A long, beautiful day. Coming to the end of my project at work, which means all those tiny little details are popping up going “forgot about me?”.
No, I didn’t. I just didn’t want to deal with you.
But, I have my second demo tomorrow and the third day of code reviews. In theory, code cut-off is this Friday, so I’m working overtime to get as much done as possible. I spent an extra three hours of work to get another critical bug off my plate that I couldn’t seem to get done during the day.
Going to be a fun week, but by the time next week rolls around, I won’t remember it.
(Side note, upgraded my LJ-XP patch to sort avatar listings as per the request at the issue page).
I got to write some and it was wonderful. Just a few thousand words, plus mowing the lawn, making dinner, and chasing the dog around the house, but still… I got to write.
My Father’s Bike is doing much better when I found a voice for it. I’m also doing much better now that I have a goal in mind. I started this project with the intent of a gift for my father, but that wasn’t enough. I needed something a bit more and I think I found it. I just hope I can pull it off and not sound like an ass.
… or having him going through the book hating every word.
Today, I learned that Inigo really, really likes frogs. I went to Weight Watchers (lost 0.3 kg which negates half of the last two weeks) and managed to only stick my foot in my mouth once. Then, getting home an hour later than normal, I decided that as much as I wanted to play on the computer, I’d go on a walk.
One and a half hours later, I’m tired, Inigo is tired and staring hopefully at every. single. dark. spot. on the trail hoping it is a frog. I managed to walk just under four miles, which isn’t too bad. I wasn’t in a hurry or anything.
I also enjoyed thinking about My Father’s Bike, which is the novel-like thing I’m working on. I finally sat down and got a chapter outline set up for the thing and I’m a bit happier about it.
Didn’t do much beyond thinking about it though, I’m planning that for tomorrow. Tonight, I only had an hour or so, so I decided to mess around with a Emacs major mode for ASH, the scripting language used by KoLmafia. Kind of fun, but still a challenge. And it gave me some new insights on how to improve csharp-mode, which is one of those things I really need to polish up a bit more.
Yesterday, I was so excited about the petition getting approved and only been a class and a week from graduating. Today, I had a doctor’s visit to follow up for the problems I had at GenCon and a checkpoint on the pre-diabetes thing.
105.
I ended up not eating before I got there so I had a fasting blood sugar. Their little prick test put me at 105. Which is very good news since I was 137 the last one (which was a fluke) and around 122 for the rest of them. And the A1C test came back as 5.5, which is right in the “perfectly healthy” range of things for a three month average.
So, just to get that level down just a little bit more and keep on exercising. The doctor doesn’t think I need to worry about it too much, but I’m going to keep on it mainly because the fear of diabetes is getting me to change my health. Which is probably the best, long-term thing at this point.
In completely other news, I got my personalized license plates today. Yes, a completely vanity thing in general and it will increase my annual license fee by 1%, but still… it’s cute.
Four more days until the end of class and I’m excited about that. I also got the notice for my petition, which was accepted after the responses. Thirty seconds later, I was on the phone with my academic adviser who got the same email only a few minutes before me. So, I’m now one class and one week from my masters and I’m very excited.
Work is relaxing a little bit this week, but I’m still not over the major hump I’m working on. I try so hard to get things done, and it is nice I get the impression that I’m appreciated and wanted. Call is self-esteem but I worry about those type of things. I also want to be the best employee I can be.
I’ve been obsessing about two things for no reason. One is a little Kingdom of Loathing script. It is turning out to be a tad more difficult than I expected; I know I can do it, I just can’t get the bits and bytes to shift the way I need them too.
I’ve also been working on world development for my steampunk world. Partially scripts, partially language. Messing around with the map and trying to figure out how much history is important to the story. I mean, I know that some of the history is important since it shows up in Flight of the Scions, but how much is enough. I think I could spend months coming up with the history, mainly because I have so much fun.
… though, I really need to get to the “do” part of those things again. Right now, I have the following on my radar:
- Scroll of the Lands
- Unit Performance
- Flight of the Scions
- My Father’s Bike
- DG
I know there are more to consider, but those seem to be the ones I want to play with now. Well, and making a font for the lovely scripts I found. *sigh* More projects than time. And I seem to love it.
Followup on yesterday, I realized I didn’t actually point out the discussions on why it is legal to transcribe copyrighted material for Braille, so I figured I’d post a links to some discussions on it. I’m in favor of giving the blind children books for free, if anything because I think that when you are stuck without the senses the majority have, having that spark of light in your life could be priceless.
(more…)
Young adult writers! Detroit teacher of blind kids wants your ebooks for her Braille printer!
I was reading Boing Boing this morning and saw a request for young adult authors to give an electronic copy of books to a teacher in Detroit to let her print them up on the Braille embosser so her blind students can have something more to read than “See Dick… sorry, feel Dick run. Feel Jane. Feel court summons…”
I wish Flight of the Scions was finished enough to do this, but I think that there are authors out there who would love to have their books read by people starved for reading. They mention it is legal to transcribe books for the blind, even under copyright, but it is a LOT easier when you have an electronic copy.
I miss my vacation already. I had to plan out the rest of my vacation days yesterday. I went with the one day every couple weeks which means I spammed my coworkers with seven vacation notices in one shot. Hopefully, won’t be a problem, but I couldn’t figure out a better way of doing it.
Worked a bit on college. Found out I only have two weeks of this class which means I need to get my petition out soon, so that’s going to be my priority first thing this weekend. Or tomorrow, depending on energy levels. I need to get some stuff up at work.
Sadly, added 0.3 kg to my weight from this weekend. I made… poor decisions both before and after the weigh-in, which I’m not proud of. A moment of weakness, I know, but it gets so frustrating when I spend dozens of hours doing rather heavy activity to gain weight. I also suspect that any weight I did lose got negated by the liters of diet coke for the all-nighter drive home.
Helped a co-worker over a problem in his code. But, I’m having one of those at home, trying to figure out something that should be simple.
But, ended up working on My Father’s Bike at the cabin. Not sure how it is going to work out, nor the exact tone of the story, but I noticed I stole an idea from Mark Henry. The footnotes idea, since it seems like an absolutely great way of having a sarcastic commentary to my writing. Still not sure, but I’m enjoying it right now.
Somehow, I lost an entire day watching twelve episodes of Eureka since the idea of getting on my computer just left me feeling a bit cold. When I finally dragged myself on the computer, I found out that my petition was initially rejected. A bummer, but it seems like I formatted my answers wrong so I have a week to fix that. I can do that.
I had fun on my trip. Managed to get my laptop working at the last minute (the latest version of grub lost the boot sector, rolling back to an older version seemed to have fixed it). I’ll write more about my trip later, since I should be heading to bed.
My planned vacation of heading up to the cabin for the weekend has taken a few hits over the last few weeks. Fluffy couldn’t make it because of work, exhaustion, and other factors. I figured this was okay, my dad is up there and I’ll just spend the weekend reading, writing, and walking.
Last night, found out my laptop won’t boot. And I can’t comfortably write by hand anymore, so if I can’t recover it in the next hour or so, it’s going to be a weekend of reading and walking. Which is a bummer, because I really was looking forward to writing.
But, I’m planning on having fun anyways. I’m sure I’m completely unprepared for this, it has been a few years since I went up to the cabin, but if I can’t write, I do have a ton of books I can bring.
It will also be weird not having Fluffy along. I know she has to work, and she hurt herself today, but I also know that my dad is really looking forward to seeing me. I did consider buying a laptop, but I really shouldn’t and I would spend more time here in Iowa trying to get it installed “properly” than actually driving.
Oh well, have a fun weekend!