Hiddennode

So, right, the desk. These are a little old, but see previous posts for why they weren’t posted yet.

Let me start off by showing what my desk used to look like.

Note that I used to have a back panel on the desk. Still weird seeing that back wall now.

Okay, so the new desk. I ordered an Ameriwood Work Center-L desk from Amazon back in April. Not too expensive, but I was a little hesitant about ordering from a company I didn’t know. I would come to find out, my instincts were right. (see multiple angry tweets about not getting my instructions… that’s another story).

Fast forward to two weeks later. I have my instructions, and I’ve moved Trish’s desk where mine once was. This first shot is a few steps in and the top is still upside down.

So I start building higher and higher, getting more parts together and keeping cats from grabbing the tiny bits and screws.

Look! It’s standing! I’m so proud.

One wing done.

(Look, a cat distraction!)

And here’s the left wing. FYI, this step is recommended for two people. The manual is not lying. This was a pain in the ass crawling behind and attaching that wing. (Also, I got the top up too)

So, that’s the desk done. It’s a few weeks later and now here’s the current desk:

If you can name a few dozen geeky things in that picture, a cookie for you.

So, desk images delivered. Are you happy now Dakota?

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It’s been some time. I’m sorry for the lack of posts in May, post here and in fiction. Life has been busy mostly centered on work. As said on the 16^th though, it’s the end of the month and things are getting rolling. Work is manageable again, especially after a last minute change Friday morning. I’ll have less and less stress going forward and I can get my shit together!

So the breakdown:

Work – They kept another person, reducing my work load by a 1/3. Awesome. They also activated the program they were testing and things were wonderful. Awesome. I’m shifting to an 8am-5pm work schedule. Not awesome, but I’ll deal with it. These three points combined make life a hell of a lot better.

Home Life ­– Some issues, but progress is continuing. The new desks arrived and I built one of them (pictures to come later). Too big to have two in the office though, so we’re giving one to Trish’s dad. Sounds good too as he’s moving closer. That will make life easier with just being able to interact with them on a regular basis as opposed to being two hours away. A few things I need to touch on in the coming weeks, but overall, things are on the up and up.

Writing – New life blog today, new flash fiction tomorrow! That’s right, the flash fiction is returning as of June 1^st, and so help me I will never have a break again unless I end the project. I’ve only completed yesterday’s work but I’ve resolved myself to write a piece a day. It’s going to take a bit to get my groove back but everything is rolling. I’m not sure how often I’m going to blog here over the next couple of weeks, but I’ll try to keep this place in the know regarding the big things like, when I’m going to be at D*C, any conventions I’m heading to, and where my writing it going. Life marches on.

That’s it for the update! Expect more! Demand More! Communication! End!

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So to sum it up in the least number of words- April was busy. May has been as well, but that’s a given from having the middle of April start in a fury of activity.

The primary source of my busy state is the paid gig. The day job has been taking up a great deal of my time and effort, spilling into over time in the last two weeks. Whereas work five weeks ago was relaxing, focused, and allowed me a certain level of mental groove; the most recent iteration of work since the 19th of April has been epic in the amount of issues, assistance, and general size of my work pool. Frankly, I haven’t felt the desire to do anything after working these past few weeks beyond mental simplicity. It’s just been that kind of month. That said, things with the job should begin to change come the 31st of this month. Hush-hush on the details but work should be more back to a stable structure instead of the madness that engulfs the current focus.

There has been some progress at home though during this cycle. Trish and I started having weekly meeting regarding the standing of our household, finances, and things that need to be acted on. It has really made her happy as she feels like I’m more “involved” with the house and I agree. It makes me feel like I’m more involved. We’ve even started doing more with the house because of it. I bought some new desks and they should arrive this week. I can’t say putting them together will be fun, but it will be great to have the change of scenery. We’ve had the same configuration for the past 3 and 1/2 years.

On the writing front, these are the first words I’ve written since the 27th, when the last post showed up on the writing side of the blog.I missed a great deal of days in April and all of May. I won’t have June ready by the 1st of the month I believe. I’d like to, but it’s just unlikely. I do have a plan for continuing the flash project. I even know where, oh, about 40 stories are coming from. I’ll share the inspiration later once I have it rolling. The goal, right now, is to be up to date by the end of June and have July rolling. Be the end of July, I expect to have everything up to Dragon*con ready. By Dragon^Con, I expect to be done for the year except for the stories I’m going to add to the purchasable book.

Like I mentioned, it has been a busy time. Life is stabilizing though, and within the next week or two, I’ll be into my new routine.

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It has been some time hasn’t it? Almost a month now since my last post on this feed. Long time readers might not be too shocked about the delay but those of you who started reading this year are likely to be surprised by the long disappearance. The past month has been quite a mix of activity in and around my personal life.

The primary dismay has been the last two weeks, where I spent most of my time either sick or recovering from being sick. The first week of March was spent dealing with a nasty norovirus that gave me terrible flu symptoms. The second week bronchitis decided to come back. Even now I am still recovering from the bronchitis and through it all I missed something like four and a half days of my day job, with only one day of that being sick time covered. I’m just happy to be near healthy again. If only I can clear my lungs long enough to go for a walk and get back to exercising. The con’s only six months away and I’m still only able to be on my feet fifteen minutes. This half a month repast on sickness is not helping.

But hey, we’re done now right? Time to just climb back on the horse as if we never fell off. Excuse or not, we’ve got some catching up to do. Expect a return to the normal schedule here with the typical Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule. Well, maybe not Friday, but Monday and Wednesday will be common.

Also, regarding jsamueldiehl.com, I have been behind on my flash as well. To be exact, we are missing the following dates: 1/5, 1/7, 1/12, 2/18, 3/2, 3/4, 3/9, and 3/11. That’s eight stories I owe you, not to mention the fact I haven’t started the Saturday series yet. Well, look for them, they will be coming. For now, expect a new piece to show up tomorrow as expected, and then we’ll start filling out that back log.

Plans are still in motion, and things are getting back on schedule. Just taking some time.

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So, let’s just agree that I totally made posts between the 8^th and today. The other posts are just, erm, on a mystical quest that they may or may not return from. Let’s wish them luck.

So it’s Wednesday again, which means weight and diet talk. February has been a disaster as far as eating right goes. I’m still keeping count of calories, but as far as keep below my goal I’ve been a mess. I blame my tendency to relax my diet during the weekends.

Also, I need to stop bringing change to work. I seem to be too friendly with the vending machine especially since they just stocked up on my favorite candy. Curse you Raisinets and your tasty flavor!

Food Goal this week: Make it through the rest of the week without grabbing a soda or candy at work.

Exercise has also been pretty bad. I still try with the hula hoop, but I haven’t quite got the knack with it yet. I need to spend time this weekend really learning how to use it properly and get active.

I’m starting to realize at this pace I’m going to cost myself extra money for travel expenses in September. The only person I’ve got to blame is me at this time.

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Sorry for the delay with posting, certain things kept this from appearing on the usual day.

The last week with dieting has been a mixed bag of success and failure. Primarily I failed on Friday and Monday. Friday happened because of ordering out at lunch, dinner, and having a pastry (which is worse because I turned one down that morning but still had one later that evening). Calorie count for Friday was ~2450. Monday failed at dieting but it was a planned failing. It was my anniversary and I knew whatever we did, wherever I went, I was going to be bad.

That’s fine if that’s my one day this month. After that, I need to remain good and loyal to my diet. I’m down to seven months left to lose enough weight to reach my goal of needing only one plane ticket to reach dragon*con.

Frankly, that’s the goal. No weight value, no size value of clothing. Just so long as my fat behind fits in one chair in an airplane, I’m happy. That’ll be over $200.00 in travel expense savings over my planned trip budget.

So now I just have to figure out the size of the seats on the plane I’m riding up in and see how many inches I need to lose to squeeze in.

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We’re almost a month into the new year already and things are starting to take shape. In the past few weeks I’ve found myself being far more productive, focused, and driven than I have in the months leading up to the change of decades. I’ve returned to some old favorite activities and have taken up new causes to change how I act and behave. Anyone reading this realizes one such is the new focus on working on my blog, so I’ll leave that one to rest while I go over some of my other recent changes.

Today, as I discussed in a post last week, I’m taking more strides towards weight management. I haven’t started up the exercise portion of the practice but my changes to what I diet on and when are becoming more noticeable. I started my new efforts to begin the day with a hearty breakfast, and slowly end with a very tiny meal for dinner. I’ve been doing it in reverse and I’m wagering that it really hasn’t been helping my metabolism in the least bit.

I guess Wednesday is my “talk about the diet, health thing” day.

Oh yeah, and thanks to a post over at the F7lans forum, I bought a hula hoop to try to learn to exercise with.

Don’t you judge me.

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Okay, I’ve bitched about my weight before in the past. I’ve talked about how I did great here, poor here, and lose and gained after this and that. Well, the juggling stops here, because as of January of next year, I am officially on diet using a big motivator.

Money.

That’s right, starting in January me and my wife will be going to a diet clinic getting doctor guided dieting methods. I don’t know the details of the clinic just yet, but we’re finding them out as we go. Ideally this will help us stay focused and on track with our food plans, and maybe, just maybe, I can become healthy enough that I won’t be in pain all the time. That I’ll be able to walk the distance a normal person can. That I’ll feel good about how I look.

I really need this, especially considering I want to go to Dragon*Con this year. If I’m this big when I get to the convention, I won’t be able to do nearly half of what I want. That’s an unacceptable waste of money.

It’s scary though, I’ll give you that. Damn near terrifying thinking of just how strict things will be. At the same time, though, I’m eager. I want to lose the weight and spending $70.00 a week to do it is a great motivator.

I will be posting the results of these weight-ins once they start. I don’t know my exact starting weight right now, but If I had to guess, I’d say around 395-400. Yeah, I’m that big. And just think, when I had my heart surgery two and a half years ago, I was 345. Disgusting…

Now I just wonder if I can get my insurance to help cover it.

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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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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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