dmoonfire

My last class is finally over. That last little essay (got a bit cocky though) got finished somewhere in the middle of the week. I’m already approved for graduation, and I got a 98% score according to the online course. So, that should give me a 3.9 GPA for my master’s program.

Given that, and ignoring my irrational fear that I somehow missed a class, I’m completely done with college. I probably won’t go on to the doctorate program at all. Instead, I’m going to focus on something more enjoyable.

Like fiction writing.

Haven’t gotten much of it in the last few days though. Work is winding up for a deadline next Friday and hopefully there won’t be any overtime this time. We also had a pretty impressive snow storm and a nastier set of confusion. The snow removal guy never showed up, so I had to shovel the 20-30 inches worth of snow myself.

Yeah, whine, whine. Still did it and I wasn’t even that sore for more than a day. We are also watching one of Fluffy’s co-workers Lab puppy for the week. It has been… interesting. I keep forgetting that some dogs consider horking up a tug rope as a sign of affection.

I’m still working on that website design probably for the rest of the weekend. Fluffy is working on her own designs since she needs to brush up on her skills. And, for some reason, I really struggle to teach her programming; we live well together, but we don’t exactly work well together.

I’m also hoping this means the three people who read this will actually see more posts.

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.

’tis the season for lots of change.

I finished my final paper for my masters on Sunday. While I hate it with a passion–it isn’t my best work–the instructor seemed pretty happy with it in the draft a week before. I have one last short paragraph to write and I should finally be done with college. I even paid my tuition last week, so I could actually graduate.

Looking forward to starting new projects soon. I decided to hold off on the programming for a little bit and just work on novels for the rest of the year. Yeah, those plans will last. But, I’m looking forward to just… writing.

And a little web design since I’m trying to make a little site for a friend. It isn’t perfect, but I’m liking how it turns out so far. Haven’t gotten much feedback on it, to be honest, so I’m going to just assume it is awesome and let people quietly snigger behind my back.

Yesterday, I finally got back to the .NET user group meeting that my co-worker runs. Got a chance to see some pretty little libraries out there and won book in the raffle. Always fun.

On Thursday, I’m going to try out the local writer’s group and see if it would fit my personality. Once a month, but if I want to be a good writer, I need to take myself a bit more seriously.

Finally, Fluffy got her Christmas/holiday gift last week. It was down to a year subscription of People magazine or me going to the gym with her twice a week for a few months. I bet you can guess which one she got? Yeah, her subscription star… never mind. Tonight is session four at the gym. It isn’t a habit and I feel so pathetic since I can’t keep up, but I’m persistent so I’ll get it sooner or later. It works out since my co-workers pretty much stopped walking with me at lunch.

I won’t get under 136 kg pounds by the end of the year like I hoped. I should be within 5 kg pounds of it though. According to Weight Watchers last night, I’m at 140 kg, so I’m within that goal. Going to try making that different as small as possible in the next few weeks.

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.

Still have a little more work to do for the release. I managed to clear out my queue for a short period of time, but I took two more defects from a co-worker to help him get closer to finishing everything by the cut-off (officially late Sunday). I’m not going to do a 12-15 hour day again, but I’m going to try resolving those last nagging issues hanging around.

College started this week and I’m also struggling to finish that. It is a simple one, I’m just viewing the class with dread and trepidation. I know it is only ten weeks and I finish, but it will be a long ten weeks and an even longer forty page paper by the time it ends. Well, one day at a time.

Not that anyone needs to be told, but feel free to ignore the posts starting with Oile. I wanted to write, so I decided I was going to just do it. I don’t know how long it will last or what will happen, I just wanted to write and maybe do a little world development.

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.

After a hellish week of 80+ hours of working, filled with self-doubt and wondering if I was doing the right thing, I finished. And got boss kudos so I’m all warm and fuzzy, but very tired. I’m also somewhat burned out since when I stop moving, I also stop thinking (normally I have something go on in there). It will pass. I’m very glad I did it, just wish it wasn’t as frantic. But, push came to shove and I just bit the bullet and did it.

Started my college course today also. Didn’t really like the introduction to the class. I felt like I was being treated as a 15 year old, which shouldn’t be the case for a master’s final project. I’ll do it, just not holding my breath at all. I’m waiting for this part of my life to be over, I want to do something new.

At the cabin, me and my dad talked (a lot) about college. It became pretty obvious that I don’t need a feather in my cap from going on. So, after I finish this course, I’m going to focus more on something I do want to do, like write and program. No clue if anything will come of it, but it was nice in this last week just… making things. I solved puzzles, I created minor miracles, and I don’t get that feeling from academia. Too much structure and too many limitations for me.

Well, off to watch a bloody movie and cuddle with the kitties and puppy.

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.

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.

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.

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.

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.

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.

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.

Been a busy week this week, mainly because of a self-inflicted need to do better at work. I hate putting in estimates for 100+ hours on a single task when everyone else is putting in 8, 12, even 40. But, having the only one over 50 and having it so much higher gives me a tiny little lurch in my stomach. More so when I’m justifying to the VP of Development. It doesn’t matter that it is an honest estimate, and probably a bit low, it still sucks when I have to do it. True, the 100+ hours is broken into a rather impressive WBS, but still.

I like breaking things into smaller blocks. Most of my personal projects are done that way. The MfGames.Tools is just one step toward my current programming goal of having a new version of CuteGod out. I just need to get the command line tools, unit performance, updater, BooGame, and a ton of other things. I decided I need to really focus on a single programming project, so the “main goal” is getting CuteGod polished. Then I’ll play with Tablet of Words (WordPlay, my other “official” game), Ceimaha and other ideas.

I don’t expect any of those to be done before GenCon, which I’m seriously looking forward to. I think the next week or so is going to be dedicated to working on homework and finishing up the petition which I promised by Auguest 9. I’m thinking about also stopping doing book reviews from GenCon this year, or at least just doing it when I feel like doing reviews. I don’t know if they are helpful in general, but I feel bad since I don’t give glowing reviews… ever. I don’t even give glowing reviews to my own book. Like the review my brother did of MG (rated 4 out of 5 stars), I really try to be brutally honest but I hate the imagined conflict I get when I do them.

While I’m not entirely sure why I did it, I finally joined Twitter. Amazingly, my account is the same almost everywhere else: dmoonfire. No clue how long I’ll use it, it seems to be as unfocused as everything else in my life. But, that is who I am. I don’t focus on one thing in general and I kind of like it that way.

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.

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.

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.

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.

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.

Okay, completely and utterly obscure reference. If you like parodies, check out the Power Rangers parody, Shinesmen. Wonderful little sense of humor with quotes like:

Business cutter attack! Ineffective as usual!

Well, I just sent out the third petition for college. Only came out to 28 pages but still a pretty solid example that I know project management. Or, I hope it will be a pretty solid example. We’ll find out in 3-4 weeks. I’m not planning on waiting for this one to be accepted before finishing up number four. I want them off my priority list and to work on other, more enjoyable, things.

Speaking of enjoyment, tweaked my website design a bit further. Uses a bit more dividing lines and I got this really cool watercolor effect with some alpha channel PNG’s. It also broke up the side navigation bar from the main. I did that so I could put a textured background on the main block of the page. Normally, I’m not fond of image backgrounds at all but I think the mass of black on white needed a bit of structure.

I’m struggling a bit with the first three chapters of DG. I found some of the things that bothered me from the original draft, but my writing skills have changed since I wrote this. The introduction, which I liked before, I felt is a bit too… bland to be a good novel. So, I’m using this as a chance to clean up my beginnings and see if I can make this one really grab the reader.

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.

Having trouble sleeping tonight. Part of it comes from the drugs flowing through my veins. Drugs for pain and ones to prevent infections. The aftereffects of surgery were not too bad; Fluffy said was I all cute and groggy when I finished up. I managed to sleep better part of fifteen hours today, which also contributes to the lack of sleeping and me making a blog post at two in the morning.

The rest of this is just a list, probably not interesting for most people.

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.

(I know I said I’d talk about Glorious Saber and artwork, but I decided it sounded too whining so I just canned it.)

My mother came into town this weekend on her way up to teach a class. I was hoping it was for her other company, but… oh well, it is here life. Nice visit though, mainly talking about random things while plate after plate of sushi showed up at our table. She ordered about 30 pieces too many for the group of four, including Fluffy. I try not to over-order on sushi, mainly because the flavor changes so much overnight and my contribution to the order ended up being exactly what I could eat. Except there was only one sushi chef and they were swamped. So service took three hours for our food to show up. That gave us a chance to talk.

Nothing really meaningful, but she made a joke that actually got me worried. She’s been falling a lot. She didn’t come out and say it, but she jokes about a few nasty falls and Fluffy said that a friend of ours (who works for her) said that she is falling more often. It isn’t normal of her to keep secrets like that but in other ways, I’m not sure how much I’m going to really worry about it. I’m trying to pull away from her to get a clear head, but it is something I’m going to keep an eye on. You never know if falling turns into something worse.

In more cheerful news, I got a 93% or A on my college course. Only two more to go, including the capstone project, and I should have my masters by the end of the year. I’m still hoping to get my petition out by the end of the weekend, but I suspect the MfGames CIL release won’t be until next weekend. It is all those documentation steps I want to get done before I finish.

Technical writing is an interesting best. It is far different than writing fiction and very different from my non-fiction writing. I have a separate voice for all three types of writing, just as I have a fourth for academic writing. It is hard, actually, to write documentation for libraries like this. Mainly because it is done last, but also because it sometimes is really hard to explain why you did something that works well in code. “Just because” is a horrible thing to write in documentation. For some, I reverted to just explaining how to use it, but for others, I explained why I use it, so people understand the decisions behind what I wrote.

So, programming and writing and school this week.

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.

There is something to be said about hearing the weight loss for the entire room and getting ten percent of it. Lost about 0.8 kg last week, mostly I suspect from happily obsessing about programming and playing games that I forgot to eat. That means this week will be even harder because I need to maintain the weight loss into next week.

Found a neat feature on my tracking system for Moonfire Games. It lets me see the progress toward a release. Since I was hoping to do a MfGames CIL release this weekend, I decided to put in all the tasks that I need to complete and use that roadmap to show my progress. It is in the progress bar, for those who are interested.

It looks like a lot, at first, mainly because I didn’t enter what I completed. But, my major goals this week are to work on the petition and get MfGames CIL out the door. As soon as I get this release off my progress reports, then I’m planning on switching back to a writing project. I have two commissions sitting on my plate now and one of them is due in three weeks.

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.

Late night because of work. I don’t mind the occasional extra hours helping customers, mainly because I know I can help and, in most cases, they’ll be much happier when I’m done. Still makes it a tired night though.

Didn’t do much beyond that, though. I finished most of the cleaning on MfGames CIL library and shuffling things around. I’m more comfortable with it now, which is good. Now, I can focus on MfGames.Settings and MfGames.Tools which will let me do the Unit Timing reporting tool.

I also finished my college course for this semester. This weekend, I’m going to work on getting the third petition out and try to get some pretty graphics out of my unit timing library.

That will lead nicely into the growing desire to actually write some more. I found taking a week off after a commission helps a bit with the creative juices and I’m still bribing myself with a new project or playing this computer game with getting unit timing generating useful data.

And, that nasty, icky documentation process going on. It’s taking a while, mainly because it requires a different set of gears. But, I want to get all of this nicely documented.

And, in the last little bit, I’m starting to work on a new style for Glorious Saber. It is still a lot like the old one, but it does more with arms and legs, which are the two things I’ve always struggled with. I think I’m pretty decent at backgrounds already, though I’m going to try making it look a bit more polished. And, I seriously forgot how lousy I’m at limbs; the main reason I loved the Thing Thing style, but that is me being lazy. Right now, my sketches seem a bit super deformed, which is fine. While I do have a few serious things, I want to be “not serious” about the strip and SD works nicely for there. And, like the other little bits of the comic, I’ll probably use the golden ratio (body is 1.618 the height of the head) for the main characters.

Yes, I’m a geek.

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.

I noticed something about the doctors in the Iowa area. They are a lot more obsessed with money and procedures than the doctors both Fluffy and I had in Illinois. Things that would take only a visit seem to take two or three. And there are more tests needed to make even a basic decision. I don’t know why this is, but it really isn’t that fun. I don’t think we are really having that many more medical problems but I do think it is a reflection of the medical insurance ecosystem.

And that is kind of depressing.

Now that I’m on a HSA with a high deductible, I’m suddenly noticing that doctors really charge a hell of a lot of money to do even the most basic of things. And, since they need more visits, it is more large chunks out of my HSA because they are doing what they have to do to get the money they think they deserve. I can’t really say if they do, but it feels like a war between insurance and doctors, with the ammo being people like me.

Some of this is related to my dentist visit today, which required four signatures to explain that “yes, you must pay this bill, immediately!” and “insurance going slow is not an excuse to not pay the bill” and a few others to that same line. And this isn’t the first dentist here that is saying that.

In other, more cheerful news, my second petition got accepted, so I only have two more to go. And only a week left in class. So, that is a little spot of sunshine.

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.

I just got back from the doctor’s office. It wasn’t a fasting blood sugar test, but the pin prick and the ac3 tests were both positive. After eating less than a half hour before, my blood sugar was 102, which is very good for my situation. The 126 is still the magic point and the doctor apologized about the expensive tests from last month and suggested I come back in three months to see how the ac3 trend is doing. The ac3 test was also positive, 6.0 when 4.5 to 5.5 is “normal”. So, slightly elevated, like the 102 mg/dl glucose results.

I’m very relieved about this. I was terrified that it would come out at 10+ for the ac3 and 130+ for the stick test. Having those somewhat sane levels means I’m doing the right thing: exercising and eating healthier.

In other news, I submitted my commission to the person asking for it and immediately put the one I’ve been stalling for the last nine months on the list. I need to finish this one, if anything because they pre-paid me. It doesn’t help that they keep telling me “whenever” but this is something I need a structure for.

I’m also dropping one petition since I don’t have enough time to get it done before my classes. So, I’m going to take one of the classes properly and just do four petitions instead. It’s frustrating, mainly because it puts me more in debt and takes longer, but I’m still on track for graduating with my masters this year.

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.

There are days when I hate to walk alone.

Yesterday became one of those days. I didn’t bring Inigo out on a walk because of the temperature. Keeshonds are absolutely adorable dogs, but they also have huge furry coats and can suffer from heat exhaustion. The last time I walked Inigo, alone which means about half again faster than Fluffy, he got so hot that I saw drool pouring out of his mouth. When he got home, he pretty much collapsed. When it gets hotter, I can’t walk with him, not and feel that he will be safe.

Fortunately, Fluffy walks him in the morning, where it is cooler.

Unfortunately, Inigo doesn’t understand the connection between so hot that he almost collapses and walking outside. So, five minutes after staggering home, he is ready to go again. Pretty, but not so bright.

That means I walked alone.

It gives me a chance let my mind wander. Which usually means thinking about some story I’d really like to write if I wasn’t walking. Actually, it was nice, I got to work out the entire plot and realize that, somewhere around chapter 15, I simply couldn’t get it to work. That is the nice part of walking, getting to work out those story ideas and filter out the ones that won’t.

The hard part is when I get a story I want to write. Like Flight of the Scions, Peg and Sue, and everything else. Ideas get ironed out faster than I can write them. Then again, I always had that problem, so I can’t honestly blame college, exercising, or anything else. In fact, it just seems to be who I am.

I have a busy weekend planned. I’m late on my major homework and I need to compress 38+ pages down to 20 or so, plus include my own work. I also need to do all that icky lawn stuff, get more boxes out of the garage, repair the electrical on two outlets, and finish my commission. It is also the weekend we are celebrating our anniversary.

I really, really need to finish that commission.

What else does a boy need?

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.

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.

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.

Today has been a relatively good and somewhat frustrating day at the same time. A bit long and wandering though, both the good, the eh, and idle thoughts.

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.