Jack of Harts

I’m Not Surprised

by Medron Pryde on November 5, 2025 at 12:01 am

Posted In: Diaries

I’m not surprised by the election results. I’m disappointed, but not surprised.

The out of power party always gains in off-year elections, and the Democrats are certainly motivated to fight the party in power right now.

And in this case, they absolutely voted to push their goals.

They voted to take away representation from millions of Republicans in California.
They voted for an antisemitic Muslim who pals around with known terrorist supporters and wants to defund the police and wants to seize the means of production.
They voted to put a man who fantasizes about killing Republican men and children so Republican women can weep over their bodies to be the Attorney General of an entire State.

Democrats voted their values and they put people who reflect those values into office.

I’m not surprised by this. I am disappointed, but not surprised.

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Captains William Carter and Jack Hart

by Medron Pryde on November 4, 2025 at 12:01 am

Posted In: Diaries

I needed Captain William Carter, and Jack before him, to be mentally strong as well as physically strong. The kind of people who had been raised to make the hard decisions when they needed to be made and to know when they were needed. And the kind of people that had a strong moral compass.

Jack was raised in the Assemblies of God, one of the many Christian denominations. But during most of the stories I write, he lost his faith. Didn’t turn away from it, but just lost the certainty that anything existed. Most of his stories have been written after his world ended. After his family and friends died. After his home was destroyed. He lost his sense of safety and faith. But the training of his parents still shows through. And he tries to live up to it, even if he isn’t sure it is true.

William never doubted. He was raised a Puritan, and they were a hardy bunch. Ready for privation and everything that goes with it. And since he deals with magical and otherworldly threats, his faith in God upholds him in his quest to protect people. His faith in God is in fact very central to his quest.

In the end, both main characters, and most of the supporting characters that work with them, are all mentally strong. Resistant to breaking or giving up. They are all heroes of some order. Volunteers who chose to stand up and fight. That makes it fun to write them, and I hope it makes it fun to read them as well

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Captains William Carter and Jack Hart

by Medron Pryde on November 3, 2025 at 12:01 am

Posted In: Diaries

The primary concept of Captain William Carter’s entrance into the weird world was when he was touched by the otherworld after crossing the Delaware in 1776. He got bit by a Hessian vampire and doesn’t age any more. He doesn’t know why. All he knows is that he doesn’t age, and he’s a fair bit tougher than the average human. Not invulnerable. Just hardier and quicker to heal. Pretty much the same as Jack Hart some centuries later. There’s got to be a reason why your action heroes take wounds that would cripple or hobble a real living man and just walk them off, right? Your typical action hero from movies would spend weeks or months recovering. I want to write another story for the next day. So I write characters that can do that. And then I shoot them. Or stab them. Or get them into crashes that fracture every bone in their body. Sometimes a lot.

That is where Captain William Carter comes from. I wanted someone better than human but still realistic. Still human, but better than most, a hero I could write, without having him age out or get crippled. I was going to put him through a lot of hells and he needed to be able to survive them. That is where William Carter comes from.

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Old Computers and New Life

by Medron Pryde on November 2, 2025 at 12:01 am

Posted In: Diaries

I’ve been a techie all my life. I came by it honestly. I wanted to play with computers but couldn’t afford to have other people maintain my computers, so I learned to maintain and upgrade them myself. To keep them going long after others would have left them to die. And my computers do not spend their days in other people’s computer shops.

My current network of computers are all very old by modern standards. Not one of them was built in this decade, and my favored old laptop that I have written many stories on and have burned through three keyboards with was built in 2010. Yes. Some of my computers predate the teens. And not a one of them can “upgrade” to Windows 11, so I’m stuck running Windows 10.

I’m so sad about that. If you listen closely, you may hear me crying.

Ah… but no need for that.

I recently upgraded three of my computers with new RAM. Taking two of them from 16 GBs to 32, and one of them from 8 GBs to 32. The old classic DDR3 RAM is rather cheap today, and a good old school 2GB Geforce video card can make them scream rather well. I know that isn’t powerful enough to play front line mega games now, but they can do anything I care about. And if I want to play big games, that is what Xbox is for. 🙂

But I have to say… those three computers running on 32 GBs of RAM are really feeling frisky now compared to before. They were starting to get a bit long in the tooth. Now they are ready for a new day. So I have some long awaited surgery planned for the other two computers. They will get new RAM soon as well, and one will get a new motherboard she has needed for a long time, and a better video card as well. That poor girl has been limping along for a while after part of her motherboard burned out. Once that upgrade is done, she’ll really scream. By my standards at least. Two of the machines being upgraded are even production machines I use for Jack of Harts, so guess what? I get to use Jack of Harts money to pay for those upgrades.

What can I say? I love being able to get new performance out of old machines to keep them useful today.

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