2009-01-30

Exhaustion

Filed under: Family,Writing — Tags: — D. Moonfire @ 13:31

I took half of Tuesday off to find a new family doctor. I never realized how much finding one is like blind dates: you don’t know what you are going to find, if they have a good bedside manner, if they are going to rant endlessly about your weight, or any other thousand things.

Fortunately, this was a good blind date, so I think I found a doctor. I’m a bit heavier than I thought and an inch shorter than I realized. So, my goal of 16 kg this year is going to put me at 136 kg at the end of the year. Well, still working on that.

Had an enjoyable conversation with my brother, who reads my blog. I keep forgetting that, but it’s nice. He and I talked about the attempt in the 70′s to convert to the metric system and all the push-back. But, we both agree that if we stuck with it then, we would have just gotten through it.

Back to my date. To avoid taking vacation days for it, I had make up the time. I ended up working until 19:00 on Tuesday, which meant I got home and could barely bang away at the keyboard. Then, last night, I didn’t get home until 21:00. Release weeks are fun, but they also make it hard to write. I’ve only gotten off about 6k words this week. They were a good 6k (a chapter in the serial and about a thousand on the first commission).

Fluffy came into town about 01:00 this morning. This means I got up to talk to her, get her situated, and well, that kind of killed my sleep there. In other words, I’m exhausted.

2009-01-28

Mountain lakes

Filed under: Uncategorized — D. Moonfire @ 05:05

There is a lake near Pike’s Peak, Colorado that froze itself into my memories. It is next to this wonderful camping ground that I went to for quite a few years, an annual tradition if you will. And, like camping there, I had a second tradition.

Swimming in that lake.

It is cold, colder than cold. The type of frigid water that sucks the breath out of you until you are shivering from fright, terrified to go deeper into the seaweed and rocks and just as terrified to crawl out, as if the warm air would melt the skin from your bones.

I love that lake.

There are two ways of dealing with that lake. One is to inch in from the shores, chatting with everyone else as you go in millimeter by millimeter. Large splashing from children who have no concept of near-zero waters turn into terrified ordeals as you watch the waves come closer.

Or, you can just plow right in. Take a deep breath and keep on driving until you are neck deep and the hypothermia ends up being just a really nice buzz of adrenaline and shivering. Twenty seconds later, you can’t even feel the cold that way.

Amazingly, I have a point here. The senate has just delayed the transition from analog to digital television until June 12. I am saddened by this, not because I don’t think that many people are still on rabbit ears, not because I think its bad technology, I’m saddened because we are dragging it out. Inching into it, centimeter by centimeter instead of just diving in. Yes, it would be chaos. Yes, people would be rushing out to get new converter boxes. But, I honestly think, a week later, it would no longer be news. People would have moved on. Cable isn’t changing. Satellite isn’t changing. Those who need it, will adapt because television is addictive. Instead, we are going to draw it out. We are going to have more endless commercials telling us that we need to change, in a few more months. And when that time comes around, someone will push to have it pushed back a few more months. Then a few more. And a few more.

If they just dove forward. Let it happen in the next two weeks, guess what? By the end of Feburary, it won’t be news. People will have moved on. Yeah, they’ll bitch, but we’ve been trying to do this transition for years.

There is another transition that I so desperately want that is doing the same thing: the metric system. Ignoring FiL’s opinions that we have calculators that convert, so why bother converting, I consider switching to the metric system as part of our entry into the rest of the world. If we just held our breath and dove in, it would take so little time and be over. We are holding it as our little private secret, just us and two other countries. Yeah… pretty much the rest of the world has already moved on, but we keep inching into it. Most people could probably guess how much a kilogram is at this point, but still we refuse to take that last step.

I’ve been wanting to dive into that lake for decades.

2009-01-27

Little bit of creativity

Filed under: Writing — Tags: , — D. Moonfire @ 01:40

Got the details for my third commission this weekend. It’s going to be hard, but doable. Only about five thousand words. The second one is ten thousand words, and the first is… well, they have a fifty thousand word limit and all the commissions they want until they expend it (giving money when I’m desperate is a good thing). And I have three weeks to finish that and the second one, so it’s going to be a very busy two weeks mixed in with college, work, and that “relaxing” thing. I’ll probably skip the relaxing thing as usually.

Actually, I tried to skip the relaxing thing. But, I got to this point where I was deciding if I should sit down and program, sit down and write, or read a book. So, in times of that, I did what I usually do: roll dice. Big old handful of HERO system dice, because they are pretty… and green. Of the dice, 80% said “read a book!” so I did. I’ll probably review it later, not sure. I wanted to read the PDF book I have from a friend, but the idea of staring at a screen for four hours… well, I realized I needed to sprawl out in a puddle of sun, drip myself into my blankets, and just… do nothing.

I both hate and absolutely love doing nothing.

The nice bit is that I’m enjoying the writing. I haven’t even tried to program lately, because I don’t really see a need to, or a desire. I haven’t done my Critters obligation though, really need to catch up on that. I also need to get Victim of Love updated and resubmitted. Between that, commissions, and my serial, I’m pretty and happily busy.

I keep thinking I should submit stories, but commissions are holding me pretty well and I know that they are seasonal. In a few months, I won’t have any so take everything I can now.

2009-01-14

Writing and Classes

Filed under: Education,Writing — Tags: — D. Moonfire @ 02:09

Doing a bit of writing. Last week, I had a few seriously down parts and it managed to pretty my lynch my creativity for the week. But, this week, I got a bit of writing done and things are moving forward nicely.

I finished my commission. It came with the best payment ever–money from PayPal and another request. Yah for another commission. I’m working on a prepay commission and it reminds me exactly why I hate being prepaid for my commissions. Knowing I would get paid at the end is one of those motivators and when I don’t have that, I find myself working on other things instead.

Classes started last week. Compared to the struggles I had before this, I’m not having a lot of trouble with this one. Week one… make a website. Week two? Make a website with multiple pages and links! *squee*

Overall, I’m having a good week this week. I won’t be blogging probably as frequently as before (last week again), but I’m hoping to get into “real” writing (i.e. stuff that might get me published). I’ll see, these first few months of 2009 are going to be transitional.

2009-01-11

Crayon Physics Deluxe

Filed under: Reviews — D. Moonfire @ 18:31

There are a few games that I really enjoy. There are the plot-heavy RPG’s that draw me in for hours and the casual games that draw me in for hours. Sometimes, it’s nice to find a game where you can start it up and just play around with it, then look up to find out that you just lost half a day.

Crayon Physics Deluxe is one of those games. A very simple game, relatively speaking. You draw boxes, chains, and hinges on the screen and get a ball to roll into the star. The wonderful part of the game is not the complicated puzzles; most of them can be solved by brute force. Instead, the draw of the game is how you can solve a puzzle. The program doesn’t have “one true way” to figure out a stage. I lost hours trying see how complicated of a Rube Goldberg device I could create. I realized this at some point when I managed to build a catapult to launch the ball into a series of tubes just to get it along a straight line.

And that is the joy of the game. Not finishing a stage, you could probably do that in a few hours, but finding cool ways of finishing a stage, something that someone else might not have thought of.

Obviously, I would rather there be a Linux version of the game, mainly because that is my operating system of choice, but this will definitely hit the magic point of good entertainment for me (money paid divided by hours of entertainment is less than 1). I’m already 6 hours into that and I just installed it yesterday.

Happy Hour of the Damned by Mark Henry

Filed under: Reviews — D. Moonfire @ 18:20

I love urban fiction where the main characters are snarky and the sarcastic. I like when the humor is mixed in with the horror and seriousness, but not when it is bolted on. It needs to be blended with the elements instead of “put a funny scene here” type of writing. It doesn’t hurt when there is something interesting besides vampires in the story. And this novel gave me everything I wanted in that type of book.

(more…)

2009-01-07

Good thoughts

Filed under: Education,Family,Games — Tags: — D. Moonfire @ 17:27

I had a terrible bout with depression last night. A bit of talking with Fluffy helped a little bit. So did the somewhat high maintenance cat–well the cat who wants to be petted all the time but I still love her–helped with pulling me out of my dark mood.

This morning, it was better. Could be the decision I wasn’t going to stress out about work or money today probably helped.

I also ascended today on the one and only online game I play, Kingdom of Loathing. KoL was driving me nuts actually, since I was getting upset about missing out on an once in a lifetime event because I jumped the gun with the last ascension. I know it was a game, but it took me a few days to just let it go (a skill I’m normally really good at). In the end, I missed out on a bunch of loot, but it wasn’t too bad (if I ascended two days earlier, I would have made it). Oh well, I had my fastest speed run ever (14 days from end to end, because I missed out on the once in a lifetime event, go figure), bought the once in a lifetime event item from the store, and rolled into the next round.

I also solved a major problem at work with a customer, got everything off my plate, and basically managed to take a long, deep breath.

When I get home, I start my college class.

Today is going to be good.

2009-01-06

Overcautious warnings

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: — D. Moonfire @ 19:01

I responding to Jeff Duntemann’s LJ entry about LEGO this morning. So, naturally, I did a little search to show my point and I encountered this little gem: Walmart’s LEGO Quatro page. For those who don’t know, Quatro is kind of like a beginner Duplo; it is twice as large as a Duplo which is twice as large as a normal LEGO brick. There is also LEGO Baby line which is twice as large as a Quatro. But, something jumped up as interesting…

quatro

LEGO Quatro is for ages 1-3. And, in the above warning, you can see it is for ages 12-24 months, but there is a warning not to use it for children under 3. Just a cute little thing. Though, I’m annoyed at the “toys for boys” line. Girls like LEGO’s too, you know.

That said, I still like LEGO. If I understand correctly, you can use Quatro, Duplo, and normal LEGO bricks in the same creation, which is just fascinating. Plus, it lets you use Quatro and Duplo bricks as the foundation for larger works.

2009-01-05

Goals for 2009

Filed under: Education,Family,Programming,Writing — Tags: , , , , , , — D. Moonfire @ 17:00

Every year, I believe the year with a bunch of new goals. My record for achieving them isn’t the greatest, but I’m usually pretty good at least making a few of them. This year, after some playful ribbing from Fluffy, I have five:

  1. Writing: Finish Flight of the Scions. This was last year’s goal also, but I hit writer’s block for most of the year. I’m not including writing a novel this year, because after so many years of doing it, it’s more of a “well, duh” item instead of something remarkable. I’m going to write a new novel this year, it just isn’t a goal.
  2. Programming: Join and complete 4E7. I’ve had a nasty time with game writing contests last year. I’m going to not join any game writing contests until 4E7, then work on that one. I want to finish, damn it. Now, that said, I’m still going to work on CuteGod, Baby Squid God, and Wordplay when I want to write a game.
  3. Health: Lose 16 kg (35 pounds). I need to loose some weight. This is actually the hardest one on the set. I’m not going to set a goal of a certain number of miles on a bike or walking, or the stairs or anything. I just want to be 16 kg lighter by the end of the year (and ideally not through projectile vomiting or amputation).
  4. Family: Be living with Fluffy, our cats, and dog in the same house by the end of the year. I’m tired of living across two states, really, really tired of it.
  5. Education: Graduate with a master’s. I’m on track for this one, but I need just a little push…

I do have some secondary goals. These are goals that I want to get done, but I won’t feel guilty of I don’t:

  • I have a second novel that needs an edit round and self-publication. I won’t get the artwork done in a reasonable time, but I can everything prepared for the artwork.
  • Get at least one story published.
  • Finish up the book of poetry I’ve been working in my spare time for two years.
  • Finish Baby Squid God.
  • Finish CuteGod.
  • Finish the Glorious Saber arc and get closure on that project.
  • Get more commissions.
  • Stop being a wanna writer and programmer.
  • 5 ascensions on Kingdom of Loathing.