This week in my crazy life.

Hey all, sorry I haven’t updated in a while. I’ve been frantic for the past couple of months. Here’s why:

• My wife had a ski accident which shredded her ACL and had to have surgery.
• I’ve started my second semester of grad school
• Buying a house
• All while working full time

So I’m a bit stressed.  My 101 in 1001 is going rather well, although my fitness goals are sliding due to having almost no time to go work out.  However, we are currently under contract for a house, my scholastic activities are becoming more regular, and my wife is now able to get round really well on her own, so I should be heading back into the gym on a more consistent basis.

Hooray!

P.S. This is blog post 3/100 for 101 in 1001

101 in 1001 – Update

I’ve completed a few 101 in 1001 goals.  The specific ones are the creation of a book list and project list.

The book list is published in the side bar, and is a list of books that I want to read in the future.  Most of them are science fiction books that come highly recommended by friends.  The rest are ranked by most to be the top books in the genre. Eighty Seven books in total are on the list, a daunting number, to be sure.  I have already completed two books on the list.  Dune by Frank Herbert, and A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin.

The project list is going to be kept secret for now, because some of the items on it could be monetized in the future and I don’t want anyone to have a leg up on me.  It totals nine projects which are quite long.  Another item on the list is a way to keep track of these projects and their status.  I’m thinking of a few different ways to do this.  At the front of my mind is a set of clipboards with the most recent accomplishment on them, and an updated plan for future activity.  The actual projects and content generated will of course be kept elsewhere.

I’ll provide updates every time I accomplish a 101 in 1001 objective. Cheers!

New Year, New List

This new year started off with me being sick, which was fun of course.  But barring that I’m feeling nearly 100% better and I’m ready to attack the new year.  Tomorrow we’re going snowboarding, and this Friday we’re throwing ourselves a birthday party downtown!  Saturday is the day before Kim’s birthday and I’m planning a dinner for the two of us.  Sunday is Kim’s actual birthday and we’re celebrating with family. After all of that business is the time for me to head back to work.

I’ve made a new 101 in 1001 list for these next few years and will post it in the side bar.  I think it’s an improvement in feasibility from the last list, and I’m pretty confident that I can complete the list this time.  The few exciting items on the list include graduating from grad school and buying a house!  Two very big milestones which should be awesome to experience.  Wish me luck, and Happy New Year!

101 in 1001 Lessons learned and the way forward.

My what a year it has been.  I failed utterly at my 101 in 1001 challenge, but instead of wallowing in failure I will ask myself, “What have I learned in the years this challenge took place?”

Well, for a start it’s that often there are goals we set for ourselves that are nearly impossible to fulfill.  But that’s just humanity, always reaching and challenging ourselves.  Sometimes when we are trying to accomplish so much we need to break down our goals into their different parts and attack them one by one.  This makes challenges like, “Walk the dog every day” and, “Write a novel” a bit too big to chew.  Sure, I had a couple years to do all of that stuff, but there’s plenty of things not on the list I accomplished in that time.

So now I must fulfill the last item on the list, making a new 101 in 1001.  This new list is in the making and I hope to begin on my birthday, Jan 1, just like last time.  I’ll be adding a few more lists to the sidebar.  My life seems to be made of lists 🙂

I’m finishing up my first semester of grad school while working full time and it’s been tough.  But tomorrow is my one and only final and my last day of the semester.  Four more semester’s and I’ll have a Masters Degree in Computer Science.  Hooray!  While grad school has been a high priority, I’m also on the hunt for a house, and hope to be moving in by the end of my next semester.  I’ll have to lean heavily on my wife in the months ahead, but she’s very good at helping me sort out my life.

Again I am trying to start blogging regularly, and hopefully with some more interesting posts.  We’ll see. Thanks for reading!

Weekly Goals, Week 1

Continuing my adventure in organization, I set up a list of weekly goals last week.  I managed to cross off every single one of those goals.  It turns out that daily goals are far too restrictive.  It’s hard to be motivated to do all of those things in one day. Ugh, I just want to lie on the couch.

I’m thinking of starting a side project with gusto, but I may be jumping ahead of myself since I will be starting grad school Aug 20 (As long as they accept me of course).  It’s a website involving Redis and PHP. I’ll give the NoSQL option of Redis a shot and possibly make a blog with coding examples since there is not a lot of that on the web right now.

Grad school should start with classes in Algorithms and “Parallel and Distributed Systems”.  I grouped the last class name in quotes so y’all would know it was the name of a single class.

Crazy Life and Priorities, Round 2

Wow, life has been pretty busy for me for the last few weeks.  My brother-in-law got married, and I had to see him through the whole thing.  Work has pulled me in for more hours than I have ever wanted to spend there during any given week.  But now that’s all over and life can proceed as normal.

A while back I had a list of items I was currently pursuing.  It looked like this:

• Playing SWTOR
• Playing Borderlands
• DM-ing a DnD game
• Playing Pokemon Black (back off, it’s awesome)
• Playing Professor Layton
• Reading the Mistborn Series
• Reading ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’
• Working out
• Getting a Master’s Degree
• Writing ‘JAG’
• Writing ‘JOL’
• Collecting Star Wars
• Collecting Video Games

Well, that’s been pruned to look something like this:

• Getting a Master’s Degree – Will start at UC Denver in the fall
• Working Out – Hiccup has put me up to 205 lbs, but I’m getting back on track
• Reading the Mistborn Series – on book 3!
• Reading ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ – no progress
• Writing ‘JAG’ – no progress
• Writing ‘JOL’ – no progress
• Writing on the blog – this counts as progress 🙂
• Collecting Star Wars – no progress
• Collecting Video Games – Currently Playing Skyrim

It’s still a pretty big list, but some things have fallen by the way side.  DMing my D&D game has had to be put on hold due to my travel and educational plans.  Now the group has shifted hands and we’re going to be starting a super hero game in the recent future.  Basically it comes down to the fact that there I don’t have enough time to run a D&D game, but I do have enough time to play one.

I combined the video game priorities and decided to play one game at a time.  This is also something I will do with my books once I have the Mistborn series read.  Writing is an ongoing process and will always take time just like collecting.  I read an article here that promotes the use of weekly goals.  I think I’ll give it a shot this next week starting on Sunday.  I’ll try to hit everything in my list at least once during the week and see where I end up.

Dungeons and Dragons, Part 2

During our first game, our heroes all converged on the ruins of Tesserant in the central plains of Woad.  Balasar had been sent there by his kin from the plane of existence dominated by the god Raekus, with instructions to pursue the ruins.  Copperwire followed the rumors of an ancient machine developed by the long lost wizards and Artificers of the time being present at the site.  Ujesh was compelled by his wandering mind, unable to recall the past before this day.  Kr’yor followed a vision in which an old orc crone burdened him with exploring the ruins, hoping something there would led him to his father.

Our heroes met up during the night.  While Balasar relaxed next to a fire, Ujesh, Copperwire, and Kr’yor asked him if they could share.  Through conversation they all found they were headed in the same direction and decided to join forces.  Who knows what traps and trials Tesserant holds for the would-be adventurers.

In the past, Tesserant was the site of a wizards tower, lorded over by the wizardess Tess.  She along with the rest of her kind were long dead by the time our heroes found her old home.  Nearing the outer wall, the group unwittingly sprung an ambush by blue kobolds.  Luckily with quick reflexes and good teamwork, the ambush was a failure.  The team also dominated a small group of kobolds guarding an opening in the outer wall of the ruins.

Inside the wall stood the tower, whose insides were overgrown with vines and moss.  A rickety staircase lead down into the towers depths opposite the crumbled debris that was stairs leading up in the past.  Pursuing the towers secrets, the group went down.  After entering into a barren room at the bottom of the stairs, Copperwire dashed ahead of the group into a hallway leading off towards some double doors.  Unfortunately for him, he fell into a ten foot pit hidden in the floor, alerting another band of kobolds in the room at the end of the hallway.

Quickly extricating the dwarf from the pit, the group burst into the next room and entered combat with the waiting kobolds.  After a quick victory the party took a short rest and searched the room.  They found a small religious text referring to the goddess Sorrow, leader and creator of the blue dragons.  Balasar quickly explains to the party that the bronze and blue dragons are mortal enemies.

The small room adjoining this one hold only a stairwell heading down, which the group takes to find a double door blocking their way at the bottom.  Being as stealthy as he can, Kr’yor attempts to push open the door silently.  Luckily for him the two dragon born on the other side of the door were having a loud conversation, because the door squealed loudly as he opened it.  Quickly taking the dragon born soldiers by surprise, Kr’yor cut one down immediately.  The rest of the party made short work of the remaining soldier.

This was where our first game ended.  Full of combat, everyone getting used to their character’s combat mechanics and class features.  A great start to an adventure, cut short by time.

Why I’m done with SWTOR for now…

So I’ve been playing SW:TOR since beta, and I bought the collector’s edition and got to playing.  During the beta I played a Bounty Hunter up to level 30, and an Imperial agent up to about 20.  Since the game’s release I have leveled a Marauder up to level 50 and an Imperial Agent up to 30, along with several low level alts.  Most recently, I’ve decide to stop playing the game for several reasons.

For one the game plays like most MMO’s that I’ve dealt with in the past, to include World of Warcraft, Everquest II and Star Wars Galaxies.  The play style and daily interaction with the game is extremely familiar, and due to that fact I’ve been bored for a while.  The redeeming part of the game play is the story, and I have to say, I’ve been let down.

I finished my class quest for the Sith Warrior and enjoyed the story throughout the game.  I boosted my companions’ affection all the way and played through their stories as well, and ate up every bit.  I had the warm fuzzy feeling of a story well written.  While playing the Imperial Agent it was not so fun, it just seemed like I was going planet to planet offing people. Granted, I was striving towards my end goal. I understand that there is a journey associated with a goal, and that’s fine, but the content wasn’t nearly as exciting as the Warrior’s story.

Excitement aside, after I was done with the class quest I felt lost.  What is my goal now?  My participation in the war now is running on a treadmill, doing PvP missions over and over, and that’s no fun.  My companions are now just statues that stand and stare, offering no commentary or interaction.  The story stops after a time, and my lifestyle is not as such that raiding and doing hard modes is convenient or fun.  If I’m by myself, I can drop off whenever I want, and I like the game play enough, so soloing is a great play style for me.

But now that I’m out of story I’ve been thinking about how the game could have improved that for me, and I had a few ideas.  Perhaps repeating characters on each planet associated with the war would be a great addition to the game.  Maybe the players can encounter a rising star in the military, meeting him or her on each planet and seeing their career expand at the same time yours is.  Also, put some leaders out there on the planets too.  I only ever saw Darth Malgus, a character they’ve been pimping out since the game’s inception, through holograms.  Where is the guy???  Through story I have never been able to meet him face to face, and that was a let down.

I’m sure as expansions come out with story content I will pick the game back up again, but for now the game play is too repetitive and just plain boring to continue.  Thanks for the fun TOR, see you again later.

Dungeons and Dragons, Part 1

I run a D&D game every Thursday with some of the guys from work, and I thought that I would write about the experience and possibly give you a chance to peer into what the characters are doing.

We’re using the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons from Wizards of the Coast and the setting of the game is a world of my own creation, Rildan.

Now, for those of you that don’t know what Dungeons and Dragons really is, for shame. It’s a table top role playing game, which means that a group of people sit around a table and take on the roles of the heroes they play in the gaming world.  The Dungeon Master (me) provides the setting for the game and is the main point of interaction between the players and the world.  I command all the rules for how the world works, including magic, physics, monsters, and people the players may encounter along their journey.

The first game is always the most critical and takes the most time to plan.  We are introduced to the players for the first time.  We have no idea what their goals are, or what they want at the current point in time.  Before the first game my time is spent talking to the players, trying to figure out what they want out of the game and how to fit their desires into the plot that I have cooking in my head.

In this first post I’ll introduce you to our heroes:

First up is Copperwire, a Dwarven Artificer from the city of Haverun.  His copper colored hair is his most defining feature, followed by his boisterous approach to pretty much everything.  An Artificer is an inventor of magical items and machines.  Copperwire carries a small crossbow as his weapon, and has a personal mechanical assistant to help him.

Next is Kr’yor, a Half-Orc Slayer nomad. He stands tall and is well-built.  His dark hair hangs to his shoulders and he wears a scar running down the left side of his face. Before losing them to forces unknown, he was part of a group of guardians called the Ro’thaldin who roamed the country looking for work.  His weapon of choice is the gouge, a spear/axe hybrid.

Balasar is a Dragonborn Paladin from the plane of existence commanded by the Thunder god Raekus.  Being of bronze descent, his features mimic those of the bronze dragon; although his scales show a tinge of green, showing his young age.  He has been brought to the world of Rildan through magical means and was directed by one of his elders to go to the ruins where our adventure begins.  He carries a large shield and sword.

Lastly is Ujesh, an Invoker of the god of gods.  He commands the power of the gods themselves, through power of faith and nothing else.  He is Half-Elf, which is a mystery because the Elves left the world of Rildan long before our heroes should have been born.  Ujesh has no clue about his history, but felt the pull towards crumbling ruins in the distance.  His servant spirit follows him wherever he goes, a haunting presence that floats gently behind Ujesh at all times.

Crazy Life and Priorities

A lot of times in my life I will look at myself and say, “What the hell am I doing?”  After saying that I tend to take a shallow look at my life and re-prioritize on the fly, moving in a more productive direction than I was before.

Today I had some down time at work and decided to scratch the itch that was my priorities and take an in-depth look at how I spend my time.  In regards to priorities I have always held my wife and my family above everything else.  I’ve never had a hard time going to work and doing my job well because that’s what feeds my wife, my dog, and I.  That’s what gets us our dose of fun on the weekends.

My priorities when afterward are somewhat haphazard.  I want to cultivate my artistic skills, play more music, play video games, read, write, play DnD.  All of those goals tumble all over each other and have never really had an order to them.  So here’s what I did, I wrote down in totality all of the things that are in progress at the current time:

• Playing SWTOR
• Playing Borderlands
• DM-ing a DnD game
• Playing Pokemon Black (back off, it’s awesome)
• Playing Professor Layton
• Reading the Mistborn Series
• Reading ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’
• Working out
• Getting a Master’s Degree
• Writing ‘JAG’
• Writing ‘JOL’
• Collecting Star Wars
• Collecting Video Games

This is the storm of goals that are ‘in work’ right now.  GEEBUS!  Look at them all, ridiculous. Look at how they’re ordered! Ridiculous.  This needs to stop, I need to tackle things one at a time and get them done before moving on to the next thing.  So I categorized the list into the following:

• Lifestyle: Working out, Getting a Master’s Degree
• Play: All the video games on there
• Reading: The Books
• Writing: ‘JAG’ and ‘JOL’
• Collecting: Star Wars and Video Games

Lifestyle should obviously be a priority, but some of my other things involve other people, which should definitely be a priority over things that do not involve other people.  So here’s the final list of prioritized activities:

• Get a Master’s Degree
• DM Dnd Game
• Work Out
• Play Games
• Read Books
• Write Stories
• Collect Fun Stuff

As you can see it’s much shorter than the other list.  There are prioritized lists for those items listed above, but it’s this overall prioritized list that matters.  Now I can have a flow chart for how I spend my free time.  I can start at the top, and take care of the things that involve other people first.  Am I set on my Master’s Degree?  Have I done all my work for that?  If yes, move on to the DnD game, am I prepped for the next game? If yes, have I worked out for the day? If yes, I can choose what I want to do out of the rest. First do I want to play games, if no, do I want to read? You get the point.

I think this will work out well if I can keep this list around in my noggin.  If I can’t it’s always here on the blog.  I hope you’ve enjoyed this small insight into my brain 🙂