Kick Off The Week

Today's Monday and, in spite of my predisposition to get up at 6AM, I woke up late today. That was mainly because the kids decided to go insane last night right at bed time. Isaac and Felicity had fallen asleep before the sun went down and woke up just as we were heading to bed. For his part Titus decided to throw a fit just as I was trying to drift off to sleep. Rachel finally managed to get him to sleep, but I have no idea what time that happened. I'm hoping to have better luck tonight. I really want to get back on schedule. There's lot to do and the earlier I get started the earlier I get finished.


Work went well today. I managed to get my e-mail and forums work taken care of pretty quickly and shot off another submission for my book. I'm hoping I can keep sending one out a day until I find a publisher. Of course, I wasn't really able to get as much done today as I wanted because, once again, I had to head into town. Rachel had to come with me for two reasons: First there was some paperwork we both needed to sign. Second, there were groceries we needed to get and if I went alone I would have come home without most of them. I hate grocery shopping.


Once we got home I slipped quickly into “goof off” mode. I'm hoping to have more time for work and more time for goofing both tomorrow. That's mainly because Rachel is going to take the boys and go get some more furniture without me. I'll be here watching most of the other children (obviously she's going to take the baby with her) and working away. We've submitted the second Kickstarter campaign for approval and are awaiting with baited breath to hear the answer. I feel very confident that we'll get approval, but I'm also confident it won't happen for a few days.


I really wanted to launch the campaign tomorrow, but I don't expect that to happen. On the other hand at least it will give me a chance to catch up on a few other things. There's a lot of work left to do and I want to get as much done as we can before the second KS kicks off.

Anyways, I'm still dragging a bit from last night, so I'm calling it here. I hope you guys enjoyed the pictures. They're from our trip to Aiken :)

Goodnight from South Carolina!

Cascade Success

The title of this post represents what it is I hope to have soon. That is to say, a cascade success. If I can get up on my feet in any one area it ought to help me get completely up on my feet. Take Worlds of Magic for example. If it's the success I hope it is I'll have the money I need to pull Console Classix up to the next level. I have a number of improvements in mind that might literally make it a multimillion dollar company. Getting my book published on top of that would be real icing on the cake. For the last few years I've been working away plowing and planting. The thing is that the harvest belongs to the Lord. I can only do what I do and keep plowing and planting. Success isn't mine to give or take. The crop grows because God makes it grow. I'm hoping and praying He's about to make my crop grow, lol. I know I've been talking a lot about that lately, but it's on my mind a lot. There are so many things I want to do and I'm not going to be able to do many of them until I can make some more money. I've put in a lot of work the last few years, it just hasn't been overly profitable.


Of course, the game is going very, very well. Today we put up version 4.44 of the battle board. We're hoping to get a little more feedback before we put up the public version tomorrow or the next day. Already the team has made great strides. It is much better than it was just last week. It won't be long and the battle board will be complete and we'll be moving on to finishing the world map. We want to get a “vertical slice” ready as quickly as we can so we can line up a publisher. Strictly speaking we don't really need one, but I think we'll get much better sales if we do have one. Plus we'll be able to get an advance and if we need any extra money for graphics or what have you that will come in handy. We're working real hard to make sure WoM is a smash hit. We have a lot of ideas for the future and want to create a lot of DLC (Downloadable Content) for the game. The bigger the game is to begin with the more quickly we'll be able to add things.


I'm really hoping that by next week I'll have the time to work on some of my other game ideas. Having seen just how Worlds of Magic has taken shape I now realize how important it is to start working on your Development Doc early. I've jotted down a few notes for future ideas, but I haven’t had much time to fill them out. After all, I have to work on them in my spare time. I have enough dev work to handle with Worlds of Magic. I can't work on other games “on the clock” as it were. Again, this may not seem like much of a leisure activity to most of you, but my brain gets a rest out of it just because it's a change of pace.


Anyways, that's enough about that, on to what we did today. I got up late, but still in plenty of time to get ready for Church. The older boys had gone to spend the night with Young Jacob and the girls had gone to spend the night with Granny. That was very convenient because everyone woke up with a ride, lol. Rachel woke up a little under the weather and decided to stay home in case she was sick. She kept the three younger boys with her to make things easier on me. I ended up meeting Mom Y. at her house and she and I took the girls to Church together. On the way home we ran into some bike race and it took us about an hour to make the fifteen minute ride home. Because of that I got back to the house late and as a result I wasn't able to get playing as early as I wanted. I did get some gaming in, but not near as much as I wanted. I'm just going to have to aim for next weekend, lol.

In just a few minutes I plan to get to watching TV. I want to get as much “relax” as possible in what's left of my Sunday. So, in the spirit of that, goodnight from South Carolina!

Blink And It's Gone

So it's Saturday. That is to say, it's Saturday afternoon. It seems like only moments ago it was Saturday morning. The day has just flown by for a number of reasons. To start with I got up late. That was mainly because I felt like I was in a coma when the alarm went off this morning. I was having dreams about being back in Dominica. I don't remember much about them, but I know we were having fun and the weather was great. Lord willing, it won't be long and we'll get to go back. The weather here is already to my disliking. It was cold when I first walked outside this morning. Well, colder than it ever was in Dominica. I think it was probably around 60 degrees. I just checked the weather channel and the low this morning was actually 57. Just think of that my dear Dominican friends. It was 57 here and it's only been fall a few days. I'm not looking forward to the winter, lol.


Anyways, once I finally got up and got moving I jumped on work. I only had a few e-mails to answer and after that I did a little bit of work on the forums. I was very glad I didn't have too much that needed to be done this morning. My brain has been frazzled. In fact, I'm having a hard time focusing enough to write this post. Either way, once my work was done I headed to Williston again with Ben and Alec to pick up our old washer and dryer. Kateri (my sister-in-law) had been using them, but she's moving into a new place and won't need a washer and dryer for a while. She's finishing up her degree (which is really going to be a blessing) and is staying with our cousins while she's in school. She's only got one semester to go so she should be done by this coming summer. Rachel was very glad to have her washer and dryer back. Before we head back to Dominica we're going to have to make arrangements for appliances :)


Getting the washer and dryer out of one house and into the other proved to be easier that I had feared it would be. Still it took us hours to move them and switch the “old” ones out for the “new” ones. I'm just glad to have it done.

One thing I may have forgotten to mention over the past few days is that we lost another hard drive recently. One of the computers got knocked on its side while it was running. Normally that's not a big deal. This time it killed the hard drive. We've been having to watch Netflix on Libby's laptop every night. I remembered to mention it today because I decided to pick up an old Console Classix server that's been out of use for a few years. It has a compatible hard drive so I thought I would just pull the hard drive out of the server and put it in the other computer. Well, I pulled the hard drive out and guess what! It's bad! That's the third drive in the last two months. I'm getting sick of it. In fact, I mean to buy a couple of hard drives next week. I'm going to buy Solid State Drives because they have no moving parts. You can punt them while they're running and they won't break. They're small, but we don't need a lot of room to work on Facebook or watch Nextflix and that's what we do with the computers that need the drives. I figure if I get hard-to-break drives they'll be less likely to break, lol.


I did get a little time to play SWTOR, but not much. Tomorrow may or may not be better. We've got to make arrangements to get everyone to Church. I think Dad E. is just going to come by with the van. For the next few weeks moving us all around is going to be a bit of a pain. I could really use a few more vehicles. And a pile of money would be nice. I've got so much I need to buy (as well as pay-off) it can almost make you dizzy. At the moment I feel almost like a “starving artist” although I don't quite qualify. I mean, I am an artist in my own way, I'm just not really starving. On the other hand I've been working on this game for over 18 months and so far I haven't made anything from it.

Of course, on the other hand, I've also spent I don't know how many hours writing and haven't been published yet either, lol. As most of you know I've written two novels. Many of you probably also know that I wrote a book-long collection of childhood stories a few years ago. I'm up to several hundred thousand unpublished words at this point. Still, you can't let yourself get discouraged, you have to keep on trying. That's why I sent off another submission this morning. This time it was to TOR UK. Lord willing, this “unsuccessful streak” is about to come to an end. I suppose time will tell :)


I guess I'm going to go for now. I'll try to keep you guys posted. I'm shooting manuscripts out here and there and the Kickstarter video is currently being rendered on five different computers (Les finally gave up on the rendering farm). There's a lot going on and I'm really hoping all of it is going to pay off. I've been working for years now without any major successes to my name. I'm praying that I'm nearing the end of the tunnel now. I'm more than ready to break back into the bright sunlight of success, lol.

Anyways, I need to eat and shower and get in bed to watch some TV. So, goodnight from South Carolina!

A Bit Of Work

This morning I woke up at around 4:30AM. I couldn't get back to sleep so I decided I might as well get to work. As usual I checked my e-mail first thing. To my amazement I didn't have any Worlds of Magic e-mails at all. I was a little shocked and shot Les a message to let him know I was up. As it turned out, part of the reason I hadn't had any word was because the rendering software we're using for the KS video crashed. So, they had to start it over. Lord willing it will be done over the weekend. The video was sent out to a rendering farm because it would take 20 to 40 hours to do it on a normal machine. At this point that might have actually saved time... Oh well, there's nothing for it, but to press on. I can't wait to see the video. I really hope it turns out looking good. It took me hours to record my section of it. I don't even know if they got any video of the rest of the team. I know they were talking about it, but I don't know what the final decision was.


A little later in the morning one of the team (Mat) got in touch with me to ask about Unit Abilities. I'll spare you the details, but I had to put together a long list of what units need to be able to do in the game. Once I was “done” with that we decided that I needed to flesh out the list of roaming creatures (creatures that wander around the map not really serving anyone) to see if we missed any abilities we might need. Fortunately I had already started work on the list a while back. In order to fill it out we're going to try use some “off the shelf” solutions. For one thing we really could use some more common monsters in the list. Leaving “mundane” monsters out of a game like this would be like leaving potatoes out of stew. It just wouldn't be the same without them.

In addition to all this I got a little more work done on the forums. There's a debate about one of the races that's actually being managed by one of the volunteer moderators. He's done a great job! It looks like it's going to save me a whole lot of time which is nice. In fact, I got an early enough start and things went well enough that I actually found the time to send a submission off to another publisher. Be praying for me. I intent to start trying to send out around ten submissions a week until I get a hit. As I've said many times before: “It may not be the great American novel, but it's still pretty good.” Lord willing it will just be a matter of determination. Keep on keeping on as they say, lol.


I also got time to play SWTOR and am edging ever closer to playing WoT. If tomorrow goes as well as today I may be playing tomorrow night. Of course, we have to go back to Williston for another load of stuff. I'm hoping we can knock that out quickly and get back to the house. I really want to get a rest. Saturday is about my best day for rest. People only expect me to do a minimum amount of work and we don't have Church.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy going to Church. In fact, now we have an A week/B week thing going on where we're visiting two congregations. The problem at the moment is that we're short on vehicles. Dad has been working on his van since right after we got back to the US. It's not up and running yet, but he's getting close. Even when we get the van back it's going to need a bit of work. Plus, with Alec here, we're actually short two seats when it's time to head to Church. The result is car juggling and extra effort. All in all the result is: Not Restful.


Obviously it's worth the effort, I just wish I was going to have more real “time off” this weekend (or “free up” as they say in Dominica). Still, the truth is that we probably won't launch the new KS campaign until Tuesday, so I may be able to take a little time off on Monday (We do have to run up town to get some paper work notarized and mailed off, but that shouldn't take too long.) I am hoping and praying that it won't take me more than a few hours a day to manage the campaign. This time I think we're a lot more organized and we know a lot more up front about what to expect. This will actually be my third campaign and hopefully my second successful one.


Either way, I've gabbed on enough for this afternoon. If you wonder what the pictures are of they're of the neighborhood. I took a quick walk around the block and snapped a few photos. I also forgot to mention that Caleb has befriended one of the neighborhood boys. Little AJ is also seven. So far they're getting on like a house on fire. He's very happy to have a friend nearby his own age. That hasn't been common for the little guy. Even when we were living in Williston his cousin Gideon only came over about once a week. Really we need to have him over soon. I think Gabriel is planing to spend the weekend with us. I suppose we'll pick him up tomorrow if he doesn't get dropped off tonight.

Either way, I obviously feel a little bit better. This post is a little longer than they have been lately, lol. So, for now, goodnight from South Carolina!