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May 6th, 2008
10:36 am - note to self: make better notes to self
I have a terrible memory for certain things. These lapses in memory are centered around things I'm supposed to do, like updating this journal. To counteract this, I make a lot of notes to myself. Sometimes, however, I leave out important details. For example, today I found a note reminding me to post about "the ten percent rule."
I have now fulfilled the letter, if not the spirit, of that note.
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May 1st, 2008
05:46 am - goals for month: may
Good morning, May. So, how did I do on my April goals? Pretty well, actually.
Writing
In some ways, I made the least progress here. The Penny manuscript continues to move along, but I really fell down on the playtests and the fiction. Finishing Penny is my top priority for May.
Podcasting
Things were better here. The Voice still isn't "caught up," but there's some changes going on there that make me feel better about it. Did put out two episodes of HG,WT (both of which I was pretty happy with) and three of Paul Unscripted, and I'm going to try to do so again this month. Oh, and I recorded a story for PodCastle, which was fun.
Gaming
The Reign game is no more, sadly, but we did finish the Infiltration phase of our Burning Empires game. It was rough at points, but I'm happy with how it turned out. We're taking a break between phases to play a few sessions of In a Wicked Age, which ought to be fun. I need to finish the session summaries before the next phase starts. I'd also like to play some boardgames, and not just at Mark's event in two weeks.
Exercise
I hit both of my goals here. This month, I want to turn at least two of weekly walks into jogs, and I want get to Rung 9 by the end.
Improv
Three workshops and three shows a month was just right, so I'm shooting for that in May as well. I also want to re-read Acting on Impulse.
Media
I finished both of the music history courses, and I enjoyed both of them. This month I want to catch up on my podcast backlog (especially Escape Pod). I've only got 150 pages remaining of the second Queen & Country novel, so that needs to get done. I also managed to finish off the third season of BSG, and I should be able to get current on the series by the end of the month.
Web
Among the new projects that popped up this month were the helping out with the VIC web site and setting up my own for Gameslinger Enterprises. I need to finish both of those off by the first of June as well.
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April 26th, 2008
12:54 pm - more useless family details
My sister has been hoarding all of the recessive traits. My mother let me know yesterday or so that Laura, who is pregnant right now, found out that she has a negative Rhesus type. (My impending nephew is Rh+, so she get gets take RhIG shots.) She keeps doing this to me! First, she gets the blonde hair (mine is brown), then the blue eyes (again, brown) and now this ( I'm A positive). How come I get stuck with all the dominant genes?
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April 17th, 2008
05:04 pm - today's quote of the day
Overhear in a design review today:
"It's okay to pull some numbers out of our experience."
"Is that what you're calling it now?"
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April 8th, 2008
03:32 pm - gordon joseph tevis: 1908 - 1979
My Grampa Tevis died when I was about year old. I have no memory of him at all, and my family never talks about him. Today, my father emailed me and let me know that last Wednesday would have been his 100th birthday. My father said,
He was likeable, relatively quiet, not exactly driven, fairly short -- about 5' 6". He was built like his mother. His father was tall and slender. However, he played on Lawton's H.S. boys team that went to the state tournament. He was one of the middle children in the family. And during the depression, he milked cows on the County Farm along the old highway 141. Jobs were hard to come by. He farmed the farm after my grandfather Burns retired from farming.
Among other things that I didn't I realize: My father, the eldest child in the family, was born when his father was 39.
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April 1st, 2008
05:12 pm - goals for the month: april
I mentioned previously that when it comes to goals, I work best on a moderately short-term basis. These, then, are my goals for April
Writing
I need to get the manuscript for A Penny For My Thoughts ready for beta playtest, which I really would like to start in May. (This requires finishing off the three PBeM playtests that I've still got going.) It's certainly doable, as the current draft is close to where it needs to be. I'm also getting the itch to write some fiction again, along the lines what I did for Finis. I'd like write at least two pieces of micro-fiction this month.
Podcasting
I'm way behind with Have Games, Will Travel. I've even recorded one version of the next episode, but it was crap, so I'm redoing it. This month is about getting back on the horse and getting two episodes out. The Voice has also been behind schedule. I promise, this month the April episode will come out in April (along with the March episode). I released a new episode of Paul Unscripted two weeks ago, and it felt good. I've got a backlog of content for that, so I'm going to shoot for three this month.
Gaming
Delays in Burning Empires have be killing us, but we're going to finish the Infection phase this month. I'd also really like to get our new demon-hunting pirates Reign game going on Wednesdays.
Exercise
The walking has been good, and I want to keep doing it at least four times a week. I also want to get to Rung 5 on the Hacker's Diet Introductory Ladder by the end of the month. I did Rung 1 this morning, and I think it will fit right into my schedule.
Other
On the improv side, I'd like get to at least three workshop and perform in at least three shows. I want to finish listening to the two music history courses on CD that I've been going through. I need to ramp up the event submission process for Gamex. And I want to re-read the Queen & Country series of graphic novels (plus Gentleman's Game), because I just got number eight and can't remember what all has happened.
Will it all happen? Tune in May 1 to find out!
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12:51 pm - west texas by way of minnesota
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March 28th, 2008
09:49 am - curse you, weak will
One of my gaming resolutions for this year was to play all of the games I bought. Currently sitting on the "paid for but unplayed" stack are In A Wicked Age and Sons of Liberty (which I playtested, but that doesn't count for my purposes). With my current pace of game consumption, dare I add Trail of Cthulhu to that stack?
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March 22nd, 2008
06:42 pm - purim for goyim
At last night's improv show, Judy decided that each team should do a scene about Purim. She decided this because (a) it was Purim, and (b) none of the players had any idea what Purim was actually about. The results were amusing (if I'd really been thinking about it I would have suggested that the cheese triangles in our scene were wrapped in bacon), but because I'm me, I had to correct the deficiencies in my knowledge of Judaism. I had some vague memory of my college roommate Andy inviting me to get drunk with a rabbi on Purim. And sure enough, I was right. But the highlight of this research was finding this passage:
Most people assume that one must become so befuddled that one can no longer distinguish between the most wicked of people and the most righteous. Some, however, have noted that the two phrases, "arur Haman" and "barukh Mordekhai" have the same numerical value according to the traditional counting of the Hebrew letters called gematria (502). This point is somewhat obscure. Are we to assume that people are sober enough to calculate the gematria of these phrases, but drunk enough to get the words confused because they have the same gematria? However puzzling, this seems to be the opinion of the 17th century halakhist R. Abraham Abele ben Hayyim haLevi Gombiner. Drinking and gematria? Count me in.
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March 20th, 2008
09:09 am - ah, spring...
...when young men's thoughts turn to human sacrifice.
Courtesy of YouTube, here's the Joffrey Ballet's recreation of Najinsky's original choreography for the 1913 premiere: part 1, part 2, part 3.
Stravinsky's music also features prominently in this episode of the excellent RadioLab podcast.
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March 17th, 2008
10:27 am - gently being the key word
I'm just back from a weekend of skiing at Mammoth, and I feel good. This is marked contrast to our trip a few weeks ago, which pretty much wiped me out. I attribute this to two things: (a) the first weekend of the season is always tough, as I try to remember how to ski, and (b) I've actually been getting some exercise recently. Not a ton, mind you, but some. Most days I've walking a slightly hilly circuit in our neighborhood for about forty-five minutes. (On days when I'm particularly virtuous, I do it in the morning before I go to work.)
It actually hurts me to say this. I mean, three years ago I was doing half-marathons and Olympic-distance triathlons, and now I'm feeling good about walking for three-quarters of an hour? Yeah. The last four years have not been good for me health-wise. By which, of course, I mean weight-wise. I don't know precisely why, but my spiraling unhappiness with my old job, followed by the complete breaking and remaking of my routine with the new job, certainly didn't help. I've lived with this body long enough that I should have figured out by now that I need to schedule time for exercise every day or I'm not going to like the results. (I think maybe I just did.) And I need to have strategies rather than plans.
Whenever I get in the fitness-y mindset, I immediately set goals and come up with ways to measure my progress. This, as it turns out, is a terrible idea for me. When I fall off my planned progress, as I inevitably do, I end up abandoning my plan, and I'm back where I started. So, no rule: no planning more than a month in advance. I'm not training for anything. This doesn't mean that I don't have goals, it just means that I don't have a specific deadline to achieve them by. What are those goals?
- Be in good enough shape to enjoy the physical activities I like doing. Skiing this weekend so much more fun with a little more cardio capacity and leg strength than I had last time. I'd like to extend that to hiking, biking, swimming, and (heavens forfend) even running.
- Be less self-conscious about my appearance. I've inherited my father's gut (though my mother's side of the family tends that way too) and I don't like it. And back in college, one of my roommates described me as having a "long face." No one's done that recently.
So, with those two goals in mind, for the rest of the month I'm going to keep to my routine of nearly-daily constitutionals. And at the end of March, I'll re-evaluate and figure out what do in April to move gently toward them.
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February 13th, 2008
04:23 pm - it's possible that only jeff tidball with get this
Every time I see maps of Democratic primary results, I think, "Obama needs only Kentucky to achieve the 'Hands Across America' victory."
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January 29th, 2008
04:30 pm - the answer is hell no
I was supposed get home from Dreamation on Sunday, around 10 PM. I actually got home at noon on Monday. Did that dampen my enthusiasm for the convention?
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January 10th, 2008
04:13 pm - call me call me anytime
In case one who wants it doesn't have it, my AIM screenname is paultevis. I'm on there a lot.
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January 2nd, 2008
11:31 am - obligatory new year's post
Last year, many things happened. Some were good. Some were bad. This year, I will try to make more good things and fewer bad things happen.
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December 2nd, 2007
09:07 pm - on the move
As announced earlier today by the lovely and talented ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) gwentevis , we'll be moving sometime between now and Feb 1 (and no, princeofcairo, not to Chicago). Our landlord has decided to remodel our house and move back in, so we're looking for another place in Santa Barbara. Much fun will be had by all, I'm sure.
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November 12th, 2007
02:40 pm - slow down, you move too fast (or, how paul's brain works backwards)
Am I, as many of you know, busy. Jumping from thing to thing makes it hard for me to concentrate on one thing long enough to dig into it. (There's something else going on here, related to something I realized while talking with schlafmanko about how my mind works, but that's a post for a different time.) I've tried keeping notes on things that I'm thinking about in electronic form, but it's never worked for me. Recently, though, I've been keeping a pair of topic-oriented notebooks, one for improv and the other for software engineering/career development, and I've been pleased with the results. Today I realized that the inherent slowness of writing this stuff out by hand is critical to the process. It forces me to stop and think about one topic for a while. As a result, it's almost like a conversation with myself. I used to think that I needed to figure out what I was going to say before I wrote it. Now, I realize, making myself write allows me to figure what I'm going to say. Neat!
Also, Moleskine notebooks are sexy.
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November 2nd, 2007
05:03 pm - willpower. . .failing
I had resolved not to get Guitar Hero III until I beat the first two on Hard. (I've got two songs to go on the original and eight left on the second.) But today I finally looked at the full track list. We'll see how long I can hold out. Hopefully at least until A Penny For My Thoughts goes to layout.
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October 29th, 2007
01:49 pm - ah, irony
Today I first encountered the concept of shoshin, which pretty much sums up how I've been trying to live for the last five or so years.
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10:56 am - successful nuptials
Our "three weddings in four weeks" run is complete, and everyone was successfully wed. Here's to getting back to a more normal schedule. Oh, wait, the holidays are coming. Nevermind.
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