Category Archives: Life

My daily activities may, or may not, be of interest to you.

Birthday

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This isn’t a real update, just an opportunity to write about how old I feel.

Okay, okay, so 36 isn’t exactly old, but it’s not 35. Or 25. Getting older isn’t something I ever really got all that worked up about until I hit 30, then it sort of started poking at me. Still, I’m one of those people who always celebrates my own birthday, usually in an aggressive manner.

Let’s face it, without your birthday, none of the other holidays would really be happening, right? Think about it.

Anyway, this year I’m celebrating by spending the day at home, writing, drinking coffee, and maybe playing some video games. Or watching some movies. Or even reading. In other words, I’m doing exactly what I have been doing for quite some time: working my butt off, then falling into a zombiesque stupor.

When your life is such that you can tell the difference between celebrating and just doing what you usually do, I think that means things are either going very well or very poorly for you.

I’m leaning towards “very well,” but I can’t say for sure.

Why I Shouldn’t Wake Up At 4:30AM

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Actual (edited due to secrets) support ticket I just submitted:

I derped my own email when setting up my [REDACTED]. I’m a loser. Well, maybe not a total loser, but certainly a raging incompetent.

My real email address is “[REDACTED].com” but I decided the ‘o’ was optional and filled out the form using “[REDACTED].cm” instead.

As you might expect, this not only means I did not receive the confirmation email I should have, but there’s probably some dude in Cameroon accessing my [REDACTED] right now so he can put pictures of squirrels smoking pot on it.

I’m really not down with animal cruelty like that, and also would really like to click a “validate your email” link, ’cause I haven’t done that in like a whole week. I know, it’s probably weird I like that sort of thing, but it would be wrong of you to judge me.

Especially since I like clicking those links when I’m not wearing any pants. I’m pretty sure it’s against the law in most states to judge me for that sort of thing.

Anyway, if you can find it in your heart to change my email address to the right one, I’d appreciate it. I looked for a way to do that myself, but couldn’t find it. It’s probably there, but since I can’t even be trusted to find the ‘o’ on my keyboard consistently, you really shouldn’t expect I’d be able to fix this thing myself.

Jeff

P.S. I filed this as a “Bug” because it probably bugs the hell out of you that there are people in this world who can’t even be relied upon to get their email addresses right.

P.P.S. After reading this over, I realized that my remark about squirrels smoking pot might imply that I’m against the legalization of marihuana. That’s not what I meant at all. I don’t really have an opinion on marihuana, except that I don’t think squirrels should be smoking it. Unless they’re over 18.

P.P.P.S. I just looked it up and found out that squirrels only live until about the age of six in the wild, but urban squirrels rarely live longer than a year. Maybe that’s because urban squirrels are more likely to smoke marihuana? I think someone should do a study on that, but either way I believe it’s safe to conclude squirrels shouldn’t smoke pot.

UPDATE:

I received the most wonderful possible response to my ticket. The support dude not only wrote back his own thoroughly batshit response to mine, but he fixed my problem and gave me a lifetime paid membership to the site for FREE.

Let that be a lesson to you, people. Support dudes–and dudettes–work tirelessly to fix problems you probably created yourself. Help make their day just a little bit better, and you just might be rewarded for your efforts.

Many Irons, Many Fires

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I’m taking the day off today. Mostly. Over the last few weeks I’ve been in a near-constant state of GO, GO, GO with only the occasional breath stolen here and there.

Appointments continue to interrupt me, the novel I’m working on continues to grow at a steady pace of 2,000 words each day, and I’ve upped my exercise to levels not quite grueling but pretty close. And of course there are things like email, this blog, and my social networks to pay attention to. That sometimes happens.

All that said, I am managing to keep my New Year’s Resolution going. I’m eyeballing my schedule, but I’m pretty close to a 50/50 mix of Things I Have To Do versus Things I Want To Do. To be fair, that’s made a whole lot easier by the fact that I’m positively in love with the novel I’m writing.

Today, though, I’m just going to chill. I’m going to play some Minecraft, maybe watch a little T.V., and crack open an Elmore Leonard book I’ve been saving for just such a Do Nothing day. No errands, no appointments, no doing anything at all of consequence.

A day off.

What a concept.

Still Mostly Silent, Yet Also on YouTube

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I’d like to enthrall you with tales of my capture by pirates, or a quick trip I had to take back to 1955 in order to be sure my parents got married, but I can’t. In truth, I’ve just been busy with more of the same things I wrote about in my last post.

The writing is going well, I’ve been selling off a bunch of articles I wrote on spec a while back, and on balance my life seems to be pretty much on track. Sure, I hit the occasional penny on the track, but I haven’t experienced any significant derailments for a while now.

Well, I’d really like winter to crawl off an die, but that’s an entirely different matter.

There is one new thing, though. I think I’ve mentioned before that Minecraft is one of my favorite distractions. I’ve played it for years, exposed my friends and family to it, and even watch others play on YouTube. So, of course, it was only a matter of time before I fell into a conversation like this:

My Friend: “Dude, these videos are awesome. I wonder if we can do that.”

Me: “Video production is hard. Where’s the coffee?”

Now it’s two months later and my friend has his own channel on YouTube. You should check him out. “Why,” you ask? Because not only is he entertaining, but yours truly makes an appearance in his videos from time to time.

Of course, if you’d like a little alone time with me, you can satisfy your inappropriate hunger at my own channel.

This Minecraft movie making thing, it’s infectious I tell you. At the very least, it’s given me another way to blow of steam until the weather decides to be reasonable.

In Case You Haven’t Noticed…

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…I’ve been a very busy boy. So busy that I’ve pretty much fallen off the Internet. In no particular order, I’ve been…

Working on a New Novel

I’ve been averaging around three to four thousand words a day since I started this project a little less than a week ago. More important than my word count, though, is the fact that it’s been incredibly fun to write. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that I haven’t had this much fun in years. I’m sure I’ll post more about this at some point. For now, I’m just enjoying the ride.

Saddled With More Appointments Than I Can Count

I’ve been averaging four appointments a week for more than two months. The details aren’t that interesting, but believe me it’s a special kind of torture having this many things to do. Fortunately, this cascade has finally slowed to a trickle and I’m back to a manageable number of commitments.

Exercising

I’ve been hitting the gym twice a week to play racquetball, as well as getting out for walks whenever humanly possible. I feel great, am losing weight, and I’ve been sleeping a lot better than I used to.

Knitting

If I had to guess, I’ve been putting off about a dozen knitting projects I’ve promised people. As of today, I’m pretty much all caught up.

Putting Off Amateur Radio

With everything I’ve been doing, it’s obvious that I’ve let a lot of stuff slip. Amateur Radio is one of the areas that I’ve had to drop in order to take care of everything else. I’m happy to report this will no longer be the case shortly. I still have about a week of commitments and tasks to attend to, but after that I’ll be able to turn my attention back to the hobby. That’s good news if you’re one of the two people who are waiting for the next installment of my homebrew radio series.

And that’s pretty much that. Like I said, busy.