The Barrington Report

A question

2012-03-25T17:34:50Z

For those of you who didn't see me post this elsewhere...

What is the deal with the Hunger Games? It's a huge hit, the books are selling, and all it seems to be to me (from what I've read about it) is that it's a long, depressing, overviolent slog through dystopia, a place where authors spend too damn much time.

What's the appeal?

Cheaper e-books!

2012-03-17T21:08:03Z

Interested in buying the e-book of my "Chronicles?" It's now $7.50 (down from $10)

Click here to order

Why They Call Green Bay "Titletown"

2011-12-29T18:11:00Z

Why They Call Green Bay 'Titletown' From the Atlantic - more about how much Green Bay dominates on a per-person basis.

Chronicles on sale - 25 percent off!

2011-11-23T19:04:50Z

Thanks to Lulu.com, my book will be on sale through December 14 for 25 percent off. Note: This is only good at lulu.com and not at Amazon or any of the other places. If you've been on the fence, now is a great time to check it out (or if you liked it, give some to friends).

To get the discount, use the coupon code BUYMYBOOK305 when you order. Note there is a maximum $50 discount on your order!

Order it here

Share your cat-naming story!

2011-11-03T17:12:46Z

Got a good cat-naming story? I'm collecting them for what may be another book. Our Bikini, of course, was named for her bikini-like markings. Does your cat have an unusual name, and what's the story behind it? e-mail ray.columns@yahoo.com and it might end up in print - we'll even consider running a photo of the cat!

Book news

2011-11-03T05:33:52Z

"Chronicles" is now on sale:
-The Reader's Loft in Bellevue, southeast of Green Bay
-E-book at Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.com (Nook bookstore).

Now on Amazon, soon to be on Nook

2011-10-24T09:30:14Z

The distribution of "Chronicles" keeps growing, I'm happy to say.

The book is now available at Amazon.com, so if you have a gift card for there, now's a great time to use it! Just go to this link. or search for "ray barrington".

And I've been notified that the book is going to be listed at the Nook bookstore at Barnes and Noble, so you should find it there soon.

Oh, have I mentioned that I'd love feedback, either directly to me or on review pages when you buy a copy?

Order an autographed copy!

2011-09-29T02:14:41Z

Now you can order an autographed copy right from my book blog!

Just go to my blog and click the "buy now" button on the right sidebar.

Just an update...

2011-09-27T22:22:39Z

I'm providing updates on my new book "Chronicles" at this blog.

World Champs times 13

2011-02-07T04:28:24Z

The party will be going on for quite some time

drbear @ 2010-12-25T23:13:00

2010-12-26T05:13:46Z

For Christmas, tweeti bought me a chain for my prized pocket watch handed down from my grandfather. To raise the funds, she had her long, beautiful hair cut off and sold to make a wig. Meanwhile, I sold the watch to buy her a beautiful set of combs made out of tortoiseshell and jewels for her lovely brown hair.

Well, not really, but it was a nice Christmas.

drbear @ 2010-11-15T08:45:00

2010-11-15T14:45:56Z

After seeing TIkit (above) licking the shower wall after tweeti showered today, with apologies to Mr. Floyd:

We don't need no bowl of water
We don't need no gooshyfood
No post to scratch on, we use doorways
All we need is attitude
Hey! Mommy! Turn that shower on...
All in all, it's just a
cat that's licking the wall.

An interesting new blog that has just started.

2010-04-10T03:06:24Z

It's at Posts from god.com

The Final Jeopardy Answer: No.

2010-02-11T21:32:32Z

The question: I'm 53, married, and trying this as an experiment ... can I show the discipline to do this at this age?

I started this in April 2003, and while it is not being shut down, it is going into, appropriate for a bear, hibernation. It seems an appropriate day to do it.

I say hibernation because I will make few, if any, direct posts to this journal for the foreseeable future. My Twitter posts will continue to appear daily. And I do plan to keep following my friends list. And commenting. And playing the LJDQ.

I've noticed in the past year that I haven't had much I wanted to say on here. You all know the situation tweeti and I have at home, and it continues. I am just depressing myself anytime I think about it. And there has been a stagnation here; few new people showing up, and I think the rest of you have already heard all my stories.

I would love to take the extra time I have these days to start a book, but I wouldn't have a clue how to write a novel, and I still don't really have the time for the research nonfiction would require. Besides that, there are a lot of things I don't want to write about (crime, courts) that seem to be the most popular, and most of my sports contacts have flown away.

So I will find something else to pass my time, and post now and then on Twitter or Facebook just to let everyone know I'm alive.

Thanks for playing along. I wish I had a copy of our home game to give you.

And if I take a really good photo, I might post it on here anyway.

A story for the day

2009-12-24T07:55:09Z

This is the story of how the little angel got on top of the Christmas Tree.

It was the day before Christmas, and the North Pole was in an uproar. None of the toys looked right, wheels kept falling off toy trains, and dolls that were supposed to speak stood mute. The elves were running around for no apparent reason. Santa Claus tried to bring some order, but the machinery kept breaking down, the pipes started to leak, and the reindeer got out of their pen. Santa shouted at the top of his lungs, but could not make a dent in the madness. His face grew redder as his voice grew louder, and his shouted instructions grew more and more angry.

And just then, in the midst of all the chaos, the liiiiiiitlest angel came to the door of the workshop and said, in her high, piping voice, "I've brought the Christmas Tree, Santa! Where should I put it?"

And the exodus continues

2009-09-27T00:45:30Z

Yet another person on my friends list said today they are quitting their journal, although they'll still read their friends list - at least for now, at least for as long as us stay. (as us stay? It's been a long day. Go Badgers and Georgia.)

Seriously, this is what happened at the site where tweetiand I met - Bianca's. God knows how both of us ended up there - which brings me to another post I'll make someday - but we did. Soon after, it started to fade after it was bought during the Net boom in 1999, then faded away.From Wikipedia:

At the time of the site's creation, the posts in bianca's chat rooms could be of any length. If a user had a 100-line-long poem they wanted to post, the chat software would have accepted and posted it. This was manageable when bianca was a smaller, more closely knit community. However, as bianca grew more popular, cyber vandals eventually found their way to bianca, and they too could post 100-line-long rants if they pleased. As the site prided itself on allowing all users freedom of speech, little effort was made to correct what quickly became a problem in terms of both site management and bandwidth, bringing the system to its knees. [3]

Some anti flooding software was later added, but was shown to be less than impervious to persistent hackers.

In the final days of the site's full-blown operations in 2003 and 2004, the site became the target of hackers and cyber attacks. The attacks included, but were not limited, to exhausting the sites bandwidth by flooding Bianca’s message boards with text that included links disguised as leading to porn sites. Remnants of this vandalism can still be found on the skeletal remains of Bianca.com to this day.

Although it is unclear who was actually managing the server, bianca's operated with intermittent functionality and frequent outages as late as early 2007. At some point after that, hackers were able to access the server and delete the contents, using a function that rendered the data irretrievable,. For a while the home page continued to exist, along with some archived messages and the site's update page. Now the whole site is dead.
[edit] bianca.org

But it was there for a time, like Brigadoon, and now it's gone and served its purpose in life, which was to bring two of us together.

Now, LJ has brought a bunch of us together, and it's fading. Not all of you are elsewhere (Facebook, twitter, etc.) and I'd hate to lose you. I'm staying, as I have said; I'm a writer and 140 characters doesn't always cut it.

I don't know where all this is headed. I'd love to know how many of the kajillion LJs are actually used.

And I'd love to know just where the decisions start that a site is hot or not. Who started the hotness of Facebook and twitter? Who decided LJ was dying?

I'm on Twitter, get me out of here!

2009-06-29T23:05:23Z

Like chirps through the hourglass, these are the tweets of our lives...

06:22 @bobandtom @bobandtom Did ya hear about the typesetter who became a trapeze artist? His circus name was ULTRA BODONI #
11:25 Next2last day b4 vacatiom. Just let me get thru it. #