Mindstream

Slowly I’m getting more organized. I’ve found myself with so many minor side projects lately that I am quite behind on everything. So I’ve come up with a nice and simple solution. Scheduling.

Yes, the time honored tradition of taking blocks of your time and dedicating them has been determined to be the most effective measure. It’s a bit trite I know, but hopefully it’ll keep me a bit more on task.

The ironic thing is I have too much free time. I have too much time dedicated to nothing in perticular. I have blocks of time where i have to do things, work a few days a week, run a few games for my local store, that sort of thing, but for the most part I have huge swaths of time I’m not using constructively.

So… I’m going to change that. My life will be rather scheduled out now. Through years of practice and paying attention to how long it takes before I stop paying attention I come to the conclusion that I do things in about 2 hour blocks. This jives with what I know about REM patterns, and other such things. Between 90 minutes and 2 hours, I really start to lose focus and drive. This is fortunately about how long it takes me to do most chunks of things I enjoy doing, so it’s a happy coincidence. I’m going to break my free time down into 2 hourish blocks.

The other thing I found out about blocking is after doing *anything* for about 6 hours my brain goes numb. So I’ll limit myself ot about 6 hours of scheduled activity a day. Yes, this means I’ll be working less than a ‘full time job’ this is true, but this also doesn’t take into account travel time, lunch, and other household chores I get to do which will effectively take a 2 hour block each day anyway.

I will try a bit of an experiment. I’m going to try to pack my days full and short myself on my usual sleep. If I can operate with say… 6 hours of sleep it could be worthwhile. Unfortunately this part of the experiment may have to wait until I have a more coherent work/volunteer schedule.

So, my life will be blocked out as follows:

Health: This is time I’m going to use to preparing healthy food as opposed to grabbing something quick and easy. This is also time I’m going to be using to work on my wii fit and shake weight stuff. Right now I have about a 35 minute yoga/strength routine that is burning a bit under 200 calories. In time I want to nudge this up a bit more. Maybe 5 minutes a week until I’m at about an hour. I want to try to get that done at least 3 days a week if I can manage it.

Write: This is another important one. I’m going to actually schedule writing time. Not oh I think i’ll get some writing tonight time, actual concrete this is the time I will write things time. I should be able to get about 2k words done in that time, I know it’s a doable pace becuase I’ve done it before. I simply need to schedule time to do it. Cooling down after working out seems to me to be a really good time to get it done.

The hardest part will be working on a topic. The plan is to rotate weekly what I’m writing about. Maybe monthly depending on how it works. The other options is to have each day be dedicated to something different. I might experiment with both and see what works better. One will allow me to gather momentum and get lots of writing done. The other will keep me from getting overly bored, but it will risk me running out of ideas and getting disinterested in that days topic. I consider that a good exercise myself though.

News: This is where I catch up on everything. Webcomics, Social Media, news and other updates. It takes me a bit under an hour to trawl through the news on the wii, and about ten to twenty minutes to burn through my comics. That gives me a bit of time to catch up on my various feeds.

The biggest problem here is this really needs to be done daily. Which isn’t too much of an issue. If it gets backed up it still needs caught up on and gets extremely time consuming. This may be the only schedule where I’m actively *limiting* myself on how much I get done.

Site: My site needs work. The problem is I tend to work on it in spurts. Well no more. By blocking about 2 hours I can break things down into manageable projects and work on those as I need to. I’m also including in this group learning about various programming things and actively studying them.

The other thing this chunk will be good for (which might get it renamed tech) is I’ll use this time for computer optimization. I have tons and tons of files that need sorted, archived and worked on. Using this time as a limiting factor will keep me from wasting a day on less than urgent things.

Games: This is the time that I will actively put forth designing games and scenarios. This may cross over with Site development (for inputting scenarios) and likely cross over heavily with Writing. That’s fine. This is something I want to try to get in regularly. I have two weekly sessions that require my attention, by devoting two hours to each one and maybe another block to working on my own game, I should be able to push myself ahead.

Hobby: This is an interesting one. Turns out that most of my hobbies actually take quite a bit of study time. Magic requires deckbuilding and optimization, finding time to sort through cards and figure out what I actually *need* and want is time consuming. Now I’ll have it. Warhammer figures take forever to paint, well now I have time. What’s more is that I’ll have time to make a lot of my figures start to look *really* good after i get some layers on them and experience.

This time will basically be for studying and getting competitive at the things I enjoy. Pokemon breeding, deckbuilding, poring over sourcebooks will all get done here. This will be both a limiting factor in that I could easily spend a whole day half-doing any of these things, and an enabling factor in that I’ll be spending blocks of time on it specifically allowing me to get things done better.

There might be some more blocks as things come up or change focus, but that’s about it.

Why am I telling everyone this? Well for one I needed something to write about. Secondly and probably more importantly, this is the sort of thing that requires encouragement. So I’m asking anyone who reads this (all two of you) to help me keep on task. I’ll probably be crosslinking this to my various social outlets in order to get more support.

Ideally I’ll have a group of people scheduling things with me. That sort of togetherness generates a lot of energy and that’s what I’m going for. So anyone who wants to help me on this block-scheduling plan, let me know. We can be mutually supportive and helpful.

Pets

Shadowkitty

Cleokitty

Memory Lane

Thinking about things. You get to take a glimpse into my memories.

It’s my brothers birthday party and I’m inside watching ‘The Last Unicorn’

I did my best to talk to the people. I did my best to hide my true feelings. I hope I did a good job, but I don’t expect I actually got anywhere.

So I’m watching Last Unicorn, and everyone left. I’m hoping the movie will find a fitting mix with my mood.

In irrelevant news: I’ve been a bit lazy lately with getting burnt out at work. I’m a bit behind on some things So I’m gonna spend my vacation trying to catch up.

The kitties are afraid of the fireworks. Cleo is in her hiding spot and Shadow is trying to run from the loud noise.

I am unfortunately a good bit tired. Fortunately I don’t work so the sleep will help me. I’ enjoying this movie so I’ll go with that.

It’s my brothers birthday party and I’m inside watching ‘The Last Unicorn’

I did my best to talk to the people. I did my best to hide my true feelings. I hope I did a good job, but I don’t expect I actually got anywhere.

So I’m watching Last Unicorn, and everyone left. I’m hoping the movie will find a fitting mix with my mood.

In irrelevant news: I’ve been a bit lazy lately with getting burnt out at work. I’m a bit behind on some things So I’m gonna spend my vacation trying to catch up.

The kitties are afraid of the fireworks. Cleo is in her hiding spot and Shadow is trying to run from the loud noise.

I am unfortunately a good bit tired. Fortunately I don’t work so the sleep will help me. I’ enjoying this movie so I’ll go with that.

I’m making some ribs right now. This pleases me. There is a giant bug, of the large male mosquito type wandering around and crashing into my monitor. This does not please me. I’m trying to scare it away but it doesn’t seem to be working. It’s following me. And banging into my screen. *glare*

Anyway, work is getting steadily more painful as the days go on. Fortunately I got a paycheck and a half this time. Unfortunately, when I get back I’ll only get half a paycheck. Ouch. This paycheck however is big enough to jumpstart my savings account. Unfortunately I’ll have very little spending money for a few weeks. Then following my plan I’ll have very little money for the next 9 months or so. I will however have a healthy savings account to support my plan.

I just ninja-grabbed the mosquito and escorted him to my brothers room. Yay for humane treatment.

Friday I’m getting my tattoo touched up. I really need to remember to do it, but it’ll get done. That won’t cost me money. Monday I get to go to the dentist followed by the doctors, the dentist will cost me money but work will give it back. The doctor will be handwaved away I’d imagine. My brother is going so that’s something.  Tuesday will be wing-mania night, Hopefully I’ll have enough money for my one indulgence. It’ll kinda be Mike’s birthday dinner.

Saturday I work and there is a party. I’m not entirely sure how this will work out. I may only be working half a day then going and watching over the party. I’m fine with that, I just hope the party doesn’t get out of control before I get here. I also hope that plenty of people show up for Mike’s sake, yet not so many people as to cause absolute chaos. I’m also hoping someone shows up, but I’m well aware she probably won’t. *sigh* Damn unrequited things.

The week after that is the LAN party. I have no idea if I can effectively navigate that. I’ll certainly try tough. Work is getting to be quite the chore again but I’ll muddle trough I guess.

Sorry for the not entirely interesting life stuff, I promise I’ll try to suck less as soon as I get my head on straight.

So I’m getting into my sucktacular week. It’s only a few days in, and I already am getting sick of it. But I’m managing.

Still getting through my X-Men Evolution kick. I really appreciate how they foreshadow things quite a bit in advance. It’s also notable that X-23 (the episode I’m watching right now) is the first appearance of everyone’s favorite Wolverine-clone. She managed to cross over into the comics much like Harley Quinn and Mercy Graves.

I don’t have much news to note, so I’m gonna talk a bit about Magic the gathering. Feel free to tune me out.

I’ve been on a Block deck building kick for awhile now. I’m kinda getting into Kamigawa stuff. I already have a Genju deck that I like, and I worked on getting a Unspeakable thing going. It’s going really well. I’m going to try to make a Myojin, Genju, Houndon, Legend deck. I just need to get a few hundred cards.

The flippy deck I made worked out much better than I thought. I have about a 27/64 change of dealing 3 damage to a creature, dealing to 6 damage to every opponent, and drawing 9 cards then untapping all my lands. All for 2R. Great deal. Also a 3/4 chance of getting another turn for 1UB. Some other silly effects, enough creatures to save my ass and enough control to make up for my slightly costly everything else. The Chance Encounter is an alternate win condition, but really the deck is quite capable of beating people into a pulp. The cumulative upkeep on Karplusan Minotaur really helps with that as well. I might need to tweak the distribution a bit, but the basics of the deck are in there.

Anyway, In future Magic updates I’ll try to link to cards so people know what I’m talking about. My Sliver deck should work good, I need to do some more testing. The Poison deck did actually manage to beat Dan’s Slivers, and the flippy deck outran another deck so that’s good. I have more tweaking to do, then I’ll keep going. If anyone wants to join me for my Monday Night Magic games let me know. I’ma go watch more Evolution

Not yet actually, but I may be nearing it.

My goofy work schedule is messing with my mind, coupled with my chronic bad dreams not letting me get any rest, and you’ll see that I’ve become a bit skitchy of late.

On my last two days off, I tried to just sit back and relax, unfortunately people were intent on bothering me all day. The more i try to do what *I* want to do, the more it seems people are intent on making me do absolutely the opposite.

I don’t have any actual content. I spent most of the day ignoring the phone and playing pokemon. I did finally get Umbreon and Espeon to evolve, so that was happy. I also watched season 2 of X-Men evolution. Plenty of great story ideas. I’m actually paying attention to the narrative structure and how to tell action-packed stories. Yes. I’m a nerd. I’m also researching.

Unfortunately no one really wants to come to my games. I’ve given up on it really. It was a stupid idea.

Predictably my weight is creeping up. Unfortunately I really don’t care. I’ll regret it later I’m assuming, but right now I really don’t give a damn. Mike keeps bugging me to go shopping but I want to clear out the stuff we have first. We have food from awhile back we never got around to eating, so I want to get rid of that before we get more.

I tried getting in touch with several people. I’m assuming everyone can guess how that turned out. I tweaked a deck for Magic, but it’ll be a while before I can actually test it. I need some land for my other decks. I considered doing a sort of Magic column but no one would read it. Then I realized that I wouldn’t be any worse off for it. Unfortunately it’s just me here and Magic is a two player game. It sort of puts a damper on actually getting real data for my blogs. So that idea is scrapped. Maybe in the future.

So that’s about it. Not much, filling space letting everyone know what’s going on.

So I have today somewhat randomly off. It’s less random when you consider I’ve had the last several Friday off. It’s annoying when you factor in the fact that the other guy I work with is on vacation next week. Which means I’ll get to cover him and me all next week. Fortunately my vacation week is right after that.

So I’m spending today doing absolutely as little as possible. Watching X-men evolution. Mike wants me to go shopping but I kinda don’t want too, we have plenty of food we need to eat up first. He’s complaining he’s out of snacks. I mentioned he should be eating actual food and not just snacks. But he never listens to me. Typical

X-men’s buffer is failing a bit, which annoys me slightly. I still need to grab a shower, and clean up around here, level up my Eevee’s in pokemon, and try to get some work done. So I guess I should stop blogging here and actually do something useful, but as you can see, even in my days off, when I have a minute I’m back to blogging.

Now if only someone would actually read this.

Ok. I’ll admit I have a slight problem.

I’ve long had issues with impulse control. People who know me know this. People who know me often talk about my large and impressive video game collection. They will also note how there are times I’d rather spend money on silly little trinkets than eat. You’d think I’d be thinner.

Anyway, Dan’s succumbing to the cold grip of Magic: The Gathering has inspired me to update some of my decks. Actually a few of the decks are recreations of decks I used to have before they mysteriously vanished. The others are decks I would have made had I been playing Magic during a given period of time. My justification is I’ve never actually sold any of my decks at a loss, so they’re a pretty stable investment.

I’m also spending far less money than Dan who has spent nearly a thousand dollars so far on cards. Of course he plans on selling large heaps of them and trying to get his money back. I, being the silly thing I am, will help him in this, and we both know it can be done. Our friend was making 6 figures doing so.

In other news: Chad’s computer was infected with a virus. We cleaned the virus off, installed windows 7 on his computer so we could get it back later. I backed up his files, cleaned those off and everything was pretty good.

So he came over the next night and we restarted his computer. Same thing. That’s when my fears were confirmed that his recovery drive had been infected. He reformatted and reinstalled windows, against my better judgement, and opened up the recovery drive. The scan tore in and ended up with several hundred infections of the same few virii. It wasn’t pretty.

The scan went through and cleaned everything out, but unfortunately it scoured the disks so hard that his recovery left with it. So he’s back to where he started, and unfortunately, he can’t figure out how to get his recovery working. He tried the Gateway website and they don’t recognize a computer by that serial number.

In other non-boring-life news. My urge to run has been rising. I really need some sort of adventure. It doesn’t help that a girl I’ve been chatting with seems quite the adventerious type. Also the cute chick I work with broke up with her fiancee, this is amusing news, she’s happy about it. Anyway. I’m gathering bits for my plan to escape. Right now I need to get me a digital camcorder and I’ll be pretty set. I’m working on a list of sponsors, and as soon as I get the camera I’m gonna try to film a demo. Meanwhile I’m really wanting to work on some video editing things, unfortunately I lack the talent required to do so.

I may try to hone my skills on Let’s Play videos or AMV Hell clips. Both of those I assume would be vital skills in my future path. Another option I would enjoy is stick figure things. I used to draw stick figure destruction scenes all the time, and I really enjoy stick fighting. I could get some public domain classical music and animate some stick things. That’s probably a bit more skill than I have, but I can always dream.

So that’s what I’ve been doing this week. Gramma is going to visit family, which is cool. I feel bad I missed her call when she was leaving, but I’ll see her when she gets back. Hopefully it’ll slow down in a bit, but somehow I doubt it. So we’ll see how much time I have to update.

NInjaout.