Soon?

The base ship sketches for CosmoViking are all drawn and inked now.  I'm not sure how long it will take to get them scanned and finished on the computer.  I hate scanning things.  It's a slow and terrible process that involves not doing very much.  Next week I plan on getting it all done if possible since I am taking a little time off of work to catch up on various projects.  Go CosmoViking!

Yes, vacation.  It's not a proper vacation by any means but it is time away from work.  It's been nearly a year since my last vacation and that was when I moved into my new house.  As fun as that was, it was still a hectic activity and not really the sit back and relax type of vacation I need right now.  The real trick of course is staying motivated on this stay-cation as they call it.  I could easily burn through a few days doing nothing of importance but that wouldn't be very good at all.  

Big things to get done:  

- Basement.  I have to get that thing finished up and then the room cleaned up.  Sadly this means boxing up all of my Warhammer stuff.  So sad.  I just worry about them when they're not safe on their shelves.  

- CosmoViking.  Sketches need to get done.  This will be a nice first day of Vacation project I think.  I'll set up the scanner in the living room and watch bad movies until they're finished.  That sounds like a perfect Monday.  

- Prep for the gig.  Yes, I have a show next week play with The Seasonals.  Friday, May 3rd at the legendary Bridgid's Pub, downtown Bemidji.  It's going to be a fun evening and I encourage everyone to get out and enjoy the spring air by walking around downtown taking in the local culture.  I need to brush up on some songs but overall I feel good.  More than anything I need to get used to the new bass pedal.  It's just so solid and well built it feels weird under my foot.  It's going to take a little bit to get the feel for it.  

Well.  That's about it really.  I'm sure there will be some partying and all that as well.  Hopefully some gaming at some point.  Woot.

Have a good day kids.

Spring?

Snow!  Yes, there was snow yesterday but a quick check of the 10-day forecast was a little surprising.  High temps in the fifties at the end of this week.  Yes, fifties.  Amazing.  I think it's finally coming to a close, this winter of everlasting.  Highs in the forties for the majority with partly cloudy skies and no sign of snow.  Glorious.

If this is the case, I look forward to a pleasant and productive week.

Another Friday...

Another Friday and thus begins the month of events.

It's going to be a fairly exciting few weeks here as spring seems to possibly coming our way finally.  Tonight is gaming night, hopefully, where the lads will face their most hated enemy to date.  Will they live?  Will they have their revenge upon him who betrayed them?  Always a good time and I hope it goes well.

Roller derby starts up again tomorrow night.  I'm pleasantly surprised by the increased interest in getting me help for the NSO crew this spring.  There seems to have been a real push to get the staffing issue under control.  It will still be a frantic affair but I will actually pull it off this time without too much issue.

After that there is a little bit of a break in the action as the weather starts to warm up and I get cracking on house things.  I still have a little interior patching to get done and get some much needed spring cleaning done.

Then, after that is done I'm thinking of taking a few days off of work for a mini-vacation.  If the weather holds, I'll be cleaning out the garage and enjoying some much needed head clearing time.  Work is being quite the pain in my brain lately and it would be good to worry about Minecraft rather than garment orders.

That would be capped off by my triumphant return to the stage.  A wild and crazy evening with The Seasonals at Bridgid's Cross on May 3rd.  It's a Friday.  Bigger energy now with me punching things up a notch and bringing my signature louder is awesome style.

After that it's back to derby action training and then hopefully Out of the Hat coming up mid-May.  May 18th as I have heard.  I think there was something on the 11th too that was pretty important but I have forgotten now.

In the middle of all of this I have two very special projects to be working on.  First, the sketches for all the regular ships for CosmoViking are finished.  Huzzah!  Now to get them scanned, colorized and stuff.  That will be fun.  Secondly, my new book idea is really taking off.  Things are bouncing in the brain and after purchasing a ridiculous sketchbook to use as idea journal, I'm not losing my ideas anymore.  Notes I'm jotting down at work are transcribed into the tome of awesomeness at night and saved.  The plot is coming together and I would expect I can start putting some actual words down soon.  I just need some character studies and then I can get writing.  It's very exciting.  I owe it all to Froyd and his wonderful whiteboard for making that little idea explode and become a real story.

Anyway...time to get to work.  Just a few hours and this crazy weekend will commence!  Good luck to you all.


(Edit) P.S.  The Wi-Fi card is working again...sort of.  It will work fine for awhile then randomly disappear for a few then come back after it's shut down for at least a half an hour.  I'm wondering if there's a heat issue or some sort of incompatibility issue with something else that only pops on randomly once in awhile.  Unknown.

Ups and downs

Tuesday turned out to be a day of ups and downs.  On the upside, went to my first band practice in over a decade and it went rather well.  I'm a bit rusty and having trouble remembering how certain limbs move at certain times but overall it was fun.  I need to do some studying before gig day but I think it will be a good show.

On the downside yesterday, the wi-fi on the wife's laptop crapped out a day after I finally got it working right!  It wasn't long after we got the thing that the internal wireless just wouldn't connect.  It would see networks but never be able to connect.  I pulled the card, checked the antenna connections but still nothing.  I checked the drivers and such but nothing seemed out of place.  We had a USB Wi-Fi adapter sitting around so she just used that until that got damaged.  So I ordered a new half-card, mini-card wireless adapter for five bucks and dropped that it.  What happened?  Perfectly connected up, no problems, top transfer speeds across the board.

That worked great for an entire day!  I came home last night, picked it up and connected to a minecraft server and played for an hour.  No issues whatsoever.  I put the thing down to eat some toast and watch some IT Crowd and when I picked it back up the card was gone.  

Yup...the card was no longer listed in the device manager.  Poof....gone.  I popped the back off just to make sure it hadn't been stolen by pixies but it was still there physically.  Odd, I thought, it's still there!  I restarted and now the computer is trying to tell me I have a unrecognizable USB device attached to the computer.  What the heck?  Somehow, in the span of making toast, the system decided that the wireless card wasn't a wireless card but rather a mutant USB device.  I am a titch angry.  If I can install it manually rather than relying on the plug-and-play awesomeness that is modern computing maybe that will clear it up.  It's a fix I will try tonight.  

Sadly though I fear it's a bad port and never repairable.  I guess it's back to USB adapters.  So sad.  

At least Bioshock: Infinite downloaded the day it was working. ;)

Coffee

There's coffee all over my shirt now.  I hope you're happy.  

I really have to get the brain working again.  I think we all expected to be hopping rain puddles and putting away the winter wear by now.  This snow stuff really has to end soon.  I keep doing little things to keep me feeling like I'm being productive but it's a bit like shoveling out a ditch with a spoon.  I need a backhoe to get caught up.  

Things to do:

- Get my room back in order!  I'm almost there.  After some rearranging I need to seal up on more crack and then I shouldn't be needing that damn dehumidifier anymore!  Priority level:  Half a year late...

- Music Music Music!  I need to write a few more tracks for the dominant species project.  I don't know if it's even being worked on anymore.  You know what though?  I'm finishing that damn project!  

Priority level:  Pretty important...at least for the ego.

- DRAW!  Cosmo Viking will be released and if I don't get off my ass I'm going to hold that whole project up.  Priority level:  Go Team Venture!

- All the other things on the plate!  Seriously.  Derby, new band, new dance album, work, housework, learn to golf better as to not embarrass myself at golf weekend this year, make cookies, build a wood box, build garage shelves, flush and fill my transmission, get oil change, get my marriage officiant paperwork approved by the state...an more!  F.

Grumpy Friday

There is so much talk right now about the marriage stuff that it's making my head spin.  I would write some articles explaining the craziness of it all; but who has the time?  Also, what would it do?  Seriously.  On a topic such as this, your mind is probably already made up on the issue and little is going to change it.  People throw up articles on Facebook not so much to convince others but rather to stir up trouble.

So many of the articles are the same anyway, rehashed and retold by somebody new to appeal to another demographic.  Old man, young girl, married couple, college girl, gay man, straight man.  It's like they've all been handed a list of points they have to make for their article by some central mastermind that isn't that good at being a mastermind.

I guess the only thing to really do is stop trying to convince people through two-clicks worth of effort linking some article that you probably only skimmed anyway.  Things are happening and effort should not be wasted on fighting skirmishes in the digital alleyways.  Instead, concentrate your efforts pushing others into action in the real world.  Rise above and all that.

I'm going to go look at cats...

Thursday...right?

Facebook equal sign day is over and for me it passed without much drama.  Browsing a little reddit I found that it became quite an enlightening experience for some facebook users.  Apparently plastering your beliefs all over the internet can cause tension between people who don't share them.  Who knew?  

It's all a bit like high school.  It seems like the biggest thing in the world when you're in it but in reality it's very silly and unimportant.  We can make huge social change through social media!  That's the mindset and it's really quite incorrect.  If the actions you take only exist within the social media world than they will stay in the social media world.  People talk about how social media is helping candidates win elections and influences voters to make a difference.  That's true in a sense but it's actually not quite right.

What is actually making a difference is that you are connecting with people who already share your opinion and notifying them to go out into the real world to do something.  Essentially you're doing a quick and far reaching text message.  It works and works well but it's not doing what people think it does.  People who use it to accomplish their political goals like to say they accomplished so much with social media.  However, it was a combined effort through rallies, door to door campaigns and social media that made things happen.  The social media aided a real life event and made it better.  Changing your profile pic and blasting some opinion on your wall accomplishes little. Opinions are rarely going to change in a social media setting.  

Say you're in a stadium with thirty-thousand people and you're hanging out with your closest friends.  You're going to mainly be hearing what they have to say because their in close proximity.  The remaining thousands having conversations will just be an indiscernible rumble.  If it's "wear your most politically charged t-shirt day", you're probably wearing the same or similar t-shirts as all of your friends.  Now, say a person from the fringe of your friends group walks by on the way to the hot-dog stand wearing a different t-shirt.  You'll exchange some words, maybe argue a bit but you're not going to sit down and have a debate about your views in the middle of the noisy stadium.  Especially since you have ten to twenty of your friends there to pitch in their two cents on the matter.  In fact, you'll probably both say some dumb stuff because it's chaotic and uncontrolled to begin with and possibly tell that person to go stick his head in the toilet.  There won't be any sudden changes of opinion.  There won't be really any change at all.

Now, say you're in that stadium and someone puts a message on the jumbo-tron that everyone who thinks cats are awesome should go out to the parking lot for free kittens.  A giant chunk of people will leave and go get a kitten.  That is the power of social media.  It's not to be underestimated but it's not the miracle working thing that people have grown to think it is.

</end rant>