both of which ran quite hot. This newfangled one, however, is fully sealed and doesn’t even get  very warm and the fan is a quiet whir, unlike the old one that sometimes sounded like an airplane at takeoff. The only thing that could truly make this new on better would be a Solid State drive for increased speed and optimal efficiency.

Housekeeping Notes

If you’re a regular reader returning for the first time in a while, you probably immediately noticed a different look here in terms of layout and even the general name change. This has always been brandonrucker.com but a couple of years back I named it Ruckerpedia. I am now in the process of re-configuring my online venues – expanding, actually, and thus I need specific brands for each venue. Brandon Rucker Dot Com is the hub — the HQ the main blog. Comic Book Fetish.com is specifically a comic book commentary and appreciation blog, dedicated to comic book-related geek culture and such. Two more online venues are under construction, each with a specific purpose: the all-new Ruckerpedia will be my online publisher and archive of fiction, poetry, etc – both old and new (and developing). The fourth and final site will be outlet for my musical production. I’ll tackle the specifics and informative details in the coming weeks. I aim to launch Ruckerpedia on the first day on the Spring Equinox.

-B.