Monday, September 28, 2009

Bread and donuts, let the baking start

I tried making fried donuts on saturday. They turned out OK, but they need work.

Sunday I made bread while working on the web page. I have to be sure that I have an alarm set to keep track of the bread as it, and I, work. It turned out better than the week before. I have started tweeking the recipe. I added a bit of ground flax and changed the rise times. Once I get it working to my satisfaction I will add pics and recipe.

Monday and Tuesday are Crypt Crawl days for me. It is coming along nicely. There will be about 200 player cards available. The religious background for the world is also going to be ready, at least in an outline form. We can add minor and local Deities as they are met. I am making serious notes on the scenarios and adventures we are now running so we will have something to run up with the beta.

I am not at peak efficiency today, last night we had some thunder and lightning, it kept Mocha on edge and, well, she did not want to be up alone... So my sleep got shortened. Oh well, she is a good dog, so I will live with it.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Sunday, and another week begins

It has been an interesting week. I am getting a good deal of "behind the scenes" work done here at the secret clanhold. A good deal of work has to be done to get the Crypt Crawl website up and ready. I think I'm about to learn a few things about sub-domains.

I fired up one of the older computers this morning to increase my insanity and the first thing that come up is a message that says, in essence, "hey buddy, there is a server here that wants to know who the heck I am. Do you want me set up to work with the server?" In less than five minutes it was set for internal e-mail, chat, blogging and house wiki. It is amazing how far server software has come since I was an "administrator" last.

Sometimes I feel like I never left college. The degrees I have don't seem to be worth the powder to blow them up in todays environment.

Sue and I are getting to spend a bit more time together with the use of the server, and I like that!

Well, bread is calling me, so I have to take a baking break. I'm reasonably happy with where I am on the bread. I will be fine tuning the mix as I go along. Maybe in a month I'll have it worked out to my satisfaction.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

It Works! but I have halted.

It took a lot of hours to get the beta adventure, cards and rules far enough along to get a fair test started. By the time I got done writing up the post game notes last night I had finished my 40 hour week of work. When I awoke this morning my mind froze up solid.

Sooo, the dishes are done, I tore apart the davenport, washed it inside and out, reassembled it, and the bread just came out of the oven. Ohh, we finally have a new oven, I can bake again.

At the end of last week I installed our server software and got it running. The wiki's blogs, internal chats, etc are already helping Sue and I work on mutual writing projects. My writing tends to be more like spoken word and that is a different science than writing. However, it is giving Sue a core that she is able to rapidly rewrite into something better.

Anyway, maybe I will go make some donuts, all my thinking is done.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Monday Morning and Just Starting

I rolled out of bed at 8:10 AM this morning. Five hours later I have finished my house cleaning and morning home work.

My work plans for today is to get the Beta Crypt Crawl as close to ready to play as possible. I have most of the cards printed. I have to work on the items and cut and sort them all. By tomorrow night I also need to have a written adventure as well. When we post the Beta we will need scenarios, and a starter village, for the GM's to work with. We want to try avoid making the GM's guess what we mean. The only way to do that is to have scenarios, towns, monsters, mythology and history ready in a basic form. We can fill in details as we develop the system.

What it amounts to is that Sue and I are spending almost all of our efforts on her art business, web work, house work, podcasting and Crypt Crawl. We are relying on the community to feed us DS ideas to pass on.

Well, back to Crypt Crawl... This evening I have two hours scheduled for podcasting.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Day Off Tomorrow

I'm looking forward to Saturday off. I am revising the Crypt Crawls 200+ cards for final a Alpha run. I have to have all of them revised, printed, and cut for our basic group by Tuesday. Why did I start this?

I am also able to make reasonable basic rules based on the cards as they come along. Things like Character Creation rules etc. I am also working on the initial village cast members etc. for the GM.

One of the flaws in our DS releases was not enough background and scenarios. Using a simpler system we will be able to make GM accessories/adventures much more often.

Well, back to it.

Oh, I'm setting up our in house server as well. Entertaining is learning all the server administrative functions.

Back to it now.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Labor Day Preparation

Tomorrow, as some people know, is labor day in the US. The history of this day is a little odd. Politics being what they are, Labor Day and the international May day celebrations both sprung from the killing of US workers by police and military in Chicago. Wikipedia has covers the details here, for those who want to peer into our history for a moment.

Saturday Sue and I went out to see my mother. She is somewhat depressed by the death of my aunt (91 yrs old), so she needed a visit. Mom is still getting around and seems determined to stay mobile. She is staying up on politics and becoming more certain that "they" are lying to her. I am glad to see that at 87 she can still recognize propaganda. It gives me hope for us all.

Well, I got distracted, I just spent an hour looking at how to videos for planting vegtables. I think I need to learn, or remember, a lot of old information. The web is an amazing tool. I am glad to be in this tech world. Just plain fun.

Tomorrow (monday) we head out and buy a new stove, the old one's spirit is gone. *sigh* it is always something. We should be able to hit a good labor day sale or two. We are looking for a small stove, there are just two of us. I'm looking forward to doing some baking in a reliable oven.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Just a little difficult to get restarted

My excuse for slowly getting back to work is this irritating lung infection / congestion that is just hanging on. I am pretty much back to speed, but the work start up is coming slow.

What I have managed to do is keep the kitchen cleaning habits I developed this summer going forward. I really think Sue is in a better mood when the kitchen is cleaned each morning. I also think my life is mighty fine when Sue is in a good mood. I have made the whole cleaning, breakfast, dog car, and Raising of the Sue, into a two and a half hour ritual in the mornings. It even includes four big cups of strong coffee for myself. That covers my day from 7 am to 9:30 am.

What I can't decide is if I should try to add a regularly scheduled deed from 9:30 to 10, like working on learning to garden again, or if I should try scheduling work periods later in the day. I know that between the Dragon Storm, Crypt Crawl, Art web work, Web Design jobs, Shipping, manufacturing, blogging, podcasting and whatever else I have my fingers in, I miss too many necessary details. I need to somehow keep track of each of the tasks in a way that helps me catch everything and yet does not consume too much time itself.

Sue and I are investigating the wonders of the computer calendar, and I think there are some possibilities in here. The tasks, events, notes and to-do functions combined as a unit have serious possibilities.

As usual my thoughts are skipping around in my mind, jumping in and out of my subconscious in a rather random fashion. Maybe if I divide the house and yard into a series of five "zones" and schedule one of them for an hour of work each day. That may make it possible to maintain a larger area around the home. How in the world does a traditional "housewife" do it? While I am trying to work this out , Sue is making most of our meals and maintaining the bathroom. We do our shopping as a team. I do laundry on the weekends. Yet we are always behind. *sigh*

All right, enough of this, my schedule says I am working on a podcast, so I better get a move on.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Back to work and trying to keep up

Well, we are back to work. After two weeks of just doing almost nothing it is a strain trying to get back into the swing of things.

I am keeping up with the basic housekeeping I started a while back. The kitchen is getting daily maintenance. You know, dishes done, garbage dealt with, counters etc. Getting this done, plus rousting and feeding Sue and Mocha. Walking the dog fits in here too, but in my groggy morning state I do make errors, and Sue reacts badly to the leash... but Mocha likes breakfast in bed... Anyway, the process takes 2.5 hours in the morning. The clean kitchen routine is helping Sue to get to work and it is worth it.



The second home routine I am establishing is to do laundry on saturday off. I am not sure this is a good way to do this. We travel a lot and once a week on laundry may not work out well. I may have to try to schedule laundry twice a week to cover the "on the road weeks". Maybe add it to the wednesday schedule.



In addition I am using the computers calendar to start scheduling so I get to everything, or at least don't forget anything. Today, tuesday, is aimed a working on the Crypt Crawl game with a long game in the evening.



I did routine maintenance on my portable and discovered the hard drive is showing signs of weakness. With all the data on it I decided to buy a new bigger Hard Drive. A 500 GB one is on the way. The current one is 320 GB and mostly full. I then checked the old portable and the Hard Drive in it is showing serious flaws in seek and temperature control. That baby is about gone. I am going to take the hurting drive and put it in the back-up machine, giving it a big boost in size (now a bad 120 GB, going to a weak 320 GB). It should be fine in the back-up computer.



OK, I'm going to close this out. I am running behind today, *sigh*, I am not sure this scheduling concept will work. My reliability is questionable.