Hiddennode

Thanksgiving has come and gone. The past four days were glorious moments of family, friends, and of course, food. We’re entering December and the heart of the holiday season and frankly, I think my diet has already had it. This morning I threw away an apple fritter from Friday, some pumpkin bread from turkey day itself, and tonight I’m tossing out the mini-cupcakes and cookie cake from Saturday. Far too many sweets in my house. Don’t get me wrong, I know I’ll be eating bad again come 25 days from now, but I can do my best to not during the three and a half weeks in-between.

That said, I’m going to also need to start burning these calories if I’m expecting to actually still lose weight this holiday season. I’m off to a bad start but it’s never too late to turn that around. First I’m going to start walking during one of my breaks at work. Second, I’m going to try to add in walking either in the morning or the evening at home. Likely in the morning because by the time I get home the chill will already be heavy in the air. That and it’ll be bad for my sleep schedule to get worked up that soon before heading to bed.

I’m still near 400 pounds and frankly, I’m tired of it.

Hey, are the rest of you trying to balance the tastiness of the holidays with staying healthy and eating right? It’s not an easy feat, especially with the scores of temptations out there. Let me know what ways you’re cutting back and staying active.

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Slow week, but with the holiday coming up I’m not surprised.

The only major change I can report on is my return to Second Life. That’s right, after about a year (or two) away from the realm, I’m back into Linden Land. I caught the bug Saturday night after my last post. Logged in, looked around, and decided to just start working on the project Raven wanted me to do for her build space. Two hours later I’m sitting inside of a very pretty gigantic floating sphere. I even nabbed Dakota into jumping in and it turns out some of the Ventrlio regulars play as well.

I’ve taken to it like a fish to water as if I’ve never stopped. I’m also quickly picking up some of the newer techniques that developed over the last year or two. Interestingly, I’ve found a number of builds using sculpties where in the past you could easily solve with one or two prims cut the right way. I can’t say I blame the builders for this method, but at the same time I almost feel as if it’s an unneeded short cut. Maybe I’ve just got an “Old Guard” mentality when it comes to my SL design work. Then again, sculpties often (although not always) tend to have a more “organic” look, which is contrary to my more simplistic modern style.

What can I say? I like straight lines that match perfectly every time. Do I use sculpties? Of course, but as a rarity.

Now Mega prims, that’s a different story.

So today’s question: Are you a Second Life player? Have you played before or are you interested in playing it again? Let me know, maybe we can meet virtually in game. If you’re new maybe I can also help you get started.

Extra Credit: If you do play Second Life, are you a builder? What’s your opinions on sculpties? I know they’ve been around for quite some time (late 2006 I believe), but it’s always possible to review something from a different light.

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Things the last few weeks have been interesting. There’s been a lot of good change in my life in the last few months with most of them focused on the last three weeks. Between my new attitude about my domestic life, my creative and inventive projects, and my desire to just get things done, I really feel like my life has moved into another slot in the wheel and grinded forward a dozen steps.

In the past quarter, I’ve managed to start a new job with an old company, begun working on projects I’ve dreamt of for years, and lay out plans for domestic projects that both needed to be done and wanted to be done.

Domestically speaking, there are a couple of projects I’ve started that I’m proud of. I’m making moves every Sunday evening to clear out some of the boxes left over from the move four years ago. This mostly involves purging items in the garage and organizing what’s left behind. It’s cost some money to buy the shelving but it’s really worked out. I’ve been at this three weeks in a row and I’ve found the simple pleasure of working with my hands.

Additionally, I’ve ordered parts for a project I’ve been planning for years. A friend pointed me to monoprice.com, an inexpensive site for computer, A/V, and network wiring. For under $50.00 I’ll be able to hook up the old media PC to my TV and Stereo in the living room. I’ll be able to sign up for things like Netflix or make purchases on iTunes and watch them on the much larger screen. Not to mention Hulu and my music I’ve bought. Parts should be in by this Monday or Tuesday (they were on their way to Jacksonville around 12:06 AM Friday).

Day job professionally speaking, the new job I started in September is going great. I’m with a company I used to work for a year ago. It feels great being back and the work, while challenging, is enjoyable. I enjoy my coworkers and I think they enjoy being around me.  Generally speaking, being a permanent employee at a company that acknowledges me for my achievements is a great change of pace. Hoping this time the job lasts longer than a year.

Night job professionally speaking, I am lacking in the book production mindset. I’ve been writing but I haven’t been doing as much as I intended. I did start NaNoWriMo this year, but starting is just about all I did. A million excuses but basically I’ve been lazy about it. I am slowly getting back on the horse but it’s not as fast as I’d like it to be.

Speaking of creative measures, after three years of listening to podcasts and wishing to start one, things have come to pass. My friend Dakota, myself, and Andrew, a new friend who has audio engineering experience with podcasts are starting up a weekly or bi-weekly project. The name is tentative until episode one goes up in December, but so far we’re happy with Trans-Dimensional Cafe. The show is going to be a forum for discussion about geeky interests, writing, gaming, and lifestyle. We’re recording several episode zeroes to get into the swing of a format as well as raising out comfort level with speaking into the recording stream. I believe by mid December we’ll do fine with recording and releasing episode one. Episode 0-2 was recorded tonight and compared to how the first recording went, we were great. Thirty minutes to record with most of the audio actually useable. I’m very pleased.

Finally, tech speaking, I’ve reformatted my computer for the first time in two years. It’s about time frankly, but it’s come at a cost. Namely, I’ve lost all my contact details in terms of email addresses as well as archived mail items. Ugh. If you are someone who’s had email correspondence with me, please email me at jdiehl AT hiddennode.com so I can get your latest contact address.

The reformat has fixed a number of annoying bugs, and I have nearly all of my old programs reinstalled. I’ve limited the number of games I have installed, as well as the number of programs I can have installed at once. Basically I’ve formatted my drive into two partitions and only allocated about 50gb’s to my XP installation. When I do install 7 sometime next year, I’ll probably just buy a new drive to put it on.

That’s my current life activities in a nut shell. Future plans include the entertainment project, writing more, and Dragon*Con next year (more on that later). For now, I’m getting in gear.

What about you? Are you keeping busy? How goes your projects? Let me know if the busy bug has bitten you too.

Take care all,

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Just a quickie.

I am participating in NaNoWriMo this year. Going to use the drive of NaNo to kick start the reboot of my novel. Work will start this evening once Trish and I are home from our outing. I need to finish up draft one of the outline then get to work on chapter 1.

If anyone is interested in becoming writer buddies with me, my profile is here.

For those who don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, here’s a description from their site:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

For a full description, click here.

Okay, that said, I’m off.

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