Back in the saddle again

There's this scene from M*A*S*H where Frank Burns, after not seeing Margaret Houlihan for some time, thinks he's going to see her and puts on cologne while clucking to the tune of 'Back in the saddle again.' "Buck buck, buck buck buck, buck buck."

I kinda feel that way at the moment, not from a romantic perspective, but from a formerly homeless, formerly paying outrageous amounts to live in a motel, to a finding a place to live and having things go in a positive manner for the first time in ages, since the end of August 2015.

I have not only found a place to live with a co-worker in Jacksonville, but he has a car he wants to sell me. That car is far from perfect, but if I can get it running, it may be a lifesaver.

Also, for the first time since the end of August, I'm posting long overdue videos made in July and August, and made my first Warcraft video since then, because I now have access to my desktop computer that I built (and recorded building) back in July.

I'm far from settled, still physically exhausted and mentally questionable to a certain degree, but I think the tide has turned.

At any rate, things are looking up, and on Christmas day no less. I guess Christmas miracles do happen.

Hope your holiday is as hopeful as mine!

You’ve Been Running Through My Mind

There’s an old, bad pickup line which goes something like: “You must be exhausted. You’ve been running through my mind all day.” What follows is an example of what has been running through my mind in say, the last 24 hours. Any wonder I’m exhausted?

Writing projects: I have stories that I like to test by going through the entire story in my mind before committing it to the computer. It helps me to determine if the story has a future or not. Some of those projects that I think about every day include:
   
    The Timmons Chronicles - Like the story itself, the writing process for this book/TV series has taken many turns. I have written 11 episodes in script form, and after reviewing what I deemed to be good episodes, I have determined that I have revealed too much too fast. The pace is staggering. So I’m in the process of rewriting the series, starting slowly and trying to be like ‘Lost’ in that the most astounding elements of the plot will be revealed slowly, through flashbacks. Status: Rewrite!

    The Adventures of Mistress Chloe - This story has been running through my mind for years, it seems. I’ve only just started to commit it to the computer. It’s about an old soul that goes from body to body, and somehow retains its memories from life to life. I’m into year 4000 now. Amazing  how many lifetimes I can conjure up in such a short time. Status: Ongoing.

    New Rome - This is a book/movie project I’ve also been thinking about this for a long time, but have committed very little to computer. It’s about a Roman officer, the first Renaissance Man, a man of many talents and ambitions, who gets exiled and put on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic, somehow makes it to the New World, and then goes about teaching his new-found Native American friends all about Rome and the evil it will bring when it comes. The project is ambitious because it will span many generations. Mostly it’s on hold because of the research involved, not only of Roman times, but of Native American languages and culture.  Status: On hold for research.

    Working From Homeless - This story actually led to my creating Project Five-Star. Semi-autobiographical, it takes a look at how shelter life can drive a man to attempt suicide. Status: Ongoing.

    The Shy Boy - Also semi-autobiographical, this story is based on events from my youth where three girls teased me to no end by chanting ‘Shy Boy! Shy Boy.’ If it goes as planned, the boy in the movie creates an imaginary friend: Wile. E. Coyote.  I was a big Roadrunner fan at the time. Status: Still in the thinking process.

Programming projects: Some of you may not realize it, but I have some education and skills in programming. I’ve thought about writing iPhone apps, but mostly I think about World of Warcraft Add-ons like this:

    OneofTen: This add-on/external program is a tool to aid multi-boxers in managing their characters. If you don’t know what that means, look at my youtube page. I use someone else’s add-on and external program to help me out there, but they really don’t do what I want them to do. So I’m learning how to program in both Java (Netbeans) and Lua, which is the scripting language used by Warcraft for its add-ons. The idea is to be able to control two or more characters from one screen, and my ultimate fantasy is to be able to do a 10-man raid by myself. It’s a fantasy because I’d need to buy 9 more versions of the game, and pay $15/month for each account in order to make it work, not to mention have either one blazingly fast computer or 3 or more very fast computers networked together. I have two computers, neither of which is fast in the least, and one of those is unavailable at the moment. Yet I will work on this project for my own future benefit and maybe to make some money on someday. Status: Ongoing.

Of course, my ultimate project is Project Five-Star, which I am reminded of every time someone does something stupid in the shelter. In other words, half my day is spent thinking about that. I’ve been thinking in the last day that I want to record the song: ‘The Job’s Not Done’ and try to get some sales generated for it. The words to the song appear at the beginning of my book, and also on my Facebook page. I’m currently trying to enlist a volunteer band which includes a lead singer, bass guitar, keyboard and drummer, because while I may be able to write, I can’t sing or play an instrument in the least. So if you know of any bands out there willing to record for free, I’d be willing to share profits! I’m also going to start putting together some of the video I’ve managed to record at the shelter (Hush, hush!) and record other things that I will post on Project Five-Star’s own you tube page. I’m doing what my limited social skills allow me to do to promote the project. I really need a staff!

And somewhere in my daily process, I find time to apply for jobs. I do not apply for any and every job out there. I apply for jobs where I have the skills, and where I know I’ll be comfortable. That by itself is not an easy process. Which is why I’m concentrating on either Project Five-Star, or selling my own works in order to make money.

I’ve got so much going through my mind that I find it difficult to concentrate on any one project for any length of time. If I had money I’d hire a personal assistant who would cook and clean for me, prod me to stop playing Warcraft or Civilization V and write or program or fund-raise and prod me to exercise (not necessarily in that order). Any volunteers? And can I stay with you? I’d share profits from any sales I made! Really I will!

So now you see what I think about on a daily basis. A lot of people may wonder ‘What do you do all day and why aren’t you working?’ Well, I am working. I’m not getting paid to do it, but I’m still putting in as much time every day doing the things I do as you do in your normal job. Probably more, because my thought process doesn’t end until I fall asleep at night, and even then, it’s a struggle, because my brain won’t let me! I still have things to think about!

Tuesday ups and downs

The Carpenters once recorded a song in the early 70's, "Rainy Days and Mondays." I loved singing along with that song.
Generally speaking Mondays don't get me down, but rainy days do. And Tuesdays, but mostly because of Warcraft being down most of the day.
Today I'm feeling up and down, up because Osama bin Laden is dead, and I got a favorable comment on my script on storyboardtv.com.
Down because I still have not found a job, and unemployment looks each day like it will not come through,. though nothing official yet. I will appeal if it does not go through.
I have done some preliminary work with my 'Working From Homeless' script, mostly character and plot development, and the more I work on that, the more I like it. It's just a matter of time before I have a rough first draft.
Other than that, I spend each day at the library, typing away, surfing, perhaps a bit of playing on the Warcraft PTR, and that's it. I don't get the feeling that I'm accomplishing anything. Maybe that will change when the top 10 of storyboardtv is announced.
So, that's it for this update. You may go back to your merry lives and I will continue mine, and somewhere, we may all find happiness!

Play: I reiterate: Healing sucks/

Tonight my priest went into the Ice Crown Citadel raid for the very first time, as a healer. She came out with her head held low, defeated, not by Arthas, but by other people's belief that she could not heal the group the way it should be.
First, it's a ten man raid, and there were two healers. It started well enough, making it though the trash to the first Boss with few deaths and no wipes. Then the first wipe happened. It's a difficult fight for someone who has never done it before. Lord Marrowgar puts out frozen trails in many different directions, and if you can't get out of the way, you die a cold death.
Second he puts out spikes that freeze one person, and too often that was me. After the first wipe, we had to contend with 3 additional bad guys, not quite as bad as the Boss, but hard to contend with anyway.
So the second attempt at the Boss starts, and we lose a tank early. Tanks, as I have stated before, take most of the damage, but also draw attention from people like me, so we can survive.
We wiped on that one too.
The funny part of this game is when you wipe, people start pointing fingers. It took just two wipes before someone said I was undergeared. Which isn't actually true. My gear was the best it could be short of raiding in the place we were at. Since it was my first time, my gear could not have been that bad. Anyway, I was told my spec, the combination of points I put into each specialization, was wrong for healing a raid, since I didn't have much to heal a large group. No use countering that, even though I was not the only healer, and I was the one who had to constantly get out of the way of the frozen ttrails.
Maybe I just needed more experience, but Warcraft players are a notoriously impatient lot, and someone had to go. I left on my own accord. I also switched to the spec that was supposed to be better for raids, and proceeded to test it on the hardest 5-man instance in the game. We wiped, twice, and the group broke up. Seems to be a recurring theme: Try twice and leave.
I heard later that the raid group I left earlier fared no better with a different healer. Do I feel better? No. I don't get smug about these things because I am inexperienced in healing a raid.
I'll keep working the different spec, and maybe I'll get comfortable enough to go back and try again. But I do really like the original spec, and maybe I'll prove it's useful in that raid.

Time for a little gaming

All right, work is done for the next 16 hours, let's play a little.
I play the World of Warcraft primarily. It's, as I've said before, an MMORPG. Massively Multiplayer. Thousands of players online on a given server at a given time. Why do those people play? For the gear, or 1337 purplz, in the vernacular. 1337, is slang for 'Leet', or elite. The purplz refers to the color of the title of the gear if you mouse over it. There are 6 tiers of gear: grey - the gear you start out with, junk, sold to vendors within the game to build your gold supply; white - usable by someone, sellable, auctionable, but not generally a money maker; green - pretty good quality gear/weapons/gems. usable by poor people (at least within the game, to make their gear passable for leveling up. Generally of little use at maximum level; blue - better quality gear than green, sells for more in the auction house (where people buy/sell things), and it is coveted at lower levels; purple - the mainstay of raiders and PVP enthusiasts, not the highest level, it's generally bind on pickup, which means if you loot this, you can't sell it on the Auction House. 1337 gear, that has different tiers of just how good it is. Some purplz are more 1337 than others, and you can get laughed at by people who have the better gear. Not the most fun part of Warcraft, at least for me.
The final tier is Legendary - very rare, usually some epic quest chain that you have to follow, that cost much time and gold to finish, and only a few have these. They are generally weapona.
The problem is, with every new patch, with every new expansion, the 1337 gear that you can get from the previous patch/expansion is meaningless. So for those that must be the most 1337  must continually grand their way to better gear. Warcraft will never end for them.
I'm not quite like that. I don't play the game for the gear, or the gold, or be being 1337. I play it because it's fun. I play it because each class, or type of character a player can make, is different. I play it to see what each class can do, to see how to fight each class in battlegrounds - where players fight each other. I play it because I can play it by myself most of the time, and can pick and choose when I want to work with others. Believe it or not there are MMORPG's where you don't have that option. You can't solo your way through content.
I play because each time I level a character I discover a different nuance to the game. It will never end for me, either, but I'm not stuck up about working with someone who has less 1337 gear than me.
So those 1337 people can have their 'fun', and I'll have mine. It is just a game, after all. amiright?