And so I finally get it accomplished

Finally ... finally finally.. I get the title of the Jeep Wrangler moved over into my name. After 4 forms, 10 emails, 2 fed ex trips to Iraq (and back), 3 visits to the county clerks office, 1 visit to a REALLY nice lady with the bank who was a notary... the Jeep is in my name.

And all my Dad wanted to do was give me a unique, nice gift. Leave it to the American administration system to screw up a gift. But at least its done. I think I'll recommend to Dad that next time.. just get me a gift card to a bookstore.

Other than that, today will probably be busy. I'll try and duck out for lunch to edit part 10 of spec ops. If I get that done, I'll work some more on Cold case. Sometimes, I think it sure would be nice to write all day. I bet I could really get some manuscripts cranked out if I had more than an hour at lunch and sometimes an hour at night to write.

StReSs AnD OvErWoRkInG

Getting a bit strung out, but I can't decide if its from only getting 4-5 hours a night or working so much. I counted it up, I actually have up to 5 jobs/careers depending how you look at it. One of my coworkers called me Banzai (sometimes Dr in front of it) as from the movie Buckaroo Banzai because I fit the opening line about the main character "began life as he was destined to live it...going in several directions at once". This week I never noticed before that he really does have a point. Who knew?

But to that end I'm glad its friday, this weekend will be BuSy! I've got to get the license key web service "productized" so it looks really cool and snazzy.. not to mention lets a customer actually log in to use it! lol. Then there is desgin notes for the pda writers' outline tool... Writing on Spec Ops, two manuscripts and one short story... clean the house, hang pics (which is VERY overdue for it) ... tons of laundry ... and get this stupid eKit Portal and Maps Core support coding done.

All in two days. Somewhere in there I'll need to eat and sleep I guess. Man I need a vacation, to just sit and watch the world go by. Bad part it when I do that.. I wonder "damn what am I not doing that I *should* be doing?!"

Busy Weekend, Boring Monday

Quite a busy weekend overall, running errands, getting little things done.
Got to try using a fondue pot Sunday night. That was ... different. Seemed like a fancy name for "lets eat out of a boiling pot of ...whatever".

I finished "Response Time" and submitted it late last week. No word yet, but the magazine's guidelines state 4 weeks so we'll see. I started back on "Cold Case" and some notes for a Kinloch short story.

Got a new cafe press site up for my paintings: http://www.cafepress.com/penstylepress it may not make a fortune, but it feels kinda cool to get my paintings out on the internet. Kinda like a gallery.

Today is boring, had a thunderstorm last night and its still raining today. Kinda leaves me a bit gray. On top of that, the push is really on to force all developers into coding on "emulated" systems. Pretty stupid if you ask me. An emulated machine is not the same as a real one, so there may be unexpected results. And then there is the issue that I have to start up a vmware session, then copy files then start up my dev studio. Lots of hoops to jump through.

But my manager is very excited over it and really really wants me using it. So.. I'll try it.

I just keep thinking.. is it lunch yet?

Finshed Story and Machine bingo

First off, I'm done with "Response Time". It has a good feel, nice and comfortable. I think it grabs the reader right away and doesn't let go. So, now I'll be writing a cover letter for it and start submitting. Sadly I can't go the route of a Literary agent (they don't normally handle short stories, only larger manuscripts) but its a good learning experience. I've got one magazine in mind, its a new, small publication so I'm hoping they are hungry for submissions.

On the other side of life, I'm forced into playing machine bingo. I'm to see if VMWare works as a dev platform because we've more junk machines than reliable machines around here. I happen to have one of the reliable ones. The concept is to use a VMWare "emulated" machine as a "vitrual laptop". Cool idea but the flaw is that unlike a laptop you really can't take this and work anywhere. You're limited to a machine that has VMWare hosting software installed. Admittedly, they're trying to get around buying hardware, etc. But really, this isn't portable in the least.

Last but not least, I finally got around to collecting my ink paintings in one place in a kind of gallery / storefront:
Pen, Paper, and Stylus
I'll be adding more of my paintings as time allows but once my existing ones are there, then I'll start making some new ones (and promoting the store!)

now if I can just think of what to put in for the store front text. ...

Things to ponder

Its a rainy morning so I suppose I'm a bit thoughtful.. not sleeping enough last night probably contributes to it also I'm sure! Anyway I was at lunch at Ruby Tuesdays yesterday, I had a craving for their salad bar for some reason, and three ladies in nurses' medical scrubs walk in before me. Nothing unsual, where I live there are lots of medical research labs, clinics, two hospitals, and so on. What caught my attention was that all the nurses (pediatric nurses from what I could tell) were serious smokers. Now, I'm alergic to smoking so I noticed it in spades. But it made my think.. you would think people who work in the medical field wouldn't do things like smoke, heavily drink, or anything else the medical community has labeled as "life threatening bad". Often though, they do and with relish in some occasional cases. Really, does that seem right to you?

Never did get the hang of Thursdays

Boy is that ever true.

I understand the purpose of a "stand up" meeting every morning. It forces total communication between team and team leads. Of course if you are a team lead that is actually any good at your job you'll talk to your team regularly anyway. Therefore making a "stand up" meeting useful for a large team, and useless for a small team (of which I'm on a VERY small team right now).

Which brings me to my rambling point that it seems that this "extreme programming" concept is partially designed to compensate for bad management in some ways. I wonder, instead of inventing buzz words and elaborate processes to cover up or compensate for things like bad management. Why not learn to do your job effectively? Guess that makes too much common sense. Though, common sense is a very rare commodity in the business world. More and more I get the impression that if you either cannot figure out what to do for a career or you really don't have an aptitude for anything in particular, etc you wind up in "business". That way you can spend your days trying to push paperwork without really *doing* anything yet feel like you've contributed to the Greater Good of the company. Scary to think of human beings willingly being reduced to the level of barnyard cattle. It's not "Brave New World" its "Brave New Barnyard"! Though it would explain the legions of people who can't quite explain what they really *do* as work during the day.

Rant aside, it *is* Thursday.. which means tomorrow is Friday. There is such a relief and a weight tossed off my shoulders as I leave work on Fridays. Which, I know is a sign of my job and myself being incompatable. That brings up another rant of the American culture being obsessed with health ruining work ethics. But I'll save that for another entry. One rant per entry should be enough for anyone.

On to writing. On the second edit of "Response Time". Its a short story set in the Spartika City universe. Yes, another superhero story. But this isn't Pulsewave, this is Skyburner. New character. I'm going to keep Skyburner in the realm of "pulp short stories" for awhile. After working on Spec Ops, I find there is a singular joy in making small, compact stories for magazine publication. Sense of accomplishment I guess. In any case, I like the story. I got the idea from hearing a story about a nursing home in New Orleans that was beseiged after the Katrina disaster by looters. The staff fought the looters off and protected the people staying in the nursing home. I have great respect for that so I used lots of elements of that for "Response Time". After edit #3 it *should* be in a shape to send. We'll see.

Reinventing the wheel... again

Just got out of a meeting. I'm not sure but once again I think I've just heard that my manager and another engineer reinvented an existing software package that was already made. Just a gut feeling but I think that is what I heard. I'm curious, and a bit exasperated, that they won't ask before they run off and design something. So far 9 times out of 10, we've already got it (at least so far) and they burned a bunch of time needlessly.

I'm supposed to meet with them on it sometime today. So we'll see.

Post Holidays

Been awhile since I blogged. Went on Thanksgiving, get back and work's insane. Such is the way of life. Fortunately I took a week and a couple of days (thanks to New Years being on a Sunday) which seemed to really help get the knots out of my rope.

Not really a lot to blog today. Its kind of a hum day, looks like rain outside my office window. Probably a good day to go to that nearby coffee shop at lunch, eat a sandwich and get a bunch of writing and editing done.

Got the garage cleaned, and a new workbench setup. Been wanting to do that for awhile. Now I can clean, paint, etc my pinball game! Heh.. been really wanting to give it a touch up for some time now. Paint and cleaning for it first, then maybe fix that LED display that is a bit futzed up.

Writing is coming along, I've got one short story that I'll finish and give it the usual 3 edit polish. I'm gonna try and send it off to iHero. Beyond that, I've got several other ideas in my mind for short stories. I'll get those on paper and start working through them.

Need to check google for freelance writing gigs. Be nice to do something simple on the side.