My Game of Thrones Review (Some Spoilers)

If you've ever read my blog before, you know I'm a fan of Game of Thrones.  I bought the season DVDs, I watched all the episodes, I bought the books.  Now, I'm going to complain about them.

Most of this post will be about the HBO show rather than the books.  But, I'll get to the books, don't worry.

I started the Game of Thrones series a bit late.  I did see the first season before the second season came out, but I wanted to wait until the entire series was out before I watched it.  Also, like everything else, I was always behind the curve.  I have too many interests and I spent far too much time on them to get anything done in a timely manner.

The first season was better than I expected.  The story was big, there were lots of characters, there was plenty of backstory, and the world was big and fresh.  It's what convinced me to buy the books and it convinced me to buy the season DVD set with my limited funds.  Main characters died, and it showed that not all characters were safe.  From a table-top RPG perspective, it showed that sometimes nearly random events can have catastrophic results.  I'm sure these deaths had different causes, but the effects were the same.

I read the first book, but realized that I was going to have to slow down if I didn't want to wait for the end of the series.  George R.R. Martin writes at his own pace, but I hate waiting.  I know he used to write episodes for television shows, and still does on occasion, and that's what the first book felt like - it felt like it was deliberately leaving plot holes open in order to fill them in during later episodes... er, I mean books.  I know it does take a while for a writer to get comfortable with a particular voice, but this was clunkier than I'd come to expect.

I'm not perfect either, so I was willing to give Mr. Martin a chance.

The show, after the first season, got bigger, but the world didn't seem to add much depth.  This is a difficult concept, but I've noticed that the world doesn't seem much bigger than the story.  I'll give an example because I didn't really phrase it right - you ever notice that after the show introduced the Rains of Castamere, it was the only song the characters in the show ever knew?  Then they introduced another song - The Bear and the Maiden fair, and still, those were the only two damn songs that anyone ever talked about.

Y'ever notice that after a character was mentioned as having been born in a part of King's Landing called 'Fleabottom' that everyone mentioned it as a place in King's Landing?  They never mentioned Guilder's Row or Iron Hill or Stone Chimneys (I made those up), but Fleabottom was mentioned several times.  Yes, it makes the world seem a bit more detailed when you bring up disparate stories like that, but it never seems to make it bigger than the story itself.

Maybe that's the problem here - there are a lot of characters and a lot of stories here and there just isn't time to show those extra background touches.  In the meantime, it seems like an episode of Star Trek, where everything happens on the bridge of the ship because they never had time to make a real set for the science labs or anywhere else.

While we're on the subject, what are the chances that every single combat encounter Arya has involves someone she hates from a previous experience?  Every.  Single.  One.

Again, I realize that it's hard to make a series like this with so many main characters with so little screen time.  I don't know how to fix it.  I would imagine that the episodic feel to the show would become even more episodic if they somehow doubled the amount of episodes in a season or the length of episodes themselves.  As the seasons get more complex, I can only imagine that it would get worse, regardless.

Finally, there's the sense of being robbed.  I know that exciting dramatic scenes cost money.  That's the point.  Waiting nearly a year to watch the dramatic fight at the Fist of the First Men was so worth it when they skipped over the fight and just played the sounds of some swords clanging and a couple guys shouting.  Wasn't that supposed to be the cliffhanger at the end of Season 2?

Maybe it's just me, but at this point, it seems like the characters are wandering around, marking time, until they can get to the last season when they can resolve the plotlines.  In the meantime, things happen, but they're less plot-driven than they are emotion-tugging.

Ah well, had to complain.

- Jim

I'm sorry about not writing sooner, but May is that sort of month.  As I mentioned in my previous post, May 5th was the 8th anniversary of my brother's death.  May 15th marked the seventh anniversary of my Mom's death.  I'm not broken in the same way, but I'm still not the person I was before those events and every year requires me to go back and consider myself and what I've done with my life.

As usual, what I see is not good.

But, it is what it is, and repeating the same post over and over isn't going to change it.  I am fixing myself, but slowly, probably too slowly.

- Jim

Hello there.

So, it's May 5th, 2014.  May is that month.  Eight years ago, it was the month of hell that tore all semblance of organization and future from my life.  It's probably silly, but it was the month I broke.  Waitaminute - before I go on, I know how corny that sounds.  Other people live through much worse than I did and they move on.  Other people have broken much worse in their lives than I did as well.  I agree.  In the grand scheme of things, the events of that month weren't all that much and taken individually they should have led to no more than me being sad for a few weeks or months.

But, I'm not other people.  Those events didn't happen individually.  I broke and I never moved on.  I'm not blaming anyone or begging for anything.  It was never about a single person or event but rather that everything happened all at the same time until I cracked.

I've moved on a bit, sort of.  Instead of moving along on the road of life, I took a detour and ended up on a dead-end street.  I'm here, but little more than that.

This post was never meant to be about me, only about background, yet here I am.  Sorry about that.  Today isn't the anniversary of the Month of Hell, today marks eight years after my brother passed away.  I miss you Mike.  RIP.

- Jim

Just wanted to say Happy Easter!

Things are going well.  I've had to take some time to resolve issues stemming from the past week, but things are progressing and are nearly back to normal, or at least normal enough.

God is Good.

- Jim

I was wrong.  I'm not going anywhere, at least for the moment. 

I love my friends.  I'm serious. Life is good.

- Jim

I suffered an enormous setback earlier in the week.  I'm still not entirely sure whether it was a hardware or software failure, but my computer died for a while.  I've brought her back from the dead, but I'm still in the process of picking up the pieces.  The cure was far better than the disease, but they were both nearly as dramatic.  Not much of importance was lost, but restoring the system to its former flow will take some time.

Time that I don't have.  No, I don't mean it like that.  I'm not dying - that I know of anyway.  But, there are other events coming that will stop everything cold.  It doesn't look like there was any way to avoid it and if there was, I missed the opportunity.

I'll probably miss it, so Happy early Easter to everyone.

- Jim

I'd have written a week ago, but I ended up catching some cold or flu bug that was going around and never got around to it.  I'm not seriously sick or anything, but it was seriously getting in the way of doing anything remotely productive.  Hell, at some points, I couldn't even watch television without spacing out and forgetting half of it.

Ah well.  I'm getting better.  Whatever it was, I'm beating it slowly.

The new season of Game of Thrones started.  Amazingly, I watched the episode almost as it was broadcast.  I paused it a few times while playing it to deal with being sick, and I had to rewind it a couple times to check stuff, but that's usually how I watch shows regardless.  Except for watching them right away, I mean.  I love my DVR almost too much.

Of course, I will need to watch it again, later, to keep up with the series.  I dislike waiting a whole week for an episode to come out because details get lost over time and Game of Thrones is a really big series. 

Hmm... I didn't mean to make this whole post about Game of Thrones, but I just did.  Maybe the next post will be about me. 

We'll see,

- Jim

A letter to Baranto Llama

The internet is a crazy source of information, much of it illegitimate and almost all of it involves porn of some kind.  Still, there are crazy nuggets of truth out there for those who are willing to look for it.

No, I'm not suggesting that the missing Malaysian Airlines was abducted by UFOs.  The people who believe that are weirder than most.  Yeah, it's a big universe and yeah, I suppose it's theoretically possible that an advanced civilization travelled hundreds (or thousands, or millions) of light-years to steal our airline peanuts and watch our inflight movies, but until there is a shred of proof besides zero, I'm going to have to choose not to believe it.  Seriously, do these people suspect alien involvement every time they lose their keys and can't find them after fifteen minutes?

Oh yeah, Baranto Llama.  I know it's not his name. 

Recently in the news, there's been another person who complained about the state of foreign affairs while mangling the name of a world leader - namely the President of the United States.  While it's okay if you don't know the President of Uganda (assuming you don't live there), you're probably going to want to know his name if you're complaining about the state of affairs there.

By the way, the President of Uganda is Yoweri Museveni.

Besides, in the era of internet, you should be able to find an accurate spelling of what you're looking for.  Don't give me that autocorrect crap - yeah, autocorrect is moronic at times, but proofreading before you hit send is always a good idea anyway. 

- Jim

Yeah, I know.  I haven't written in a long while.  I've been busy and there's been less results from it.  I have less and less time to spend on new and exciting projects as all the older ones require upkeep.  It's crazy how things work.

At the moment, I'm working my way through the Game of Thrones series again after I got Season 3 on blu-ray.  I've got just over a month before the new series starts, which means I'll have to try to stay away from the internet to avoid all the spoilers that I managed to miss so far.

In the meantime, I'm writing less and working less on other things.  It's the way things are.  Oh yeah - I got the Firefly series on blu-ray last week.  It was a good change of pace from things I was working on at the time. 

As I've said before, I try and keep my Twitter account generally up to date.  You'll find recent highlights over on the right side of the screen.  =======================>

- Jim

Nope, I'm not dead.  Sorry to disappoint you.  I've been busy with reading, writing, reading, family stuff, and reading.  Nothing major to report - just some library books, really, to cross off the never-ending list of stuff I want to do.  I have high hopes about the writing thing, but I'm still in the process of polishing and I'm not going to rush it until I make sure it's the best I could do.

Yeah, I know the real world doesn't operate like that.  I can't either, but since I have some extra time, I want to make sure that I take the time I can.  I can't say that none of it is procrastination or that I couldn't rush it just a bit more, but I will say that much of it is necessary.

There comes a point where good enough is good enough, but I'm not there yet.

High hopes,

Jim

Happy New Year!


- Jim

I just wanted to say, MERRY CHRISTMAS!


- Jim

I've been busy over the last few weeks.  I really have been trying to get stuff done.  It's all largely inconsequential stuff, but it's been stuff that's been sitting around because I wanted to get to it at one time or another.  "Inconsequential" is probably the wrong term here - it's not immediately important, but I consider all such things important.  And yeah, my inability to prioritize makes it that much harder to catch up.

Anyway, I've been working on bigger projects that have fallen behind the wayside - stuff like magazines, article archives, books, and stuff like that.  Movies too, as you can probably notice from looking at my tweets down there on the right hand side of the screen.  The DVR was at something like 95% for a long time.  I'd spend hours working on it, getting it to 90% or 80% and then ignore it as it went right back up.  I finally got mad and watched enough stuff to get it to fifty percent full.  It's a lot harder for me because one show will typically spawn interest in two or three others - mostly science and crime shows.  Then I'll record the occasional movie that I heard about two or three years ago.  Meh.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel.  I won't ever catch up - the nature of information and my nature will prevent it, but I am getting the process under control.  To some extent, it's like food.  You need it to survive, but too much will make you overweight.  So it is with information - you need it to survive and work in the real world, but too much will paralyze you in mountains of data.

To some extent, I suppose this goes back to childhood - for both things.  There were large stretches in my life where both food and outside information were simply unavailable or not available in large enough quantities.  Now that I have enough or an abundance of both, it's easy to overdo it.  As I said, I'm getting control of it, but it's pretty easy to fall off the wagon.

Other things have mostly stopped as I work on this stuff.  It's not completely stopped, and I certainly spend a fair amount of time thinking about it, but there's been little progress to report.  I hope to change that soon.

- Jim

Happy Thanksgiving!

- Jim

I haven't been ignoring the blog so much as wanting my posts to be meaningful.  A daily post about how I'm not getting much done might be accurate, but it's not really saying anything of importance.  Then again, it's possible that what I'm doing isn't important.  That might be more accurate.

Anyway, long story short, it's the end of the year and there is a whole list of unfinished items on my January 1st, to-do list.  Many of them are big projects and it stands to reason that I wouldn't finish them all, especially under the circumstances.  I think I've finished five so far, and two of them were DVD collections.  Yeah, I'm a hard worker.

So, I've been desperately trying to finish whatever I can get finished.  It's not perfect, but there are a few things I'd rather not carry into another year if I don't have to.

- Jim

I finally went to the doctor for my back problems and discovered I had some sort of spasm going on there.  Not sure how that worked.  They gave me some medicine, it works for a while, and then my back hurts again.  I'm not hopeful this'll fix it long term.

I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween.  Take care,

- Jim

Ever since I went to the hospital at the end of July, my back has been in terrible pain, made worse by sleeping.  I don't know what I do in my sleep or who's been beating me unconscious, but it's been pretty close to hell.  The good news is that the back pain is bad enough that I often don't feel my knee pain.  Okay, it's not good news.  The knee pain is still there, it's just overshadowed.  I'm sure if I were stabbed or shot, I wouldn't feel my back.  Somehow it seems like that escalation would quickly get out of hand.

The good news is that it's keeping at my desk more and working on more desk related things.  I'm doing more reading, more watching stuff on my ever-full DVR, and even writing.  It's crazy.  I do have to give up my computer from time to time so my nephew can play StarCraft II, but I don't mind too much.  If my back didn't hurt, I probably wouldn't mind at all.

Anyway, that's about it.  Little new save the ever-increasing back pain.  I have some ideas to deal with it, but those will take time.  Hopefully by the next post, I'll have some improvement to report.

- Jim

One of my nephews has been spending more time with me lately.  His family is living with mine for a variety of reasons.  He's eleven, and not much into the more scholarly pursuits I often attempt.  So, I've been spending time playing computer games with him and letting him play those games on my computer. 

Yeah, I finally got into playing StarCraft II.  Not a game I would have thought I'd be playing for a while, but it's entertaining.  It's not that I don't like the StarCraft story - I've been playing the original game since 2001, but I intensely dislike games that force me to play online, on their servers.  What's going to happen when Blizzard goes under or ceases to support the game?   I can always play the original game, so long as I have a computer that will play it.  The sequel on the other hand has limited offline features and doesn't allow progress in much.  In short, there's little point to play offline at all.

No LAN games.  I'll admit, it's not a big deal.  I don't often like playing with other people anyway, but it would be nice to play with my nephew.  One more thing - my nephew and I can create separate game accounts on the original game and play for the original price.  Not so with StarCraft II - too bad, so sad.  If he wants to play the full game, he has to fork over the money to do so.

Or his uncle has to.

- Jim

Sorry about the wait.  I'm alive.  I spent a long time recovering from being in the hospital.  It's weird, because it was just me being sick - nothing was broken or protruding from anything important, just sick.  Kinda like your mind, after you read the word protruding.

Okay, probably not that sick.  But pretty sick.  When I got back, I was beat up, sore, sick, and suffering from all the side effects of medication.  I'm alive, but I really don't want to go through that again.

Work is slowly picking up.  I spent a lot more time being broken.  I'm not sure what to do about it.  It doesn't seem like anything I try is helping.  I'm not sick, but I'm certainly not the same person I was before I went in the hospital.  Even then I was no prime example of human prowess... but now... fuhgetaboutit.

There isn't much of a plan at the moment.  Get better, get these projects done, find something else to occupy my time.  It won't be hard.  I have enough stuff to keep me occupied until the end of creation at the rate I'm going through it.  We'll see.  Maybe it's something I was never meant to do.

- Jim

Okay, first of all, I apologize. It's been too long since I've written, but much has happened.  I certainly had time to write during much of it, but no access to any sort of computer or internet.

On the morning of the 17th, I got really sick again and went to the hospital. I'd like to say it was nothing major, but it was.  Especially worrying was that it happened so soon after the last time.  This time they tried a longer treatment that was similar to the first except it was less medicine over a longer period of time.  I got out of the hospital late Wednesday afternoon and then spent the next two days recovering and sleeping. 

Oddly enough, hospitals aren't for sleeping much.

That being said, I'm otherwise fine.  I did spend five days without either my computer or internet though, so I'll probably need therapy for years.  I never buy a laptop because a laptop generally can't do the things I ask of my desktop.  I really don't go anywhere either, except when I do.  Ooops.

Anyway, work stopped, writing stopped, reading essentially stopped.  I barely even watched television.  I'm nearly caught up on the whole "going out of my mind from boredom", though.

Anyway, now there's lots to catch up on.  So, I'll try to write soon, but it probably won't be soon enough.

- Jim

As usual, it's been an interesting few weeks.

First of all, my recovery from the hospital has been mostly good.  I don't feel like working as much though, so my output has suffered.  Still, I'm healthier and that improves output a bit.

Did I say healthier?

We live in a house that is well over a hundred years old.  The house was invented before they realized you had to close it off from the elements in order to be a house.  As a result, there are a thousand nooks and crannies and every now and then - usually a couple times a year, we get bats in the house.  When I was a child, we would just capture the thing with a string fishing net and take it outside.  The net gradually fell apart and we don't fish enough to bother getting a new one.  So, I have big work gloves that I put on and I use a towel or an old t-shirt to capture one.  We had one on Thursday, I think, last week.  I put the gloves on, grabbed a t-shirt, put it over the bat and carried it outside.

On Saturday, we had another one.  This one was in a nook and the t-shirt thing wouldn't work.  So, using the work gloves, I picked the thing up and carried it outside.  The gloves were designed to be used at work and the backs are just fabric, in order to allow the hands to sweat and breathe.  The bat, in just the right position at just the right time chewed on the glove.  It wasn't enough to break skin, but may have been enough to scratch it.

Sigh.

So, I had to start a rabies treatment.  Despite what you hear on television, it's not gotten better with time.  A dozen shots on Sunday morning at the ER followed by something like six more hospital visits.  I'm not exaggerating either - a dozen shots.  Two in the affected thumb, three in each arm, two right above each knee.  Sheesh.

At least I'm getting fresh air.

- Jim

Happy Birthday to me!
I live by the sea!
I eat frozen pizzas,
   and the soda's for me!

- Jim

I hate to bring it up again, but it's been a month since I was in the hospital, give or take a few days.  I really don't remember.

A month.  I was only in there for a couple days and I was only sick for a few more days.

Ever since then, I have been in pain, everywhere.  My knees always hurt, but this hurt is different.  Still, it's my knees.  They regularly find new ways to hurt me.  Since then my back has hurt every day, my neck has a knot or something in it, my shoulder hurts, and even my wrist hurts from time to time.  I was pretty out of it, but I'm pretty sure I would have noticed the nurses beating me with sticks if they'd done it that badly.

Plus, I'm pretty sure I would bruise more.

So, honestly, I have no idea.  I am still working on being more active, but it's far, far less than I've planned.

Work too has been problematic.  The drive I had before has been replaced by nothing at all.  I was hard pressed to call what I did before, "work".  Now, now it's just a step or two above comatose.  I can't even brag I spend the time playing games.

- Jim

I have two DVR machines from Charter Communications.  I know this isn't an issue with just one, but both.

For some unknown reason, they updated the software remotely on both machines so that you can no longer press 0-3-2 to go to channel 32, but rather you MUST press 3-2-ENTER instead.  Before, you could do it both ways.  Now, you must do it the latter way.

I'm going to be honest, this is an annoyance with me.  Worse, I cannot for the life of me figure out WHY they did it, except to piss me the hell off.  It's not like it makes it easier.  The 0 button is with all the other number buttons, right next to each other.  The enter key is six inches away, far enough that unless you're using the remote two-handed, it'll often go to that channel on its own.

The only thing I can think of is the QWERTY excuse.  Most of our keyboard placement comes from a typewriter design created by a guy named Christopher Sholes who deliberately arranged the letters in such a way as to slow down the typists and eliminate or reduce key jamming.  Similarly, my guess is that they do this to slow down channel surfing, though they still have the channel up-down button.  Shrug.  Okay, I admit, I don't get it.  I really really don't.

- Jim

Update:  You can type 0-3-2 to change the channels you're watching, just not when you're changing channels in the channel guide which makes even less sense than it did before.

This isn't really new, but we have dogs now that are more sensitive to heat.  The upper Midwest is currently baking in a heat and humidity wave.  For those reasons, and because I am still somewhat recovering from my recent adventures, Seti@home doesn't run much. 

My house was never designed for such things as weather, electronics, the 20th century (let alone the 21st Century), or air conditioning.  I can compensate, but there really is no airflow.  Air movement seeps rather than flows anywhere.  Because of the poor dogs, I've cut down on everything that produces heat as much as possible.  No television during the afternoons, computers mostly off, and so forth.  It's a pain, but they seem to appreciate it.

Anyway, it'll be like that for a few days and then we'll go back to regular summer work.  We'll still be sensitive to heat, of course, but it won't be nearly as bad.

- Jim

My recovery is proceeding.  The worst of it was over relatively quickly.  It's the last twenty percent or so that seems to be slow - It's not really, but it just seems that way.

I do admit that I am spending less time working.  Disruptions like that are always like that.  The projects I do are always pretty intense and when I can't do them as intensely, I tend to lose focus and drift for a while.  Even when I got back home from the hospital, my ability to work the way I wanted to was limited.

But, things are getting back to normal.  They're not quite there yet, but they're a lot closer than they were.  I'm also more cognizant of what led to my hospitalization and I've been spending more time in efforts to prevent future recurrences.  That's a process that's not complete, but it's moving along.

In short, there have been some significant shifts in how I do things, but there aren't really any new things I'm working on.  Still digging through the piles of reading material I've accumulated over the years.  Writing has dwindled a bit - I found it impossible to write anything in the hospital, but it's slowly recovering as well. 

- Jim

An exciting week.

I went outside in my socks a couple weeks ago and managed to step on something.  We thought it was a cactus needle, but it may have been some kind of thorn.  It took us a while to find it though and get it out.  It was mildy infected, but we cleaned it up and it seemed good.

Until it wasn't.

Blah blah ambulance got called blah blah kept me in the hospital for two days.  I'm fine now.

Anyway, uh yeah.  I haven't done anything since Thursday except be sick and sleep.  Oh, I did finish a magazine, but it ended up taking me something like three days.

So, that's about it.  Just figured I should let everyone know I'm back home.

- Jim

This is going to be difficult to explain because the concept is pretty subtle, or at least it seems that way at first glance.  I've been writing or trying to write for years now - decades even.  The start date isn't exact because of shifting goals and all that, but suffice to say, it's been a long time.

It's not over yet.

But, things are moving a lot quicker now, and not just in the writing aspect.  In the past, I would sit at my desk for hours, working hard, but not getting ahead.  To some degree, that still happens, but I think I've figured out how to better manage my time.  Again, there is always room for improvement.  Still, I'm managing to get things done and get things moving.  Writing will always be an inexact science, but other metrics are more easily tracked.

It's amazing how I can write so much and not actually say anything.  I can't be really specific - I could say I read fifty pages today or something and it would mean I read fifty pages.  Writing fifty pages can mean you wrote on fifty pieces of paper (or its digital counterpart) but kept only three.  Then there is the way I write - notes and appendices and ideas and scribbles and maps and blah blah blah.  I'm sure there's a quicker way to do it, but that's not the way I can work.

Still, I can say this - I'm actually getting things done.  Not just writing, and not just the magazine goal that I've been working on.  It's small, incremental improvements, but it ends up being a lot bigger over time. 

Anyway, I hope to have something publishable soon.

- Jim

Some things stick with me for a lot longer than they should.  Some criticisms can stick with me for years. 

UNM professor: Obese need not apply for PhD

Read more: http://www.koat.com/news/new-mexico/albuquerque/unm-professor-obese-need-not-apply-for-phd/-/9153728/20414264/-/bkphhtz/-/index.html#ixzz2WGvGMcm3

A University of New Mexico professor is under fire for tweeting that obese people do not have what it takes to earn a PhD.

Dr. Geoffrey Miller is an assistant professor of psychology at UNM. He posted the following comment on his Twitter account: “Dear obese PhD applicants: If you didn’t have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won’t have the willpower to do a dissertation.”

The tweet sparked loads of reaction on the professor’s Twitter account. Several people have also contacted the university.

Psychology department Chairwoman Professor Jane Ellen Smith was shocked when she heard what he’d written.
“The idea that the psychology department here at the UNM or any department at UNM would be discriminating against people because of their size or shape It's just outlandish,” Smith said. “It’s nothing we would ever do.”

Miller has now posted an apology on his account, and said the tweet does not reflect his PhD selection process.

Smith said Miller told her the tweet was part of a research project. Miller, who was already on unpaid leave and working at New York University when he posted the tweet, told UNM officials he’s been sending provocative tweets for months and is measuring reaction to them. UNM is investigating that claim.

Action 7 News reached out to Miller via email for his reaction to the story and to learn more about the reported research project, but he did not return our request for comment. 

Anyway, that got me to thinking about the time I'm wasting even now.  It's no secret I've been behind schedule for everything I'm working on now.  And so, I've been working to catch up on things.  Not kinda working, not sorta working, but trying to spend every moment I have toward that goal.  None of these projects are Earth-shattering, and that's the problem - I've treated them that way for years and failed to spend the time on them that I should have.

And yeah, a large portion of this is about that pile of unread magazines.  It just bugs the hell out of me.  But at the same time, I was at the point where I realized it was unlikely that I would be able to catch up on all of them by the end of the summer.  It was an optimistic goal (considering my history) when I started, but it soon became clear that it would be impossible.

I'm not going to blame all of this on that article, but the article did its share of making me think about these things.  And so, for me, I've been working at hyperspeed, getting these things done - without changing the rules I've made for myself.  I can't skip articles - I have to read the magazines cover to cover.  I have to actually read them, which  means comprehension.  I may not remember every name (I won't; I'm horrible with names), but I will understand what and why and how.  Or as much as the article allows me to do so.

Magazines aren't my only project, but I'm working harder on that one than others at the moment.  Sadly, after the larger-than-normal effort of the past couple weeks, there are still 58 magazines to go.

One more thing - I am a hoarder.  I still have unread magazines older than that from when I was in college or when I was working full time.  While deep down, those bug me as well, they don't bug me nearly as much.  I had other things to do that took up a huge percentage of my waking hours.  Indeed, I had almost no free time in college.  The point is that I have all the time in the world now and I just simply don't apply any of it to anything.

Yeah, this is a proxy for another project, but that one is finally moving as well, though more slowly than I'd like. 

- Jim

This is turning into a monthly thing.  I don't watch television as much as most people.  I have my computer, I have my hobbies.  Television isn't interactive enough, I guess.  Too much idle time and I end up feeling guilty about not doing something else. 

Anyway, my eyes are always bigger than my proverbial stomach.  I record stuff that I'm interested in, but I never seem to have time to watch it all.  The DVR gets full and I have to watch it or stuff gets deleted.  I'm not one of those guys who can sit and watch tv all day.  I'm still burned out from watching two seasons of Game of Thrones a couple months ago.  Let's not talk about how many episodes I'm behind in that.

So, for the next few days, I'll be all about the DVR, trying to get to it to stop screaming in pain every time I change channels.  Then I'll be burned out on it again and go back to reading and writing.

- Jim

This is all old news, but permit me to indulge myself in my past for a moment.  It's not a pretty picture, but it needs to be said.

After the oft-mentioned "Month of Hell" in May of 2006, there was a year where things went mostly downhill.  It took a long time for the factory I worked for to admit that I was injured and meanwhile they forced me to work around it.  Not quite through the injury, but close enough that the injury got worse.  The surgeon who eventually saw me was surprised the damage was as bad as it was even after she got the x-rays and MRI results.  Meanwhile, as I was in both the fog of pain and painkillers, my Mom was steadily getting worse.  I tried several times to pick myself up during that year, but reality was what it was.  It just wasn't time.

Shortly after my Mom died in 2007, I lost my job.  The factory I worked for was tired of the injury and found an opening they could exploit for all it was worth.  At the height of the recession, no one wanted to take a chance on a guy learning new skills.  I was cocky about the whole thing too - I may not have had a lot of experience, but I could do everything I applied for and figured it'd be pretty easy to get a job.  I spent more than a year being cocky, never doing more than play video games because I figured I'd go back to work any day.

Well, as you know, that day never came.  Still, between the Month of Hell, the following year, and then the stagnation of the year after that, I let a lot of things slide.  The few years since have been a mishmash of periods where I tried to catch up with life followed by periods when I shut life off.  The pile of to-do stuff was just too big to handle and I eventually would just quit and play video games or something.

I'd like to say now is different, and it both is, and isn't.  On the one hand, this is probably the longest sustained effort I've made to "catch up".  I'll be honest here, depending on how you look at it, it's impossible.  I could live forever and always find stuff to do.  And therefore, my reading list will always be several years long.  My video game list will be similar.  But there are other projects that just bug me because they shouldn't be as behind as they are.  Magazines, for example. Writing.  At this point it's probably safe to say that I could live forever and never run out of writing ideas.  But at this point it's just as likely, given my track record, of never finishing any of them anyway.  Life too often gets in the way and I lose the train of thoughts rushing toward a literary conclusion. 

And so here I am.  The most I can say is that I'm trying harder.  I hope I succeed.  I don't think I've given any hope of doing so, but this has been the best effort I've put forth on it all.  Don't expect me to be done with anything by tomorrow, but the last couple months have seen progress.

There is one more point I want to make - progress is a double-edged sword.  I am notorious for underestimating the time and effort needed to complete a project.  It doesn't matter what it is - writing a book, making an RPG adventure, reading a magazine, or doing a virus scan on my computer.  It simply does not matter.  Oh, I can put a hard drive in a computer, but it'll take twice as long as I thought it would.  In that particular case, it was because I cleaned the computer case, moved some wires, and had to hunt down my regular screwdrivers because my power driver was dead.  Damn thing.

Anyway, there you go.  I'm still mostly working on the pile of magazines that keep calling me.  I am working on other projects, but the magazines are where I spend the bulk of my current time.

- Jim

This is kinda pathetic, I'm sure.  But, it's a big thing to me.

Nearly a hundred years ago, or actually... 12?  I started playing StarCraft.  That's not quite true, but it's close enough.  I had it for a while, tried to play it, but couldn't find the time to invest in it to become interested in it.  In short, it wasn't until I got to college that I was into StarCraft.

Over the years, college interfered, girlfriends, moving, deaths, the year of hell, etc.  I stopped for a long time after my brother died, merely because I was playing the game while he was dying, though I didn't know it at the time.  I felt pretty guilty about it.

Since I started writing my yearly resolutions/to do lists, StarCraft and StarCraft:  Broodwar have been on it.  Some of the time I "wasted" playing my own versions of my own games, some of the time I just spent making my own missions.  So, while it's been a long time, it hasn't been a very concerted effort.  Still, I finally finished it.  I'm pretty psyched.

Actually, over the past couple weeks, I've made a sustained effort and it's paid off.  I've gotten better to the point that the end mission was long, but wasn't as difficult as it had always otherwise been.

Anyway, I'm pretty proud.  So, I thought I would share.

- Jim

Call what I do what you will, but I get absorbed into it.  Every now and then I look around and notice the world has changed around me.  The internet comes on computers now?  Will wonders never cease?

So, it is with sadness, but probably little surprise that I find that West End Games, formerly the maker of Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game is liquidating.  Not just scaling back or losing some titles because some asshat decided their crappy new Jar-Jar filled movies justified raising the price of a licensing deal, but really liquidating. 

I'm not saying it was a perfect system.  Where Rolemaster by Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) was really too much, WEG was too damned simple for my tastes.  But still, I'm not a fan of Wizards of the Coast's lame attempts at controlling the entire RPG sector.  Thanks for ruining the world WotC. 

Yeah, I know WEG's demise started back in the 90's of the last century.  I didn't figure they'd last long without Star Wars and indeed, they surprised me by lasting as long as they did.  I also know that this liquidation is old news.  Sue me.  Please refer to the first paragraph.

As much as I post those Dice pictures, I'm not a gamer any more.  Not really.  I pull the books and binders out every now and then and scrape the dust off, but little more than that.  I've purchased... what, one RPG book in the last year?  Two?  I'm not going to look.  It would just make me more depressed.

Ah well.  I still have my memories.

- Jim

These aren't priorities for me right now which is why they're taking so long to read.  At the same time, these MERP books are among the smallest projects I'm working on.  Here's the one I just started today: 

In addition, I got a new camera and have been somewhat haphazardly taking pictures of various things. 

I thought that picture was appropriate for the moment.

- Jim

I dislike using the word anniversary to describe it.  It's been six years since my Mom died.  Six years to the day.  I won't say that broke me - I think I broke before that, but it certainly didn't help.  I suppose I feel lucky in a way.  I had injured myself nearly a year previously and was on painkillers for the aftermath of my Mom's death.  It didn't make things easier, really, but it bought me some time.

That's all we all have, I suppose.  It's something I sometimes have plenty of.

- Jim

May is a tough month for me.  The fifth was the uh... anniversary of my Brother's death in 2006.  The fifteenth will be the anniversary of my Mother's death in 2007.  It's not so long really, but it's an awful long time to be broken. 

Now, I know in the past, I've promised that things would change.  It wasn't a lie exactly so much as a promise I couldn't keep.  Even now, it's not like I'm going to flip a switch and be over it.  The past six (or seven) years have paid some of that cost, but they've also exacted their own toll. 

But the recent past, being all recent and all, has spurred some changes.  Positive ones, I think, though self-diagnosis is problematic at best.  It is what it is.  I promise to try as much as I can.  It's the most I can offer.

- Jim

Today is May 5th.  Most people remember it as Cinco de Mayo.  I remember it because in 2006, my brother passed away.

Seven years.  At times it seems like only yesterday or maybe the day before.  Other times it seems like an entire lifetime ago.  A lot has changed since then.  And a lot hasn't.

I'm not doing much of anything today.  Just sit back and drink a couple beers, in honor of Mike.

- Jim

Several years ago, I attended UW-Whitewater.  One thing led to another and I applied for a Summer RA position.  I didn't get it.  So, I made plans to work at the pizza place I'd worked at before I went to college.

And... the college called me and offered me the Summer RA position.  I'd cancelled all my plans when I didn't get the job, so it was basically me getting paid a small amount of money to live on campus.  I didn't have much to do.  The work was generally easy and I spent my time working on early versions of the books I'm writing and playing StarCraft.  I have to admit, I spent most of the time on StarCraft.

During that time, I made a few friends with the students coming in for the summer programs.  There was one in particular that I'd wished I'd spent more time getting to know.  It was a weird time for me, a weird circumstance, and I didn't know what I was doing.  Opportunities, if that's what it was, they never repeat themselves.  Not like that.  I know.  I tried.  And I failed. 

Too much time passed in me trying to track her down.  Too bad.  The more I found out about her, the more alike I found we were.

Dammit.

- Jim

Not much has happened over the last week.  Trust me, I will still be trying to catch up when rapture comes.  And essentially, that's what I've been doing.  Oh and allergies, but you didn't want to hear that.

I've set a goal to get a big specific chunk of my backlog done by the end of the summer.  It'll be close, but I think it's doable.  Barely.  That means two things - One, that I'll be working for a while on just a part of the backlog.  And two, that the backlog is greater than what I could conceivably finish in four months.  Eh, I've been letting it slip and my efforts at getting it under control have been inconsistent.

Anyway, I figured I'd post before people got worried about me.

- Jim

Nothing much over the last week.  A cold, allergies, reading, and more reading.  A little bit of writing, but the reading has taken over at this point.

I finished reading The Lost Realm of Cardolan, from the MERP collection. 

And I started reading Rangers of the North, from the same collection.

I've also been trying to work on the huge backlog of back magazines I have piled around here.  Sometimes I get interested in other projects and those weekly or monthly editions get pushed aside for a later, more convenient time.  Well, it's later now. 

That's about it.  Will post again soon,

- Jim

Oh, and for the record, here's some of what I've done over the past couple days:

I watched half of the episodes of the National Geographic channel's The 80's:  The Decade That Made Us.  It's six hours long.  I finished a DISCOVER magazine from May 2013.  I started a TIME magazine, April 22nd, 2013.  I also worked on a bunch of archives that I've neglected for too long.  That's another hole that will never be filled entirely, but it's smaller than it was before.

As I said, it's normally not anything I would write a regular post for and I won't be doing it regularly now.  It would have been more convenient if GetGlue would have been more convenient, or at least more stable, but that's life on the internet.

- Jim

If you checked this page for just the few right (or wrong) moments over the last few days, you would have seen that I was experimenting with a couple changes.  No big deal - they didn't work out.  I suspected they wouldn't.

Over the past few months, I've been using GetGlue to keep track of the things I do - reading, watching movies, television shows, video games.  Stuff like that.  I wanted an easy way to post to the blog about the everyday sort of things I do without the obnoxiousness (is that a word) of posting and of reading an entire post of whatever length about the fact that I'm watching Fraggle Rock or something.  For the people who get notified about every post I make, it would be doubly annoying.

Well, GetGlue failed.  As I was experimenting over the past um.. while, those wise folks at GetGlue discovered that not only are people not using computers any longer, but they're also not reading books or playing video games.  I could post that I was, for example, watching a video about MineCraft on Youtube, but I surely couldn't post that I was playing it.  Then the widget for the blog posting failed because they didn't believe people used blogs and the whole thing became meaningless.  I march to my own drum and GetGlue apparently doesn't.

Ah well.  Anyway, this post is just to say that an easier way to determine I wasn't dead when I failed to post regularly wasn't going to happen.  I am alive and I'm buried deep into projects of my own making - projects I'm desperately behind in.  I *think* I'm catching up, but it's sometimes hard to tell.  Catching up in one area invariable leads to falling behind in another.  I'm working on these things for longer periods of time, but the sea can sometimes appear to be endless at times.

These late night knee pains are getting worse though.  Bad for sleep, but plenty good for getting work done.

- Jim

This isn't going to be a Game of Thrones blog either - but that's mostly what I'm doing at the moment, even when I'm not doing it.  Anyway, I'm about halfway through the second episode of the new season and I have a complaint. 

No, I'm not going to complain about the books being different, I haven't read this far yet.  Nor will I complain that they cut out action scenes.  They could double the budget, but action scenes are expensive.  No, this complaint is all my fault - As I said earlier, I bought the first two seasons on blu-ray.  1080 looks a lot lot better than 720.  HBO HD just isn't HD enough for me, I guess.

All the other complaints will probably wait until after the season.  If then.  I haven't found much to complain about so far, except for the books' (and the show's) penchant for having such a large cast.  Hell, I don't remember my family half the time and there's only a handful of them.  I'm horrible with names anyway.

Ah well,  back to the show.

- Jim

It took a while, but I watched all the episodes, commentaries, and special features on the Season 1 and 2 blu-ray discs for Game of Thrones.  I ended up watching the first episode of the new season about five days late.  Thank goodness for DVRs, I guess.

Now I'm on to other things.  Mostly getting all that stuff off of that DVR.

- Jim

Happy Easter!

I know I said I would write less on this blog.  This isn't what I meant.  I try to write more but I just can't seem to find time.

I got the blu-ray discs for the first two seasons of Game of Thrones.  I have to admit, it's kind of weird to like something so popular.  The things I like usually get cancelled before they get this far.  Weird.

Anyway, my life recently, has been all about trying to catch up with this mountain of stuff I've set before me over the past... decade or more.  Things don't even get close to being finished before I pile more ideas and interests on top.  I suppose we never finish everything we'd like to finish in life, but this is pretty ridiculous. 

Anyway, it keeps me busy.

- Jim

I'm slowly catching up on my unread NEWSWEEK magazines.  I got very behind while doing other things.  Now that I'm taking the time to notice things, I can't believe how much it seems like they tried to kill the magazine.

As a matter of fact, I can't remember an issue I haven't shaken my head at, wondering the same thing.  This is not the magazine you remembered reading just ten years ago.  This is a whole new level of incompetence.

But it gets worse.  I was reading the last print issue, from the end of December.  (I said I was very behind in my reading) when I noticed five pages missing.  It's probably four, but the page numbers jumped from 38 to 43.  Crazy!  I contacted customer service and... well, you know how to tell if a company knows it's going under from the inside.

It's where the employees hide from complaints.  No response, no messages, no nothing.  Seriously, it's been almost a week. 

I canceled the remainder of my subscription.  Even if they couldn't fix it (being so far out of print), they could have at least acknowledged me.  I paid for a print subscription, they changed to digital.  It was annoying me anyway.

Good riddance NEWSWEEK,

- Jim

I'm awake because I am sick.  Don't worry, nothing serious - A bad cold or a mild flu.  Surprisingly, it hasn't slowed me down much.  I'm sleeping more, or trying to, but I've been using the remaining waking hours more efficiently. 

I've made such statements before, I know.

The truth is that work is what I make of it.  It's structured activities rather than the random stuff I would otherwise do.  Reading becomes work when I feel I have to do it, for whatever reason.  The reading in between those sessions is still considered free time however.

I feel like I've explained this before.

Anyway, because I'm interested in a lot of things and because I'm a human who can't prioritize to save my life, I am perpetually behind.  Reading more merely means I want to read more. 

Hmm... scratch that analogy - watching enough television only makes me want to gouge my eyes out.  It's true that I can watch television for a while.  I watched Game of Thrones in a little more than two weeks.  However, when combined with the stuff I record on my DVR, it often meant three or more hours of television a day for quite a while.  I'm sure that it sounds like fun for most people, but for me, it really began to be like work.  Since I finished watching the series a week ago, I think I've watched one show on my own and my nephew and nieces and I watched a couple cartoons the other days.  Seriously.

Anyway, I've been looking at the growing piles of stuff I've meant to do for years with growing disgust.  I've finally started working on those nearly exclusively.  It took years to get like this and it will take years to fix it, but this is how it's going to be for a while.  Mostly. 

Truth be told, as I've said before, I will never truly catch up.  There will always be something I want to do, just around the corner, over the hill, or beyond my reach.  There will always be something to read, something to watch, something to learn.  Still, I'd like to get that list a little more current than it is now.

- Jim

It's been longer than I thought it would be.  My Nephews and Nieces are still staying with us and because they're kids, I spend less time on my computer than I used to.  Don't worry, there's nothing wrong, except perhaps that they play too many computer games.

I continue to work on the whole concept of "catching up", which is flawed from the very conception.  Still, it keeps me busy.  My knee has been giving me more trouble of late, so I have more time to watch shows I haven't watched, movies I haven't seen, and read books I haven't read. 

Aside from that, everything is pretty good. 

- Jim

This is probably painfully obvious, but I can manage to fill my days with whatever I have at hand.  I haven't been bored in a long time, unless I'm specifically waiting for something, like a doctor's appointment, and am unable to do the things I normally do.  As a result, I can suddenly metaphorically look up and realize that six months have passed or six years.  Time doesn't mean much when I'm in my own world doing my own thing.

It's been even more like that over the past few years.  After the so-called "Year of Hell", life stopped.  Work, such as it was, was little more than a collection of tasks I set for myself.  Yeah, I distantly noted the passing of days and months and years, but only in relation to those tasks I've previously mentioned.  I could keep going like this until I died - the list of movies, books, writings, ideas, thoughts, magazines, blah blah blah are growing exponentially.  I suppose that in some way that growing list is something to be proud of. 

But it's not.

I'm not going to pretend that I have suddenly become much more industrious.  I am busy in my own way, doing my own thing.  That's different though, and may be related to OCD.  It certainly feels that way.  Still, there have been marked improvements in the way I handle new tasks and the way I prioritize.  Some of this began a few months ago.  Some of it began over the last few days.

Life is too short.  There is so much I want to do, so much I've missed while being in my own world.  Tomorrow may not come, so it's up to today to do what I can.

But life is also painful.  In some ways, I suppose it might be another way of procrastinating.  I don't have to deal with those thoughts if I'm buried in mindless work.  But I do dwell on those thoughts because many of the tasks I set for myself are mindless.  It's a trap I've made for myself. 

I don't know.  I probably not making any sense right now.

- Jim

One of the advantages of my position here is that if things get out of hand for me, life can stop.  No, not in that way, but seriously - I have all the time in the world to dwell on anything I so desire.  Of course, that leaves the obvious disadvantage - I have all the time in the world to dwell on anything I so desire.  It can be both a comfort and a blessing to deal with things at one's own pace.

Well, it is what it is.  I have to make do with what I have.  It's not as bad as it could be, but the process is not yet entirely complete.  Still, things are going back to normal.  Such as normal is. 

- Jim

This is probably completely obvious, but I don't deal well with death, especially the death of my peers.  Lately however, it seems as if people I'm distantly connected with, more or less, are dying all the time.  I'm sure there's a lesson there, but my mood is too dark to grasp it.

Ah well.  I'll be fine in a few days.  This just seemed more random than most.  Life may be like that, but I don't have to like it.

- Jim

Sorry about that last post.  My nephew came in to talk to me and I don't want to worry anyone.  The problems I have are serious, but not serious enough to worry a little kid. 

Anyway, I've been keeping busy with research and writing.  The research, of course, isn't wholly relevant to the writing itself, but I find ideas in the weirdest of places.  I'm still technically doing some catchup from the internet thing from last month as well.  It's a process that will technically never be finished, but the pile should shrink over time.  I hope.

Anyway, I've got to go.

- Jim

I took a big break from everything for a couple days.  Suddenly, my health became a big issue.  I don't know the whole story, but that's sometimes the way things are.  Honestly, I have no particular fear of death, but I have no wish to begin dying.  Too often, the process is protracted and painful.

Will write more soon,

- Jim

Yeah, I know I haven't written in a couple days.  I seem to have picked up one of the bugs that have floating around lately.  However, as far as being sick goes, this is pretty good.  A headache that comes and goes and body aches.  My stomach isn't right either, but could be worse.  So, I guess I'm lucky.

I finished watching my Transformers:  Complete Series DVD collection.  Yeah, I know.  It's been three years.  But it was bugging me, so I've been working on it lately.  The fact that my nephew has been staying at the house helped too.

Aside from that, there isn't much to talk about. 

- Jim

So I'm back, more or less.  As I said before, I was never really as away as I could have been, though I was never really online as much as I usually am or needed to be.  There's a period of catching up to do and I'm doing it as best I can.

It'll take time.  I'm interested in all sorts of things and there never really is any end to it.  "Catching up" is technically impossible, but being current probably is a bit more realistic.

- Jim

Truth be told, I was never really away.  Due to circumstances mostly out of my control, my internet presence became unreliable.  In my opinion, it became easier to just assume I couldn't post than to post during the random occasions when I could.  The internet was both more and less reliable than I'd planned, but neither was enough to change my plans for what I could do. 

But that's over.  I'm back and everything is working normally, or as normally as such things work in my world. 

While I was gone, work continued.  I'd like to think that I did more work in the last two months than I did for the previous twelve, but it's hard to tell.  Like writing, you can write a hundred pages and then save only two.  I played less games than I usually did and actually did things I'd been planning to do for years.  That's pretty good for me.

Anyway, I look forward to posting more.

- Jim

I'm a little late in posting this, but I've had it done for several days now.  My internet connection just isn't good enough to post something like this.

A couple notes first.  The list has been slightly edited for public use.  There are, for example, specific bills that need to get paid on the list that have been truncated to "Bills".  As far as the books go, I'm at the point where the next step is to finish them off and send them to the publisher.  I would like to see them published, of course, but at the point I send them off, they're out of my hands.

The rest are more in the line of my usual yearly To-Do lists.  I've tried to concentrate on the important stuff instead of just adding stuff at the bottom.  Still, it's likely that I won't finish everything on the list.  Writing, for example, has taken far longer than I have ever thought it would.  Still, I want to make an honest effort here.


2013 To-Do List

1) Bills
2) Bills
3) Send book to publisher
4) Send book to publisher
5)  R. A Game of Thrones
6)  R. A Clash of Kings
7)  R. A Storm of Swords
8)  R. A Feast of Crows
9)  R. A Dance of Dragons
10)  R. Tolkien and the Great War.
11)  R. Popul Vuh
12)  R. Flowers for Algernon
13)  Lose weight
14)  Beat StarCraft
15)  Beat Twisted Metal:  Black
16)  Beat Final Fantasy 7
17)  W. ThunderCats (80's Cartoon Series)
18)  W. Star Trek:  DS9 series
19)  W. Star Trek:  Voyager series
20)  R. Legacy of Ashes
21)  R. Eagle and the Sun
22)  R. The Stand (Revised and Uncut)
23)  Catch up on current periodicals
24)  R. Don't eat this book
25)  Buy Discovery Magazine Archive DVD
26)  R. Gamemaster Law (Rolemaster)
27)  R. Arcane Companion
28)  W. Fraggle Rock DVD collection   (Finished 1/5/2013)
29)  W. Heat DVD set
30)  W. Back to the Future DVD set 
31)  W. The Stand DVD
32)  W. Transformers DVD Set


One final note, as my Sister's kids are still staying at the house, it becomes easier to watch things like Fraggle Rock and Transformers.  I got the Fraggle Rock DVDs done already because they were on Christmas break.  When they come home from school, I tend to work on the Transformers stuff.

- Jim

I'm a news kind of guy.  During my early post-college years, I had subscriptions to Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report, and Discover magazine.  As the internet destroys such things, my collection keeps dwindling.  I just cancelled my Newsweek subscription today.

Funny thing, they seemed to have anticipated this when they announced the switch to digital.  Their phone lines were swamped, their email addresses were closed, and their website changed so that you couldn't cancel online.  Convenient, huh?

Well, hopefully I thwarted them.  It may only have been a few dollars at this point in my subscription, but at least they're not getting them.

Now I just have to finish reading the ones sitting around here.

- Jim

First of all, Merry Christmas Eve!  I don't know if I'll be able to post again before then, so just in case I miss it, Merry Christmas as well. 

Way back... several months ago, I decided I was too far behind to get everything done by the time I wanted it.  That's not really all that surprising.  I don't schedule for patience, and as I've said many times before, I'm interested in everything.  On my work table sits a pile of index cards with sixty or so books I want to check out of the library.  I have twenty or so books sitting around my desk that I want to read.  Then there's the book list I have online of those I want to buy.  Add in the books I've collected and downloaded in digital form and I could stay busy even if I lived for a thousand years.  Well, maybe not.  It might only be like six hundred. 

Well, I've done what I could with the annoying distractions I suffer.  I'm also working harder than ever during the last days of the year.  It's always been like that.  Nothing new there.  I bite off more than I can chew, and then I spend the rest of time in a futile rush to catch up.

That being said, it's time to start working on the Master Yearly To-Do List, formerly known as my New Year's Resolutions.  I've got a preliminary rough draft and am working on adding things to it. It'll look familiar; there's a lot of stuff from last year.  And the year before.  And the year before.  And so on. 

A couple things I want to mention though.  Unlike previous years where the beginning is meant to catch up on all the stuff I didn't do last year, I'm going to work on new stuff.  Well, it's not new.  I've always meant to write, but that task will no longer be subordinate to anything else.  If it's on the list and it's not writing, then it's secondary, meant to either fill the cracks when I can't write or meant to be after I finish writing.  I will send a book to a publisher this year.  I'm close enough, I think, to make that promise.

There will actually be a couple days when I won't write, in the beginning of the year.  I'm going to wait until my Sister's kids all go back to school after their Christmas break.  I'm motivated, but I'm not crazy.   It's hard enough to just read or watch movies with them around.  As a side note, if I ever win the lottery or come into insane amounts of money, the first think I'm going to do is build a cork study. 

- Jim

Lots has happened, though little in the way of blog-material.  My Sister and her family moved back in with us after having money problems.  It makes finding time to work more challenging, but it's nice to have the kids around during the Christmas season.

I'm finishing up what I can for the end of the year and continuing to work on other things.  I've found new reason to write and new motivation to finish.  I'd like to believe that's enough, but I'll be honest in admitting that I'm mostly talk in this regard.

In any case, I'm still alive, still mostly... more or less, away from the internet.

- Jim

It's been nearly a week since I wrote last.  Nothing major has happened really.  My computer chair finally died.  Not too surprising, since I spend so much time in it while I'm doing the things I do that I try to call "work" with a straight face.  It'll be a week before the new one gets here.  In the meantime, I have a chair that is hard on my knee, which is why I don't otherwise use it. 

That's not too bad though.  As I mentioned in my last post, this is the time of year I rush to finish all the stuff I can.  Well, this year I'm rushing to try and finish stuff that has been lingering on various to-do lists for multiple years.  Mostly reading and DVDs really.  There's no way to finish everything I'd like to finish, but I'm trying. 

Anyway, it's still going and it's going pretty steadily overall. 

- Jim

I'm sure no one was losing sleep over this, but I figured I'd let people know.  If you've been keeping track at all of the Seti@home numbers on the right of this blog, you'd have seen that my progress has essentially stopped and my recent credit has plummeted.  Being off the internet will do that.  I'm sorta on the internet now, in a very limited way, so the numbers should improve eventually.  Unfortunately, there was some kind of technical glitch at the Seti@home headquarters, and they've temporarily shut down. 

Yeah, even I wasn't real worried about it, but I haven't posted in a few days and I figured I needed more posts that weren't simply saying that I was still alive.

Just for the record, I am.  Still alive, I mean.

Anyway, I've been keeping busy.  The end of the year usually means me pulling out my New Year's Resolution List/To-Do List and trying desperately to catch up and finish anything and everything I can.  And so I have.  In that way, the internet thing has been a bit of a boon.

Anyway, hope to have better news soon.

 - Jim

Just a short note, I'm not dead.  I'm mostly offline for the immediate forseeable future.  That may change eventually, but probably not for a while.  In the meantime, I hope everyone had an enjoyable Thanksgiving and I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas, regardless of whether I'm online to wish it again.

Take care,
Jim

At the risk of sounding bitter, it's not like I don't try.  I'm not all that far away from making things right, but there you go.  Five hundred dollars would fix the immediate.  So close, yet so not close.

Ah well.  Nothing I can do about it now.

- Jim

So, I was walking in to the use the computer and I hit my toe on a large plastic file box.  I have 10 toes, and the only one I seem to hit is the injured one.  Well, it's damaged again, though not as badly as it originally was, I think.  Anyway, it's been twenty-two hours or something, so it is a real injury though.  Dammit.

Circumstances have become more imminent, so I will be taking a break from the internet for a while.  No worries, unless you read my name in the paper, I suppose.  I imagine I'll kill myself eventually, even if I do it one toe injury at a time.  But really, I don't feel any signs of approaching mortality, so I think I'm good.

Take care,

- Jim

I had a headache yesterday and while I wanted to let people know what was going on, I wonder if I did it right.  Rereading my last post, it seems to be suggesting something I didn't mean to suggest.

My Aunt is doing better.  She's not 100% yet.  At her age, recovery will take a while.  Still, she will recover.  It's just a process that needs to take place. 

As far as me leaving the internet, well, it's not a decision I've made, but rather circumstances beyond my control.  That's not entirely accurate, but it's accurate enough.  Consequences of a choice I made really.  To be honest, it wasn't much of a choice, but there's a price to be paid nonetheless. 

Now that I've had time to think about it, I probably won't ever abandon this blog.  Well, not completely anyway.  I've limited its goals and restrained its growth, but it still does serve a purpose.  It'll be around as long as Google allows blogs I guess.  I don't imagine I'll ever spend the time to move it though.  So, don't worry.  It's not anything dramatic like that.

Anyway, until next time,

- Jim

Not much has been happening in my life.  Working on stuff when I can and that's about it.  I didn't want anyone to think I died or anything.  Oh, the enforced absence from the internet is still imminent, but I have no ideas about when or how long.  It will be what it will be, I guess.

My Aunt is doing better though.  The road to recovery is still a process, but it seems this race is pretty much run.

- Jim      

Nothing major, but I finished the Harry Potter series.  I've given the last book away to my Sister's family.  Technically, I own the fifth one still, because I owned two copies of that book.

As I said, it was nothing major.  I'm still working on what I called the "Phase IV" goals that will finish up the year.  Basically, I picked a handful of stuff from the other goal lists and combined them with catch-up stuff.  It's slower going than I thought, but as always I hope I'll be able to improve my pace.

- Jim

The last I heard, they were releasing my Aunt from the hospital.  I don't know any more details than that really.  She'll be tired though and she's got people looking in on her, so not hearing anything is probably good news.

- Jim

The family dog, Ruby passed away this morning.  Dying is often a horrible process and I'm not going to describe it here, but her passing was easier than it could have been but harder than we wished it to be.  That is partially my fault.  I convinced them not to put her to sleep nearly a month ago.

As may be expected, the family is pretty sad.  This dog, along with another who had passed away a couple years ago, got my Sister through some tough times with cancer and the deaths of my Brother and my Mother.

- Jim

My Aunt went back in the hospital.  It's not that her condition is much worse, but that it's not getting any better.  As I said before, she probably shouldn't have left so soon before, but that's what she wanted.

The dog is almost certainly dying now.  The hope that existed before is fading.  Sigh.

And... I will likely be taking an enforced break from the internet shortly.  Life consequences and all that. 

- Jim

The family dog may be on her way out.  She hasn't eaten in several days and has been very sick.  There is always hope though.  Anyway, it's an emotional time for the family.

- Jim

There's really nothing new to add.  Aunt is still home, but still recovering.  That process will take a while, I'm afraid.  Still, it's better than the alternative.

As for me, I'm nearly done with the Harry Potter series.  I suppose I could have finished it sooner, but I had other smaller chores that needed my attention as well and I did my best not to neglect them.  My toe is still messed up.  You know how that goes.  Hindsight again, but I should have gone to get it checked out before.  I don't think it's any more injured than it was before - it's not like it's green or falling off or anything, it's just not healing straight.  I'm doing my best to stay off it, but I don't think I'm doing enough. 

Oh yeah, the writing is continuing.  I'm not spending all day every day on it, but it's coming along slowly.  I don't figure I'll be able to devote my full time to it until after the end of the year.  Still, that might be for the best.  These smaller sessions allow me to fill gaps and holes, to work on background stuff, and flesh out ideas.  The world of the book will never, ever be complete, but as it can be the framework for something bigger than just a single book, I want to make sure that framework is complete at least.

Things are finally coming together there, I think. 

- Jim

My Aunt is home, though weak and tired.  It's probably the right call, but I wonder if they rushed it.  In any case, she's mostly resting, or should be.  She is hopefully resting.

So far, so good.

- Jim

If all goes well, my Aunt should be leaving the hospital shortly.  If all goes well, she'll recover quickly once she's at home. 

Because most of the increase of my social activities were because of this incident/crisis, I'll be decreasing my activities back to where they were before.  I don't mind being available to help when things like this happen, but I need to get back to work.

Good luck, I continue to post when I can,

- Jim

The good news is that the cause of the problems for my Aunt is relatively easy to fix.  The bad news is that it caused such extreme consequences.  She's doing better, but still not out of the hospital.  She hopes to get out very soon, and I understand the sentiment.  I'm not sure what to expect in that regard. 

Again, high hopes,

- Jim

Alas, I spoke too soon.  My Aunt has had a bit of a setback.  It's not as bad as it could be, but it's certainly not good, especially at her age.  They're working on the problem now, but it will take time to determine the results.

High hopes,

- Jim

I am within just a few pages of finishing the sixth Harry Potter book.  I'm still working on the whole backlog thing, but it's going.  I had to slow down for a few days when my Aunt went in the hospital.  Admittedly, I didn't do anything more than change my sleep schedule, but it allows me to sit by the phone and ease the worries of others.

Yeah, it's kinda pathetic, if you think about it.  Still, it's the least I could do.

Anyway, my Aunt is doing better, though she's still there.  They're running tests and will decide how they want to proceed in a few days.

- Jim

There's not much to talk about, but I figured I'd post before anyone think I died or something.  Everything is pretty close to normal.  I'm still working on the Harry Potter books mostly, though like always I'm ever dabbling in a dozen other things as well.  I want to know everything, read everything, see everything, blah blah blah.  It keeps me busy though.  Downtime is hard for me.

I am still waffling about the toe.  On the one hand, it's a broken toe.  I can't imagine the doctors doing anything if I went to see them and medical care costs money.  On the other, it still hurts like hell.  It's been... what, a month?  More?  It seems like forever, but that might just be because it's the middle of the night and I haven't slept well.  Invariably as I climb into bed I brush my toe against something and it kills me.  It's not like I'm abusing it really, but the toe doesn't think so.

In the meantime, I'm doing some strengthening exercises, but I'm mostly on hold for anything else until the toe situation resolves itself.  Again, I don't want anyone to think I was out running marathons even before the toe thing.  I'm just trying to make it to the end of the block before the knee gives out.  Yeh, it's that bad.  Pathetic. 

Actually, on bad days it's worse than that, but I've dwelt on the knee enough.  Suffice to say, my dreams of becoming a ballerina are over.  Heh.  I'm kidding. 

Well, can't think of anything else. 

- Jim

I had to put the air conditioner back in.  Though my room gets cool at times, it's still hot enough during the day to make the temperature in here above 80° F.  My comfort is important, but not nearly as important as my computers.  Besides, I sleep better with the air on.

I doubt anyone checks as much as me, but if you've noticed my Seti@home numbers dropping, it's not my fault.  Apparently my newer computer wasn't getting all the work it could have because of a problem with the Seti@home servers.  Blah blah, problem was eventually fixed.  Incidentally, that probably increased the temperature in here by another five degrees or so just from that.

Anyway, still reading, toe still broken, blah blah blah. 

Take care of yourselves,

- Jim

- Jim

I've been working on both of these for a while.  Just thought I should share what I'm doing.  I've been working on both for a few days already.  There's no rush on the Tom Clancy book, but I feel the need to read even when I'm taking a break from reading.  Weird.  Anyway, there you go.

- Jim

I just wanted to mention that despite the whole toe thing, my plan is coming together, though more slowly than I'd hoped.  Too late for some things I suppose, if that hope ever had mattered.  Still, my weight is coming down, I'm getting visibly thinner, and my blood pressure is lowering again. 

Still working on reading though.  That list has gotten insanely long.  I honestly think that if I lost internet access, my library card was stolen, my legs were cut off, and I could live forever, I'd still never run out of things to read.  Or at least, not for many, many lifetimes. 

I'd better hurry along then.

- Jim

Contrary to popular belief, I will be fine.  I'm not happy about current circumstances, but as there's nothing I can do change them, I'll just go on.

- Jim

From now on, if someone I'm debating doesn't understand the square peg/round hole concept, I'm going to let them win.  The forces of truth and justice can never defeat ignorance of that magnitude.  Seriously, what Kindergarten did these people attend? 

- Jim

OW MY TOE HURTS!  ARRRRGGGHHH!

Okay, I'm done.  That's all the toe-related stuff I have.  I think it's healing, but one way or another it takes time to do so.  In the meantime, though I try to limit using it or aggravating it, there are a hundred different ways we use our toes that we never realize until it hurts to do so.

According to my handy countdown clock on my iGoogle page, there are just 93 days until the end of the year.  Yes, this is THAT post.  Time is running out and I'm trying to get things done.  Just wanted to mention that I'm cutting down on many other things in order to finish what I can.  It's a losing battle, of course, but it's a battle I'm used to waging.  It's not that I don't work hard the rest of the year (though I suppose one might argue that), it's that I always bite off more than I can chew. 

I also make everything harder than it needs to be when I do so.  Half of what I do pertains to process and it's amazing how much time I waste trying to perfect a process that is nearly pointless to the end product. 

Back when I was a Gamemaster for MERP (or Dungeon Master if you prefer), there was a... deadline for getting adventure sites done.  It was a hard deadline, since we had to play the next day or whenever, but it was typically more of an outline for suggested sites rather than a totally finished product.  The problem was that if I sketched the left hand side in detail, the players would invariably choose to go right just because they secretly knew how to mess with my mind.  The other part of that is that if I worked inhumanly hard and finished everything, the players would invariably fight each other outside of the adventure site and thus ruin all of the work.  Artifacts and adventure sites rarely repeated in multiple locations, else they wouldn't be called artifacts or adventure sites.

Still, it's the process that rankled me the most.  Looking at it, I saw where the holes were, even if the players accidentally forgot to find them.  The problem is that there are always holes.  The universe keeps expanding and there are always things and places that aren't sketched to completion.  Indeed, the whole "sketch" part is part of the problem.

Ah well.  This post ended up being longer than I wanted it to be.  Must be the OCD thing kicking up again.  Anyway, it's time to get to work.

- Jim

I know I'm weird, but I am insane about books.  When I get any extra money, I try and buy books.  When I create those to-do lists, half of them are books.  I like to read.

Well, when my Sister's house burned during the summer, they lost all of their books.  The ones that survived the fire were destroyed by water and mold damage.  I don't have the money to replace anything as yet, but since I'd planned on reading the Harry Potter series before the end of the year, I decided to give them my books when I'm done with them.  They got the first three, plus the fifth book already, since I had two copies of them.  The rest are waiting for me to finish them.

It's also good because somehow I've managed to hurt my back.  It may be because of the fall, either directly or indirectly.  I hit my toe while I sleep, which seems to cause me to contort into weird positions during sleep.  I've caught myself doing it.  Between the two, my back is killing me.  Every single day for the past... week, at least.  One day or even a couple days isn't enough for me to mention in a post, but this is crazy.

The toe continues to look messed up.  I'll give it time, mostly because I consider most doctors worthless, but the toe looks... deviated.  Not just broken, but possibly broken in a couple places and not healing straight/right.  It's like a road they built from two ends, but when they met, they discovered their measurements were off by ten or twenty feet. 

Anyway, that's about it.  Physical activities are even more severely curtailed because of this.  Damn them.

So Yahoo! reported my email had been hacked.  Conveniently, they upgraded my email from classic to the new crap they have now.  That's it, and the change can't be undone.  Yahoo! wants everyone to change to their new version anyway.  Did I mention that was very convenient?

- Jim

This isn't really the post you think it will be.  I hope.

I had this vague idea of being able to increase mobility.  I don't know how successful I might have been, but there are things I wanted to do.  Unfortunately, the broken toe has prevented that for the time being.  I really don't think it's permanent, but for the time being it means plans are put on hold.

Unfortunately, the timing could have been better.  There was a Suicide Prevention Walk going on that I would have liked to attend.  Despite what people think, I'm not really as anti-social as I seem to be.  Even so, it wasn't about being social - too many of my friends and peers have chosen that way out.  I'm being somewhat hypocritical here, but that's what I do best.

Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to go.  I probably wouldn't have been able to do the whole thing with my knee anyway, but there's just no way I'd make it past the car ride there now.  Walking sucks, but the whole wearing a shoe with this thing is what really gets it.  Sheesh.

I just want to say that I would have been there if I could have.  I'm not entirely sure it would have been for the right reasons, but some of those people lost were friends. 

- Jim

Mentor397 - The Toe Blog.

It's not meant to be this way, but this is what it seems to be.  Sorry about that.

It's been a couple weeks since I fell.  It's been a week since I cracked the toe again, or at least, it made a cracking noise when I abused it.  Over the last couple of days, it has mysteriously swollen and gotten darker.  Did I do something while I slept?  Is it something more nefarious?  I have no idea.  I'll give it a couple days and if I don't go insane from lack of sleep, I will probably head to the doctor. 

Ooops.

- Jim

Now that I've scared everyone away, I may have changed my mind about this blog.  I certainly like the idea more than I like the idea of Facebook.  People come here if they want to know things.  It's not like I'm shouting to get their attention.

The toe was injured again.  If it wasn't broken before, it certainly is now.  I'll be limiting my exercise for a while, I guess.

- Jim

As a follow up to the last post, I am nearly fine now.  The muscles don't really ache any more, the knee is a little sore, but I'm sure it's just a bruise now.  The toe is probably broken, but the one next to it is likely only bruised as well.  So, I'll be on light duty - well, I've not really been anything but light for years, but I'll be on lighter duty for a week or two, but I expect I'll be back to normal after that.

- Jim