Blankshield

So I was sitting on the couch, reading a book with Kalen sitting in my lap. We'd just finished playing upside-down girl, and she was sitting quietly muttering to herself and playing with my housecoat; opening and closing it up near my neck, playing with the loose belt-ends, that sort of thing. I ask her if it's OK for daddy to read his book again, to which the responce is "umm, ya?". So I go back to reading, Kalen playing quietly in my lap.

A few minutes later, Kalen having stuffed the loose ends of belt into sleeves and so forth, she happily announces. "There Daddy, you're all nice and tied up."

Sigh. Maybe it's genetic...

James

Woo! Davyd, Other, Gorra, Fox and I have just determined, through careful scientific exploration, that moderation is a measurable quantity.

More specifically: M=Q/T

Moderation equals quantity over time. This led us to the lovely realization by Davyd that the unit of moderation is chocolates per second.

Tee! :)

James

Well, I decided last night that I am going to stop trying to write a novel in November. It was a fun experiment, but without sacraficing my already slim social life, it's pretty much unattainable. I mean, I could, in theory, write 7000 words a day for the next 5 days and complete my novel, but umm... no. Given that the "2000 words a day" method went over so well for the first 3/4 of the month.... I have instead, settled for a new goal, which is what I *have* been attaining: writing every day, at least a couple hundred words.

This is allowing me to also do other things that need doing without feeling guilty about not writing madly. I made noticable progress on the "clear off the pool table" project last night in addition to a couple hundred words written, and also relaxed in a chair reading for a bit before bed.

Life is good.

James
Word count: 15,321
Working title: Destination, please?
Working method: Just keep writing, Just keep writing, Just keep writing writing writing... Gargh! I've been watching too much Finding Nemo...

Stuff. And things. Yup, that's about where my brain is.

My project at work is done! My project at work is done! Yay! No more 2 hours out of every morning meeting the guys with a truck full of laptops and showing them which building they're going to, and then standing there freezing my butt off while they turn a truck full of laptops into a securly-locked-room full of laptops! No more 3-4 installations of control room workstations with odd-ball software and weird configurations! No more idiots who can't figure out how to reset their palm pilots!

Ok, that last will still happen. But with me changing clients soon, it won't be my problem! Yay!

James
Word count: 10,814
Working title: Destination, please?
Working method: procrastination as a motivational tool

Ha! I am posting this from my dead laptop! Ha! Serves me right for believing the dogs at IBM! "New System Board" my scrawny white... ahem. Well, you get the point.

Resolving my laptop woes did not require a $1700 systemboard. It required an hour or so of my (admittedly skilled) labour, and the removal of about a teaspoon's worth of dust that was clogging the cooling fan.

So again I say Ha!

Now, to write the other 42, 933 words of my 50,000 word novel by the end of November!

James
Word count: 7067
Working title: Destination, please?
Working method: caffeine and desperation in equal quantities

I am not often inclined towards profanity, particularly in the written word, but please bear with me a moment.

IBM wants - get this- Seventeen HUNDRED dollars to sell me a replacement systemboard for my laptop. My 5 year old Pentium II 300Mhz laptop. Un-fucking-believable. Do you have any idea what kind of laptop I can buy for $1700 bucks right now? Just for laughs:
http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=-124&storeId=124&langId=124&dualCurrId=75&categoryId=2302835

...And that's not "my price", that's the "this is what we'll charge Joe Random visiting our website" price. We are an IBM reseller, so I could realistically get a much better deal.

RIP, oh laptop mine.


James

Hey look, it's a cliff. (sproing)



Fairly accurate, I think. I don't agree with some of the philosophy that drives the Eneagram test (think good, emotion bad), but can't argue with the results. Except the unpretentious bit. I can be as pretentious as the next guy.

And I can do it without looking like some kind of gay superhero.

James

Grr.

My computer died on Saturday. I know what the problem is; it happens all the time on these beasties, and it needs a system board to fix it. Resolvable, but not resolvable quickly (quickly meaning "On Saturday, so I could keep writing my novel" which was my intended activity all Saturday night and Sunday). So my wordcount, which I'd intended to break 5 figures this weekend, is woefully short of that goal.

In other news, I'm doing the internal shuffle at work; After 9+ years (and 4 companies and 3 contracts), I'm finally leaving the [large chemical plant I work at] site. When [Company I work for] moves offices in December to our shiny new facility (it's about 5 times the size of our current cubbyhole, and long overdue), I'll be moving with it. This is a Good Thing. Also a vaguely nervous-making thing, because I've gotten very used to [large chemical plant I work at], and change is always unsettling. But I've been asking for this for two years now, and moving towards it for the last year. I've been getting awfully complacent out here.

James
Wordcount: 6700-and-something. I'd be more precise, but I can't. My laptop is broken. Grr.
Working title: Destination, please?

Hey look, it's an update.

Um, yup. That's what it is alright. Life is progressing at it's usual pace, although Kalen is adding complications by flat out refusing to go to sleep nicely. There is hope for the future though; she only got up once from her nap this afternoon, as compared to every 5 minutes from 3 AM (when I came home to find her in my bed bugging her Nyquil'ed mommy) to 4, when she finally settled. I was proud of my self-restraint, I didn't smother her with a pillow to aid the sleeping process.

My NaNoWriMo novel is woefully behind on wordcount. It's a third of the way through the month, I should be at 20,000 words or so, I just broke 5000 today. My problem is not writing, my problem is finding time to sit and write. I've improved my odds of finding little bits of time here and there now, as I liberated a docking station for my laptop from work [it's "broken" in that it can't be unlocked, so has been sitting for a year and a half. I cut off the two little things that keep a laptop from being set it in while it's locked (or keep a laptop there, obviously) and it's now letting me take my laptop upstairs to write, where I can (in theory) watch kids and write novel. As opposed to before where I had to be in the basement to write, and the kids are mostly upstairs beasties. They'll play downstairs, but only for so long before they start to go crazy.

I've been good though: I've been not building or sorting Lego in November, nor wasting [much] time online when I should be writing. No episodes of Buffy or Highlander or Angel for me until December, and I've only broken that once, but that wasn't so much watching Highlander as it was "doing something with my eyes while repeatedly settling Kalen". I'm still doing my regular gaming, but I had decided back before I started this that I would not sacrifice my few nights of social interaction to sit in my basement by myself. So there, mleh.

More later. I'll try not to let another week and a half slide by this time.

James
Wordcount: 5383
Working title: Destination, please?

I was grumpy today. I was grumpy at Jeff when he came by, who didn't deserve it. I was grumpy at my wife, who didn't deserve it. I did manage to avoid being grumpy at my kids, which is good, because they really didn't deserve it.

Then I had to go out and get gas for my van and return a video, and during the process I decided not to be grumpy.

Reasons not to be grumpy:

It may be winter, but I have a fireplace.

I have lots of good music and warm beverage.

Snow on the ground means Christmas is coming, so I can get away with singing carols in the house.
(and playing jazz disguised as Christmas music - don't tell my wife)

I'm insane.

My kids are napping.

I'm not at work.

I didn't snap at work on Friday, killing many people, so I still have a job.

I have a laptop. which means I can sit in front of the fireplace, listening to good music and drinking warm beverage, being insane in comfort and style.


James
Wordcount: 0
Working title: Destination, please?