Share your unfinished business. What have you been creating recently? What still needs work? What projects keep you up at night? Let's talk about them.
I'm halfway done with a folk-punk song, based on a real thing my friend said but about which I immediately asked: "are those lyrics?" Hoping for a more optimistic second verse, as indicated by the perhaps-puzzling turn to a major feel underneath the chorus's apparently fatalistic exhortation, "So toss me into the lake / and leave me there" (which is, incidentally, the aforementioned remark, which my friend also didn't mean nearly as pessimistically as it sounds). Here's the start:
I am working on Forever Labs. We have raised a round of funding to build out a b2b side of our business and ramp up the consumer side as it relates to storing cells from adipose tissue. We have secured a partnership with the largest liposuction provider in the US. They do 30k a year and are in 41 locations. We have a 5x NBA Allstar coming on board to be a brand ambassador. Attempting to get more brand recognition and make stem cell banking less "weird" and into something people aspire to do. Setting up the ability for our clients to donate the portion of their cells we use for quality assurance to research, in an anonymous way. This is exciting on a number of fronts. Working to increase sales. We have flatlined around 30-40 signups a month. We've implemented some online/digital marketing programs that seem to be working. Problem is our sales cycle is long so it's hard to immediately measure. I stopped eating bread, pasta and rice. So far I've probably lost around 7 pounds. I feel great. Been playing tennis. I"m working on Forever Labs and my health. Both are heading in the right direction. I dig your song, galen.
I recently finished a giant stuffed penguin. He is about 85 cm across and 75 cm high. I use him as a pillow to lean against in bed while reading.
The bike is effectively done. Already has 80 miles on it. Someone stopped me yesterday and said "man, that's a cool-looking bike!" So that was nice. I also recently decided that the dim-ass single-LED-Bulb existence of my prison cell down here needed a little revision. About $120 worth of Ikea leaves, about $60 worth of Amazon color-changing LED strips and a staple gun later and now it's a bit more awesome. It also changes color. Sometimes I turn them all red and pretend I'm trying to fall asleep on Mars. I made about a gallon of limoncello but it's still steeping. I also changed out the video board on a 55" plasma in hopes of getting a $3k TV for $70 but it didn't fix it so I had to send it back. And I have a trio of 7750s - a new-old-stock never-used Gerald Genta with dial and hands, a tried-to-fix-it-but-it's-kludged Omega with a Universal Geneve dial I bought special and a Chopard 7754 (which is a 7750 chronograph with a world time hand) that I intend to replace the Omega with. If I can figure out a clever way to make myself a 24-hour chapter ring that doesn't look like ass I'll have a Universal Geneve Senna with world time and a panda dial. But that's a ways out. It looks like I'm going to have to learn 3cx. I'm not really looking forward to it.
My mid-life crisis motorcycle rebuild project keeps running into interesting, intensely practical problems that I need to solve before moving on. Here's some of them: - the factory manual has shitty photos and directions about how to do basic things. So I had to buy the Clymer manual to get better images and step-by-step instructions. - motors don't actually sit nicely on a workbench, like you have seen in countless photos. They need to be supported with some sort of stand. That I had to design and build. - Too-tight bolts don't just require more leverage to remove... because sometimes you just break the head off the bolt, instead of unscrewing it. So now I get to learn how to remove broken bolts... and buy new tools to do it. - Previous owners/mechanics did not do work on this bike very well. So there are three other bolt heads that are terribly damaged. So now I am learning how to employ MANY different methods to remove stripped screws, bolts, and other hardware. - Old engine liquids (oil, coolant, etc.) need to come out of the motor... get put into some sort of receptacle... and then disposed of. Each of these three steps has unexpected complexities that need to be addressed. - Most of my tools have been used for work around the house. Electrical. Drywall. Construction. Using them on a greasy, oily motorcycle makes the tools dirty. Now, every "work session" on the bike is followed by a "tool cleaning session" so I don't track oil and grease all over the rest of my life. - Google is not helpful for finding parts, in almost every instance. Every single motorcycle parts manufacturer and supplier makes every single item on their website respond to ANY year/make/model information you enter. So I may search for "piston rings Suzuki VX800", and be presented with piston rings for 1940-1960's Harleys, Suzuki-themed wedding rings, brake pads for an Audi, leather motorcycle gloves, and seven pages of results of EBay listings for motorcycle tail lights. No. SERIOUSLY. And I'm an old database developer, so I know VERY well how to limit Google search results, the mysterious god-like powers of "+" and quotation marks, etc. - Wrenching on this motor (and specifically removing stuck bolts) has actually injured my wrist. So I need to give it a break for a few days and heal. So in the interim, I am designing and building a new light over our front door. Yesterday I built an electrical testing rig for my workbench that I have been wanting to make for several years, so I can test the various vintage electronic parts I am assembling to make this light... the rig didn't work, of course, but it is close. (Wiring switches is a dark science that you need to be in the right headspace to do properly.) I'm also playing "husband" to the single Mom next door neighbor, who needs a bunch of handyman stuff done around the house. Carpentry. Electrical. Simple stuff for me, but she is really grateful for the help. The final design for our backyard landscape/hardscaping is pretty much done. Hoping to get that started this month, with contractors doing the hard part of the work, so I can do the fun stuff. Oh. And I'm going tuna fishing in two weeks, too.
We've started renovating a space in my parent's basement to live in so we can help out around the house/land. The lease here isn't up till January, but I wanna get that shit done. It's been stressing me the fuck out. I ended up mocking up the floor plan and our furniture in CAD so we could get a feel for how the downsizing cookie is gonna crumble. It is gonna be a quarter the space of our current place, but conquering bedbugs a while back made a lot of downsizing decisions for us. Spending a lot of time staring at the layout puzzling out walk paths and public / private spaces. The owners before my parents used the space to run a business, so it is more or less independent of the rest of the house. Figuring out how to get multiple uses of a space is an interesting challenge, but not really one I'm passionate about. Feels more like work.
Yikes. Bedbugs are bad news. I once slept in a "hotel" in SF that was littered with them. I went and got trash bags and covered everything I touched with plastic. With some careful quarantine procedures, I miraculously didn't bring any back. If you haven't already tried: bedbugs don't handle heat too well (eggs neither). They are weaker than pets and babies. You could stuff all your possessions into a car, seal it up, and park it in the summer sun somewhere for an afternoon to be rid of them. The ones in the car at least.
Alas, we've already had our entire unit heat treated once and sprayed twice. The exterminator that did it offers a 6 month "guarantee" so the subsequent callbacks have been free but he hasn't exactly been confidence inspiring to deal with. Our lease has a clause where the tenant is responsible for paying for treatment. And the guy they called out was more than a month's rent. So I wouldn't be too surprised if someone else in the building had them and was staying mum about it. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
Music stuff: I've been working on an album for some time now. It's really pretty close to ready. But I think it needs a couple more songs on it. flac and I have also been shuttling songs back and forth and I think there's some really cool stuff coming out of it Work stuff: I'm taking over a lab and I am in the process of getting everything ship-shape. The lab was supposedly functional not long before I had arrived, but had a documentation procedure which can be described as document nothing, and a data infrastructure that consisted of literal piles of unlabelled loose hard drives, among other fun systems. I got some things in good enough order last week that I could process some samples for grad students and earn the lab its first $280--no $32--no $96? I'm not really sure yet because the pricing schedule I'm stuck with for the next month is absurd and probably mislabeled. The service probably should cost $32, but the strictest interpretation of the schedule is upwards of $280 because the previous guy gouged the fuck out of basic services. Mead: Made a gallon of orange mead (technically melomel) the other week. It's happily bubbling on the counter. I haven't made any in some time. I still have bottles of previous batches that I wasn't a big fan of. We'll see how this goes.
Honestly, it's tough for me to talk about my software projects in a way that gets other people excited about them. To begin with, people don't understand how code works or how difficult it can be to do something that seems simple. I'm working on curriculum management software for a local NPO, and given that I'm in Nebraska this XKCD seems almost too apropos: They want to pay me for the work I'm doing, but honestly I'd be happy to just get the project out the door and off my plate. I do most of my freelancing for spending money, but this one feels like a good cause and I'm thinking about just doing it for free. Frankly, though, I'm not a fantastic solo dev. I can slot into a team extremely well as long as other more experienced people are managing headaches like architecture and deployments. I'm good at programming, but I'm still learning all the surrounding technology that makes a website work well! I think on some level I don't feel like I deserve to be paid for a project that's way, way behind schedule and written with code I don't feel totally confident about. Either way, I'm trying to finish that up in the next two weeks. Getting it out of my weekly planning spreads is going to make me happier than money in my bank account. I know I deserve to be paid, but it's tough to ask for what I feel like I deserve sometimes.
I'm back to reading the New Testament, and am blogging about it here. For the time being I'm leaving that particular blog focused on my spiritual journey, while I've started another one for everything else going on. I love the idea of blogging regularly, but I tend to start feeling self conscious pretty quickly so I stop. Part of dealing with my ADHD is to resist that. In the real world: 1. Actually file our taxes (I got an extension back in April which runs out soon). 2. Finish setting up my new home office. My wife wanted a space of her own, so she took the room I used to use, and I'm now in a different one. I'd like to make this space as comfortable as possible, since the work I'm doing in here sucks, largely. 3. Find a new drawing tutor (I had one I liked, but she moved cross-country like a year ago). 4. Read some books. A Choir of Ill Children by Thomas Piccirilli, and continue with Yo el supremo.
I have a McIntosh MC30 with a bad transformer that's partially replaced. The MC30 is a mono power amplifier from the 1950s. This has been in pieces for years. I have a second MC30 with a fault I haven't even started troubleshooting. It makes a nasty hum when I turn it on. I don't know. But my third MC30 works! I just need to get back to two good ones.
I have been writing music. I have been writing essays of thought. I have been putting together a business plan. The book I have been reading has been dull, but short. I have been designing a wedding dress though. c: