Weight Loss (8.3 of 14.7 kg)
Commission (4,227 of 15,000 words)
Well, Friday has come around and I can’t say I got everything done that I hoped. Not that I ever seem to finish my entire to do list when I have weeks like this, but I got a reasonable amount of them that I don’t feel that I completely and utterly wasted the weekend. Given the number of times I got distracted over at Armor Games and Kongregate, I’m going to say I got to the “fun” things. Just not the ones that I planned on enjoying, like playing on the PlayStation or programming a game. Oh well.
My commission is kicking my ass. Four days of working on it and I can’t say that I’ve gotten more than a quarter done. And I’m not exactly happy with the bits I do have, but I’ll keep plugging on it.
I did get pretty good progress on a theme framework for web applications (I’m calling it WTF for web template framework). I have a DokuWiki and WordPress themes that use the same centralized style and it seems to work out pretty well. It even has a test page to test the style.
Tonight, I’m going to dinner with the in-laws and tomorrow we have board game night (*squee*), so this week is pretty much over for projects.
Weight Loss (8.3 of 14.7 kg)
Commission (3,673 of 15,000 words)
In this week of downtime, I decided to finish updating some of my websites. After trying to get WordPress to play with my personal site theme, then with Simple Machines Forum working with my Moonfire Games site, I realized that all these software applications need to stop making their own special way of doing themes and find a way of getting some convergance. I’ve encountered this same problem when playing with MediaWiki (my old Moonfire site), Mantis (the bug-tracker I use), DokuWiki (my main wiki now) and a score of other applications.
Depending on my energy level, I might give up on my current attempt to cram the MfGames site theme into SMF and come up with a system of making a generic theme engine that I can integrate into all of those. It would really help since I have 3 major sites that I would like to see converted this week into 7 different web-based applications (3 DokuWiki, my WordPress blog, 2 SMF forums, a Mantis BT).
And fighting the urge to create a new typewriter font for my personal site because I hate the entire quagmire of copyright of the fonts I do find. I like giving away my stuff too much and it is frustrating that I can’t get Underwood Champion to look good on Windows XP, even if I install it properly and use it in Microsoft Word. Interestingly, I found a decent font I could scan from my old medical procedures books, but I wish I had some old newsprint or scans of a proper typewriter to convert into a font. I really like the rough text of Underwood Champion and I think it adds a nice flair to my main site.
Weight Loss (8.3 of 14.7 kg)
Commission (3,673 of 15,000 words)
No, it isn’t any pornographic. Just having a little trouble with this week of being idle. I made a list of things to do, mixed in with things that are big and should be done and little things like cleaning up my office. Naturally, I seem to be focusing more on the little things and ignoring the two big things: the commission due at the end of the week and my homework due on Sunday. But, I’ve done an impressive job of unpacking books and putting them in the bookcases.
Unfortunately, this urge to unpack and put things away has resulted in something that I apparently didn’t schedule: I’m out of bookcases. I have most of my paperback in three shelves… back three columns deep and two rows high… each. My programming books are up on top of the bookcases, my religious books jammed underneath. I’m stealing the light-weight shelves for my manga (once I managed to re-read half of them in the process of shelving). My RPG books are overflowing into my hard sciences and graphic arts.
So, this leads to the realization that I need to purge some books. And I don’t want to. While I haven’t read anything heavily in about a year, I still read occasionally. I have book reviews that I feel I owe to the great writers at GenCon.
Some are easy. I have a huge stack of Dragon Magazine which I have no clue what to do. I think I have almost every single one from issues 11 or so (there are three boxes worth), but I honestly don’t read them anymore. Not sure if I should dump them at the GenCon auction since I have no clue what the resale value on the magazines. But, it seems like a shame just to throw them in the recycling. My JCL and mainframe books, they had no problems meeting the bottom of the recycling bin. As did 60 empty DVD cases which I really don’t need.
Oh, and one minor other thing…
I reached a major goal. My goal for GenCon was to lose 5% of my body weight from when I started Weight Watchers. That comes out to 7.2 kg. Yesterday, my official weight lose came to 8.4 kg since I started. I am… excited, mainly because this is going to be a very long and hard road I’m taking. I’m losing about 0.5 kg a week on average, which is a good rate. The 14.7 goal above is 10% of my weight and is my next major goal. And 14.7 kg is much easier to swallow than 52 kg which is roughly the amount I need to lose to be “healthy”.
Previously, I reviewed the first book by T. R. Chowdhury and T. M. Crim, the Child of Prophecy, and I picked up the second book at GenCon 2008. But, it took me way too many months to get to this review.
Warrior of Destiny is a solid continuation of the first book and it dovetails nicely into the conclusion of that story and builds up a remarkably different story while keeping to the original tone. The book is 534 pages, a pretty hefty book, and takes a while to read. In my case, just over six hours, but they were an enjoyable six hours.
(more…)
Weight Loss (6.3 of 14.7 kg)
Commission (823 of 15,000 words)
Finished up another little change, the ability to pick and choose LiveJournal avatars from inside WordPress. This way, I don’t have to write up a post, post it, then go over to LiveJournal to make it private (last week’s change) and pick an avatar (this change). It all happens in the same place, which makes it easier for me to post quickly.
Despite the fact I get almost no comments on my main blog, I still prefer to have that as my primary and LiveJournal being a secondary mirror. It could just be me being picky, but despite the fact I’m not on Facebook or MySpace, I still want to have my blog on my domain. But, all those delicious comments and online friends are over on LiveJournal, so I bridge the two in the way that I’m comfortable with.
This also means I really should stop stalling and work on my commission or write a program.
Weight Loss (6.4 of 14.7 kg)
Commission (700 of 15,000 words)
Just screwing around, but decided I’d work on the LiveJournal crossposter that I use to automatically mirror from my WordPress blog to my LiveJournal one. There are only two changes I’m planning on doing, this being one of them, but at least I can now mark a post as “friends only” from WordPress without manually jumping through a few hoops.
The other change is to let me select my avatar from WordPress so I don’t have to go over to LJ, just to change the avatar. Not a big deal for most people, but it can get a bit annoying after a almost three years of this.
Hope other people like it.
Weight Loss (6.4 of 14.7 kg)
Commission (700 of 15,000 words)
Been a rather interesting week of ups and downs. But, most of the downs, I’m not suppose to talk about because of various reason. They are things I can survive, but I can’t honestly say the next three weeks are going to be pleasant at work and, to a smaller degree, at home.
But, there is positive news in there. I hit my one year anniversary work and got a cute paperweight for the efforts. It doesn’t seem like much, but I really like working where I work and I want to keep on doing it.
My third college petition also got accepted this week. That gave me a wonderful surprise, I was worried about that and now I’m not. Only one more to go, then I’ll have all the petitions out of the way. And class starts on Monday, hopefully the second to last class for my masters. Still can’t decide on the entire doctorate thing. Since I can’t figure it out, it probably means the answer won’t really matter in my life. Which is probably true, a doctorate opens some doors and closes others.
All that has given me a bit of a creativity block. I didn’t really want to work on anything really important. So, I just putzed around on the computer. I submitted a patch for KoLmafia for some features I happen to want. Nothing major, but something for my own curiosity. I also ascended again in the game which is always fun. Sticking with the Sauce class, mainly because I have a few more things I want to pick up, then probably wander over to Seal Clubber or Pastamancer. I should focus on getting the Olfactory skill, but… I keep getting distracted with ascending. It is fun and is a little sense of accomplishment.
The “MfGames.Tools” is a programming project. A small little library for creating command-line tools, MSBuild, Ant, and probably other things. I wouldn’t be surprised if I also try to figure how to get it working with PowerShell, but it is one of those things on the dependency graph for the projects I want to work on.
Weight Loss (6.4 of 14.7 kg)
Commission (0 of 15,000 words)
Ended staying up to nearly midnight last night to finish up the responses for the petition. Even though I felt pretty comfortable with the answers, I’m still uncomfortable with what they were asking. I had one other petition rejected in the same way, for the networking class. The first round came back with a comment that my resume didn’t show heavy networking experience. So, I added five pages on the various networking I did for SIL. It came back again, with show more information about networking skills. I had no clue what they were talking about. I told them I did it, I explained all the cases where I used networking. I also couldn’t figure out what part of networking they wanted, and they wouldn’t tell me.
So, I went with one of my vices: wordy. A thirty page paper on how to do networking. It included the basic process of wiring RJ-45 plugs, including the differences between the A and B style wiring. I had tips on wiring houses and buildings, including the cases where you use PVC verses plenum wires. I went with configurations on Linux, Mac, and Windows. Basics of software firewalls and using `tcpdump` to track down errant network usage. I also even included the IPv4 firewall configurations to handle things like SYN and smurf attacks (the two I dealt with personally). Which naturally required a discussion on IPv4 and IPv6 packet headers.
As a note, I really do try to be a jack-of-trades in life.
I got it, but I still don’t know what they wanted. I just info-dumped on them and hoped it work. I did something similar to this petition, which I’m not entirely happy with. I gave them how I would honestly use the PMBOK from the view of my experiences and my own style. I gave links to where my discussions in my previous answers correlate to the PMBOK bullet points and expanded with specific examples. The one thing I didn’t do was use the section numbers and exact names of processes to describe what I did.
Weight Loss (6.4 of 14.7 kg)
Commission (0 of 15,000 words)
I’m excited and worried at the same time. My weigh-in for Weight Watchers was… good. Actually, a bit too good so I’m worried that I won’t be able to lose weight tomorrow because of some quirk. Came out to almost 3 kg in a week. This reverses the weight gain in the two weeks before and then some, but I’ll have to be extra focused on walking fast, getting some excercise, and eating healthy. I’m 0.45 kg from my next star and 0.91 kg from losing 5% of my initial weight at Weight Watchers.
Fluffy is out of town for a few days, so I get to enjoy obsessing at home. This week, I’m planning on working on my third college petition feedback and then the commission due in a week or so. The commissioner is anxious to get it and I really want to see how the story turns out. It is probably one of the largest ones I’ve done from someone else’s idea, so this is going to be a challenge. While I can write fifteen thousand word stories, I do better with less than that.
My “sweet spot” for short stories is five to ten thousand words. That is where at least 90% of everything I write for myself falls into. Naturally, it is larger than most of the places looking for short stories which makes it harder to find places to submit.
Not that schedules impact writing at all *cough*, but the ten thousand mark is also the largest story I can reasonably write in a single evening. I have to be really into the story, dreaming and thinking about it constantly, but sitting down after work until bed time, I get just under four hours. Naturally, that times goes into Fluffy, animals, and housework also, but when she’s out of town, I write more.
Imagine that.