Journal Entry: July 27, 2009

Hah! You just thought I was the perfect husband.* On Saturday N– orchestrated a surprise party for T–, and I got her just what she wanted (SFW). In your face, Mister Darcy!

Ahem.

Friday
Friday was a long day at work trying to figure out how we’re going to handle the crippling documentation we got from Raytheon. Not fun.

Shortly after I got home, we went out to dinner for T–‘s birthday. We decided to try somewhere new, and picked a little pizzeria we’d driven past a dozen times up on May. K– and N– and D– joined us, and we each ended up getting our own personal pizza, trying all the house specialties (I think) and a plain ol’ boring half-beef half-pepperoni for AB and me. It was delicious.

Afterward D– came over to introduce me to a hilarious show called Three Sheets while T– went to see a movie with my little sister. Three Sheets is a travel show about a guy who goes to exotic locations (we watched Brussels, Champagne, Jamaica, and Costa Rica), tries all of the famous regional liquors while participating in the local night life, and then the next morning tests out the indigenous hangover remedies. That last part is made necessary by the sheer, absurd indulgence of the first part. It’s fun.

Anyway, T– got home late, D– went home, and I think I made it to bed while it was still Friday.

Saturday
Saturday morning I woke up around 9:30, worked out on the elliptical, and then ran up to Taco Bell to grab us some lunch. Then I invested myself in Courtney’s novel, and read through to chapter sixteen before AB woke up from her nap and we had to leave.

We had plans to be at K– and N–‘s place by 3:30, so that T– could go shopping with N– to help her find a frame for a painting T– had made her a year or so ago. D– joined us (because he and I were going to go hang with K– and probably play some XBox), we drove up there, and then N– took T– to get a massage. As a special surprise, several of her friends were there, too.

While she was doing that, K– got the kitchen decorated and set up for a surprise party, D– watched AB, and I ran up to Walgreens to get some wrapping paper and wrapped T–‘s present. When T– came back to the house, with Becca and E– and my little sister in tow, she was surprised again to find an actual party waiting for her. She loved it all.

When the party finally wound down, T– went with my sister to do some shopping at Hobby Lobby, and B– gave D– and me a ride back to our house. I read another two chapters of Triad so I could give some specific feedback, and then contacted D– to see if he wanted to go out. We ended up heading to Henry Hudson’s around nine, and we were there until they turned on the lights and kicked us out. In betwixt, too much alcohol and much talk of relationships and religion.

I got home around 2:30, and made the wise decision to stay up and do some hydrating, and while I was at it I watched Joe vs. the Volcano. Excellent flick. Finally went to bed a little after four.

Sunday
Sunday morning I woke up in time for church, took a Benadryl and two ibuprofen, and then crawled back into bed. T– called me at 11:45 to ask (doubtfully) if I wanted to join them for lunch, and I said sure. We had Schlotzky’s, which really hit the spot.

Then I spent the afternoon playing Fallout, which is an incredibly massive game. I got lost in it, and in no time at all it was after five. T– called me out for dinner, and afterward I decided I should actually do something useful with my Sunday so I mowed. Then I got a little too ambitious and pulled out the chainsaw to trim some of the trees along our front fence. The end result looks nice, though, and it should make mowing next time a more pleasant experience, though.

After that I came in and helped T– get her Cricut up and running, and she showed off just how cool it is (which is to say, very), and then we put AB down for a nap, and then we sat side-by-side on the loveseat with our various laptops and read through Digg for an hour (which was a little surreal), and then we went to bed.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

* no you didn’t

Journal Entry: July 23, 2009

I’ve been reading Courtney’s fantasy novel, which is one of the better fantasy novels I’ve ever read. I spent much of my lunch break for each of the last two days working on that, and I find myself really regretting it when I’ve got to put it aside and go back to work.

Work this week has been a lot of wrestling with FrameMaker, which is an authoring tool for structured documentation (as opposed to a WYSIWYG editor like Word). I had some training on it way back when, but there’s just so much that it does so differently from what I’m used to, that I find myself floundering again and again. It’s frustrating, and could have been avoided altogether if certain higher ups had done their job when negotiating with Raytheon, but that didn’t happen and here we are.

I’m not bitter, I’m just unproductive.

Anyway, after work yesterday I wanted to take a nap, but we do our Wednesday night meals pretty early to get them done before church, so I spent half an hour playing with AB instead, and then we drove up to Arby’s to meet my sister’s family and N–. Then all of them went to church, and I went home to hang out with D– who, it turned out, was unavailable.

So instead I worked out, figuring it was too close to bedtime for a nap at that point. I also cleared out the village of Minefield and made a tidy profit in the process. Which is good, because I’d been running out of ammo.

T– brought home the missing second half of Courtney’s book, but I got distracted working on internet things (specifically my Google Docs account) and didn’t get around to reading any of it before bedtime.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

Journal Entry: July 21, 2009

Yesterday I spent all day in a meeting at work, which was brutal.

After work, I did forty minutes on the elliptical machine while getting killed by fire ants on the XBox. It was…fun? Anyway, I did my workout, so that’s good. Then I helped T– hang some stuff in AB’s room — a mirror and shelf over the changing table, and some pegs for coats and backpacks near the door.

After that AB grabbed T–‘s laptop and showed me her new favorite games on the Sesame Street website. Her favorite is an Elmo game that lets her push keys on the keyboard, and Elmo names an item beginning with the letter she pushed. Up until now it had just been typing letters in a Word document, but she’d always end up getting distracted with the auto-repeat functionality and stop searching for new letters. So I think this is an improvement.

Then she went to bed, and T– and I watched Leverage while I typed up some pages I’d written during the day. That put me over 10,000 words (close to 11,000), and halfway through with chapter 4. I feel like the story is finally starting to flow, but it could easily prove me wrong in the next week or so.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

Journal Entry: July 16, 2009

Yesterday I finished my software course. It’s a pretty cool program. I threw together a MaskedFox icon in it, and then drew an Eye of Horus that was pretty acceptable. That was killing time. For the actual training I built a workflow process flow chart, an organization chart with decorative groupings for the various departments, a cubicle map that imported database info, and a Word document with an embedded calendar object.

Boring stuff.

I know how to use the program now, which is what my work was paying for. I don’t know how to design (or really read) an EE schematic, though, so I don’t know how practically useful it will be. If an engineer who spends all day every day working in CAD software needs to tell me every little line I need to change, wouldn’t it be faster for him to just make the change and hand it off to me? I mean, I could understand if the goal were to have him say, “Reroute this circuit from J4 to $A1X33+ and put in a resistor.” That would save him a lot of time. But they’re going to have to send me to a lot more classes before that happens.

Okay, it just occurred to me that apart from the handful of work associates I left behind in Tulsa, I don’t know a single other technical writer in the world. So this post has been a real waste of time so far….

Yesterday after work I grabbed a way-too-short nap while AB climbed all over me. I finally got tired of that and agreed to take her to McDonalds so she could climb on the play equipment instead. D– and my sister’s family were already there when we got there, and K– and N– joined us a little later.

Oh! Okay, I went to check out Redbox for new movies last Monday when they sent me a coupon for a free rental, and there was nothing worth getting. Just before I walked away, though, I noticed one of the many “Coming Soon” covers and when I looked closer I saw that it was The Color of Magic. That’s a Terry Pratchett novel — the first one in the Rincewind series (I think). So, of course, I had to get it. Hogfather, you’ll recall, was extraordinarily long and most people found it tiresome, but I loved it. I’m certain this one will be the same, but with the added features of Tim Curry and Rudy from the movie Rudy. But no Susan, which is a real shame….

Anyway, I went back Tuesday (the aforementioned “Coming Soon”), and they didn’t have it. I figured it was a pretty low-demand item, so it probably wasn’t too heavily stocked. Still, there’s another Redbox about a quarter mile from the one I’d checked, so I hopped down the road to try that one, but no luck. There’s another one on my way home from work, at the McDonalds right by our house, so I checked that one, too, but still nothing. I decided to add it to my Netflix queu, and promptly forgot.

So then last night when T– told me to take AB to the playground while she got in line to buy our food, I spotted the Redbox and took AB over there instead. And there was the movie! Haha, in your face! I say that because now you’re going to have to sit through an extraordinarily long and timesome movie, but I’ll love it.

Ahem.

After dinner, T– took AB to church, and I went back to the house with D–. We started watching Dexter, about which I’d heard some really rave reviews, but it’s just oppressively dark. It’s hilarious, when it’s not soul-crushingly bitter. We watched most of two episodes before AB showed up and made us change the TV to WordWorld.

Then we put her to bed, D– headed home, and T– and I watched the penultimate episode of Flight of the Conchords. And then, both of us still exhausted from our Harry Potter adventure, we went to bed before ten. That’s our glamorous lifestyle.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

Journal Entry: July 14, 2009

Yesterday morning (you’ll recall) I was complaining about crippling back pain. During the course of the day I did some stretches my physical therapist had taught me a year ago (and prayed a lot), and by the end of the day I was walking normal.

My back was still a little sore, but I basically spent the whole evening saying to myself, “If I can move this well when I wake up in the morning, I’ll be fine.” I remember when I first injured my back a year ago it took me three months of agony before I even went to a doctor about it, and then another two months after that before I was better. Yesterday morning I was pretty sure I had that to look forward to again because of the work I did last Wednesday.

This morning, I could move as well as I did last night. So I guess I’m fine. Praise the Lord.

Anyway, after work yesterday I skipped my workout because of the back pain. Instead I took care of a couple little chores, and then T– and I headed to dinner in separate vehicles. I drove my boss’s BMW, and T– drove the new Saturn. We went to Taco Bueno, and then from there out to my boss’s house in Mustang (about forty-five minutes’ drive from our house) to return the borrowed car.

Irene and her husband came out to greet us and check out the new car, and they were suitably impressed. AB also enjoyed getting to meet Irene’s little boy. We probably would have stayed longer, but it was so hot out. We headed home around 7:30, and got home in time to bed AB down to bed.

After that I worked on some stuff in the office for a little bit, then joined T– in the living room to watch an episode of Flight of the Conchords (which leaves us with only three left in the season). Then we went to bed to read for a while, and a while became “not very long” because we were both exhausted.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

Journal Entry: April 23, 2009

Yesterday, at work, I officially got the sort-of-demotion that I mentioned last Tuesday. My supervisor took the other tech writer and me into a conference room, laid out the problem for me, and then we spent half an hour discussing exactly how it should be resolved. I’m basically stepping into the publication process to do a full review of every document she prepares, including all of the ones currently in process.

That’s the ugly part. The next two months or so are going to be crushingly brutal while I try to get through the backlog of existing projects. Once that’s done, reviewing her new projects will probably only add eight to ten hours a week to my schedule. Unfortunately, by that point I’ll also be fully trained to do her job, which I see as a possible sleight of hand involved in this whole bit. I don’t mind reviewing her projects, but at that point they could just as easily have me start working some of the projects through the system, and that becomes tens and hundreds of hours, not just eight. I don’t want to mess with that.

But, y’know, it’s their Administration. They can run it however they want.

I went to BWW for lunch, because I needed a break, and learned that my waitress has gotten another job, so she won’t be there anymore. Lame! I mean, great for her, but lame.

My back has been hurting, too, almost as bad as last summer. My physical therapist said that when my back starts to hurt a little bit I walk differently to accommodate it, and that’s what causes the real problems. So that explains why I’m having the same issues even though I haven’t done anything resembling the sort of work that caused the original problem. That’s really neither here nor there, but I figured, as long as I’m whining….

After work I got home to find my little sister with her two kids at the house. They were out in the back yard, playing with T– and AB, so I slipped stealthily back to the bedroom without saying hi, and crashed on the bed. My brother-in-law showed up shortly, though, so I had to get up to let him in. I managed to avoid going outside, though. Small victories.

We had dinner at Qdoba, which is pretty much awesome. I’ve got a real appreciation for those chicken burrito bowls lately — rice, beans, chicken, cheese, salsa, lettuce, and cilantro in a cheap plastic bowl. I get the same thing when I have lunch with D– at Moe’s. It’s cheap, delicious, filling, and relatively healthy. Yay!

No, that was not a paid advertisement, but I did accidentally watch Biggest Loser last night, so you were well within your rights to wonder.

After dinner we went home, and I fetched the laptop out from the office so I could try out a new game, Demigod. It’s fantastic. I recommend it highly. It consists of short matches (15-30 minutes) that feel like RTS battles, although you don’t do anything like base management. Instead you’re playing a hero tasked with killing the heroes on the enemy team, destroying their fortifications, or capturing and holding strategic locations (“flags,” but the gameplay is what’s usually called “king of the hill”). A given match will consist of getting a certain amount of points from one of those three things to win, but every match becomes a mixture of all three.

There are eight heroes to choose from. Half of them are assassins, capable of wading into the battle and murdering everything, and the other half are generals, who can summon 5-15 minions to do battle for them. Each of the heroes has its own skill tree, and you can level up and customize your hero’s abilities through the course of the match.

I had fun. Ended up playing it from seven-thirty straight through to eleven. I really wanted to get some writing done last night, and didn’t because of the game, but after the day I’d had, it was just the evening I needed.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

Journal Entry: March 19, 2009

Well, hmm….

I don’t usually talk about work much on my blog, because the life of a Technical Writer is not an interesting one. But this seems worth posting.

Back in December, as you all know, our house was robbed. In addition to every single thing that makes our lives happy (read: electronic toys), I lost a work laptop that I’d accidentally left at the house that day. That was no small source of anxiety for me, given the recent attention paid to losses of government laptops. This one had no sensitive security information on it, but still.

Anyway, everyone at work told me not to spend a lot of time worrying about. There would be paperwork (and, oh my, there was), but apart from that it was just a thing. The Federal regulations are pretty rigorous, and I absolutely had to get the loss report filed within three days of the incident. I turned it in the day after I got back.

Then, on Tuesday just before heading home from work, our property manager at work called to tell me that my report had gotten lost in the paperwork of a massive inventory that was going on at the time, and she was just getting to it. She said she had everything but my Memorandum Receipt (the form that allows me to take government property away from the facility), and the police report.

Now, when it happened, T– called the police in first thing and we filed a report. The officer gave us a little card with contact information and our casefile number, and that was it. When we filed our claim with the insurance company, we gave the agent a copy of that card, and that was enough for her. So when I filled out the incident report at work, I did the same thing. I figured if that was insufficient, if they wanted me to go through all the hassle of tracking down the actual police report, they would let me know. When I didn’t hear back from them, I figured everything was taken care of.

Then of course, as I said, I got that call on Tuesday. I went home and asked T– if she knew where the card was, and then forgot about it.

Yesterday morning I showed up at work, and my Team Lead came storming out of his office fresh off a phone call to ask me if I had my police report in hand. “Not on me,” I said, cursing myself for forgetting to bring the card in.

He said, “Well, you’re getting it. Go to the police station if you have to, but you’re getting that report right now, because this has gotten ugly.” Turns out they’re really not kidding about that three-day deadline. I did everything I was supposed to, but because our property manager didn’t follow through on it, I’m now going to be the subject of an FBI investigation.

Yay!

Yesterday was an intense day, actually. In addition to that stuff at work, I also wrote an email to the author of The Numerati — on a whim, not expecting any sort of answer from him — but telling him I’d written a novel on the same concept and wondering aloud if he’d be willing to give me his reaction to it. To my utter astonishment, he wrote back within an hour saying he couldn’t commit to reading a whole novel, but if I sent him the first chapter he would give it a look.

That’s exciting. Obviously, I’m hoping he’ll like the first chapter enough to ask to read the rest, but just getting an answer at all surprised me, let alone offering to read it. Frankly, if a complete stranger wrote and asked me to read his material, I’d almost certainly ignore the email altogether.

I also started the process of applying for graduate school at OU. Dad’s been pushing me to pursue a Master of Fine Arts for a while now, and then Writer’s Digest recently spotlighted the unique Master of Professional Writing program at OU, which looks awesome. So, yeah, I’m trying to get in this fall. I’ll have to take the GRE before then, and I’ll need to do a little bit of leveling (specifically a Stats class and Mass Comm. History or Mass Comm. Law, which I almost took at O.C. just out curiosity). Apart from that, the whole program seems perfect for me.

Then Dad spent some time sounding concerned about me providing a copy of my novel to a published author (who probably has the contacts necessary to steal my material and get rich off of it). I don’t see any risk of that with this guy, but he got me thinking about the Copyright Registration process, and I remembered reading a year or so ago about the Copyright Office starting work on an electronic registration system. So I went home and checked it out.

Turns out, it’s a pretty simple process (given, of course, that it’s government paperwork). Took me about fifteen minutes (and thirty-five bucks) to register Gods Tomorrow. There’s an option to register multiple unpublished literary works with a single registration, but I didn’t really have my other stuff ready, and I needed to get it done in a hurry before dinner, so for now it’s just Gods Tomorrow. It’s nice to know how simple it is, though. I’ll probably do everything else in a batch sometime later this month.

Then we went to dinner at Johnny’s, where we met K– and N– (with their baby, of course), and my sister and her whole family. We had a delicious dinner, then D– and my brother-in-law came back to the house and got caught up on Family Guy while the rest went to church.

After that, T– and I watched a new comedy, Better Off Ted (which was pretty good) while the TiVo built up a suffiicent buffer on Lost. Then Lost, and immediately after that I disappeared into the office.

I got about two thousand words done last night — half a chapter, the way I write them — and then finished up chapter three over lunch today. I’m optimistic that I can get chapter four done tonight, and then I’m still on track to finish it in March with a chapter a day. We’ll see how that goes.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

Journal Entry: May 29, 2008

Yesterday was Wednesday, right?

Ah, yes. Sorry, it’s been a long day at work. Anyway, last night I invited our regular Wednesday dinner guests to pick up something of their choice, and bring it to our place (rather than meeting somewhere). Seemed like a pleasant change of pace.

K– and N– couldn’t make it, but my sister and her family came, so we still had a crowd. D– came, too. T– took AB to church at 7:00, but Jeff and D– stuck around so we could play a little AoC and introduce Jeff to it. Meanwhile, my sister ran some errands.

Anyway, after that first hour that I spent picking up drinks for everyone and grabbing our dinner from Taco Bell, I spent the rest of the evening playing AoC. I did come out of the office around 9:00 and watched the end of an episode of Boston Legal with T–, and then (even though it was bed time) we watched a Lost before we knocked off for the night. In the meantime, I got my character up to level 30.

That was my night, then today has been another busy and productive one at work. I took a long lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings again, played some AoC over lunch, but apart from that my whole day has been spent crawling through old Safety Risk Management documents and trying to match up project numbers and NCP codes from dozens of different projects, to see what we have and what we haven’t yet paneled, and make plans based on that.

In the end, we’re doing better on all of it than any of us suspected, and I have a shiny new spreadsheet to prove it. Good for me. Now I’m going to go run for half an hour, and spend the rest of the night complaining.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

Journal Entry

Last night I went back to the gym. As I mentioned, I’ve been going regularly three times a week since January, and I’ve seen a lot of strength and endurance improvement, but not a lot of weight loss.

When I started in January I had a goal for June that wasn’t terribly aggressive, but at this point I’m nowhere close to making it. So I’m thinknig I’ll switch to five days a week, and see if that helps any. I’ll devote the extra two days to cardio.

When the weather improves (and if I feel like I’m getting enough benefit from it) I’ll probably just jog the neighborhood for those two days, more often than not. For now, though, I’m going to stick with the gym. Adding Tuesday nad Sunday to my other three.

Anyway, I got home at five and the gym took two hours (with drive time). I dropped by B– and E–‘s to pick up some tools I’d lent them, that I’m going to need for my plumbing project tonight. Then I got home around 7:30 and T– had dinner waiting for me.

We watched the finale of Biggest Loser and she watched a Law and Order while I read. I finished another of the Myth books last night, and another one over lunch today. They’re short books.

I forgot my laptop when I came to work today, and it’s a thirty-minute drive, easy, so I’m just getting by without it. I have a desktop that is still “officially” my work computer, so I can still get some stuff done, but it’s really thrown me off, having to work on it.

I’m not sure how tonight will go. I’m just changing out a leaky faucet (with valve stem replacement), but I’ve had enough bad experiences with plumbing I expect there to be major problems. I don’t know what they’ll be yet, but that just adds to the excitement.

Ugh. If I can get it done, though, that’ll be a major improvement that’s been in need for a really long time. Here’s hoping it goes smoothly.

Journal Entry

I can’t say it was good to be back to work, but I had a good day nonetheless. As you saw, I had time to do an update for the weekend. I also had some time to take a lunch at Taco Bell, and got four or five pages written on Royal Holiday.

Here’s what I have left: sprint to the docks, Corin scene, pirate scene, brawl scene (straight from the movie, with all ending up in the river), escape scene, full disclosure in an alley outside the palace (also straight from the movie), the Commission of the Swords the following morning (adapted from the movie, but with a much happier ending), and then the words “The End.”

That’s it! Not so bad. I discovered today that I’ve been writing Royal Holiday at exactly the same pace I used for Sleeping Kings, and then I immediately wished that I’d been publishing it in the same way. I miss the feedback, and the format. Anyway, it’s nearly done and I should have it available for review shortly. You can all expect a big homework assignment when that’s done.

Yeah, but most of my day was spent on research and paperwork. I’ve got to get a bunch of Safety Risk Management documents done, or planes are going to start falling out of the sky. (No, not really).

After work, I stopped by the chiropractor and he made me feel less bad (I wouldn’t go so far as to say “good”). Then home to play with the baby and chat with T– until she left to pick us up a pizza from Mazzio’s. It was fantastically good.

Then we got the old band back together to get Dad his mount in Scholo. We packed 323 levels worth of characters (and 13 years of combined gameplay experience) into a Scholo run that only took us to Rattlegore. Umm…for everyone who hasn’t tried that, it’s basically the equivalent of pitting OU’s football team against Utah State. Anyway, it was fun. Still took two hours because the event is slow-paced, but we all had a good time.

That took until 9:30, and then D– and I went for a walk. One of his friends is starting to make noises about a business idea that will develop into what NewMyth was. So I’m trying to decide whether to get all excited about it again and bring that guy in, or review my depressing list of Reasons It Won’t Work, and then email him a copy.

Anyway, that was an hour walk, and then I came home and wrote a description of a boring weekday that ran longer than my review of a pretty eventful weekend. Go figure. I’m off to bed.