Health

Meandering This Week

2015-01-26T06:00:00Z

Over the last few weeks, I've been trying to knock things off my to do list so I could focus on Author Intrusion. I thought I was ready to switch over, but then I realized I needed to focus on something big this week at work and I'm stick. So, it would be better to work with smaller items for the time begin. So, this week is another to do week.

Sick Again

I was perfectly fine when I headed out Thursday night. By the time I got home, I wasn't. In a few short hours, I got nailed by a nasty head cold which has made everything difficult in general. Thankfully, I have a wonderful spouse who lets me sleep, but I still had to get other things done.

SSL

I managed to switch the Journals of Fedran website over to SSL thanks to StartSSL.com. I know that there isn't nearly enough there for privacy concerns, but I believe that most sites should be SSL these days and thankfully, I don't have to pay a couple hundred a year to get it.

Editing

Probably the best thing that came out of last week was going over edits for Under the Streets and Raging Alone (Part 1). Both of these ended up being rather drastic reworking, mainly because of a beta reader pointing out a few flaws.

I've uploaded new versions to the website, but I don't really expect anyone to read them. Hope, yes, but until I get these edited, I'm not really pushing them.

A question came up during the edit, but I'm going to make that a different post.

MfGames Culture

Since I can't focus for Author Intrusion (including the Markdown parser), I decided to work on little things. One of them is to hopefully figure out a system for managing dates in my little fantasy world.

Dates and calendars are a nasty little thing, mainly because so much code is written to handle the Gregorian calendar but not other calendars (Islamic for example) or a fictional one. I, on the other hand, use different cultures when I write and I'd like the ability to tag various elements with the “in world” date but still have the information to put them on a time line or figure out when one chapter is before another.

I started MfGames Culture quite a few years ago with the idea of writing a library for that, but it was never a high priority and it never went anywhere. Eventually, I planned on using it in Author Intrusion so I should the difference of times between chapters without faking it via the Gregorian calendar.

Most of the system is based on Julian Days (JD) as a generic baseline (it is just a decimal, so its easy to work with). The plan is just to get the two calendars written up and capable of parsing the formats into JD and back again.

I hate being broken

2014-07-30T05:00:00Z

Today, I slipped down the stairs. It was for a stupid reason, mainly moving too fast, but my ankle gave out and that slip almost became a fell. Fortunately, I was already holding the handrail which means I got a couple inch blister and a burn along my palm, but no serious damage.

It is frustrating that I'm still recovering. Even though the cast came off two weeks ago, but I'm still recovering. If I sit cross-legged or even half-lotus for more than a few seconds, it hurts. After a few minutes, it stops hurting which means it's going to be worse when I stand up. After that point, it takes me a few minutes before I can put my weight on it again.

I'm also used to walking fast. It's something I enjoy doing and I miss my lunch walks (when I managed to get them done). Now, I'm reduced to walking about a quarter of my normal speed and it takes forever to get to the kitchen or the bathroom.

Because of my health incentive, I did pick up a Fitbit. On crutches, I was averaging two hundred steps a day, now I'm almost up to four thousand (out of a goal of ten thousand).

I know it will get better, and it is better, but hard to be encouraged when I'm still struggling to walk down the stairs without hurting myself.

Efficiency and broken legs

2014-06-14T05:00:00Z

On Wednesday, I broke my leg. I wasn't doing anything dramatic or adventurous, I was crossing the street. I managed to hit a pothole (or something) because I twisted my ankle and then power-dove across the street to land in the grass.

At first, I thought it was just a sprain. Just in case, I spent fifteen minutes prodding to see if I can feel a broken bone. When there wasn't any grinding, I decided to try making it back but then I realized I couldn't put any lateral pressure at all. I could stand straight and nothing else.

There is nothing like the humility of calling your boss to ask for a ride to the emergency room. But, I managed to get over it somewhere in my five hour visit (four hours waiting, one hour of service). When I finally got service, it was very efficient and fast (to say, it took an hour). I snapped the end of my fibula of my right leg.

They gave me a boot, some crutches, and “have a nice day” and set me up for an appointment on Monday. Right now, I'm on day four of having nothing but a boot on my foot. Every time I get up to go the bathroom, I can feel the bones grinding in my leg. The codine is helping, but really at the point where discomfort is causing my perceptions to time to slow down. It feels like weeks have passed.

Along the way, I'm finding efficiencies to avoid discomfort. Little things like how to tense my muscles to reduce the grinding, the ways of getting out of bed with the least amount of sore muscles, and how to clean myself up at night. There are a couple that still cause me great amounts of street, but in my three meter world, life is intensely uncomfortable but bearable.

The worse part is that SMWM has to take care of three people now: a three year old, a six week old, and an almost-forty year old.

My main goal is not to be the baby.

And a lovely Monday to say the least

2014-01-20T06:00:00Z

This last week was a fairly productive one, though not always in ways I expected. I didn't have any real plans for the week, which always makes me feel like I'm floating in a tub, but given the project at work, it was for the best. (I don't think I have enough commas in that previous sentence.)

Writing

I had no writing goals this week. I ended up doing a few hours of relaxing writing (e.g., writing without a goal in mind) on Saturday, which was fantastic. Other than that, I didn't do much.

I did submit two chapters of Sand and Love to the writing group. It seemed fairly positive, though I still have a lot of work with one of the chapters (the one I inserted for the plot).

Jekyll verses DocPad

Yesterday, I converted one of my secondary sites from DocPad to Jekyll. It wasn't on a lark, but a hope that it would take less CPU and heat to generate the site. And, thankfully, it did. This is a 500+ page site and whenever DocPad ran through it, my laptop would heat up for six minutes while it ran. The Jekyll version is about two minutes and didn't overheat the machine.

I wasn't really using the things DocPad excelled at. I use templates, but I also prefer to pre-process my files in other languages (Perl, typically). So, I was giving both versions complete versions.

I did abstract and polish up some of those utilities and threw them on GitHub. They are pretty rough, but eventually I'm planning on leading into a wiki-like generator that takes Markdown files and generates a website with good quality taxonomies.

And since I'm trying to focus my tasks on writing, the wiki-like is going to eventually be the encyclopedia site for my fantasy world.

Map

Speaking of encyclopedia sites, I spent most of my lunch breaks starting to work on the map of Fedran, my fantasy world. It's going to take a few weeks to complete, but I really want to make sure that the events in my novels actually make sense.

I made a mistake by creating speedsters. They can cover so much distance that 1,000 miles isn't that far. Since I want to finish Sand and Blood this year (again), this is one more thing toward that goal.

Raspberry Pi

For the holidays, my mother got me a Raspberry Pi. It was such a tiny little thing, too. There are a few things I want to do with it, but the first one was to create a wireless access point for the far side of the house. This ended up being a remarkably hard thing to do. Apparently the Pi's default settings resists bridging two networks as opposed to creating an entirely separate network for that side of the house.

I'm not entirely sure if this will work, though, but I'm hoping. I'm using the same ESSID on both sides of the house but with different channels. In theory, from my reading, this means that devices will switched access points depending on which one is stronger.

ownCloud

Last week, I was excited to notice that ownCloud had a synchronization client for Linux and Windows. It promised to give me something like Dropbox, but with me controlling the end and without as much advertising.

Overall, a week of using it has not been unpleasant. There are some quirks about the clients I dislike. The biggest is having to enter the password every time I reboot since I picked a "secure" password (it looks like line noise). It also doesn't have a Javascript API, which means I can't migrate my TODO file over quite yet.

I've been pretty happy with it so far. I know Dropbox is an awesome company in general, I like open-source software, I like being in control of my networks, and I don't like the pyramid scheme of advertising ("refer your friends, get more space"). I already know they use Amazon's S3 for their filesharing, but I'd rather pay a monthly amount and get advertisement- and nag-free.

Cleaning

Oh, it never ends. Three hours on Sunday, but it meant that the rest of the days was very pleasant. :)

Exercising

Last year was a bad year for my health. As much as I want to say otherwise, it was. Last Wednesday, part of the effort to correct that showed up in the form of a brand new elliptical machine. And a co-worker happened to be getting rid of their flat-screen TV and I happened to get a Raspberry Pi to create a wireless network for the Roku. So, I have a workout room. And a nice TV for a distraction.

Though, the captioning on the Roku 2 still sucks. (Though, I saw something that said they were finally letting users pick caption colors. Please, please let there also be outlines.)

SMWM's current plan is to force me to work out at least twenty minutes every day. If I don't do it cleaning or walking or going to the gym, I'm going to be sent down to the basement. As much as I'm going to hate it, I'm probably going to like it in the long run.

The alarm clock saga

2013-04-25T05:00:00Z

I'm picky when it comes to my sleep. I don't like bright lights because they keep me awake or wake me up. My brother used to torture me by keeping on the light and then beating me up whenever it went dark. Since he could doze with light off, it meant that I spent the entire night awake because I just couldn't sleep.

The light

This leads to my hatred of ultra-bright LEDs. In specific, the blue ones that every humidifier, fan, and recharging cable seems to think is the greatest thing in the world. And, "ultra bright light that will keep you up" isn't listed on the side of the box, I don't know that I'm going to have a blinding light until after I buy it and set it up.

My alarm clock is the worst offender of all, mainly because I can't cover it with duct tape (my usual answer to bright lights) or bury it. By its nature, it needs to actually be visible to be useful.

The history

When we moved a year ago, we lost one box. Naturally, it contained my "good" clock which was a tolerable Emerson alarm clock with amber numbers and a decent dimmer. It also had the gradual buzzer (starts soft and gets louder), two alarms, and the 7-5-2 alarm modes (weekdays, weekend only, or all the time) for both alarms.

I have two other Emerson alarm clocks already. The green LED one is in the guest room and starts off with the mind-shattering loud sound. The blue one, which is the one I use, is so bright, I put it face down every night just so I can sleep. But, since both works (the green one sometimes fails which is why its in the guest room, it also doesn't get below green laser intensity), I had no reason to replace it.

The excuse

At least until SMWM said she wanted a clock on her own side. She was tired of using her Android phone for an alarm (since that means it has to be in a known location and charged, something we both are bad at). After a brief negotiation (e.g., me begging), I got to look for a new alarm clock that doesn't hurt my eyes as much and lets me sleep.

With all the excitement in the world, I got to go online and get a clock.

The first drama

I like Emerson clocks, mainly for the sound but their side and sturdiness. Sadly, Emerson doesn't really make alarm clocks anymore and the one that is available is in soul-scarring blue. The amber version (CKS9051) is almost impossible to find.

I did find it at Sears and Amazon. When I was trying to decide on where to get it, SMWMW reminded me that my philosophy is "buy small, buy local". I already canvased every store in the area to find any clock that was close, but couldn't find anything. So, Sears qualifies as smaller than Amazon, so I went with them.

After a few minutes of trying to figure out what their Max program is (Sears' version of Amazon Prime), I went with cheap delivery and paid by PayPal. And then sat down to wait for my clock to show up.

April 17 came around and nothing. Getting a little worried, I went online and found out that the order was canceled. Not by me, but by their system. Apparently, they sold something that wasn't in stock in any store and their system doesn't send cancellation notices if there is no stock. So, I got no email saying it was canceled, no notice that my money was refunded, or anything.

I bitched on Twitter and got the Sears adjective adjective Customer Care group person DM'ing me and then calling me. After going back and forth, they found out why I didn't get an email, why it was canceled, and figured out where my money went. According to the, it takes 7-10 business days and a fax to PayPal to refund my money. Last I checked, I just click the "refund" button on PayPal, but apparently they need a "fax" from Sears. I also guess no one has ever had the system cancel their order ever since it took a day to figure this out.

I haven't gotten my money back, but at least I know that Sears is not an option.

The second drama

I still could go with Amazon, but I decided to keep with my philosophy. After doing some searches, I ended up on eBay. There was only one "new" version of the clock, so I made an instant buy, paid for it and the $10 shipping, and waited another few days for it to show up.

I finally got to hold it in my hand. Plugging it in, it looked like exactly what I needed. Except... one of the buttons didn't work. Apparently, "new" means smelling like smoke and not actually working. After going back and forth with the seller, I found out they plugged it in but never tested it beyond seeing the lights go on.

This afternoon, I sent it back in exchange for a full refund and them paying for the shipping. I'll find out in a few days if they actually will do that, but it's frustrating.

The never giving up

I decided to try again on eBay. The clock looked pretty good for what I saw of it in person and I think I want it. So, there are a few others selling that clock, so I'll find out if there is going to be a third drama in a few weeks.

It's hard to imagine that buying a clock would be such drama, but I know what I want and what I don't want. And I suspect that much of the world is migrating toward smart phones or just keeping their clocks for 20+ years, so the market for good clocks is going down. I've noticed that for a while now, but the selection is growing thinner every year.

Two alarms with 7-5-2
Gradual crescendo for the buzzer
Red (preferred) or amber, as dim as it will go

It seems like a small thing, but I also think this is important. A quality sleep is something that most people don't get and I think it is because they don't think about bright lights, background noise, or temperature. The problem with knowing what I want is that it makes it that much harder to get what I think I need (and I'm always willing to realize that it won't quite work out).

The alternatives

I actually found an alternative which is to use the window tinting film and basically tint over the screen to make an existing clock dimmer. I could also build a clock, which sounds like fun but I have so many other project right now.

Sadly, the only clock I found that looked like the perfect clock, the Muse M-15 CR, but sadly it's a Europe-only clock. But, it does 24-hour time. Oh well.

Slight belated goals

2013-02-02T06:00:00Z

I've been thinking about my goals for the year most of January, but due to the regularly scheduled pressure from work, SMWM getting sick and dealing with her father's death, and everything else, I really haven't done much with writing anything.

But, I'm a goal oriented person. I found that deadlines and projects work a lot better for me because I have a purpose. But, a generic goal is a terrible thing (for me), which I've repeatedly learned when I failed.

Accountability

No one really keeps me accountable with my goals. But, I feel that if I write them down (and post them), it sets them in stone and reminds me that they have to be done. Plus, for a number of people, they see my every week or every day and occasionally point out where I'm gone. It helps, so that's why I'm posting.

Limited Goals

A long, long time ago, I was sitting in a doctor's office reading Readers Digest (the only place I ever read Readers Digest). There was a little quote that when something like this:

You only have time in your life for three things. It can be family, work, or anything else. Any more and you stop dropping them. The key part is to figure out what are those three important things.

I happen to take that recursively. I try not to ever have more than three projects at any time. Likewise, I'm going to keep to a limited number of goals for the year.

Writing

I'm not going to make any goals about writing this year. For the most part, I've written (or rewritten) a novel every year since 2001. I'm not going to stop doing that, so it isn't really a goal. I plan on finishing FIL (sequel to Becoming a Man), but I'm going to do it anyways.

Programming

I have one programming goal I've been aiming towards for over a year now: Author Intrusion. I've written the basic framework three times, but each time it started to crumble under design flaws.

I want to get a basic version of Author Intrusion done by the end of the year. Since I like goals that lead to something more, I want Author Intrusion so I can finish FIL.

Health

The other major part of my life is my health. In specific, I need to lose more weight. I've lost weight for the last five years, but it was about a kilogram each year. Which, given that I'm 145 kg, that isn't exactly the best of things.

This would have been the first year I gained weight except for that short period in August where I was losing 4.5 kg a week for almost a month.

At work, there is a health initiative. They were asking for goals for the year, so I decided to commit to something a lot more publicly than my website.

Those two goals are to walk 200 km during my lunch breaks and get my weight under 135 kg. Both are doable, but I think I'm going to consider them my two goals for the year.

Family

You might notice I haven't mentioned family. Those are such a high priority that it isn't a goal. If I know I'm going to write a novel, I know I'm going to take care of EDM and SMWM. Just a fact of life.

Three Things

So, those are the three things I'm planning this year.

Get Author Intrusion usable
Get my weight under 135 kg
Walk 200 km during my lunch breaks

Just one of those weekends

2012-12-25T06:00:00Z

The problem with there are two obsessed peole in the house is getting time to work on our various obsessions. SMWM's photography is doing pretty well, but editing photos takes a lot of time. I want to write. But, with only one laptop, it gets harder to find "alone" time. For me, writing needs to be maintained at a certain level or I spent a day or so trying to "remember how to write". Needless to say, it has been a very frustrating few months. Her laptop is still slowly chugging through the recovery process and she still has my laptop.

Last weekend was going to be my "alone" weekend to work on my writing projects. It didn't happen for a lot of reasons, mostly a very sick child and a death in the family.

Trading off gone wrong

We trade off parental duties fairly often. An hour here for an hour there. A little over a month ago, she needed to spend some alone time working on editing pictures. We originally planned for her to go to the hotel for two days but I would pick up EDM on Saturday and give her the entire day. That way, we both got twenty-four hours to work on our respective projects.

Since she is still on Groupon, we still have a steady stream of customers. And it does bring in money, so we had a scheduling crisis where she couldn't give me time alone. Instead, she was doing a photo shoot on Friday and another on Sunday, which gave her Saturday to edit pictures and try to keep up with the steady stream of new pictures.

Not a major problem. At the moment, her photography has a higher priority and we decided to give me an equal amount of time later. Sadly, that equal time didn't happen because of some other things, so we rescheduled it for this weekend.

On Thursday, my little one got a present

Thursday, EDM got sick. It was just sniffles but it quick turned into wheezing for breath and a lot of crying. We did the usual (steam baths and child-grade drugs), but it got worse the next day. We called the nurse's line and, after listening to him, she mentioned he probably picked up croup again (the cough/cry is somewhat distinctive). Now, croup is a virus which means there is nothing they can really do about it. And he wasn't serious enough to merit steroids, but we were advised to watch over him.

And that comes to Friday and Saturday. One of us needed to be watching him because he would be fine for an hour and then start to panic. And when he panicked or got upset, he had trouble with wheezing and that would set him off even more. And it would turn into a viscous cycle until we hauled him into the icy porch or into a steam bath. He never turned blue or any of the warning signs, but it is stressful.

And heartbreaking to watch him wake up in a panic and trying to hold him until he calmed down enough to breathe. And listening to the wheeze as he didn't get the hint he should slow down and insisted on using the battle octopus all over the house.

What-if scenarios

I am not a cheerful person and I easily get in the gloom and doom. So, as I'm stuck on a bed with him napping between my legs (my thigh apparently make a fantastic pillow), I started running through all those what-if scenarios. What if he stopped breathing? What would I do? How would I reacts? Hours of watching over him with little paranoid fantasies running through my head.

I didn't get a lot of restful sleep.

Intellectually, I know he was safe. I knew what symptoms to look for and what to listen for, but that didn't stop me from wanting to poke him every few minutes to make sure he was breathing. Or that brief panic when he held his breath for no reason whatsoever.

And then Saturday happened

So, I have all these frightful little horrors running in my head. Which came to a crux when Susan suddendly started screaming for me to come upstairs. She was watching over him at the time, but I actually got very frightened for a moment as I'm stumbling toward the stairs.

However, it wasn't EDM. It was a phone call from a police officer. SWMW's father had died in his sleep and suddendly everything was on her shoulders.

That is something I can handle. So, I had my notebook and a pencil with me already, so I answered the phone and dealt with the initial panic between the officer and later with the medical examiner. I also made the initial phone calls to JW's (her father) brothers.

I have certain blindspots when it comes to my emotional tapestry, but I'm good at coordinating in moments of (relative) crisis. I managed to make the initial calls to the funeral home (the ME needed to deliver a body "soon") and got the ball running. By then, she had calmed down enough which was good because I couldn't do much more without being a direct relative.

The rest of Saturday was dealing with JW's passing. There was some power games between the brothers to figure out who is in charge. And a whole bevy of bad news. SWMW's mother came up from Iowa City and helped with the things I don't do well (compassion). Between the three of us, we got everything settled down.

Sunday was handling the funeral arrangement. JW was a vertern, so we are hoping that we can get some assistance with the funeral because... well, neither of us have enough for a funeral. I watched over EDM who was over the peak and getting better, but still needed to be watched. I got a bit of writing in, but not much since I had to pay attention.

On Christmas Eve (Monday), I borrowed a truck from a thankfully good friend and we pretty much spent the entire day emptying out his house. And arranging the paperwork so we can start dissassembling his life (getting rid of cellphones, credit cards, etc). We did have a lovely dinner with MC and BN (SWMW's other parents) and they watched over EDM while we were packing. I accidently left my cell phone in the truck, but since I'm not a teenage girl (silly story), I won't die and I decided to pick it up later.

A breath

Today, I think we just crashed. None of us are inclined to head out of the house (except maybe for some IHOP).

I have a garage full of "stuff" that needs to be dealt with and a car to unbury before work tomorrow. Most of it is stuff we just have to deal with, but at least the blind panic over. The only thing left is a lot of phone calls.

EDM is breathing pretty strongly until he gets upset. Fortunately, he's finally getting to the point he drags us to his crib when he's ready to sleep. And we both feel okay with him sleeping alone now, which is just less thing to worry about.

An unexpected hospital visit

2012-08-12T05:00:00Z

Friday afternoon, I was not where I was planning on being the day after my birthday. Instead of enjoying figuring out some UI code, I was sitting in a gurney at the local hospital. It was the end of three weeks of steadily worsening symptoms and more than a bit of fear. In a few minutes, I would either be relieved or I was about to have one of the worse days of my life. And I didn't know which one.

There was a lot going on in my head, mainly of what they'll find when they look in. I learned a bit about myself then. In fact, I would be perfectly fine with an alien parasite bursting out of my chest than finding out it was cancer. But, both were on the table along with a whole slew of other, considerably less deadly, options. But, sitting for an hour and a half on a gurney, my mind got to running through all the morbid possibilities. What would I do? How would I tell people? Could I write about it?

I think life is about experiences. If all goes well, I won't be in and out of hospitals most of my life, so I paid attention to everything. You never know if a plot needs oil in the air supply system or knowing the background color of the photo identification, but might as well learn it. It also helped take off the edge that fear that I was going to find out something horrible. The phrase "if this was a novel" kept running through my head. Horror novel? Teeth. Drama? Cancer. Comedy? Explosions of blood. Anime? Explosions of blood and the alien. Porn? Naked bodies. Techno-thriller? Bomb. Supernatural? Teeth again.

I was still voting for them seeing eyes.

And then they came for me. They were cheerful, I was cheerful... because I'm good at faking it. I asked questions about the numbers on my wrist and the devices around their neck. They wheeled me in front of a number of people and I realized they were all there for the same thing. They gave me drugs, I kept asking questions.

Thirty minutes later, I was back in the room trying to get my pulse below 57. (For some reason, every time I'm hooked up to one of those machines, I try to slow down or speed up my pulse.)

There wasn't any eyes. Thankfully, there also wasn't any chest-bursting or teeth. There also wasn't anything that even remotely could be cancerous. But, that still didn't hide the fact I had a serious problem. Not life-threatening, but still serious. And, its a non-solvable problem too. The damage was done and I'm going to have it for the rest of my life. It might go away for a few months, but if I slip too many times, its going to be right back. It isn't anything that millions of other people don't have to deal with every day, but it is still nerve-wracking when the chipper nurse is keeps saying "maybe for the rest of... you know, your life."

I'm not really upset. There is a comfort in having a diagnostics and a plan. Even knowing that this is going to take four to six months to heal doesn't bother me. It is a problem, a known condition. Sad and scary as it is, at least it wasn't cancer.

Though the alien parasite would have been okay too.

An impersonal rejection

2012-06-10T05:00:00Z

I've been sick the last three days. Fortunately, the fever broke around four in the morning on Friday, but it was too late to get to work (I feel uncomfortable being around people within 12 hours of a fever, just trying to be nice). My throat has been sore the entire time though, but I'm hoping I'll be better. I miss work.

But, this week has been a rather continous series of downward trends. It started with Sunday morning (01:30) with a phone call. The Caller ID said "University IA Hospital". This is never a good call this early in the morning.

Fluffy's father had trouble breathing and called 911. I guess he wasn't conscious when they answered and he was on a ventilator when Fluffy could come in. He had a heart attack and/or pnemonia, but they weren't sure which one. Sadly, for what would follow, that would be the best news they had. I'm not going to go into details, but needless to say, Fluffy is a wreck and her father is... well, let's say he's not in a good place.

It pretty much came to a head on Friday and today Fluffy is dealing with the fallout. She's in a hotel right now, not willing to face anyone. I can understand it and I don't mind the single parent thing.

I've been taking care of EDM while I was sick. Not entirely the best of conditions, but as GS would say, "it's part of being a parent." He's a good kid for the most part but it is really hard to get anything done because I'm playing with him in various forms. And when he's taking a nap, so am I. :)

So, everyone is emotionally fragile and on the edge. You know what the best thing to do? If you said "check to see if I got a response for Flight in my mailbox?" you're right! And it was there, sitting next to a donation for my other byline.

It was a rejection. Impersonal except for a "re: Flight of the Scions" hand-written on it. I know I won't get a good response from anything resembling a Big 6 publisher, but I was surprised how non-upset I was. It just was.

I had a different problem. My plan was to try for a few years to get published, then go the self-published route. There were a few reasons for that, but the main one is: I suck at self-promotion. I think between the pieces I have out there, I have made a grand total of $12. If you count the last five years (and exclude commissions), I think I'm up to a whopping $75. I could give specifics, I have a spreadsheet, but you get the idea.

If I put Flight out, it probably won't sell. I have never had anything make more than $60 and that one thing was over eight years. If you exclude that, I haven't made over $15 in any story or novel ever.

I haven't figured out how I can get hundreds of compliments and comments on a story, reviews across multiple sites, fan art and fan fiction, all for stuff that I give away free, but somehow I can't write something sellable.

Commissions are decent for me, but that business model doesn't scale. I can only write so many 10k commissions through word of mouth and that's been steadily declining for a few years now.

So, I don't have enough to make Flight succeed. It probably isn't good enough for selling without editing. And I know that I need about $8-10k for a proper edit, which is something that isn't an option right now. I can keep on submitting, but am I wasting publisher's time? There is that doubt that Flight just flat out sucks and no one will tell me. I know people tell me its good, but I will always have that fear.

This isn't going to be answered in the next few days, but something I need to figure out.

In case of emergencies...

2011-06-27T05:00:00Z

Last Saturday evening, Fluffy and I were at the point of finally admitting we need to go to bed. It was one of those lazy nights where we knew nothing was going to happen on Sunday and we could both relax. Then we got a phone call from the University of Iowa Hospitals. Fluffy's father, JW, called 911 with shortness of breath. When the paramedics got there, he was quickly heading into no breath and they had to put him on a CPAP machine to get him to the hospital. When that didn't work, the emergency room put in a breathing tube and got him on a machine to do the breathing. The next day, they took him off a medical coma and he's aware, but there are signs of neurological damage and they have to do additional tests to find out the impact of what happened.

Life.

They found Fluffy's number by scrolling through the phone book on his phone. It didn't have any information other than just random calling people on the list. Which is scary in itself. One of the things I believe in is being prepared. And one way is to create ICE (In Case of Emergency) records in your phone's contact list. I have four, which include Fluffy's mobile, our home, Fluffy's mother, and my mother. That way, if I can't talk (like JW), then they can use that to find someone to call. Fluffy is JW's only daughter and one of the few people who really could make decisions about his life. She has a different name from JW and there was no proof that she was his daughter. So, also good to put relationships in the ICE contacts too.

It's a minor thing, but you don't think about it until you are in the middle of it.

Related to that, I was told that many paramedics will check the freezer when they come into a house and the person is unable to communicate. That whole "ICE" and "ice box" thing, but it is one of those places to put a ziplock bag with emergency contact information and medical information (e.g., if you have diabetes, JW had a blood sugar > 310). Just tape it to the ice maker or stick it some place that it would be obvious if a stranger came in and needed to find out critical information.

Hey, a blip in my life

2011-06-11T05:00:00Z

The last few weeks have been interesting. I went to the family cabin and managed not to talk about computers the whole time. It was a little rough in places, EDM is rather... distracting when it comes to writing, but I still managed to edit a few chapters of FOTS (probably should stop referring to books by names, too late). I'm around the 18% done, from purely chapter counts.

This week, I've been working on a short story for the hell of it. I also submitted a chapter to the writing group. That involved a decent amount of work, mainly to clean up some stylesheets, fix a bit of code with MfGames Writing, and one last round of edits.

I also finished taking over the writing group's website from someone who left it. It actually went pretty smoothly, but I'll be glad to manage it until they find someone else to do it.

EDM is moving through the milestones right on target. I come into his room to find him standing in his crib and he started "cruising" (walking along furniture). I'm being bribed to join in the family photos in a few weeks, so naturally I'll go and get myself photographed. At the cabin, my dad took pictures of me and all I could see was how fat I was. *sigh* I need to buckle down on walking.

Interestingly, I'm actually doing about 4-5 km walks consistently for lunch. My feet hurt right now, but I think its getting a bit easier. I'm going to pick up some shirts for work so I can change though, the heat is a killer.

A lovely night of walking

2009-09-22T05:00:00Z

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.