What up people!  I’m alive!  Man it’s been a while.  What was it like… three weeks since.  Except the DeviantART post, I’m not counting that one.  So yeah, busy busy busy.  A little depressed for a few days, but busy.

School

As much as I enjoy playing with hacking software, vulnerability exploitation and all sorts of good nerdy stuff, I was having issues. It seemed that my writing was colliding with school.  Not that I was writing anything, just editing Halloween Incense Party.  I’ll talk about that later.  My education suffered greatly.  Not only that, three weeks ago I had to skip two classes, one for bowling sweeps, the other was a freak snow storm keeping me from going down the hill.  You don’t mess with snow and mountain roads.  Seen a lot of overturned cars to realize.

I’m slowly picking myself back up from the short moment.  The biggest project I have to start is from my Risk Management class.  This sort of risk management is when you have backup plans, contingencies, programs, and situations in case a company’s network is compromised.  This project is just that – a risk management plan.  I have all the notes and the outline.  All I need is time to start it.  I can probably knock out a few parts finally in two days and raise my grade greatly.  Another project is quite simply a project similar to my final from my Associate’s.  I have done three parts out of ten and didn’t do the last three, but reading back, I have to do a whole new revision.  I need time for that too.  I’ll reserve that for Wednesday then the weekend.

The biggest pitfall I was dreading for was my Statistics mid-term.  I hated statistics.  I had a similar class back at Crafton Hills (a.k.a. the cradle of Mana Pool) dealing with logic.  I left that class midway.  Couldn’t understand a darn thing and the instructor was of no help.

And statistics is required for all science-related degrees.  I wasn’t aware there was a business major taking statistics in class.

Ever since I couldn’t make it down to my class, my grade took a nose dive, as well as my understanding of the math.  Last Friday, the day of the mid-term.  I didn’t study at all.  I vaguely understand it all.  No time to even look at the book.  Fortunatly the instructor did a full review. Get this… I got it.  All I needed after all was a flipping picture, like so:

The Standard Normal Distribution

This picture also came up in the homework a week prior that I understood.  Everything else in the mid-term was answered well.  I’ll see what I got next friday if it rose to a comfortable grade.

But I still hate statistics.

Cousin and friends

But that wasn’t it.  A couple months back mom told me my cousin and a couple of her friends to California.  A beach there, a swap meet here, and Disneyland to cap it.  I said sure.  I had no problem picking her up and driving them to Temecula to my grandmother’s house.  I haven’t seen her in six years since the last outing to Disneyland.  It was great seeing her again.  She didn’t know I wrote Mana Pool, she was ecstatic of it.  And her friends were great too.  In retrospect I needed that weekend trip.  Didn’t go to Disneyland on their plans, I had school.

Vegas for birthday

And speaking of trips, I got the green light to go to Las Vegas, alone, on my birthday week.  June 10th is the day, turning 25.  There was an issue getting this.  A couple weeks ago I paid a huge amount of money on an outstanding bill from my parents.  The thing is, when I get a job, and I use the family credit card, I repay what is not theirs to buy.  Like anything that is not the grocery store, Costco, Sams, Home Depot, whatever.  I haven’t paid it in four months.  Oy.  After paying that I was feeling let down.  That was going to be my hotel payment for four nights.  I already told my department manager at the hospital about it so I had the only option of staying home, clean up my bedroom and bathroom after a year of neglect, go down the hill for a few hours, and watch the house as mom and dad go to Michigan.  Well after pleading to dad, I got my green light and I’ll reserve my room this week without repaying them.

Oh and if you want to ask if I gamble in Vegas, I don’t.  I was raised to do these things in Vegas: eat, sleep w/ Advil PM, walk the strip, shop a little at Fry’s, watch a show or two, and eat and sleep some more.  That’s it.  I’m too broke to gamble anyway and I look horrible by the pool.

Halloween Incense Party

Here’s the truth – rewriting this story was a nightmare.  The editing alone took up all my time, frustration, and cause a short spell of depression.  Writers reading this know how I felt.  My idea was to print out all four parts and red pen them.  I done the first two with a lot of struggling, it was like I cut my finger and edit them with my own blood.  One moment I’m peacefully editing, and the next… BAM!  Cat wants cuddling.  Parents need me.  Unexpected events.  There was not a single chance to edit the last two on paper for two weeks.

I gave up on the paper and edit the last two on the computer.  Good riddance.  It felt good with that off my shoulders.  Thinking and looking back at the first story and the reedits, I’m proud of it.  I’ve changed so much that, metaphorically, I first created a bowl in ceramics class with a crappy form, then years later, I made the same bowl thats symmetrical, level to the surface, and a better paint job.  It’s good enough as an honorable version of the original.  I’ll just have to give it to someone for reading, as approval, that I did it.

New Lease On Life

The next in the rewrites is New Lease On Life

This is the kind of story I like – with all avenues shut down, there is always one unexpected route to happiness.  I had the joy of just how much I can push a character to a crippling situation.

Just the concept of living costumes was so interesting, I even expanded it to more practical means.  Life for instance… the one item to put all hospitals out of business *enter evil genius laugh*.  But there’s always a small fraction of mistakes to keep it from full production, or is it?

This time I won’t print the sections out for editing.  My time frame in school is so short with the upcoming project due dates.  If you are interested in this story in the original form, check it out.

Mana Pool Rewrites

I have volunteers for the edits and I’m grateful for them.  I’m still saying thank you.  I’m serious, if I didn’t pay that bill to my parents, I would find a professional editor, and still beg to go to Vegas.  So besides that, the three, plus one real doctor IRL at work, are enough to mark the mistakes.  That will happen for the couple of months before I repost the changes and move the physical copy to CreateSpace and use a few marketing techniques I discovered.  I’m already thinking of layout options I was unable to include before.

More beer to make

Last thing to say is today I’m homebrewing after two months.  Last Thursday I cracked open a bottle of my Dirt Simple Pale Ale, sitting in the fridge for two months.  Holy crap it’s clear.  For a home brewed all-grain recipe with no means of high-tech filtering equipment, it looks as clear as a Budweiser or Coors, but better tasting.  I’m running low on it.

I’ll brew another one this afternoon.  I’ll be tweeting the pictures from Instagram on the process.  It’s still a one gallon batch people, still unable to brew five gallons.  I’m also going all out to make two batches.  One is that, the other is the same recipe but adding navel orange juice five minutes late in the boil.  Wanna see if I can make a clean citricy pale ale for the summer.

Whew, that was a long one.  Go right ahead to read the original New Lease On Life if you want.  I gotta go out to do some computer support for a bit and then brew.

Later.