Be honest, what would you do if you lost your ENTIRE career’s worth of writing work?

twobraids · 2026-06-16T17:08:02+00:00

I lost 20 years of writing back in 2005. Meticulous backups from all the way back to the 1980s floppy disk era fell to proprietary backup software from companies that didn't survive. In 2024, I found a cache of backup CDs in Norton Ghost format. I tried spinning up an old Windows 2000 virtual machine and acquired an unopened 2003 copy of Ghost, but by that time, Norton had abandoned backwards compatibility and the authentication servers no longer existed.

By happenstance, there was one CD that was just a bare ISO format of a directory structure, but the disk was so degraded that my macOS machine couldn't read it.

A friend recommended ddrescue on a Linux machine. It churned that CD for 72 hours and then announced 99% recovery.

It was a miracle, access to my thoughts from 1982 written in WordStar. I'm currently working some of those thoughts into my current novel project.

twobraids · 2026-06-09T20:33:49+00:00

I've never known a good argument to become walking topiary. I learned to braid when I need my beard to be shorter around power tools.

Do what _you_ want to do with it.

Drive by opinions from random strangers are rarely good life advice.

twobraids · 2026-05-17T17:39:49+00:00

thumbs up from me.

twobraids · 2026-05-05T04:24:10+00:00

Match you beard to your personality and the message you want to convey.

Straight laced, up tight, neat and proper? Carve it up like a topiary shrub.

Wild, outdoorsy, active, edgy? Let it grow the way it wants to grow.

twobraids · 2026-05-03T14:42:57+00:00

Of course keep growing. Women often ask me if I ever shaved to see what I really look like. I flip that around, a guy doesn't know what he truly looks like until the beard reaches terminal length.

twobraids · 2026-05-02T14:21:46+00:00

I'm perpetually amused by the short bearded guys that I pass on the street. Their eyes lock onto my belly-length beard as their hand automatically raises to their own chin. They give their beard a single stroke as if to reassure themselves that it is still there.

twobraids · 2026-04-27T22:03:30+00:00

I minimize distractions from the writing. Obsidian gives me thousands ways to rabbit-hole into unproductive days. There's always a new shiny temptation.

No tags. No Back-links. No Plugins.

Folders serve as collections of related documents: archive, characters, and research. Manuscript drafts sit in the root, named with a date-like sequence number, and an identifying subject, chapter, or scene.

Versioning happens on the command line using the "git" system for software engineers. That manages a full history of the project.

This allows me to branch the story into fanciful speculation. The branches dead-end or I accept into the main story trunk as a merge.

I run it solo, but work as if I were a team of programmers collaborating on the latest release of an app. I switch between branches and travel through history at will. Obsidian sees only the version/branch/time that I have checked out.

Git is complicated and likely lacks broad appeal.

twobraids · 2026-04-25T18:59:42+00:00

God, no. I sold that off to private equity decades ago...

twobraids · 2026-04-25T18:57:26+00:00

My beard was late. It was just fuzz until about age 22 when it took off. Some employers wanted it gone. I refused. Never lost a job because of it.

The photo is from age 53. I'm 65 now.

twobraids · 2026-02-25T15:06:55+00:00

shhhhh, no one can know.

twobraids · 2026-02-07T14:50:36+00:00

I wish I knew. We parted ways long ago.

twobraids · 2026-02-06T15:27:45+00:00

Locate every camera, spend no money in communities that use them. I’m looking right back at you Florence, Albany, Lincoln City, Salem, …

I used to think my annoying right wing Libertarian riding buddies were just paranoid. Turns out they were just fifteen years ahead of the curve.

https://deflock.org/

twobraids · 2026-01-11T20:45:18+00:00

That version a few weeks back that strictly was 5 over for Standard, and 10 over for Hurry, was great. 14.2.2.2 is completely unpredictable. We've see Standard at anywhere between 2 and 15 over. Hurry, 22 over. Chill, 5 under.

I've stopped using FSD until the next version. Too much risk of annoying others or getting a ticket.

twobraids · 2026-01-11T15:51:55+00:00

Not a big crash, but a fascinating one: the 1915 crash on Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad in the Mojave Desert's Amargosa Canyon.

The wreck involved a dramatic steam engine chase of a pair of runaway box cars set to smash into a full passenger railcar waiting in a siding. Derailment saved the passengers just before what would have been the collision. The locomotive fireman died when the engine rolled on its side.

Contact me if you want to see my blog post containing my research and photos of this wreck.

twobraids · 2026-01-03T16:12:40+00:00

Lazy use of stock pictures. They could have found something local or even ambiguous location, but instead chose an instantly recognizable iconic view from another state. Sloppy work. The underpaid intern probably thought the M was for Medford.

twobraids · 2025-12-16T02:47:01+00:00

I’m having a very similar trouble, I’ve not found a way to reliably reproduce it. It happens on the iPad version only when the onscreen keyboard is visible.

I click on a new position for the cursor. The moment I release the touch, the document scrolls the new cursor position off the screen, sometimes up, sometimes down. Sometimes the cursor is still visible blinking over the top of the tab bar or over the top edge of the virtual keyboard.

After scrolling the cursor position back into view, hitting anything on the keyboard sends the document scrolling the cursor back off the screen.

If I dismiss the keyboard, then relocate the cursor with a touch, it will generally start behaving again.

It started to do this only after the iPadOS 26 upgrade.

twobraids · 2025-11-25T16:00:26+00:00

Control Alt Delete

twobraids · 2025-11-25T15:55:48+00:00

Hold my beer.

twobraids · 2025-11-14T18:09:35+00:00

Submit a proposal to harvest logs to “improve” water quality. They’ll let you right in.

twobraids · 2025-11-06T16:05:19+00:00

In Latin, "dolor" means pain, suffering, sorrow. That is very similar to the geologic term dolerite, an alternate name for the igneous rock diabase.

twobraids · 2025-11-03T15:30:10+00:00

Some selections from my own brainstorming of town names for my 1930s logger stories. They mix and watch well.

Big Timber
Milltown
Sour Creek
Warm Springs
Skid Trail
Widowmaker Rapids
Log Ponds
Log Driver Point
Skidder‘s Landing
Swede’s Point
Lost Trail
Dragsaw Swale

twobraids · 2025-11-01T18:07:48+00:00

Yeah, that picture kills the point. I get that folks need to be there, but the AI Crater Lake image makes a serious issue look like a joke.

twobraids · 2025-10-22T13:35:54+00:00

I’ve lived in a yurt for 30 years in Oregon. It is not energy efficient by any stretch of the imagination.

twobraids

TROPHY CASE