shawnp0wers

I'm a bloggy blogger who blogs.

Getting Lost in the Crowd

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I’m at a conference this weekend! This time, it’s not a Linux conference. I’m at a church leadership conference, and boy has it been interesting.

The most interesting part, sadly, hasn’t been the content — but rather my inability to handle the huge mobs of people. If you’ve known me for a while, you know that after my car accident it was difficult for me to be in crowds of people. That’s still largely the case, but I don’t seem to have that problem at Linux conferences. I thought, foolishly, that perhaps I was outgrowing my issues with crowded rooms. As it turns out, Linux conferences for me are more like public speaking, even if I’m not actually speaking…

If “how brains work” doesn’t interest you at all, you may want to bail on this blog post now. HERE is a great link that will make you laugh away any guilt you may have for leaving early. Really. I don’t mind. 🙂

It turns out people with difficulties dealing with large crowds (I’m sure there is some long “phobia” for the condition) can often speak to a crowd of people without that anxiety being a problem. It seems strange, but I can attest to the fact that speaking in front of a crowd is very different than being a part of the crowd. While speaking in front of crowds is certainly stressful for many people, for some reason it’s much less difficult for me to speak to 1,000 people than to sit in chairs next to 1,000 people listening to someone else speak.

For a while I was concerned that it was an ego thing. Maybe it ultimately is, but for some reason I just seem uncomfortable in large crowds of people unless I’m the center of attention. See, it sounds horrible doesn’t it?!?!? At Linux conferences, I’m certainly not usually the center of attention, but since I’m there representing something bigger than myself (Linux Journal), it seems a bit more like I’m one of the circus acts people are there to see.

So here I am sitting in the car in the parking lot. I needed a break from the crowd. Feel free to draw your own conclusions on my anxiety issues and how they pertain to my ego. Judge me. Be sickened by me. Call me a jerk. But please, if I’m at your conference, make me dance like a monkey. Apparently it soothes me. 🙂

Photo credit to vividbreeze on Flickr

2010. Wow. Just Wow.

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You ever go outside in the rain, and as much as you try to stay dry, you just end up wet? About the point where your underwear band starts to get damp, you stop caring about getting wet, and just embrace the rain. Well, the horror and destruction that has been my 2010 isn’t really something I want to embrace.

But I’m to the point I can laugh.

So I call that a win. Let’s recap, just for fun. I’m not whining, rather I’m just listing in awe the first few months of this beast:

  • I developed some serious migraine issues. Hospital. Butt shots. Yeah, still sorta have that, and it sucks.
  • My house burned down.
  • My house burned down. (Yeah I already listed it, but c’mon — my HOUSE BURNED DOWN)
  • Our pets all passed away in the fire.
  • I inhaled the smoke, and ended up with pneumonia.
  • The doctor and I failed to make contact regarding test results, so I never got antibiotics. I developed super pneumonia. Trust me, that’s not a super power.
  • Mid-super-pneumonia, I got the flu. I called it flumonia, which didn’t really make it better, but at least it was a funny word.
  • I really thought I was going to die with flumonia.
  • On a return trip from LA, my flight (the one following a red-eye) was canceled. I slept on the floor next to an old bag of Cheetos.
  • The computer we’ve been taking home inventory on decided the hard drive should quit working. It didn’t consult me first.
  • This past weekend, I ate sushi. I bought the sushi from a grocery store. I may not have looked at the date it was made on. I sorta got food poisoning.
  • And, right now, I’m beginning to get a headache.

2010: BITE ME. 🙂

Four Tens

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Because 3 day weekends are amazing. And no one does anything really productive on Friday anyway. So c’mon world, why not adopt a 4 day work week?

Also, I think the extra day should be Friday. Face it, the first day back from the weekend (regardless of duration) will stink. Monday already has that stink about it, so let’s leave it alone. Think of all the good we’ll do…

  • If everyone stayed home from work on Friday, that would be a 20% reduction in carbon emissions for the workday commute. TWENTY PERCENT. Looking at it that way, it almost seems sinful to go to work 5 days a week.
  • With every weekend being a 3 day weekend, the regional tourist industry would be booming! Think about it, everyone could take a mini-vacation (walking of course, so as not to nullify bullet point the first), and we’d create jobs for workers in the tourist industry! (I’m looking at you, northern Michigan…)
  • Saturday would no longer be the only perfect day. See, now, Saturday is the only day you can both sleep in AND stay up late. With my Four Tens plan, Friday and Saturday could be perfect weekend days!
  • It’s the next logical progression to my ultimate plan… Three Twelves. 🙂

So, my fellow Earth dwellers — let’s take a stand. I say, save the planet! Four Tens for Two Thousand Twelve! (That will be my presidential slogan. Vote for Shawn!)

A Question About T-Shirts

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Ok, maybe a couple questions about ’em…

1) Do you have “dress” t-shirts?

By that I mean t-shirts you treat as more formal attire than you do the mountains of t-shirts we have for sleeping, painting, dog washing, etc. Personally I do. I have lots of t-shirts in a drawer, but I also have my “dress” t-shirts that get hung on hangers. For example, my vintage Green Lantern shirt gets a hanger, while the t-shirt from the local physical therapy place (which they handed out during a parade) gets folded and shoved in a drawer. That brings me to my next question:

2) Do you hang or fold t-shirts? Or both? Or neither?


3) Are you OK with a cotton/poly blend t-shirt, or are you only truly happy with 100% cotton?

For me, I’m only truly happy with 100% cotton — but if the shirt is awesome enough, I’ll wear a poly/cotton blend. I might put a cotton shirt under it though.

And lastly:

4) If you could wear a t-shirt to work every day, would you?

I totally would. I already wear my Converse All-Stars 7 days a week, if I could add blue jeans and t-shirts to the “every day” mix — I would do it in a heartbeat.

So that’s my question for your Saturday evening. Feel free to include a story about your favorite t-shirt. I haven’t had any long enough (post fire) to have a favorite, but I’m rather fond of my superhero shirts. Which reminds me… I still have to get one of those root superhero shirts. 🙂

Brainhacker: Do Less Stuff

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I love the lifehacker website, really I do. But I’m not a writer there, so when I feel particularly life-hackerish, I do it here. This is one of those times.

One of the big problems with loving what you do, is that you tend to do too much. Really. Take me for instance, I have 3 jobs, all of which could easily be full time jobs. Sadly, I’m not doing a great job at any of them.

If you’re like me (God help you), and are a creative type person that loves what he does — you have more ideas than you have time to realize them. You probably also have more work than you can do, because you love the work you do, so you tend to take on too much. Take it from someone in the middle of such a scenario: DO MORE WITH LESS.

No, I’m not talking financially here, I’m talking time-wise. Do what you do, and do it REALLY well. Don’t cut corners so you can add a new project. Don’t over-commit because the new project is totally worthwhile. If the new project is that amazing, maybe replace something in your life with it rather than add to your existing schedule. Because here’s a secret: The new thing will replace something in your life. That “thing” it replaces may be the quality you produce in your current job. It may be sleep. It may be time with your family. Unfortunately, you won’t likely get to pick — it’ll just happen.

Really, you get to pick between doing a few things really well, or a bunch of things poorly. Perhaps on the next issue of Brainhacker, I’ll be able to tell you how to eliminate important things from your life. For now, I just urge you to stop before it’s too late.

Hack Your Wii, Be Like Me

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Thankfully, the former doesn’t guarantee the latter, or we’d have a lot of people with funny looking hairdos walking around the Internets. 🙂 Ok, this will likely be long, so I’ll bust it up into sections:

Why Would I Hack My Wii?

There are many reasons to hack your Wii. There are many reasons not to as well. Let’s talk about them first.

DON’T HACK YOUR WII IF:

  • You are afraid you might brick it. I’ve never bricked a Wii, but you never know. It could happen, and you might not be able to fix it. You could have a $200 boat anchor. (Or a Christmas gift for someone you don’t like.)
  • You are afraid people will think you’re a pirate. They will. Even if you’re not. (And, you probably will be — it’s VERY tempting.)
  • You are afraid of spending a few hours with a Wii, a TV, and a computer with an SD card reader. The process is long and complicated. There’s probably an easy way, but I don’t know it, and don’t think I’d trust it.
  • DON’T HACK YOUR WII IF you haven’t asked your spouse. Or kids. Or the owner of the Wii. That pretty much goes for any potentially destructive behavior, but you know, it goes for Wii hacking too.

DO HACK YOUR WII IF:

  • Your house recently burned down, and all the disks you bought are now forever ruined by flame, smoke, and heat. With a hacked Wii, you can get your games back without waiting the 6 months the insurance company will take to process your claim.
  • Ok, admittedly that is a rare circumstance, but dog gone it, a valid one. 🙂
  • You want to store your games on a hard drive, because DVDs are so 2004.
  • You want to play video DVDs in the Wii. Because really, what’s up with that Nintendo?
  • You want to play videos, movies, or show pictures on the TV over the network, or from local USB/SD drives. You know, like XBMC but not quite as cool.
  • You’d like to watch Netflix streaming videos on your television spending only $40 on the PlayOn software instead of $80 for a Roku.
  • You wanna be a dirty filthy pirate, and download games off the Internet, and play them without paying, thus robbing the makers of video games of their profits, and likely causing a cataclysmic breakdown of our economy. Again.
  • Or you can hack your Wii because you wanna be like me. Seriously though, if that’s your goal, just learn to do the eyebrow thing. It’s cheaper.
The Basic Steps

Remember when I said it was a long process? Yeah, it totally is. The frustrating thing is that links will die, information will get outdated, and versions will be changed by the time you attempt to do any hacking. So I’m going to be vague enough that you should be able to find the current stuff, and not depend on me for copy/paste instructions. You’re gonna learn darn it! But like G.I. Joe says, “Knowing is half the battle.” So, you know, there’s that to comfort you. Here are the basic steps, which I’ll elaborate on later.

  1. Do something awesome, which you’ll likely never understand, and overflow Wii buffers and stuff. Look, if you were smart enough to know how these things work, you wouldn’t be reading this blog entry. Just stand back and be awed like me. Basically, you have your Wii load a “bannerbomb”, which kinda crashes the system, and then starts whatever program you want afterwards. It’s super sweet.
  2. Remember that Wii we just bannerbombed? Yeah, we’re gonna then load a program that will load boot code onto the Wii itself, so that we don’t have to run the bannerbomb program every time we start up our console. Because really, the wow factor will wear off, and the hacker that came up with it deserves our awe.
  3. Then we’ll install the Homebrew Channel. Ok, to be honest, that program I talked about in step 2 will install the Homebrew Channel for us. Why you ask? Well, because the Homebrew Channel is the reason we hack a Wii in the first place. It’s where all the awesome programs live.
  4. Yay! We have the Homebrew Channel! Unfortunately, it’s just a blank screen with nothing inside. We’ll change that by adding cool programs. Unfortunately, those first couple “cool programs” will be cryptic, weird programs that make little sense. We’ll use terms like IOS249, and Trucha Bug Restorer. You will feel as though you’re in over your head. In fact, you may be. That’s OK though, it’s not as bad as it seems. Just close to as bad as it seems.
  5. We will likely celebrate now. Because really, that last step sucked.
  6. Now we load a few cool Homebrew programs onto the SD card. Did I mention an SD card before? Oh, well we’ll have an SD card. You’ll be swapping it back and forth a lot. By this point, it won’t even annoy you anymore.
  7. Depending on how much you want to quit, or how young your kids are, you might just start loading games onto your external USB drive now. Or, you might want to make shortcuts (or “forwarders”) to your homebrew programs right on the main screen of your Wii. All the cool kids are doing it, so you might as well too. It’s actually pretty easy.
  8. By this time, the Wii is pretty much hacked. You probably won’t want to touch it for a few days, because you’re friggen tired of the thing. Your friends and family will play with it like crazy though, and never truly appreciate how much work you put into it. Oh, and they’ll all ask you how you did it. Feel free just to point them here though. You don’t have to do it for them. Once you do all this work, you’ll say, “You’re going to learn darn it!” — again, just like me…
You Need Stuff, So Get It

You didn’t read any of that stuff did you? DID YOU? Go back and read it now. There is a secret password you’ll need to go any further. Come back here when you’re done.

Good, glad to see you back. Yeah, I totally lied about that secret password. I just wanted you to read the whole thing. Deal. 🙂 First you need to gather and prepare a few items:

  • An SD Card. I suggest it be 2GB, but anything 2GB or less is fine. I wouldn’t go below 512MB though, because you’re going to be keeping stuff on it. Maybe a lot of stuff. Oh, and make sure it’s formatted with a FAT filesystem. Not FAT32.
  • An SD Card reader for your computer. And hey, all you people thinking your 4GB SD card will be twice as good as a 2GB card? Yeah, you follow directions for crap. A 4GB card or bigger will give you lots of problems. Maybe. It’s not worth it man, just get a 2GB card. They’re super cheap.
  • Um, a Wii. Yes. You should have a Wii if you’re going to be hacking a Wii. Just sayin.
Over 1000 Words Later, We Begin

First, boot up your Wii and see what version the firmware is. Generally, you want to leave it alone. As a last resort, you may have to update the firmware to the most recent version, but keep in mind Nintendo does not want you to hack your Wii, and they work hard to keep it from working. Once you know your firmware version, you’ll know how to proceed. It’s super simple:

  1. Click the Wii options button.
  2. Click Wii Settings
  3. Look in the upper right hand corner of the screen. There it is.
  4. If that was confusing, someone made a video of what to do here. Go watch it, then come back.

Remember that number. Maybe write it down or something. Ok, the next step will be done on your computer. Grab your 2GB or smaller FAT formatted SD card, and put it into your card reader. Now head on over to http://bannerbomb.qoid.us/ and follow the appropriate link. You’ll end up downloading a zip file, extracting it to your SD card, and ending up with a folder called “private” on there, with stuff inside. That’s the magic, awesome thing I talked about earlier. That will basically load any program you put on the SD card named “boot.elf” — so lets put something useful on there, shall we?

There’s a really neat program called “HackMii” that installs 3 very useful things onto your Wii. It installs:

  1. BootMii, which yes, is a cheesy name, but it replaces the boot code on your Wii or something, and allows you to back up system bits, etc.
  2. DVDx — this allows your Wii to play video DVDs. Because really, why doesn’t it do that anyway?
  3. HBC — this is the “Homebrew Channel” I keep talking about, home of all things mystical and wonderful.

It will install these things directly off the Internet for you, so you’ll have the latest version. Pretty cool, eh? Go here to download it (as of this writing, it’s version 0.6 or something): http://bootmii.org/download.

So you download that program, unzip it, and copy the boot.elf file to the root (top) directory of your SD card. So you should have 2 things on that now, the folder called “private” (with stuff in it), and a file called “boot.elf” — if you do, you’re ready to actually hack. SWEET.

Hack It Like a Gibson!

If you thought that scene from Hackers was even remotely realistic, you’re not allowed on my blog anymore. Go away.

Good, you’re still here. Ok, basically you now follow the directions from the bannerbomb site to load the boot.elf file. The directions are slightly different depending on what version of firmware you have. It’s not hard. Go back and read the site. Basically you either go to “Data Management”, and “Channels”, and “SD Card” if you have a pre-4.2 firmware. Otherwise, if you have 4.2, you click on the SD card on the main Wii screen. There, I did the work for you.

You should get a message like “Do you want to load boot.dol?” and you say yes. Even if you would rather eat an ice cream sundae, you still click yes. Or load. Or continue. I don’t remember what the affirmation dialog is, but look, you got this far, you want to load the program. So just do it.

Now you’re going to do 3 things. You’re going to install BootMii, DVDx, and The Homebrew Channel. It’s pretty straightforward. Really. You just install them. If you don’t want to install BootMii, that’s fine. I’m pretty sure you can just install the Homebrew Channel and DVDx. The thing about BootMii is that it allows you to back up your NAND, and possibly unbrick your bricked Wii if you brick it. Not that you will. But you know, just in case. You can also use this method to uninstall these 3 programs if you get in trouble for messing with your sister’s Wii later on.

What? It’s too hard? You’re confused? Well, it turns out the folks over at LifeHacker love you more than I do, and they made a (slightly outdated but still useful) tutorial, and they even included pictures. It’s right here. You can go over there to get that part done if you like. If you don’t like pictures, or Lifehacker filed a restraining order against you, there’s a different article over on wikidot. It has fewer pictures, but it’s just as good. Then come back, because I have more goodies to teach you. Things Lifehacker doesn’t cover.

OK, My Wii is Hacked. Am I Cool Now?

I have no idea. If your self esteem and cool factor is based on the current state of your Wii — it’s likely you’re not cool, and no amount of hacking will help. But your Wii? Yeah, your Wii is pretty cool. Let’s make it awesometastic.

To be clear, you could install some homebrew apps now, and brag you have a hacked Wii. Because you do. The problem is, you have sort of a sucky hacked Wii. The biggest thing you need to do is install IOS249. What is IOS249 you ask? I have no friggen clue. I don’t really care either. It’s something you need in order to let your Wii access things like USB drives. (You might also need IOS222/223, but I’ll touch on that later)

One of the really pain in the butt things, is that Nintendo doesn’t want you to do things like this. So they make it really hard. Thankfully, people smarter than me have outlined it really well. Read the awesome article entitled, “IOS249 – How To Get Started, Even If You’re Really Dumb.” Told ya it was a good article… 🙂

This Is Starting To Suck, Are We Done Yet?

Almost. You might have noticed the link on the bottom of that last article that talked about a HERMES IOS222/223 thing. You probably want to install that too. Why? Well, because it will allow your Wii to read a wider variety of USB drives, and give you more possibilities when things don’t go right. And really, you want to get this over with, don’t you?

If you missed that link, it’s right here. Yes, you’re absolutely right, you didn’t need my blog entry at all. You could have just googled all this on your own. But you didn’t. What does that say about you? Well, based on how long I had to google to come up with the right directions, it says you’re smarter than me. Your punishment for being smarter is listening to me monologue like this. It could be worse, I could have made a video and made you listen to me sing.

OK, now you’re cool. Let’s play games and stuff.

By now, you probably understand that in order to install stuff in your Homebrew Channel, you make a folder inside the /apps folder on the SD card, and then put the program in there, and name it boot.dol. Let me suggest a few programs to get you going:

  • Homebrew Browser — This is a neat program that allows you to install, upgrade, and uninstall a wide variety of applications right from your Wii. No more moving the SD card over to your computer. Sadly, it doesn’t have every program, but it does have a lot.
  • Mplayer_CE — this is an awesome video player. It plays pretty much everything, including files on remote Windows or SMB shares. You’ll need to configure the config file on the SD card after installing if you want to play from network shares, but it’s pretty easy. It’s available in the Homebrew Browser, but as a warning — I had to use version .75, as the current version (as of this writing) is .76, and it wouldn’t load. You can download older version from their website if needed.
  • USB Loader GX — There are other USB loaders, but this is my favorite. It will download cover art for you, rip DVDs for you, and allow you to tweak stuff if games (Wii Sports Resort…) don’t work right.

See? That wasn’t bad. You have a totally hacked Wii. You are awesome. You can brag. BUT… If you want to be SUPER cool, you can install forwarders for a few of the programs you access often (like USB Loader GX).

Forwarders, For People That Are Too Cool To Click Homebrew First

This is another thing I don’t totally understand, but it’s not hard to use. Install the WAD Manager. Apparently “WADs” are the things that appear on the main Wii screen. I don’t know. I don’t really care. When you install the WAD Manager, you are able to install WAD files. Go figure. On that website for USB Loader GX, they have a forwarder WAD to download. You basically install it with the WAD Manager, and it magically appears on the main screen. TADA! It’s really simple. The big thing is finding the forwarder for the program you want to add to the main screen. (Forwarders come as WAD files… are you still with me?)

Here is a link to the USB Loader GX forwarder. Read that page. If you don’t understand the difference between installing a forwarder or installing a channel, don’t worry. I don’t either. Just install the forwarder, it works well.

Here is the info on the forwarder for Mplayer CE that I use. Unfortunately, I had to sign up for the forum in able to get access to the download links. That really ticked me off. If you want to use this forwarder, but don’t want to sign up — here is a direct link to the file. You’re welcome.

I Don’t Care If I’m Cool Anymore, Am I Done?

Yeah. That’s pretty much it. You’ll probably want to tweak the config file for Mplayer CE to point it to your windows shares for playing network videos. You might also want to install the Internet Channel on your Wii, and then install PlayOn on your Windows machine so you can watch Netflix streaming — but that doesn’t require any hacking, it’s just pretty cool. You probably also want to download a WBFS program so you can manage games you illegally downloaded and put them on your external USB drive so you can load them with USB Loader GX. And if you’re not a pirate, you probably want to attach an empty USB drive so you can rip your legally owned games onto your hard drive. USB Loader GX does that for you, and it’s pretty sweet.

If you have any questions, just leave a comment. I’ll try to answer. Really though, I’ll probably just make you google your questions — because that’s all I’ll do. I’m not really that smart, I just have good googling skills. You should too. This is 2010 man, you should be able to search on the Internet. And now? GO PLAY A GAME! 😀

NOTE: There are probably typos that I’ll fix later. I have to go to work, and y’all wanted me to post this, so consider this post a Release Candidate. Also, standard disclaimer about ruining your Wii, your life, etc. I’m not responsible. I think you should sell your Wii and become Amish. That’s my recommendation.

What Should Be In The High School Library SciFi Section?

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As many of you know, my wonderful wife works in the high school library. Even if you didn’t know that, it’s still true. Seriously though, one of the areas the library is severely lacking in is the science fiction department. Really, it’s slim pickings. So here is my request: Please leave in the comments what books you think should be in a high school library’s science fiction section. If all the recommendations come from me, it will basically just be full of my favorites. While that would suit me just fine, the thought of growing similar minded geeks is a bit unsettling. Please keep in mind:

  • Our community is pretty conservative, so graphic alien on alien action is likely a deal breaker.
  • Please don’t recommend a book that is in the middle of a series. Recommend the whole series. Seriously, my OCD can’t handle that nonsense. 🙂
  • Newer authors are encouraged. The classics are certainly not to be left out, but really — we want to introduce kids to new authors as well.
  • I think that’s it!

So please, leave your thoughts in the comments. Also, if you know anyone that would have an opinion on the issue, please pass a link along. I’m really hoping to get a good list together for her. Thank you!

Curing Writer’s Laryngitis

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One of the really neat things about writing is when you “find your voice.” A voice is a rather elusive thing, in that the darn thing hides right in front of you. It will also hide in technical nuances too. Lemme give you an example from the past few years of my life.

* I’ve had this notion that I couldn’t write fiction. It seemed somehow “different” than writing non-fiction or journalism stuff. See, with fiction you need a plot, a storyline, characters, climaxes (that word still makes me giggle, sorry), and resolutions. It’s so easy to worry about telling a good story that you never end up telling a story at all. Here’s the skinny: If you tell a good story, it has all those things. Yes, you can tweak, improve, modify, learn — but really, if you just tell a story, the elements fall into place. Because that’s what a good story is. 🙂

* I spent all of NaNoWriMo 2008 fumbling over point of view. Really. It’s sad. I never got to telling a story because I was worried about who was telling the story, what they knew, what parts of speech they used, and if the reader was omniscient or not. See? Insanity.

* Everyone says it, but I’ll reiterate. Because it’s good advice: JUST WRITE. It’s OK to suck. Vacuums do. Black holes do. Tornadoes do. Heck, even mosquitoes do a little bit. The point is, just write. Take this blog post: It’s not great. But hey, that’s not stopping me from clicking publish. MWaahahahahahhaaaa.

My point is, find your voice. Your voice is what makes you distinct. Wanna be a writer? Write. Now. 🙂

Cat photo by dolorix

It’s Already Old News…

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And yet we’ve just begun the process. The world has gone forward, us included, yet it amazes me how tumultuous our lives remain. My family appreciates everyone’s continued thoughts and prayers. Donna went to the house for the first time since the fire yesterday, and it was really hard on her. I think if the home were completely burned, it would be easier to deal with — but it’s not. One room is completely destroyed, but the rest of the house is just blackened, twisted, and ominous. I mentioned last week on Twitter that our house seemed like a version in an alternate universe, where things were dark, desolate, and destroyed. It’s quite unpleasant to visit. I took a few pictures, but most don’t turn out well because everything is black and there is only the light filtered in through smoke and heat damaged windows.


This was the first thing we saw when the door was opened. Our new washer and dryer, completely white, were blackened and filthy looking.


For a contrast on how the house used to be, I moved a rug that was sitting on the kitchen floor. The white is the color everything used to be — now it’s all pitch black. It’s baked into every surface, and can’t be scraped away.


This photo is hard to make out, but here on the left is the remains of a bedroom floor. on the right is a gaping hole to the crawlspace below. This room completely burned, without even floor joists left in the center.


Just an example of the “alternate reality” appearance, here is our shower stall with shampoo in place, yet horrid looking.


Same with the (white) bathroom counter. This is where the girls primped and curled their hair for church, hours later it was converted to what you see here.


A rather disturbing image is the playroom. These are toys my niece just got for Christmas. The photo doesn’t really show just how black the black is.


Oddly, this hand-painted piece (a Christmas gift from a family friend) is seemingly unharmed. While you can’t tell from the photo, everything around it is completely black and stained. This bright orange painting is like a beacon in the center of destruction.


And lastly, blackened, slightly burned, yet still accurate. The sign that hangs above our hallway reads, “As for me and my family, we will serve the Lord.”