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[OOC][Info] Status Updates
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#26
(12-23-2019, 10:45 PM)Labster Wrote: Well, the company takes a week holiday so I don't have any work.  A perfect time for writing... except I've spent the last three and a half days down with a cold.  I'm not ignoring everyone, but I'll respond to all your updates when I have an easier time breathing.

I just have one question that needs an answer sooner rather than later: Do you still want one of the Mimi Hanyus to move to LA at the end of the skating story? I'm getting very close to needing a go/no-go on that.

If she isn't headed for Hollywood, I might need to find some place else for the second Mimi. Having so many Japanese "twins" in a single residence is likely to summon Austin Powers... Smile
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#27
I'll take Mimi.  Sorry, I'm so far behind.  I was going to get work done today, but I didn't really feel up to it.  Instead, I just did some needlework deep background research for Tomoyo.

At least I finally got around to watching Dragon Half.  And started Macross for the first time.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#28
At least with Dragon Half there was only ever a couple of episodes rather than the full run that was originally planned. Such a shame, that.
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#29
Sorry about the lack of progress.  Which I had to say a lot lately.

Basically my job is getting a lot worse, and I've been trying to deal with that lately.  A normal day starts when I wake up and have to answer question that about 5 people have left me.  I then get to spend the rest of the hour apologizing to various people about how far behind I am.  Then I get to completely ignore all of those tasks so something more urgent can get done.  I have fifteen minute meetings with people which typically exceed an hour, and leave me so frustrated I can't get anything done for the next hour.  Nontechnical people overruling me on technical decisions with passive-aggression, you see.  I then answer questions for the people who report to me now -- who I am expected to assist and oversee, and do all my previous work as well, with no change in pay.  Then, late in the night, I finally get a chance to program for a little while, which is my job description.  Work is the last thing I think about at night before I go to sleep, which is useful because it primes me for the messages I need to answer before breakfast the next morning.  So I'll try writing if I can arrange some time off next month, like maybe a Sunday, but I doubt it because the busy season is about to start.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#30
That's the worst thing about work.

The moment anyone realises you can do something, they ask you to do everything.

It takes all your creativity and burns your soul and leaves nothing.

I love the smell of rotaries in the morning. You know one time, I got to work early, before the rush hour. I walked through the empty carpark, I didn't see one bloody Prius or Golf. And that smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole carpark, smelled like.... ....speed.

One day they're going to ban them.
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#31
I think I've managed to resolve the situation at work by throwing a fit (read: spending lots of political capital), the end result of which is that I got the CEO (in his role as interim CTO) to reassign some people just to make his own life easier.

I think I'm also going to cut down my hours to 40 a week or so, just to get things a little more in balance.  I'm also going to radically rearrange my time, moving to a seven-day work schedule.  Saturday and Sunday are 10 hour days where I actually get some programming done, while Monday through Friday are 4 hour days where I'm doing manager stuff exclusively, and possibly a little of emergency hotfixes.  I can't do any decent programming without large blocks of time.  But... I can write stories in as little as 2 hour blocks.  So hopefully this will make me happier and should increase my ability to do some writing.

Still haven't had an actual day off work since November except those I was sick in bed, but will try to schedule one of those soon.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#32
(;o_O)

... Yeah, days off are just as conducive to the creative process as actually having time to write.

I'm just starting to get back into my groove myself, so I should be getting some more content out soon.

I also need to get with Rob in regards to time-stamping my stories.  God, I've been awful about that.
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#33
Oh, thanks for that link, Brent -- that's exactly what's been plaguing me on a recent task. It takes me a couple hours just to get in the groove, but then there's yet another meeting or touchpoint and the flow has just been blown.
-- Bob

I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber.  I have been 
called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold....
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#34
*Blows the dust off this thing*

Whoo.

So, for those that haven't been on the Discord....

...The last few weeks have been "interesting".  In the sense that I would be out making deliver runs even a full hour after we stop taking orders.  The shit has been absolutely bonkers.

Lately we've taken to sending out most of our order by Doordash.  This is both good and bad.

Good in the sense that it gives me time to get the store cleaned up for closing.

Bad in the sense that I'm not making as much money.

But that's beside the point here.  The point is that now that we've been Doordashing the orders that we can (the only ones we can't are the ones that are paying cash), things actually calm down a bit because people don't see our brightly lit car toppers and go, "Hmmmm... Pizza..." and practically crush us with even more orders.

What this means is that I can finally start getting back into the swing of things here.  I just need a bit of time to recuperate.  Give me about one more week (because I REALLY need to get my other car up and running) and I should be productive once again.
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#35
Le sigh...

Had a text window open to write into this evening. It sat there. I finally closed it and watched a movie instead.

I'm in a funk. I don't even want to write incidental bits on the wiki right now. (I don't even want to add license information to images on All The Tropes right now. I'm not even sure whether I want to write this post.)

I need some time off before I take some time off next month, just to get my bearings back. Until then... who knows when I'll be writing again?
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#36
For me, it's just that work is sucking all the energy out of me. And it's not an isolated thing, either. Upper-level management in the franchise has noticed, and now we're closing thirty minutes earlier than our usual time.

It's pretty damn bad when your boss's boss's boss's boss goes, "Uhm yeah, these guys are looking pretty ragged. We better cut back a bit."
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#37
It's kind of funny that as everyone else seems to have had their muse desert them, I'm finally feeling good enough to be back at work here regularly.  Going on a trip helped -- especially given that it wass a similar road trip to the one the undines take immediately after the Halloween party.  If I could do a round trip of the desert in five days they could certainly do a bigger sightseeing trip in seven days.

Not that I'm writing that story.  I'm still finishing up Channeling Mana, which honestly has been plotted for a very long time, but getting to write the thing is hard.  I have 55kB/10000 words of unpublished material in this story alone, but it's spread out across eighteen chapters.  I'm trying to be disciplined to work on the earlier parts, but of course last night my muse wanted to write a scene near the end, so there it goes.  It will probably be two to three times longer when it's done.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#38
I apologize if I've been... off... lately.

I've been off of my meds for the last couple of weeks. Not because I got cut off, but because I've been working my ass off as usual and haven't had the chance to get them refilled. And I don't dare use the VA's automatic snail-mail refill system because that's about as predictable as a bunch of rabid weasels on crack - so many ways for something to fuck up. At least this way I know why and how things are SNAFUed.

Let me tell you, Wellbutrin may work wonders, but it's a BITCH to come off of because it's like all the pent up depression just hits you all at once.

I finally got over the worst of it the other day, though I had to take off early from work in order to be able to cope. But hopefully from here on out things will be better, especially once I'm able to get back on my meds.

I just need a bit more time - time to finally get the last needed repairs to my Saturn SC1 made (turns out that CV joint that had the cracked boot is actually fucked beyond what a rebuild will fix), and time to get back into the swing of things.

I'm just hoping that I find a good CV axle in the parts yard. And it WILL have to be from the parts yard. Because all the after market CV axles do not have the dynamic dampener (a tough, rubber coupling in the middle of the axle shaft that absorbs vibrations) that the OEM axles have. They do this as a cost cutting measure because who is gonna complain about a car that's a bit noisy during acceleration. (Hint: Me, because it's my fucking car.) So yeah. Time to play lotto, because I want my car to perform the way it's meant to, and not like some ancient relic of a shit box. At the very least the parts yard will accept exchanges for parts that turn out to be bad.
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#39
For the first time since the Before Times, I'm getting a (short) vacation outside of the city... next month.

September 7 is a travel day for me, 8 and 9 are limited Internet access, and 10 is another travel day. And when I say "travel day", I mean I'm driving for roughly six hours.

If you want to know where I'm headed, check the "Further afield" map on the wiki page for Blossom, and zoom in on the northernmost map pointer. That's definitely the correct building; it might even be the correct hotel room, for all I know.
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#40
Just a quick one. I'll be a little hard to reach for the next few days. The recall election is Tuesday, and I'm volunteering in the campaign against it. The four leading candidates to replace the governor are a right wing talk radio host, and three guys named Kevin. God help us all.

I'm also doing some interviews for a job, and I may be asked to do a small contract work as part of the interview process. So, I'm around, but less available to write.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#41
(09-12-2021, 01:53 PM)Labster Wrote: The four leading candidates to replace the governor are a right wing talk radio host, and three guys named Kevin.  God help us all.

Ye gods.

In the unfortunate event of the talk show host winning it, the only thing I can hope for is if some of these ass holes who see nothing wrong with pissing and shitting where they eat (read: jacking up real estate prices even though that’s exactly why they left Cali in the first place) decide that having a wing nut as governor is good enough reason to go back home.
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#42
Election's over; we won and honestly the Republicans who started the recall put their party in a worse position for 2022 than they were before... which sometimes happens when you call an election early.

For now, I am back to writing. I am doing it fairly slowly, because I'm not good at writing combat scenes, and they're not really the most enjoyable thing for me to write. Which is not to say I don't like the result, it's just harder and not my native thought pattern.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#43
And I see you got it knocked out now, even though it's not your usual fare.  Glad to know you're feeling well enough now to pull that off.  Smile
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#44
Okay.

So, I know people got things going on right now.

Who doesn't?

This is part of the reason why I went with a shorter bit in Love the Grief Seed.  And I wasn't really looking for essay-answers here.  Even a quick little, "Looks good, keep it up" would have been fine.

But when I get radio silence like this, I feel as though I'm talking into a void.

And when I feel as though I'm talking into a void?

That's when my anxiety kicks into high-gear.

"Nothing you do matters.  They don't care.  They've just been humoring you all along."

I know that's not true.

But as we've already covered, anxiety is not logical at all.  The only part about it that *is* logical is when there is direct and clear evidence to prove my anxiety is wrong, and then it shuts the fuck up and goes back to its corner.

But with this silence that I've been getting, my anxiety goes, "Well!  We can neither confirm nor deny anything, now, can we?  Sucks to be you!  You're stuck with me now!"

So.  Here's the deal.

I can't afford to be dealing with my anxiety like that.  Seriously.  I do *not* have the spoons for it.

And before you say, "How bad can it be?"  Well, let me explain it in excruciating detail for you.

I take care of two, sometimes three of my brothers.  "Care" is a bit of a loose term here because they're all grown-ass adults.  Or at least they're supposed to be.

One of them has felonies on his record.  It's hard for him to find work, and even harder for him to find housing.  He doesn't even try any more and relies on plasma donation for money.

One of them complains about being tired all the time and cannot wear shoes or be on his feet for extended periods of time.  He's also over two-hundred pounds overweight.  You might say, "Well, that's why he can't be on his feet all the time!"  Except there is the shoes part.  He can't wear them for long even when he's sitting down.  I've already told him flat-out that he needs to get tested for diabetes but he keeps looking at me like I'm an ass hole for insisting on it, never mind that there is a state health care system here that handles shit like that if you have difficulty finding work.  He doesn't even try, though, and also relies on plasma donation for money.

Number three is the on-and-off one.  He's been spending time with my mom and dad in McAllen - city down by the Texas-Mexico border that Mom and Dad moved to because apparently San Antonio is too noisy.  He somehow suffered some kind of spinal injury that makes it difficult for him to even get up and go to the bathroom.  Don't ask me why he hasn't gotten an MRI done - everyone keeps saying they're "working on it".  Mom and Dad at least send me a bit of money every month to cover his share of the bills, but that's it.

Oh, and I'm stuck helping one of my other brothers pay off the car payment for the Jetta... the one that got wrecked and is now sitting because the frame is bent up such that it's chewing through tires fast enough that it's becoming too expensive for me to keep using it for work.

The insurance company kept trying to tell me it's totaled in accordance to company policy despite Texas State Law stating that a car is only totaled once the cost of repair exceeds the cash value of the vehicle before the accident (and not the "trade-in" value - the law is very succinct in making that distinction clear).  The Jetta's Blue Book value was a bit over $8k.  Estimates to repair?  Between $5.4k to $6k.  (Which means even in places where the threshold is 75% of the vehicle's cash value, it still doesn't cross the line into "Totaled".)  Told the fuckers to go pound sand.  Literally.  The stunned silence I got from them on the phone was glorious.

I am the only person here that is gainfully employed here.  The one who has the Jetta in their name is attending online classes using his MGIB payout, so he can't help me out any.  There is one other who is employed (remember, I've got FIVE brothers, only two/three of them actually live with me), but he blows his money on his girlfriends, and he doesn't live with me so I have no right to tell him what to do with his money.

That's the situation I'm in, and I am barely scraping by because of it.

So instead letting myself be distracted by TNB, I'm going to be taking time out to do things that are more important to my immediate survival.  Like making sure I'm maintaining a regular sleep schedule, fixing my cars on my days off, showing up to work early so I can make more money so I can work on fixing my cars on my days off, clean my room so the Hurricane Katrina style mess isn't wearing on my depression so much, and making some medical appointments that I've been putting off because I've been too distracted to focus on that.

For real.  The point I'm at right now?  Things aren't getting worse.... but they aren't getting any better.  And I can't afford to just wait around for things to become "easy".  I need to start doing things that will improve my life.  Not just the "quality" of my life, but actual, over-all improvements.

And if this project isn't helping me?  If it's only being a drag on my mental health?  Then it needs to go on a back burner for a while until I legitimately have more free time available that I can comfortably allocate to it.  And even then, only if people are willing to interact.

Otherwise?  What is even the point of a collaborative project if no one wants to collaborate?

Catch you guys later.
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#45
Aargh. I'm having flashbacks to the Halloween Party story here.

None of us are particularly good at collaborative work, are we?
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#46
Remote work is hard for collaboration. Good for pounding shit out. Hard for interactive creativity.

And as I said elsewhere, I really find it hard to keep track of who's who and what's going on. I don't reply because usually, I've nothing worthwhile to contribute.

(I didn't want to admit I had no idea what a Tenchi or Mystic Knights thing was --- (beyond a weird Haim Saban thing that tried to create an Celtic Sentai show)

I love the smell of rotaries in the morning. You know one time, I got to work early, before the rush hour. I walked through the empty carpark, I didn't see one bloody Prius or Golf. And that smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole carpark, smelled like.... ....speed.

One day they're going to ban them.
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#47
Given how big Washuu's role is in the Metacontinuity I'm surprised you don't know Tenchi Muyo!.

The Magic Knights are from Magic Knights Rayearth -- three schoolgirls summoned to a fantasy world, given magic armor and weapons, and sent on a quest to acquire magical mecha with which to rescue what was essentially the goddess of that world. Late 1980s not-Sailor Moon-style magical girls, with a nasty stinger in the end of the first season.

I really ought to at least write up Umi, Fuu and Hikaru's pages for Douglass Gardens, and figure out how/when they hang out with the K-On! girls.

EDIT: BA, I haven't responded because I'm often reading in between tasks at work, or when I should be going to bed (like right now), and I don't have the time to write a detailed, thought-out response. I have been enjoying the stuff you've posted, which only makes me feel guilty about doing little more than jotting down notes for the story I actually became an active participant in the project to write.
-- Bob

I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber.  I have been 
called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold....
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#48
(10-04-2021, 09:56 PM)Bob Schroeck Wrote: I really ought to at least write up Umi, Fuu and Hikaru's pages for Douglass Gardens, and figure out how/when they hang out with the K-On! girls.

We should take that to the wiki thread.
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#49
Indeed we should.
-- Bob

I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber.  I have been 
called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold....
RE: [OOC][Info] Status Updates
#50
One has to remember that the reference pool on this side of the pond is somewhat different.

We didn't have a Cartoon Network. We had three channels - and maybe the BBC's if you had a decent enough aerial and the wind was right.

And cablelink was shite. Never had satellite so a lot of these 90's and 00's popular shows didn't exist here except amongst those with the cash for Sky.

I love the smell of rotaries in the morning. You know one time, I got to work early, before the rush hour. I walked through the empty carpark, I didn't see one bloody Prius or Golf. And that smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole carpark, smelled like.... ....speed.

One day they're going to ban them.


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