Posted 11:29 AM by Tim
Despite feeling disconnected, unfocused and basically totally disinterested in everything, I've been managing to get a few projects finished. I should take some pride in actually finishing things, shouldn't I?

It's been good to actually get some things done, but not nearly as good as it would be to clear a couple of my other projects off completely as well. They're going to have to wait for a while until I have some free time to do things again. The holiday season combined with the backlog of things that need doing are all conspiring to keep me from getting to a couple of my projects. There just isn't enough time to do everything at once.

I suppose I'll get a chance in the new year.

Posted 10:55 AM by Tim
Lately, I've been irritable, tired and have an overwhelming sense of ennuie. Sounds a lot like depression to me.

I'm not sure what I can do to alleviate it. I'm already too busy to pick up any other hobbies and such, and I'm also far too busy to slow down and relax. Besides, there's this overwhelming urge to make my life more complicated that keeps nagging at the back of my brain. I keep telling it "no" but it's not listening.

Suppose if I could just get myself to complete a few projects, that I'd be happier. I am working on them, they're just taking a lot of time out of my day.

Oh well. Life goes on.

Posted 10:49 AM by Tim
Just a quick update on me today.

If any of you were a winner in NaNoWriMo this year, check out LuLu. The deadline is very close - January 15, 2005, but it's not too bad if you're just going to format your novel.

Me, I'm taking this as a challenge. I'm going to edit my novel, and try to get it done and ready by Jan 12. That will give me 3 days to figure out how to get it published and working properly. Huzzah for me. I've already started editing. This is actually day 3 of editing.

Given the formatting I want (6" x 9" book pages), my novel has jumped from 90ish pages to 216 pages. Adding a couple here and there for stylistic items and proper book formatting has pushed that out to almost 230. Given that I've added nearly 1500 words to the length in just 2 days of editing... I'm looking at a book that might just reach 250 pages or more. Somehow, that makes me happy :)

It's a huge push. The original estimate was to do about 10 pages of editing a day. That'd hopefully get all the pages edited in about 25 days. I had about 35 days available to me, but I discounted 10 of them for moving and holidays. To be sure though, I'm trying to work ahead as quickly as I can. Get in at least 10 pages, and shoot for as many as possible.

Even with the other pressing projects already on, I'm pretty confident that this will work.

Posted 10:45 AM by Tim
The guitar thing has been going alright. I haven't had the kind of time I need to devote to it to really get any good at it, but it has been pretty cool just noodling around with it. I need to learn some songs or something. Of course, if I do that, then I'm going to have to sing, and I can't remember the last time I was on key.

The main issue that I'm having with learning songs is that everything that I want to play is either too techinically difficult, or just doesn't sound right. Which is too bad, really. I've also been finding that the lead guitar parts tend to be full of single note melodies and quick riffs. While they sound great when you know what you're doing, they sound like total jank when played at one quarter the speed and with a load of missed notes.

I'm getting slowly better though.

The move is coming up soon. Under a month, really, seeing as it's already December. I'm looking forward to the new house, despite, or perhaps because of, the extreme changes it will mean. I've got a lot of plans for the basement rooms, though most of them will have to be held off until we can afford to drywall the place. In the meantime though, it main basement room is going to be divided into two rough sections. One for laundry/storage, and the other for living. The little room is going to be mine, mine, mine. I'm thinking that until I get an actual door, that I'll just do the bead curtain thing... private enough, but not totally private.

The little room is going to be more or less dedicated to painting, gaming and most of my messier crafts. I'm hoping to be able to take over my old kitchen table... or possibly to build my own storage shelf. I'll have to think about eventual disassembly or make sure that it'll fit through the door. I'd hate to have to move and leave it there.

The plan is to make at least one, and hopefully two wheeled storage shelves that are 4'x4' on the tops. That's the perfect size for playing a quick game of Warhammer 40K. Pushing two of 'em together would be just right for playing some longer games, or for playing some Fantasy instead. Meh. We'll see whether or not I actually get around to building them first.

The main basement part, what I'm looking at is having the TV, XBox, VCR and such all in one media center. The girls will be using this space for playing too, so there's bound to be some couches and comfy chairs down there, buried in toys and half-eaten sandwiches.

I'm going to set up the DDR pad there. Maybe get two pads so I can play some doubles... but I'll stick with the one pad for now. Probably put the weights down there too.

Of course, the guitar will go down there, so the noise of the amp will hopefully be cut by the concrete basement, and not amplified further. Keep our new neighbour from totally killing us. I suppose in summer that I could move the amp out to the garage. Be a real garage band kind of feeling.

I can see me spending a lot of time in the basement.