Monthly Archives: March 2012

Reluctantly Geeky

Leave a reply

If you’ve read my about me page, you’ll note a fair amount of my former life was spent as a computer programmer of one form or another. Around age ten or so I started tinkering with computers and pretty much never stopped, to the point where the bulk of my employment has involved bit pushing of one form or another. At least until 2002, when I left the computer industry for various reasons.

At this point in my life, I don’t really enjoy programming anymore. I still have to do it from time to time, because I constantly run up against tasks I want to accomplish for which no program already exists. Or the ones that do just don’t appeal to me for one reason or another.

As an example, I wanted a tool that would generate Follow Friday tweets for me, based on who I interact with the most as well as a few other criteria I won’t get into. There are a number of tools available that purport to do this, but none of them did exactly what I want and I dislike the idea of handing my Twitter password off to some random third party (which most of them require since they are web services as opposed to software you run on your own computer). So, I wrote my own in Perl. It took about a day, still has the occasional issue, but it works well enough that I consider the problem solved.

I also hated every minute of that horrid exercise.

That’s really all my recent programming experiences in a nutshell. I have a problem, can’t find a solution and end up writing my own in a fuming rage. I’m always happy to have solved the problem in the end, but the journey no longer offers any fun.

This last week I’ve been trapped in computer hell. See, there are a number of things I’ve had on my “Put Off” list for months that all require some amount of programming or sysadmin stuff. Things like setting up Emacs so I can organize my life again with GTD. And getting all my videos into iTunes and making certain that any new videos I acquire are transcoded for me into a format that iTunes can play. And…and…and…

When I put my serial on hiatus for a few months, one of the biggest reasons is that I need to tell other stories. Another big reason is that I need to attend to a number of other things in my life, not the least of which is getting my life organized and balanced, both in front of and away from the computer. Since my illness reared its ugly head the other week, those little life-oriented projects have taken center stage.

Back in November when I created this site, I decided that I was going to eschew any real mention of the computer-related shenanigans that hit me from time to time. The more I think about it, though, the more I realize that there’s so much of that going on at times in my life, that this thing just won’t be complete without telling some of those stories.

I’ll keep it to a minimum though, since I can’t imagine it will be at all interesting to 99% of you. It’s certainly not that interesting to me.

The Joy of Knitting

2 Replies

A month or two ago, completely out of the blue, I decided it would be neat to learn how to knit. I get these sorts of impulsive thoughts on a regular basis and they’ve cost me so much in both money and time that I’ve had to adopt certain rigorous policies to keep them in check. See, the process I used to follow went something like this:

  1. “Hmm…it might be cool if I learned how to paint,” I think.
  2. I go to a store and buy $500 worth of oil paints, brushes, thinners, an easel, etc.
  3. Three days later, I’m staring at the pile of supplies on my kitchen table. “What the hell was I even thinking!?!”
  4. Three months later I give all the stuff to a friend just to get it out of the house.

Not the healthiest approach, if you ask me. Or my mental health people. Or my bank statement.

Instead of the dive right in, take no prisoners, spend an outrageous fortune on impulse method of years gone by, I now have a different method of dealing with these thoughts.

  1. “Hmm…it might be cool if I learned how to knit,” I think.
  2. I wait a minimum of one month before spending a dime, researching or following up on this thought in any way. After this month-long cooling off period, do I still think learning to knit sounds like a good idea?
  3. If so, do some reading and purchase the absolute bare minimum I need to try it out (no more than fifty bucks).
  4. Finish at least one project before I even think about spending more money.

I call it defensive thinking, and it’s helped me avoid more money pits than I’d care to admit. Anyway, it turns out that not only do I enjoy knitting, I’m actually sort of good at it. By that I mean after five or six attempts and a positively obscene amount of swearing, I made a green muffler I intend to bury in the back yard.

I also made a sweet hat though, which I gave to my daughter.

Cotton stockinette beanie

My daughter, modeling the first hat I ever knit.

Technically, I was knitting this hat for myself, but Alex looks much cuter in it than I do.

My current project is a scarf, also for my daughter. We were walking around a craft store, I in search of circular knitting needles and she in search of some cool wonder she could convince me to buy (she got a stuffed owl and a blanket), when she gasped and picked up a skein of multi-color yarn. “Oh. Em. Gee. You should totally buy this yarn. Look at it!”

I really don’t know where my daughter picked up certain pieces of her vocabulary, but she’s been saying “Oh. Em. Gee.” since she was five and well before she had any idea what it meant.

Anyway, I bought the yarn and am just about done with my second (and much, much better looking) scarf/muffler-type thing. I’ll post a picture once its done and my model returns.

So what’s the moral of this tale? Is there any point to it beyond knitting is fun and I plan to do more of it? If there is, it’s probably something like “Warning: Children may cause craft projects.”

Slugging Away

Leave a reply

As predicted, I’ve spent a fair bit of the last week getting back into the swing of things. Getting back to my social networks, going over my notes for the novel, reconnecting with life in general and just trying to get my groove back. When you crawl out from under a rock, your eyes need to adjust to the light. Or something.

I mentioned previously that I tend to exit bad periods in a flurry of frantic activity. This time, I’m trying a different approach which involves a softer, gentler ramp up of activity. Instead of trying to go from zero to sixty in two or three days, I’m letting myself take two or three weeks. The idea is to add a little bit of work and business every day or two, bit by bit building up to a reasonable level of productivity. We’ll see how that goes.

The upside to all this is I’m still not firing on all work-related cylinders, I’ve been teaching myself how to knit and I have been playing crazy amounts of Minecraft. I’m sure I’ll have more to write on those topics as time marches on.

One bit of work-related news I can share is that I’ve recently been asked to review some books. In fact, I received two such requests in two days. No one is more surprised than I am. Anyway, please rest assured that if you ask me to review your book, I will do my best to read it and post something. As I told one author, I really should write some sort of formal review policy, but until I do, you should expect that any review I write will be honest and in the same vein as the reviews I’ve already written.

I’ve mentioned before that I try not to write any review that consists solely of “I loved it” or “I hated it,” since those statements are about as useful as “mean people suck.” So, at the very least, if I don’t like your book, I’ll tell you very plainly why.

Six Sentence Sunday #5

6 Replies

I missed the last two weeks of Six Sentence Sunday fun, but not this time! For this week’s six, I’m taking a few lines from an unfinished novella I have kicking around on my hard drive. If memory serves, this is my very first attempt at young adult fiction. It’s rough, but aren’t all WIPs?

Around two, a new sound joined the old house’s strange rhythms; a thump from downstairs, as though something large had fallen over. Jay got out of bed and crept to his open door, listening. A moment later it came again, louder than before. He stepped out into the hall, already knowing it was his mother, sleepless as he was, unpacking downstairs. He walked through the dim glow given off by the night light his mother had thought to pack and plug into an outlet in the upstairs hall, but a quick glance into the room at his left made him freeze in place. He saw his mother sleeping within, just as another loud thump came from the floor below.

I hope you liked it.

My Brain Can Suck It

Leave a reply

I’ve often had to explain that my life is a series of good days and bad days. And sometimes these days stretch into weeks. My doctors aren’t 100% sure if my illness has a depression component, but man those bad periods give them pause. Last week was pretty damn rough for me, but it looks like I’m crossing over. And to be perfectly clear, that’s exactly how I think of it. I imagine purgatory will feel a lot like last week. Getting out will feel a lot like the last couple of days. The cold was kicking my ass too, but a runny nose pales in comparison to the gloom I was walking around in.

So now that I’m coming out of whatever place I was in, there’s a ton of stuff to get done. I need to dig into my novel, start reading again and generally restart the machine. That’s the thing I hate the most about these periods. My daily routines get completely smashed and I need to spend days or weeks just gluing everything back together. That means that any string of bad days I have must be immediately followed by a string of near-frantic days where all my energy is spent getting back on track.

And on that note, it’s time to get some stuff done.