Author: admin

I am giving serious consideration to changing my workspace. Half my desk remains unused and hidden behind a screen. It is that way because of how my monitors are mounted on the desk–something that doesn’t appear to be modable due to the physics of the desk. The space is dirty, and crowded, and fails to execute the basic tenet of “make me feel good about writing.” Therefore, I need to switch things up in an effort to start feeling more relaxed and focused in my writing.

What focuses me on writing? I think I’m a forest-punk kind of guy. I want to have tech from various ags all around me–the cobble together or reuse kind of stuff in an environment that feels like it is foresty. I know that is not a real word, but it conveys the idea of trees and green and lush, calm life. Sadly I work in an office that faces the rising son and gets a ton of heat and has bad (basically broken) AC that costs too much to fix, so the green is unlikely or at best seasonal. However, I can add a water feature and maybe manufacture some level of additional storage to hide my clutter. This is progress.

Some Thoughts:

1. I am beginning to think about the things that keep me happy, focused, and thus productive. The time conversation was extremely helpful and enabled me to gamify progress a bit. I dig gamification in the sense that it helps me apply my thinking to a problem in a fun fashion.
2. Ok, marbles and writing it is!

I have not addressed the Luka trade. I think we all feel like the Lakers won right there? At least in the short term the team is primed to be very good. I feel for players like Dalton Knecht who are full of promise but got dealt because of the big man issue. At the same time that deal fell through, so they are kinda back with the team? I’m not sure how that impacts the locker room. All I really know is Luka and Bron are dangerous. They create enough that the other weapons on that team are gonna have chances to score.

I am getting excited about spring ball. Though unorthodox, the way Northern Colorado approaches the situation is working to develop my kid. They are a gym first program. He needed that physical boost. Meanwhile he is loving in the film room and that is making him better. Should be a good season for him next year. He’s ready to pop out.

feeling the same about the young one. He’s got a lot of work to do in terms of learning the game but he too loves on film—just the til tok clip kind. He needs to turn the corner this JR year.

that’s all. Ten on the phone takes longer.

Some Thoughts:

1. Solid writing today. Kept the phone out of the space for the second hour and really did good. All I needed was quiet.
   

I’m not turning back this Tuesday. I am looking forward. I recently came to the reasoning that I deserve $50-$100 an hour for my writing. Given that I’ve written a pair of novels, a half dozen novellas of which 3 have been paid for and one published professionally and one published just on my own (I’m thinking about putting it up online again though through DrivethruRPG), I have the talent and history for the pay. I am going to be pushing to enroll in an MFA program this week, and that is designed to get me the credentials to continue teaching post my present tenure. The writing though, that’s the thing that is entirely in my power. It is not about how many cents per word I get. It is more about how fast I produce those words. So, if I am (and I am) writing a 12,000 word project and I believe I ought to be able to get $50 an hour, it means I need to get it done in 24 hours. That equates 500 words an hour. That is actually entirely doable–especially if I can seriously lock in and schedule it well. How long would a project like that actually take to do ‘in the zone’ of getting a solid 500 words an hour over the course of a week? 14 days at two hours a day and two days of not writing.

So why isn’t that happening?

Research, distractions, freaking life. I need to lock in. If I can do that—If I can shut out reality for two hours a day, I can be the writer I need to be.

I just completed a difficult scripted conversation with a plumbing company employee that made me realize that some jobs can and should be replaced by AI. It was enough of a moment that I honestly felt like it was worth a blog. There is more to this moment than this one phone call. I’ve worked with several internet providers over the years and reaching out to them is… difficult. They use phone systems that are not driven by sophisticated technology and designed solely to route me away from the human help I actually need. I need the human help because whenever I call one of these systems I am trying to deal with a nuanced problem. AI, from my understanding of the level of technology in its present state, is not very good at nuance in that respect. However, transcribing my information into a system in order to get a truck out to my house to look at a problem should not take a 10 minute phone call. I could hear her typing in the information as we spoke. I could hear in the pauses and the variety of tap pressure and speed when she got hung up on something and or needed to read from a prompt. It was as if she was working for the computer and, because I called, it needed her voice to talk to me. They have programs for that too now.

The more I consider the role of AI in jobs the more I find myself asking two fundamentally different questions. The first isn’t even about AI itself. The question is instead about people. Do we create jobs in order to hire people who do not have the skills or intelligence to find other more heightened forms of employment? I mean who actually needs someone to hold a sign on a corner and maybe spin it a few times to direct you towards a particular business. Real Estate people do that pop up work with A-frames. Likewise, are we still at a space where we need a room full of booking agents (yes, I heard other people in the background doing the same dang thing) transcribing data into a system that can better speak for itself?

The second question is about the technology. What level of nuance and understanding is required to carry out the role of a booker or of someone of other administrative functionality? What is needed of a teacher? Both of these are roles AI is being used to replace to some capacity. So, what does it say aout those roles and what we need from those roles vs. what AI is capable of offering?

24-0.

That’s all I really need to say about that. ‘Quon still needs to get live and I feel like they will lean heavy into the run in the second half. Give that man his ring!

As for Kendrick…

I was disappointed there was no Wayne, but the show was actually pretty cool. I worry that we have too high standards in terms of what the show can be. The spectacle needs to include the unexpected, and Nick Fury was not enough. Don’t get me wrong, Samuel L Jackson was a great touch and the message Kendrick pushed was really solid. I loved the American Flag of black men. How could I not?! We are also American in spite of what the new government makeover says. Kendrick even said, “You chose the wrong guy.”

There is a lot to say positively about that show and I want to see it agian to hear how he meshed the songs together and the inherent message in that and in what lines he chose to say. A lot of good here. Just not the spectacle I expected… I guess I really expected Wayne.

I had a moment today when I had to realize that not everyone lives in the screen space. The Lady Talis doesn’t. She does not understand what it is like to move from screen to screen chasing that high you get in each iteration. I used to think of it as running from something; even hiding from myself. Now I see it for the fix and the feeling that it is. I spend my morning moving from fiction to fiction to fiction. Three iterations of worlds cast on different screens. I rarely slow down to catch a minute of down or human time. That doesn’t bother me. When I need it, I take it. When I want it–when I want to step away from that churn–I take it. But it keeps me going. I use the fictions to create my fiction. Not the content of the game or the show I then switch to, but the energy of it; the knowing that this was created and experiencing that creation as motivation to make my own. That churn keeps me motivated in the cycle. It keeps me away from the natural world and all of its problems and responsibilities. It is hard for someone who doesn’t work like that to really fathom how that works. Even here in explanation I wonder if it makes sense to someone other than me.

I am going to interpret today as a fail. When I go back through this blog in a future Turnback Tuesday and go over my week, there is going to be no other way to interpret this. I did not put in the work I needed to put in today. I started late, I worked very little, and I wrote less than a thousand words on the day. Heck, the production across these ten minutes may rival what I was able to put down over the course of hours writing on this current project. Why? Distractions–internal and external. I struggle at times to maintain focus and get the work done. I do not always have it in me to lock in and follow through on the work. I do not have a space in which I can block out all distractions and be forced to put in that work. I used to experiment with leaving the house to go somewhere else to get locked in, but it costs money to go anywhere beyond my office at work, and the work office comes with its own set of social issues, distractions, and work. The hardest thing for me to do in life is not be distracted and stay zoned in on the writing that I am doing. While I realize this serves as a red flag to those who want to hire me (or read my work) and read this blog, I have to be honest. Heck, ten plus years of the dang blog argues I have been consistently honest about this process and still manage to get through these projects in spite of my personal drawbacks.

I don’t want to get through projects though. I want to be able to maintain focus through a project and get the work done faster so I can generate more projects and have more and better writing experiences. I am tired of being only a middling writer. I need to ball out.

It is hard to experience the politics of the USA without getting a sense of whiplash. So far we’ve offered a claim on the Panama Canal, Canada, Greenland, and Gaza. That last one caught me off guard a little. Gaza?! Why would we assume the world would accept us just snatching up Gaza–or anything else for that matter. I am beginning to fear that all of this craziness is being done on a whim or worse, masking a real motive and opportunity. We know we’ve deployed troops to the border and discussed using special forces to go after the drug trade. If we begin to normalize the other crazy then this will be entirely acceptable in a country where crazy is slowly becoming commonplace.

We are in for a tough few years and a tougher fallout coming out of them.

Some Thoughts:

1. Been playing Dragons Dogma 2 again. It’s okay. I’m having fun. Been a while since a game has been fun.
2. Been having fun watching Shangri-la Frontier as well. It is enjoyable. When did I start worrying about something being “good” vs enjoyable?
3. Also, the Raspberry Racers caught their first medal in the All Stars! They aren’t really in contention to win the thing, but a good showing in the next two could move them from 10 to top 5.

I tasked my Game Studies class with watching the Super Bowl this weekend. They were not pleased. This new crop of students, like the last, is not connected to the sporting world. They are the people of fringe indy games and visual novels. This business of grown ass men slamming into each other at peak velocity is nonsensical–as are the storylines surrounding those actions. Of course, the narrative and the ludology of it all is what we are studying and thus what we are going to be examining in the class… and in the blog.

I think the Eagles win. They are the better team on offense, and they have enough of a defense to make things close. It will be close, but it will not be a low scoring affair if Mr. Barkley has anything to say about it. Facts being what they are, no team has stopped him this season. He’s faced as good as or better defenses than the Chiefs. While they are the 3rd best defense against the run they have been giving up over 100 yards to backs in the post season. Yes, some of that is without Game-wrecker Jones on the field, but in Saquon we trust.

Honestly, for me #26 is the story. I’ve watched the dude since that amazing practice moment at Penn State when his o-line failed him and he still broke off the entire D-line.

It was on from there. He did the same thing throughout a wonderful Giants career and was cast aside because of a plan that backfired on the current administration. Now he has a chance to be great and cement his name in history. Go get yours 26. I’m rooting for you.

I thought about writing about the Bianca Censori nude debacle, but then I wanted to give all parties a moment to sort the nonsense out. The Nude look is not new and ladies have been showing the tatas in force this year. So I guess her lack of bottoms and any so-called illusions normally cast by a slightly not completely clear fabric is removed. Moving on.

This one is actually about Trump. More to the point it is about how different things are moving now vs. a few years back. The issue now is that Trump has people who want to and have the will and skill to make the big moves. So, things are happening. The one I am most focused on is the way Musk is getting backdoor keys to unlock as much of the governments money expenditures–at shut them down–as he likes. That scares me if for no other reason than the people who love America love us for what we provide–be it culturally or financially–and now we are pulling the plug on all of that aid.

We are ruining our world credibility in real time, and I have to watch it happen. Moreover, the Lady and I are getting married in Canada this year and those people are straight pissed at Americans. So there is some concerns that are more personal than political. It is making me into a target for hate that is entirely undeserved.

That is ten minutes of not well thought out reasoning. At this rate I could be the president.