Mizblog

My New Moon project has gone into its playtesting phase! Finally, after four long and difficult years of planning, coding, scrapping, stealing, cajoling, manipulating, testing, redesigning, crying, and a lot of drinking, it’s almost ready to go.

Hopefully no catastrophic flaw will show up to sink it all again. This is the 3rd rewrite and I don’t know that I’d survive a fourth.

Finally I got a real desk! Well, it’s a workstation desk and not a business desk, but that’s perfect for me.

http://img3.musiciansfriend.com/dbase/pics/products/54/546553.jpg

I had to remove the keyboard tray to make it comfortable, but it’s awesome! Both my monitors and both my speakers fit on the top shelf, both my computers fit in the right side rack space, and all my music rack gear fits in the bottom 1/3 of the left rack. I haven’t put anything on the middle shelves yet, but give me time.

The desk took almost 3 hours to build. Before that I spent an hour deconstructing my old setup, moving everything out of the room, and vacuuming where until today was behind the immovable kitchen table.

Once clean, I dragged the 185 pounds of new desk parts into the room, unpacked them, checked them against the parts manifest, and started assembling. I had heard that some of the quality control of these desks was a bit lacking so I was very careful to make sure everything was right before did anything that might cause damage.

Turns out everything was in order, and I got the desk assembled with a minimum of trouble. I spent the rest of the afternoon putting my computer systems on the desk and firing them up. Once they were hot I showered and had a short nap. My hands and back are exhausted and sore.

After the computers were up, I tore all my music rack gear out of the mobile rack and mounted it in the lower left rack. I’ve got a tiny 3′ power cable running from my amp to the back of the power sink, and it’s limiting where I can put the head. I should have splurged and got a longer cable. My speaker cables to the speakers are 20′ long and only need to be about 4′ and 8′ respectively. Maybe 5′ and 10′. Who cares? At least they reach!

Tomorrow’s going to be long and painful. I’d better get enough sleep tonight.

It always seems to happen. Once the massive pressure is lifted off my shoulders, I enter a phase of creative productivity. I also figured out how to solve a problem that stumped me for half of last week. Nice. :)

I’m also catching up on my sleep a bit. I don’t yet have a regular routine but at least I’m sleeping a lot. Note the correlation between sleep and productivity. Also note the negative correlation between stress and sleep. I need less stress. For a while it was so much that it was debilitating.

Much better now.

The weekend is half over. I’ve just posted a new software release. I feel much more relaxed now than I did before.

Sangeeta is stressing over her accounting though. I hope it’s not contagious. I think she wants to go to Thousand Oaks today to look at a new shopping center. That’ll be nice except for the drive. It’s a beautiful day.

I know it’s starting to sound like a broken record (remember those?) but I’m pretty stressed out. I’m preparing for a major business presentation of our software and it still looks ugly. I’ve got to get it looking presentable by tomorrow.

Stress!

I got a UPS yesterday. Well, truth be told I got it Sunday, but I had to charge up the batteries overnight so I couldn’t use it until yesterday. It’ll run both my computers for a half hour if we lose power. I hope that’s long enough for me to get ’em shut down properly.

My hands are still pretty sore. I still type using the eraser ends of pencils, but it doesn’t help very much. I’m feeling consequently less than eloquent so this entry is done.

I no longer enjoy using my computer. My hands hurt too much. I find the thought of work to be depressing. I’d rather lie on my back, clear my mind, and sleep. Indeed, but I’m not sleepy. It doesn’t matter.

Earlier today I thought of what it will be like when I’m dead: no sensation, no perception, and no memory. For me it will be like dreamless sleep, only I will no longer be me at all. I’ll be gone forever except in whatever of my imprints are remembered or sustained.

It doesn’t matter.

After finally getting a good night’s sleep the other night, I’ve fallen into a strange and unpredictable pattern of sleep and wake. I was up all last night and went to sleep yesterday afternoon around 3pm. I woke at 7pm and have been up ever since.

This unpredictability seems to be central to life. It’s the same thing as randomness. I’ve always wondered if there’s really such a thing as randomness, or if unpredictability is just a consequence of a nonrandom process that no one can know. I’ve also realized that without the passage of time, randomness and probability are meaningless. Intelligence becomes unnecessary. Life becomes impossible. Time is the great mystery. We take it for granted because it is so central to our existence. We seem ill equipped to even imagine its lack. And yet I sit, awake, trying to think unthinkable thoughts.