Two days off

Went in today just so I didn’t have to call in and take an unscheduled absence, then scheduled the rest of the week off because of that coolant leak in my car. Taking it in to get it fixed tomorrow morning.

So, I sort of have two days off. Don’t know how much I’ll get done, because the young one will be here when he’s not at school. Might get a little more writing done at night, or in the morning if I don’t stay up late, but I’m probably going to prioritize sleep *laugh* I don’t get much of it, and I have to take it when I can.

Doubt the car will be all that expensive. At least it and the computer both happened with my tax check just on the horizon, so I don’t have to stress over them.

It may be that I’ll get more done with working on the website than my writing these two days. I seem to be able to work on that a little easier when my young one is around. Trying to create vivid scenes and emotions more or less requires me to concentrate, close my eyes, and lose myself in my writing. Can’t do tha with tornado boy around. Coding is a little more second nature, since I’ve been writing code since the TRS-80.

(No, I’m not quite that old. Our school was just way behind the times)

With all my php notes and previous work now hooked up to this computer, plus the stuff that I’d already completed, I’m in a good position to work on that. The next step is designing my behind-the-scenes database and admin functions to update the site dynamically.

The young one is winding down, so I might just write a bit on Lowborn tonight. Now that I have everything back on this computer, I can double-check some things I need to move forward on that, and I really need to read back through all the unpublished chapters of SOTM yet again, just to refresh my memory after losing them for a couple of weeks.

Then again, I might just do some of the final clean-up tweaks to those unpublished chapters. There are still a few stylistic changes I’m making with regards to proper names and scene-setting that needs to be put into those.

Guess we’ll see where my mood takes me.

Gotta get a new keyboard, too. My wireless one crapped out on me. Damn batteries corroded, and once I put the new ones in, it wouldn’t connect. Oh well, it was ancient, and the software that displayed the caps lock/num lock indicators onscreen ( it didn’t have lights on the keyboard) wouldn’t work on Win 7 anyway. That was getting a little frustrating at times. Now I’m stuck with an old beater off an HP machine, and I hate the bloody thing *laugh*

My video is a lot faster with the 1GB dedicated video memory, but not blow-me-away. Probably has a lot to do with the “pretty” features of Aero that I’m not really all that interested in. I’ll probably be turning those off soon.

I’ll also set up my backups to every two days tomorrow. No more worries about lost files — Yay!

Enough babbling. I’m going to see about getting the young one in bed, and see what I feel like doing as far as writing goes.

Finally Got It.

Finally got the drive enclosure, so I have all of my files back in my possession. Now, maybe I can actually move forward *laugh*

I temporarily just dumped the important files ( writing, website stuff ) into my documents folder, which is automatically backed up. As soon as I have everything actually arranged into a new sensible folder structure, I’ll switch over to backing up every two days, as opposed to once a week.

I shouldn’t have issues with losing files ever again.

Now I need to go deal with my car, which has sprung a coolant leak *sigh*

Working for dunderheads

Well, they managed to correct the problem that kept us at work late all last week. Considering the volume of product we should be moving on average, this should have been a short week — as last week was supposed to be.

True to form, the suits found a way to completely screw up something else, and I’m stuck there just as long as I was last week *laugh*

So once again, I didn’t make it out to get that drive enclosure. I seriously doubt that anything will improve throughout the week, so it’s probably either going to be the weekend, or just a day when I feel like making the 40 min. drive after my 40 min. commute home to pick it up.

Wrote a little bit more, and goofed around with that video project — which actually might work out. I’ll probably post a link to it here ( or maybe even embed it into the blog ) if I go through with it and post it to Youtube. Hey, at least you’ll get to hear my voice.

Goofing around with this might actually have some benefit related to my writing, though. I’m experimenting with my sound recording while I’m at this, and that could lead to audio stories at some point. Odds are that the first such project would be an audio LST3K, because I think that those would be twice as good with me actually doing the goofy voices and sound effects that I type out in text for those.

That’s all for tonight. Just want to keep the blog active any time that I’m moving forward on things ( even if it is slow )

Damn football…

No, I wasn’t watching it — My sister was *laugh* I gave up on all sports with the 80’s Cardinals having 80% of the highlights reels for amazing plays, and still managing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory at every turn.

Thus, I still don’t have that drive enclosure. We’ll see what happens next week.

I did manage to write a bit this morning. I went back to that scene I skipped in SOTM and finished it, getting something important about Meckataur in there. Then, I went to the next scene with Danica and Celes, and fixed a little nagging point that was bothering me about the whole thing. I also cleaned up a scene with Zoraster, and made a few other little changes to get the flow going right.

All in all, I ended up with about the same word count that I had before making the changes, but I’m much happier with those two-thousand-some-odd words.

I was up early as hell, though. Thus, I’m going to take myself to bed, now that the young one is down for the night. With any luck, this week will actually prove to be short, as last week was supposed to be, allowing me to get my drive enclosure and write a little after work.

Got sidetracked yesterday

Got sidetracked by one of my old passions yesterday. The new computer can manage emulators and recording software at the same time, and I have enough storage space to edit videos, so I was thinking about making Let’s Play videos for a few things, starting with the obscure Taito arcade game Gladiator.

Did a little playing around and testing, just to see how it went. Not really good, but a possible building block to do it at some point in the future. I’ve always thought that I might eventually do a little of my old gaming stuff on the website in its own directory, with the warnings also offering redirects to those “safe” sections of the website, if someone foolishly wanders outside the links of the gaming part of the site to discover the main page and its purpose.

The most likely thing to go up is an archive of my old Dragon Warrior/Quest midis. Hardly anybody uses midis any more, but I still get a request or two every once in a while, and the original location is a spam fest of pop-ups and ads, now that I’ve downgraded it from paid status. I’d probably also post my old FAQS ( even though most of them are far outstripped by those of others at this point )

A couple ( Gladiator, Dracula’s Shadow, DQ1-2 SNES ) are still about the best out there, and it would be nice for them to have a place.

Okay, now that’s out of the way *laugh* I’m going to see about conning my Sis into watching the boy for a couple of hours today so that I can finally grab my drive enclosure and get fully back into gear.

Now, I’m going to open up WP and see what’s drawing my interest to write on this morning, before my tornado boy wakes up.