SLEEP, the prized commodity

Another Day, more snow.  Not as much as they predicted, but still it was more snow.  I am sick of snow and winter weather.  However, its supposed to eventually get above freezing today so some of it might just melt.  And its supposed to be above freezing on Friday and sunny.  Saturday it’s supposed to be wintry mix, which really means snow then rain, rain will melt some of the snow.  Kurtis, the weather guy said we might have a warm up for the end of February, I don’t think its gonna happen.  More likely we will have above freezing 33-34degrees and still be miserable.

They are finally talking about flooding when all this snow does melt.  We got a lot of snow, and the melted snow water has to go somewhere and that somewhere is the river and lake system.  Which was fine when we had a snow pack of 3 inches last year.  But now we are talking 10-11 or more inch snow packs.   Melt is gonna swell all these rivers and lakes and there is gonna be a lot of flooding.  Houses built too close to the river and gonna be partially under water again, yes, it has happened before.  It’s not pretty.

28 days till Spring.

Arcticon is 3 days away.  Thursday, Friday and then boom Arcticon.  This is gonna be fun.  I’m taking my mask, just in case there are rude sick people who show up.  I can’t afford to get even a cold right now, still immuno-suppressed, I will catch anything they throw at me.  Which would suck.

I’m looking forward to Shannon’s Call of Cthulhu game.  Been wanting to play CoC for a long while, but certainly since I bought the books and read the Keepers Manual.   He is running it twice.  I will play in one of them, not sure which yet, need to see what else is being offered at the times he is running CoC.

I know there will be plenty of D&D.  Not sure if I want to play D&D or not.  D&D is what burned me out on gaming.   But I have a soft spot for D&D, so yeah, I’ll probably play some.  There will also be a ton of board games.  I never get to play board games cuz Teresa doesn’t like to play them.   So, maybe I will get some board game action in.  Delta Green is also being played, supposed to be really cool.  Not into miniature gaming, so all those games are ruled out.  I am just gonna play whatever sounds cool at whatever time and get me game on.

I’ve decided not only am I getting a logo done professionally, but several graphics done.  Heck, while I am busting my budget, I might as well bust it good.   Instead of 500 bucks, its more like 1000 now.  And will be 1500 by them time I am done.  Still a far cry from the 100,000 I spent on my last business.  Teresa is grumpy that I am spending money, but if this works, I will be making more than that each month.  So, having the art professionally done makes sense.

I managed to sleep in till almost 10am today, and I slept well last night.   Felt so good to get sleep.  I needed it.  Stress level is down, I think that made the difference.  (I’ll explain that in a minute).  I am really affected by stress.  When stress goes up I don’t sleep.  Normally I try to lead a stress-free life, but with all I am doing for my business, stress was/is up.  So sleep is a prized commodity.  And I will sleep in when I can and complain when I can’t.

I did get my bank account yesterday, and I did get my mailbox.  And I filled my car with gas when it was 8 degrees.  lol.  Two things off my to do list, and one I had to do cuz I was almost driving on fumes.  I also got with Square, so actually 3 things off my list.  The only things left on my list is ART (which I am ordering tomorrow), FINISH THE CLASS (which I am skipping a bunch cuz I don’t need to learn MongoDB,  Finishing the class was a huge stressor, with the elimination of all the MongoDB stuff, I am almost done.  Huge stress relief).  And finally on my to do list is MAKE THE WEBSITE.  Which I still can’t do until I finish the class cuz the last section I need.

I’m an getting excited about making the announcement on Saturday.  I hope I can make it on Saturday, I hope the church’s reception hall has wifi.  In the event that I can’t make the announcement on Saturday, it will happen first thing Sunday after I wake up.  It’s like this, I am gonna write the big announcement up and post it here and link it to Facebook as I always do.  Then I will also make the post as a huge post on Facebook.

I can’t believe that I am starting another business.  But I really believe in this idea.  However, I am gonna need a lot of help getting this growing once I start it.  I am gonna ask some of my friends for help (with pay of course).  Not offering jobs, but am offering a way to make some extra cash (and who can’t use a little extra cash).

More stuff gets done today

President’s Day came and went without much of a notice except Teresa having the day off.  I still think President’s Day was optional.  Schools around here were in session.  So much for a Federal Holiday.

I didn’t do as much in my web development class yesterday as I wanted to.  My Airbuds would not connect with the Mac.  No matter what I did, nope, wouldn’t connect.  So, I had to wait for Teresa to wake up and then I got a little bit of  time in.  Time spent was also limited by the fact that I felt like crap.  Teresa and I both got a stomach bug.  After many trips to the restroom, sitting at a computer learning Mongoose/MongoDB was not high on my list of things to do.  Hopefully, I will get some time on it today.  Teresa is going to her office today, but not tomorrow cuz it will be more snow (will get to in a moment).

29 days till Spring.  The weather sucks.  Tonight into tomorrow we are supposed to get ANOTHER 5 to 8 inches of snow.  39 inches of snow since January 1st.  We have and are breaking all sorts of records for measurable snow fall.  The weather predictors still say partly cloudy for Friday, so I am still our of here.

ArctiCon is 4 days away.  The drive there is in 3 days… Friday.  My back has really been bothering me lately, so this drive is gonna HURT.  Can’t take a pain pill while driving, so all the built up pain will be there when I arrive at Jim and Mom’s place.  But I will make said drive, ArctiCon and more importantly, my family awaits.

I’ve decided to hire a professional to design my logo.  If I did it myself, it would look cheesy, so I am going to Jon Liebl of Liebl Marketing Group for help.  He did all my work for Away From It All and Iowa Realty, so why not for my new business too.  Well, Jon won’t be doing the design, his designer will.  It’s all good as long as it get done.  I don’t want to spend more money (definitely not manicy at all), but in this case I think it will be money well spent.  I have a lunch with him on Thursday.

I woke up this morning at 5:20am, wide awake.  So I got 6 hours of sleep.  Not enough for me, so a nap will be in order soon.  I’ve been napping a lot lately.  (Big difference from when I couldn’t nap).  Not sleeping well at night again.  I got a lot of stress going on.  Causes me to have trouble sleeping.  Always happens when I start to get stressed, and usually gets worse the more stressed I become.  It will reach the point where I go to see Chris (my PA-C) to try to get Restoril. Restoril helps me sleep through the night even when stressed.  Ambien only gives me 6 hours (as demonstrated by last night).

Today I will go get a bank account.  Today I will go get a mailbox.  Today I will get some more stuff on my to do list DONE.

The company is 5 days old.  I’ve actually gotten or will have gotten today a lot done for it.  Still not ready to make money, but hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day.  And I needed all this done before I started on the main project so I had motivation.

Talking to my lawyer can wait.   Getting setup with Square can wait.  There is quite a few things on my To Do List that can wait.  That is good, cuz I really need to take as much time as I can and put it into the web development class.  But the bank and the mailbox are priorities today.

Announcement Saturday for WordPress and Facebook and for the people of ArctiCon.  It’ll be good to be able to talk about my business freely and get general feedback.  Yup, looking forward to sharing this with my friends.  Sorry it has taken so long guys, just had to get things ready first, you understand, right?

Presidents Day is optional?????

Well, it’s President’s day and the only things that appear to be closed are banks and the government and Teresa’s part of her office.  I know not all of Mediacom has it off cuz we have an appointment for a tech to come out and fix our cable box today.  All the schools are open today with delays and bus route issues cuz of the snow (which I will get into a minute).  It’s sorta a holiday, I guess it’s considered optional.

I started on MongoDB, and it is much less forgiving of mistakes than SQL.  However, I have to say that MongoDB cares more about it’s customers.  I have received not just 1, not 2, but 3 emails since signing up for MongoDB.  One of which was from a customer support (tech support) guy saying if I need any help, feel free to call him directly.  That is caring about your customers.  From what I have seen, MongoDB will work better for me than SQL in my website and Teresa knows MongoDB, so I have a live in tech support.  It’s all good.  I still won’t be done with the web development class in 10 days.  I will, however, start programming on the 1st.

30 days till Spring.  The groundhog was wrong though.  With the snow we got and the snow we’re getting, it looks like winter is here to stay.  However, Kurtis, the weather guy said there might be a warm up of some kind the end of February, so you never know.  We have a deep snow pack and when it melts we  (Des Moines) are gonna have flooding.  Melted snow has nowhere to go but into the rivers, the rivers that overflow and flood just about every year no matter how much snow we get are bound to overflow in a major way this year.  We got 9 inches over the weekend and another 8 coming on Wednesday.  Yuck.

Gonna work on my class this morning and try not to go back to sleep.  I need to knock out an hour or two of the class, I got so much more to do.  It says I am 81% done. Maybe if I try real hard I will get done by March 3rd or 4th.  ArctiCon is cutting into my learning schedule, but I need that.  I want to be done with the class.  It’s very much teaching me that I am not a programmer.  But I can look stuff up and make it work.  So, it’s all good I guess.  I make A LOT of simple mistakes which take a lot of time to find and no time at all to fix.

I need to design a logo.  But I am not artsy (yet).    Since my business name is not a word, its initials, I could get away maybe with just using a cool font.  No, that’d be stupid.  Need some kind of design.  The obvious one I can’t use cuz the place where I got this idea from used to use the obvious one.  And I don’t want to be sued.  So, I will come up with a logo idea, doing this alone kind of sucks.  But I am gonna do it.

Still looking for a programmer who wants to work by job.  Preferably someone who has a job, and just looking for something to supplement their income.  They need to know JavaScript, jQuery, EJS, NodeJS, and preferably have some knowledge of MongoDB.  I have someone in mind, but he would be cost prohibitive I think.   The person would have to work cheap with promise of better pay in the future.

My business is 4 days old.  And I am stuck on certain things on my to do list, because it’s a holiday.   Oh well, I can take care of the stuff I wanted to do today, tomorrow.

I do have to talk to my lawyer, which will cost me, for legal disclaimers.  I want things worded right on what I won’t allow on my website.  Want everything to be on the up and up.  So getting my lawyer involved is important.

Yeah, there are parts of this that I can’t do alone.  I’m taking on a huge project.  There was bound to be stuff that I couldn’t do in a project so big.  So finding the right people (for the right price) is imperative.  I want to surround myself with good people and get this going.

This is about as country as Hectic goes.  So enjoy.

 

Tomorrow is a holiday go figure

Got through SQL with no problem.  She didn’t spend much time on it.  I’m kind of disappointed.  But now we have 20 lessons on MongoDB, which Teresa says is what I need to use.  I would be doing lessons right now, but Teresa hooked up her second monitor and it uses one of the two audio output spots on the mac, the other being the internal speakers.  This leaves no room for my Airpods to be hooked up.  So instead of doing my class, I came to write this blog.

31 days till Spring.  As the big snow that was supposed to hit, hit about 2 inches worth last night.  I am curious to hear what the weather man says.  They are, however, advising no one to drive right now as ALL the roads are covered by a couple inches.  Assuming it has stopped snowing (it wasn’t snowing when I took the dogs out this morning) the roads should be cleared by noon.  Local roads sooner as we have the best plow guys around.

I haven’t started to learn to draw yet.  I NEED to get the web development class done.  My “spare” time is focused on that.  I do plan on learning to draw or trying to learn to draw soon though.  I can only focus on learning one thing at a time now.  And I am not learning how to develop websites very well right now.  Priorities.  So drawing takes a back seat at this time.

Teresa made the best sweet and sour chicken last night.  It was perfect.  Not too sweet, not too sour, the balance was amazing.  It was the best sweet and sour chicken that she has made in a LONG time.  She said she did something a little different, and I wholly approve of whatever change she made.

Tomorrow is a holiday, I almost forgot about President’s Day.  How could I forget about President’s Day?  Only the most important holiday in February.   Seriously, Teresa even has it off.  Which means, no web development class for me in a likelihood, cuz she will probably be playing World of Warcraft all day.  Maybe I can get her to come play on my main computer (I still have World of Warcraft installed and updated even though I have no intention of ever playing again).  If I can get her to play over here, then I can have the Mac and do MongoDB and Mongoose all day long.  That sounds like a plan to me.  Switch chairs, and we both can do what we want.  Why didn’t I think of this sooner?  I’m such a doodyhead some times.

I got my business cards that say my business is coming around March 31st.  They are simple cards for an average man with an extraordinary company in the works.  I only had 100 printed.  Cuz I am hoping to have my company going before needing more than that.  I plan to give out quite a few at ArctiCon though.

Well, the best laid plans of man get foiled again.  I had planned on getting a business bank account going tomorrow.  Not going to happen, cuz its a holiday.  Turns out the UPS store is closed tomorrow too, cuz its a holiday.  Can’t do much of what is left on my TO DO LIST, not tomorrow, cuz its a holiday.  Well, there is always Tuesday, when life returns to normal, it’s not supposed to snow until the evening.  I will do what I can tomorrow and do what has to wait till Tuesday on Tuesday.   That is all I can do.

I am so excited about announcing my company on Saturday.  I really hope that the St. Sava Sebastian Orthodox Churches’ reception hall has wifi.  Or the announcement to Facebook and WordPress won’t happen until after 10pm Central time, and then most people won’t see it till Sunday.  I’ll make things work earlier in the day, Hotspots, as long as they got 4G I’m good to go.

My inkling became a business

Today, before Teresa gets up, I am gonna delve into SQL in my web development class.  I hope that SQL isnt as confusing to me as EJS was.  It almost can’t be.  I am gonna use EJS on my project, me and Mr. Google will rekindle our lifelong (for him) friendship.  SQL is a database.   Most of my project is based on a database, thus SQL.  After we get SQL database done, we move on the Mongo database.  Why we are learning two database programs is beyond me, but hey, she is the instructor.  So other than time issues, its all good.

32 days till Spring.  It’s supposed to snow AGAIN tonight, another 4 to 6 inches.  And then again on Wednesday with a similar system.  YUCK.  I am so sick of snow and cold.  I am ready for flowers and birds and being warm, not hot, warm.

I am definitely going to ArctiCon, the weather is cooperating in full.  I know I can do 3 hour drive with no problems, how bad can 6 hours be?  My back will hurt, I know that.  But beyond that, I do not foresee any issues.  I am taking my pain pills with me to take after I get there.  So, that will be good.

I am staying at my family’s house after all.  Dr. Alkhateeb (well his nurse) said to just stay away from the cats and don’t go near the litter box.  Not a problem on either front, the cats don’t like me and I’m not in the habit of litter box diving.  So, I get to spend more time with my mom and maybe see a little of my brother.  It’ll be good.

ArctiCon itself is gonna be fun.  I’m sure of it.  Already ran into a scheduling issue between games I want to play, but its all good, the one that starts first wins.  So, at 11am I will be playing Call of Cthulhu with my friend Shannon being the Keeper.  Beyond that my schedule is open.  It’s gonna be a long day, longest day that I have tried to in quite a while, I am hoping adrenaline kicks in and I am ok for the whole thing.  I want to stay for the whole thing.

I’m leaving Friday earlyish.  I don’t like to drive in the dark.  Heh.  Short drives on city streets are ok, but long drives on freeways make me tired.  So, I am leaving early in the day which will put me arriving in the afternoon.  Which will be good.  I figure with back breaks and bathroom breaks and a lunch break, it’ll take me about 7 hours to get there instead of 6.  That is fine.  I am in no rush to get there.  Take my time, try not to speed too bad.  Yeah, it’s gonna be a rough drive I think.

Yesterday, my inkling/idea/project became a business officially.  An LLC to be specific.  Whats left on my to do list:  Finish the class.  Get a mailbox from the UPS Store.  Open a bank account.  Get set up with Square (after I get the bank account).  Design (or maybe have designed) a Logo for my business.  And finally start working on the website (I need to pick a color plan).  Not too much left to do.  Just have to get on it.

Teresa is NOT happy that I have started another business, but this one is cheap compared to the last one.  This ones balance sheet at this point says I am just over 500 dollars.  That is cheap to get a business going.  A mailbox can’t be that expensive, can it?  And the bank wants 100 dollars to open the checking account, but that’s ok, that’s not money spent, it’s money held.  I should be under 600 dollars for the whole business.  Assuming I can write the website.  If I can’t, I will have to hire someone, and my budget is screwed.  But we are under the assumption that I can google my way thru the website development.

Saturday, hopefully from ArctiCon,  I will announce officially what my business is and what it’ll be doing eventually.  I’m excited to be so close to telling everyone.  From those that I have told, the reception has been good.  So, I assume from my target audience, the reception will also be good.  Yes, the business is legit, and Yes, it is entirely online. It’s all good and nothing anyone can say will turn me off from doing it.

I am not a programmer.

I finished the big EJS challenge in my web development class.  I didn’t do so well though.  I actually only knew how to do 2 out of 21 problems.  And her hints rarely helped me.  I just don’t get EJS.  It doesn’t do much, but what it does is all powerful.  But she recommended taking a few days off and trying to challenge again and seeing if you do better.  I’m not going to do that.  I am moving on to SQL.  With EJS, I can always read the online documentation, it is well covered.  I think I mentioned I tried to find a book on it on Amazon and couldn’t, there is just not enough material to warrant a book I guess.  I will not be done with the class by February 28th.  No chance.  But I shouldn’t be that far off.  I still am hoping for a launch day of March 31st though.  Just means I have to work harder.

33 days till Spring, Kurtis the weather guy said it looks like it might warm up end of February, that’d be nice.

Weather patterns have shifted.  The 22nd and the 25th look like nice days for a drive as of now.  Sweet, I am going to ArctiCon, assuming the weather doesn’t change it’s mind.  I’m gonna be leaving a little later than I had initially intended.  Gotta wait for the mail on the 22nd.  But it’s all good.  Get to sleep in an extra hour.

The plan is leave as soon as the mail gets here (between 9 and 10)  and drive to the Region.  (Note to self, get Jenny’s address to punch into Waze.)  Get to Jenny + Mike’s house.  Rest a short bit, then take Jenny out to dinner as a thank you.  Mike is out of town or I’d take him too.  Crash early Friday night.  Get up early Saturday, drive to ArctiCon.  Spend entirely too long there… 8am to 10pm.   Get back to Jenny’s and crash.  Sunday during the day, I will be recovering from ArctiCon.  Sunday evening I have a dinner date with my mom.  Then Sunday night, I will again crash early, cuz I have to be out of Jenny’s house so she can go to work at 6:30am.  Waste a little time (I don’t know where to waste time in the Region at 6:30am.) and then have breakfast with my brother (who is coming home from midnights) and mother.  Then drive home.  It’s a 5 1/2 to 6 hour dive, with bathroom breaks and stretch back breaks 6 1/2 to 7.  I’m gonna try not to speed ridiculously as I do not need or want a ticket.

ArctiCon will be my first convention in 30ish years.  As I have said I have a certain level of anxious excitement going through me.  I am not sure how many people they are expecting, I am figuring at least 150 less than 200.  That’s a lot of people for a person with Social Anxiety issues.  But hey, like I said, I got friends to talk to if I start to freak out.  Friends I have known for years.  Heh, Gang friends/family.

As was yesterday, my project/business is in a holding pattern.  I can’t do anything else until the state processes my LLC.  Then I can open a bank account.  Then I can get with Square.  Then all that stuff will be taken care of.

Making of the website can only start after I finish the web development class.  Which should be during the first week of March. My goal of launching March 31st might be impossible.  Might be some time in April before launch.  Not happy about that, but this class has proven to me I am NOT a programmer.  I will have to muddle through the programming, it won’t be pretty but it will be functional, the programming that is, I WILL make the site pretty to look at.

27 years it must be love

It’s Valentine’s Day.  Teresa and I chose to stop doing anything for Valentine’s Day before we even got married.  So, no flower, no chocolates, no jewelry, I don’t have to do anything.  Weird, eh?  Beyond it being Valentine’s Day, it’s also the 27th anniversary of our first date.  27 years ago, I took her to Estrella War and fell even more in love with her.  That was the one and only time I bought her a Valentine’s gift, a pewter dragon necklace that she liked.  Maybe this year, I will get her something and throw the world off kilter.  No biggie to run down to the Family Dollar and get her a card or something.  I’ll think about it.

I had cancer of one form or the other for over 3 years.  It honestly feels a little weird (in a good way) to be cancer free.  It’s ok, I would rather feel weird and be cancer free than still have the cancer in me.

I took really deep breaths yesterday while doing the Pentamidine breathing treatment, what took almost 45 minutes last time, I was done I under 20.  Yeah, buddy.  She walked in to check on me and went “I think it’s done”, I was happily surprised.   I do not like Pentamidine, it tastes awful.

34 days till Spring.

I worked on my web development class yesterday afternoon.  Minus time for a nap and break times.  I finished the last section before the big challenge.  And then I did 7 out of 21 of the big challenge and I knew 2 of them.  Not promising.  EJS just floors me.  Worse than Bootstrap did.  The funny thing is, there isn’t a lot to EJS, I should “get it” but it escapes my grasp at this time.  There is so little to it, that there isn’t even a book on Amazon for it.  It’s ok though, I will do the 14 other steps of the big challenge and know maybe 4 of them.   She (the instructor) will go over the answers with us.  OH, we are making a very basic blog page.   No, I am not EVER going to use it, but make it I shall.  And after I finish looking like an idiot on the big challenge, we move on to SQL.

Oh ArctiCon, rumor has it we are having a snow storm on the 22nd.  Davenport, Chicago, and the Region are having nice weather.  We are have more snow.  At this juncture I do not know if I will make it or not.  Perhaps I will decide on the 22nd whether I am going to make the drive or not.  Heh, they updated the prediction and it’s now not gonna snow here until the evening.  If that is the case, I will most likely be there.   Yeah, I am being a flake about driving there.  I do not drive in snow for long distances.  I don’t even like to drive in snow for short distances.  It’s all good, we are 10 days out and I haven’t got a clue.  I want to go and if it’s not actively snowing when I am ready to leave, then it’ll probably be a go.

I’m in a holding pattern for my project/business.  I filed the paperwork to become an LLC two days ago and it still says “not submitted”.  There is no help button, so I don’t know if I screwed up or it just takes longer when you fast file online.  I knew I should have taken it down to the Secretary of States office and gotten it taken care of right away, but no, I didn’t want to go out in the cold any more than I already was.  Teach me to use new technology when the old technology still works.  People power, that’s what it’s about.

Beyond that and the class, everything else is on schedule.  I have to go up to the UPS store and get a mailbox.  But that can wait.  Everything on my to do list at least says PENDING.  I guess, this morning I will work on my class some (feel like an idiot for a while), then take a nap.  More feeling like an idiot after said nap.  And hopefully get thru the 14 remaining big challenges.  I’ll save SQL for next week.