I can’t stand it.
I do a little cleaning up to put myself in a better place, and what happens? I end up doing a ton more work that I should. On this I lose what little I had in the process.
Anyway.
Had a dream last night, won’t bore you with the details. Towards the end someone tells me something happens to one of my brother on 11/11. I wake and the time is 3:33. It’s probably nothing, but I wanted a note reminding me of it. Thus.
No story of questionable merit today. Did some cleaning, worked on notes, played video games. Kind of worn out. Still, not a bad day.
Nothing for today, as I got busy. However! Tomorrow? I have an idea…
With the start of 2026, I’m hoping to make changes with my life. Starting with this blog. I’m shooting for a post a day, or, failing that, once a week. I’m trying to get a backlog of reviews over at the sister site. I’d like to finish the second draft of my novel, as well as improving my writing career in some fashion.
I make a lot of plans, only to fall short. Here’s hoping for the future, though.
[Note: The header image is AI generated by this site.]
Everything is probably a cheap answer, but it’s true. I enjoy the thinking about what to convey. I enjoy seeing black letters mar white background until the thoughts become words, the words sentences, the sentences paragraphs, and the paragraphs completed works. I enjoy editing, improving until I get it right. I enjoy reading what I’ve wrote, more if there’s been space between the process and the reading. I enjoy other people’s opinions of what I wrote.
Writing when I finish off an essay, a review, a story, and so on is the best.
I really should do it more often. Especially with this blog….
So I’m sitting at my desk, eating ramen, trying to think of what do do with my day. Something that doesn’t involve playing Minecraft.
Don’t get me wrong, I love playing Minecraft. It’s just it has been taking up too much of my day.
I’ve been doing a lot of Blender stuff, so I’d like to get back on that.
But that means setting back my writing, and believe me I’ve done plenty of that.
Plenty of that.
So I’d like to get back on my writing. Notes, story, novel, something.
But I wouldn’t mind trying once again to finish a game.
I mean, I have three different RPGMakers in my collection. That’s a lot of money for nothing to show for it. True I enjoy the experience., But I’d enjoy a completed game more.
But I’d also wouldn’t mind building the game from scratch. I’ve options there, too. More money spent that could be put to creative use.
So I could go about figuring out how to make a game without RPGMaker.
But those games need computer graphics. Stuff that Blender makes. And I really should be learning that.
But….
Yep. Just sitting here thinking, eating ramen, trying to figure out what to do with my day.
This week we’re working on a full low polygon character. This involves not only videos from the course, but at least two hours of videos from ANOTHER series of lectures. This series I’ve never done; I pooped out on the basic course after the T Rex.
Well. The T Rex is what I wanted to do.
So.
My thought is that the basic work I’m doing here can be transferred over to the main project. I hope.
Fortunately for me, Target had cut my hours down to twenty. Giving me PLENTY of time.
But so little money.
I’d hoped to pick up a second monitor. They’re cheaper than I expected. One cost about $95 bucks, which compare to all the TVs I looked at is a steal. I’d go for a slightly more expensive model, one that matches the fella I got. The hours cut, though, makes me hesitant.
Actually, I fib. I’m always hesitant to spend any money over $50. Under, it’s more of a struggle NOT to buy.
Anyways, here is where I stand now.
We got a new device, an Amazon Echo. To use it, you call out “Alexa”, then give it a command. We use it to turn on and off lights. We can even change the lights color. It is most convenient, especially for Mom.
It quickly replaced our previous little helper in our affections. The name Alexa gets called out more often than actual members of our family. It even knows my name and will sometimes say, “Sure, Cullen,” to something I’ve asked.
Which is really, really creepy. But I digress.
One of the other features Alexa can do is play Spotify music. It has a nice speaker and sounds good. This, too, gets frequent use.
Except when music started playing in the house ten minutes ago, no one asked for it.
The music just started.
Nearest we could figure it heard whatever video Mom was listening to and decided on it’s own to respond. No big deal. I call out, “Alexa, stop.”
Only she doesn’t stop.
Todd tries, “Alexa, stop playing music.”
Nothing doing.
We keep right on calling out instructions, without any luck. Todd starts losing his cool, to the point he’s disturbing Daisy Mae. Poor dog comes running over to me for protection.
The music, while nice, keeps playing. Todd even tries to mute the silly thing and nothing works.
By this point, I’ve disengaged from the upset dog and walked into the living room. Alexa has a screen that displays Spotify when she… it is playing the app. I should be able to turn off the music that way. Failing that, I can unplug it. If that fails, I throw it to the floor and stop on it until it stops.
Very tech savvy I am.
Only when I reach the device, I don’t see the Spotify app. In fact, I can see that the volume on Alexa has been turned off, per Todd’s request.
The source of the music? Remember how I mentioned a previous little helper? She… I mean it. It was playing the music the whole time.
I’m not sure what this all means. Perhaps the other helper just wanted to remind us it was still there. Or perhaps this is the first sign that the computer devices have come to replace us all.
Dunno, don’t care. I’m just hunting up my shovel and burying both devices. To be safe.
Past few days I’ve had two songs running through my head non-stop.
The first, “Wrap It Up” by the Fabulous Thunderbirds, I understand. I’m making wraps at work, it triggers the song. Fine.
What I don’t understand is why “Is You is or is You Ain’t My Baby” stuck on repeat in my head. And not any version; the version Tom the Cat sings in that old cartoon of his.
I’m not really complaining–I love the song–but it makes no sense to me.
So I was making multigrain sandwiches Sunday at work. Part of the usual routine at Target. I get out the bread and lettuce, cut the meat, tomato and cheese, then assemble the sandwich. When that’s done, I seal them up in the proper boxes. From there I go to the scales, where I print up price labels for the whole thing. Punch in a nine number sequence and out they come.
You’d think this all would be boring. It isn’t, at least for me. There’s something about filling up shelves one day and finding those same shelves empty the next that’s really satisfying.
I try to make a lot of product. That particular Sunday I made up I believe eight full sandwiches and eight half sandwiches. Everything went smoothly. No customers came up to bother me. Things went well.
Right up until I made the labels.
Making the labels weren’t the problem. They were cued up and came out just like clockwork.
It was only after I put a few labels on that I noticed a problem.
They read Ham and Swiss.
I hadn’t cut any Swiss.
I distinctly remember cutting up Havarti.
I look over my prep table. There sat sixteen boxes I had to open up and replace the cheese in. This is not an easy process. The boxes are a bear to open up. Then there’s cutting up the Swiss, putting it in the sandwich, and so on. So much time wasted. So much food wasted.
Oh well. What can you do, right?
So I start to reach for one of the labeled boxes when something else occurred to me.
Yes, I didn’t cut up any Swiss. I also didn’t cut up any Ham.
I had made Turkey and Havarti sandwiches. The nine number sequence for which was right near the Ham and Swiss sequence.
I’d given the printer the wrong numbers and got the wrong labels.
So instead of screwing up a bunch of sandwiches, I caught myself before screwing up a bunch of sandwich boxes.
Not that that’s a big deal. I just like going from feeling really, really stupid to felling only kinda stupid. Nice change of pace, really…
