MythTV

Making a list

2009-05-28T05:00:00Z

Weight Loss (4.1 of 14.7 kg)

College Petitions (1 of 4)

Commission (1,300 of 10k words)

This morning, I got a wake-up call when my eldest kitty decided that she needed some water and she is willing to get it from the kitchen sink. The dishes on the counter, on the other hand, took offense at the idea and committed suicide in protest.

I liked that bowl. :(

A small bit of drama, but no big deal.

But, I couldn't get back to sleep. As soon as Fluffy settled back to sleep, I just stared at the ceiling, thinking about projects and things I want to get done. It is mostly little stuff, writing and programming, but a few around the house items. And that all-important lose weight to avoid diabetes bit. I won't go into the specifics, mainly I don't think anyone is interested in my to do list.

I gave up around five this morning and finally got up. Ended up fixing the DNS settings on the house servers to handle the piss-poor Qwest DNS settings, doing some disk maintenance, and upgrading the main MythTV front end to hopefully get rid of the annoying delay to pause (about 3 minutes at this point) while watching Mythbusters.

Oh, and I also finished up the next ascension for Kingdom of Loathing. I'm planning on jumping into the gap as soon as I get home and maybe playing a few sauce/pasta classes to pick up a few more skills. I got the two things I really wanted this ascension, Ambidextrous Funkslinging and the Hilarious Grimore for cocktail ingredients. This will be my 17th ascension in the game (all hard core except the first). I'm still enjoying it, but there is a bit of a grind that started around ascension 14.

I did make a list of everything I wanted to get done. It is a big one, but also filled with things I can get done in a reasonable amount of time. Just need to focus, which seems to be my problem. Making a list also makes me feel better. It gives me that structure I need to realize everything is solvable. I won't be putting the entire list on my blog, mainly because I don't think anyone cares, plus it would just be noise. But, I'll put the current ones I'm focusing on the blog, not only to nag me but also the encourage me.

Progression! Progression...

2009-05-17T05:00:00Z

Weight Loss (2.6 of 14.7 kg)

College Petitions (1 of 5)

Commission (589 of 10k words)

Doesn't quite sound as good as "tradition", one of my favorite songs, but I had a very productive weekend so far. One of the main things is that I finally cut over the new theme to Moonfire Games. The theme is growing on me, though I don't have the extra flair stuff, I do have all but one thing up and running. I still need to migrate the online Map of Creation but that is going to take a bit more than a few hours to get that running. Apparently, it broke badly in the last year and no one told me until recently.

I'm also changing my formula for petitions. I haven't sent out any, but if I count the answered questions and the ones I'm looking for supporting documentation, I'm much further than 20% done. So, I just came up with one point for answering the question, one point for evidence, and one point to submit to come up with the new formula. Sadly, at nearly 70%, I really, really need to get off my ass and finish them. I'm going to send one out tomorrow, at least that is the plan.

Mowed the lawn... sort of. It's a free lawn mower, so you can't expect much. If I keep up with it, I'll be able to do it on two charges, but right now it should take me a few more days to finish up. The charge on the mower only lasts about a half hour with the tall grass and an hour and some with the short grass. Obviously, it will inspire me to actually keep up with the lawn work.

Gave up on getting subtitles to work with the movies. Just too hard at this point, but I do have a nice copy of While You Were Sleeping for Fluffy sitting on the MythTV box. I'll rip a few more movies, like Princess Bride and Juno.

Except for a walk, which I haven't done in three days due to being sick, I'm pretty much just going to blow the rest of the day on Fluffy, writing, and maybe programming.

The curse of water

2009-05-15T05:00:00Z

Weight Loss (2.6 of 14.7 kg)

College Petitions (1 of 5)

Commission (589 of 10,000 words)

It has been an interesting few days. Fluffy is out of town on a photo shoot, so I'm playing bachelor again. Thursday, I called in sick since it hurt to swallow and I just felt nasty in general. But, it was also the day the the landlord's plumber came in... which resulted in so much drama.

Oh, and a bunch of other little things which I thought is interesting.

Start with the drama. We had a pipe under the tub that managed to get twisted almost in half. It worked, by the virtue of the hot water heater is set way too high but it also leaks slowly. My MythTV setup is only a meter or so away from this, so I requested it on general principle.

The plumber came in, said "OMG" and fixed it. Everyone was happy, there was cheering I think. The landlord also asked him to look at the slow drains, the toilet that didn't flush, and something else. The plumber bitched about "since you are here" tasks, but worked on those anyways, but when he went to turn the house water back on, bad things happened.

The decade old cut-off decided it finally had enough and broke. Just a bit one, about 5-10 liters of water per hour. This turned the $100 job into a $500.

But, when the plumber then went to turn the water off at the street, he had to unbury the cutoff that was half a meter under the ground and found out that broke years ago. This is the landlord's responsibility, which I'm sure he didn't want to hear. Fixing that requires a back hoe and a large chunk of my front yard.

And turned the $500 repair into a couple thousand dollar repair.

Right now, I have a steady stream of water pouring into my basement. Fortunately, right into the drain, but it is going to nail my water bill if it goes on for more than a few days. And it is raining so heavily that they can't repair it until tomorrow at the earliest.

I feel that some people have elements they don't have affinity with. For me, it is water. I've been flooded so many times and had more than my share of leaks, explosions, and sump pumps going out. Part of life, but it is amusing at least.

In other news, I switched my Moonfire Games email to use Google Mail (via their Google Apps) and cut my spam down in half. I also upgraded a forum, cleaned up some website contents, and started working on my commission. Not very far into it, but I did enjoy watching some horror movies nestled up on the couch, banging away on the computer.

I also tried to use the electric lawn mower that JW gave me. The first time, I got about a meter mowed before the battery died out. The second time, almost two meters. I let it charge overnight and hopefully I'll get at least four meters. Failing that, I'm going to deep drain it, full charge it, and go for eight.

I also sold my Zune on eBay. A decent amount of money, just need to ship it out. I'm going to pick up boxes on the way home.

Started learning how to rip DVD's. Now, for those who pay attention, I'm only doing this for DVD's I own but watch a lot of. You know, children shows and some of my horror movies. And anything Fluffy watches more than three times. That way, they can sit on the MythTV box as our own video on demand service. Just... takes a while for the first one, about 5 hours with the last run and I still haven't tried it out to see if the subtitles came through properly. I have a lot more respect for fan subbers of Anime after this; they actually put in different fonts on Slayers which is far and away beyond what I'm doing. I'm going with the .mkv file format, since it lets you have optional subtitles and alternate languages; just have to find a program that does it all for me instead of me fumbling with it.

And finally, my old boss paid me some money against our back pay from last year. About 1.4% of what was owed when I left. That brings them up to a grand total of 2.7% of my back pay in the 14 months since I left. Comes out to 1% every 5 months so far. :)

Small steps

2009-04-29T05:00:00Z

Weight Loss (1.7 of 14.7 kg)

College Petitions (1 of 5)

Commission (0 of 10,000 words)

Got my official weigh-in yesterday and it wasn't the prettiest thing the world. Actually, it was barely a weight loss at 0.1 kg, which is the smallest amount they measure. Well, 0.2 pounds, but I don't like that system. There were a few things I did wrong. Fluffy seems to think that me not eating enough is contributing to the slow weight loss, and she might be right. I have been struggling all week to actually eat my full points. Normally, I'm shy 5-15 points a day out of my 44. I just get obsessed with work and, well, forget to eat. That and we took the new guy out for chicken wings about three hours before I weighed in.

So, this next week, I'm going to behave much better. I swear! We are also moving our weigh-in day to Mondays, not because of the chicken wings, but Fluffy's new job starts Tuesday nights. Actually, it looks like she's basically on second shift for the length of this job. We are both nervous about it, but I have faith that it will work out in the end. It also means that we are going to cram "together" time on Sunday and Monday nights.

I also stayed up late last night to reformat my laptop, which always takes twice as long as I think it would. But, it now has a brand new XFS file system and will let me write stories/novels upstairs with Fluffy instead of down in my "man cave". I need to rewrite at least three outlets to make this happen properly, a lot of two prog ones, but I'm getting nicely down the getting settled path. After that, I have a MythTV box to move up stairs, a remote to get working with videos, and moving the boxes out of the garage.

An exciting time, right now, filled with a great wide plain of opportunities. And doors. Hundreds upon thousands of doors spread out before us. I'm kind of cheerful about that.

As a side note, Fluffy reminded me to just "not be depressed".

Commissions, BooGame, hardware, and creativity

2009-04-20T05:00:00Z

Weight Loss: 14.7 kg (32.4 lbs)

College Petitions (1 of 5)

Got an email out of the blue last night about BooGame. It was a simple question of "can I do this", but it also got me excited about working on the project again. Like writing, I always work better when someone is going "ooh, how pretty!" Call it vanity, but I write for audiences. It doesn't matter if it is programming, literary, or research reports.

(Side note, I'm going to use the official Weight Watchers weigh-in on Tuesdays to update the progress bar on the top. It is there to annoy me and remind me that I have something hanging over my head.)

I got distracted in the last few months from BooGame and the rest of my projects. Plus, just a general blah when it came to writing which I highly suspect was writer's block. I did write stuff, mostly commissions, but there is a strange thing in that I can write on demand very well, but I can't always come up with my own ideas. With commissions, I get the idea in paragraph form, so the "hard" part is already done. All I have to do is make beautiful words.

Though, while I'm experiencing writer's block, I have to schedule my writing instead of relying on the obsessive need to pound words into the keyboard all hours of the day. I miss that, when it happens, but I have 12d6 worth of Obsessive powers.

Speaking of commissions, I got a really nice compliment from my latest commission. You know, the usual "you do fantastic work" and "I don't think other authors could treat this topic so well". Yes, it isn't entirely true I'm that awesome, but still. It helps my ego swell by three sizes for reading them. It is like not getting a rejection letter from a publisher. True, only one person is probably going to read it. Well, the hordes of anonymous people once I sanitize the names, but it was written for a single person who loved it because they got exactly what they wanted. Knowing that I'm writing what they want, even though the topic is not my own, makes me feel proud. I can write well without having a strong emotional attachment to it.

That's passing now. My commission "season" is pretty much over at this point and my creativity is coming back because my life isn't as chaotic. Given that, I think I'm going to focus on BooGame for a little bit. Knowing someone is interested will drive me to finish and maybe I can get another chunk done before life hits me in the head again.

I've had a very busy weekend. I got my new drives (two 1.5 TB), cables, and memory sticks. I upgraded a bunch of machines, got my MythTV back-end working, but not the front-end. I also split out my Windows and my Linux machines into two separate machines which involved reading a 54 digit number over the phone three times to get it reactivated. But, it should make life a bit more stable when it comes to do school and business work. Not to mention it gave me room on the Linux machine to put in the second 1.5 TB drive as my new /home partition. Mmm, space.

I also worked on the new theme for Moonfire Games website. It is bright and cheerful, with more white than the old one, but I think it is also easier on the eyes to read. Well, except the font which needs to be seriously looked at again. This is also a pure XML/XSL stylesheet. If it works out, then I can make a generic "theme" for the site and use client-side XSL to format it; might make life easier.

Remarkably, I also manage to exercise every day except for Saturday. MiL took us on a "short" walk of 30 minutes. Damn that lady walks fast, but it also means I have a lot to go before I can catch up. I'm trying to get at least 4 activity points (another Weight Watchers thing) a day and then move it to 5 and maybe 6 at some point. We'll see if I'm making a small step toward weight loss tomorrow. Here's hoping.

Diabetes, MythTV, and world-building

2009-04-16T05:00:00Z

Weight Loss: 14.7 kg (32.4 lbs)

Rough night, mainly because I kept thinking too much. Stupid little things that keep you up. I call it my monkey, a little chattering thing that won't shut up so I can go to sleep. Fortunately, not everything was negative, just... loud.

Obviously, the main thing was the whole weight and diabetes thing. My doctor is test-happy, so I limit any blood work to every few months unless it is an emergency. So, I have two months or so to get glucose and weight down. No problem, in Weight Watchers, my first goal is 10% anyways. It was also my goal at the beginning of the year, but I didn't have a good idea of my weight then. Three months ago, the doctor's office said I weighed about 151 kg. According to WW, the scale said 147 kg. So, I already lost about 4 kg, if all those scales are right. I'm going to use the 147 kg point and say I need to lose 14.7 kg in the next few months. I won't get upset if I don't make the 14.7, but I will if I don't make at least half that (5% goal) of 7.4 kg.

It's a plan. I managed to get used to eating half a gallon of vegetables every day for lunch, I can get used to 30-60 minutes of exercise a day.

I was also thinking about the MythTV box. I decided to migrate the hardware to a slightly slower machine (Pentium D 2.8 GHz to a AMD x64 3800+ at 2.0 GHz). It allows for more RAM (4 instead of 1 GB) and it's 64-bit which should help with encoding. That and it's rated higher than the Pentium. I ordered a new 1.5 TB drive for the file storage (and another 1.5 TB for my "personal" computer). I'm enjoying getting it working, but with everything else, it just takes time to get it done and I'm impatient.

I also got a new mailbox yesterday. Forgot the address already, but I really like having a postal box for my writing. With commissions and everything, I've always been uncomfortable with people knowing my home address. I also post my address on-line, for that strange day when someone might want to send me fan mail. Yes, the mailbox place (also a UPS Store like last time) knows it, but it offers a bit of veil for my on-line presence. I'll start changing my various on-line addresses, like domain records and such, over the next few weeks. It may only be temporary, since I don't know where we'll get the non-rental house, but it at least gives me something.

Finally, Fedran and religions. This is actually the fun topic, since I'm trying to show historical progression and change of various religions as they mix, fold, and separate over the centuries. I wanted to have denominations, not unlike this country, where every church has a slightly different view on things. Fortunately for me, a co-workers wife is going to seminary so I got a really good view of what she is going through to become a preacher, including the different types of relationships between a pastor and a church. Coupled with years of listening to my Roman Catholic friends, my experiences in random religions, and everything else, I think I finally have a good handle on how I want religions to work in this fantasy world.

It also lead into how I want to show history in the world. On my wiki site, I'm building up the various countries and everything as my working notes. If I ever get a book published, that is the point where I'll worry about backward consistency so everything is still mud-like right now. But, I could create a little SVG file of the continent and use that to show snapshot influences of a religion over time. So, I can show where Tirmol started and how to expanded over the years until the wars with Devmas which eventually lead to the religious truce of that became the Divine Marriage. And the fracturing later which will give me the God-King split and all those other denominations.

In my head, it's all pretty. Now, to see if I can make the website match and actually be informative.

I wish I had more discipline for updating the wiki and keeping the continual world-building going. I might now that things are settling, but I honestly feel that the reason my other world works is because I spent years building up the world. I wrote stories, ran games, and even made up little comics in that world. Not all at once, but layering idea after idea on top of it until I had such a wonderful place to write in. And, like wine, it had the influences of my ideas at the times, which changes constantly.

Well, I'm excited and creating today, despite everything.

Tech support, um, yah?

2009-03-24T05:00:00Z

Saturday, I spent just over ten hours upgrading a friend's web site and forum. They have fifty thousand members and a quarter million posts on a relatively small computer. And, given the apathy of most of the Internet, they don't bring in enough to actually upgrade the machine to decent hardware. So, I had to figure out a way of getting a SMF forum upgraded on a 500 MHz machine and not break anything.

I can't say it was easy. It wasn't, mainly because their forum attachments sat at 60k+ files and 6 GiB. In one directory. *shudder* Basically, it took more than three minutes to parse the directory contents and the system had a 30 second cut off. So, no maintenance, no downloading, nothing.

The frustrating part is, despite I'm doing everything for him for free, he can make money on it. But, he doesn't. He doesn't even follow minor suggestions which I know work, since I've seen them work. When I first got involved, I showed him how to save five hundred a month on his forum. The only thing I can do else is make it profitable, but he keeps saying "yah, yah, yah, I'll get there." I really hate being blown off that way. Just do it and get it over with.

I've slowed down my support of his machine over the years. I'm guilty of not really helping people who don't help themselves. In five years, he's had so many opportunities to make money, but all he does it bitch about not getting enough donations.

Hrm, kind of like me bitching about not enough time to write or program. Damn it... I need to change that. Remember, boys and girls, what you hate the most in others is something you probably have yourself.

Now, the one person I can't do this to is Fluffy. In the last year, our MythTV box has been steadily ignored except for the occasional hard reboot when it locked up. Every other time I visited, I spend a few hours just repairing the thing, but I haven't really been back to Illinois since it depresses me so much--it hasn't been home for months. From here, I try to repair it, but the reboots and lack of love finally pushed it over the edge. Last night, it basically imploded. I can't fix it remotely so I walked Fluffy through disconnecting my 700 GiB MythTV box and hooking up the receiver directly.

In two weeks, it comes to Iowa. I'll make it work again but I'm frustrated that it died a week before I was about to shut it down to move.

Today, I would seriously like to not do tech support.