August Agenda - I Need A Vacation

August 21st, 2008 | Posted in General, Insomnia, Random Thoughts, Starjumpers, Travel, jacefuse.com | 2 Comments »

I’ve not been sleeping well.  This isn’t exactly news.  It’s the norm for me.  I operate on average with less than 4 hours of sleep per night.  Ever since high-school I’ve been something of a night owl and except for the few years I spent on the night and evening shifts at work I have generally been the sort of person that just accepts the fact that sleep is a luxury I am not allowed to live with.

My attendance at work has never been stellar.  I would have probably been shit-canned a long time ago if I weren’t in a union.  The rules laid down at work are very specific on what is tolerable and what is not and I push the envelope so far it normally arrives with postage due.

To make matters worse, I have been neglecting house work and video games.  I have a paid WoW account that I never log into, I have Diablo II characters which I log into only long enough to keep them from being deleted, and I haven’t powered on my Wii or 360 in over a month.  A few weeks ago in the midst of heavy overtime I even missed a few days of class because the only thing I wanted to do was come home and be lazy while the robot mowed the lawn.

Now I’m faced with a few more tasks.  I’ve dedicated myself to cleaning out my garage and computer room by getting rid of everything I don’t want or need.  I’m determined to have this house looking spotless, tidy, uncluttered, and devoid of all the junk that takes up precious space.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been in the middle of reorganizing my finances and as of yesterday that was final.  For the first time in years I will now have an acceptable amount of disposable income each month and it couldn’t come at a better time since the dental work I’m having done is entering into the stages where it could start to get expensive.

On my immediate agenda are a few items which require immediate attention.  Storms earlier this year did some minor damage to my roof which will I will have to have fixed and that will be one of the first things I work on getting done right along with buying a bicycle.

Tomorrow, Friday, I have class.  Saturday and Sunday will be spent lounging around the house and setting up a new computer that my father purchased online this past Sunday.  It’s a very sweet quad core system and naturally it will only increase my desire to spend money on my own computing habits.

On my list of things to buy:

1. Roof repairs
2. Bicycle
3. New wireless N router with 1 gigabit Ethernet
4. Ethernet enabled 1 terabyte drive
5. New monitor for my PC
6. Sausage

There are other items as well but those are the items that require immediate attention.  The Mac Pro is still on the list as well as equipment to help me with my plans on pimping out my yard with cool shit like flower beds and fruit trees. FNORD

Most of the stuff I will only buy once I have saved enough money, so progress will be slow.  For the time being I will just work on things a little bit at a time.  Having said that I think it goes without saying that my offworld vacation will have to wait for another year.  Tickets for transport on a charter Starship are difficult enough to get and they can be hellishly expensive.  It doesn’t help that I’m out of vacation time at work.

So, uhm, yeah. The flowers will be plastic, of course.

Unwired

August 12th, 2008 | Posted in Fnords, Friends, General, Insomnia, Starjumpers, Writing, jacefuse.com | 2 Comments »

I have spent the past few days in a slightly different mindset than usual.  Since I’ve been in the middle of redoing all of my finances and getting myself squared away I’ve also taken it upon myself to sort through stuff in my house that I want to get rid of.  ( NOTE: If you want old computer junk, NOW IS YOUR CHANCE…)

Throwing away old things has never really been easy for me. I’m something of a pack-rat and in recent months my various losses have left me a little unconcerned with most of my physical possessions.  Ideally I’d love to live my life in this house with a somewhat minimalistic decore.  I’m getting there, but I’m working my way from the small to the large.

Since I dropped out of Blog365 (Sorry Rachelskirts, that’s just the kind of fail I’m made of) I’ve written very little. No blogging. Little twitting. No novel writing. Very little of anything. I’ve even been paying very little attention to the wired world from my iPhone at work. No Dot, no Digg, and even though I have both AIM and Twitterrific on my phone I haven’t really been logging into them.

So does this mean that I’m entering a new era of disconnectedness? No. I can’t honestly say I see myself drifting too far from my digital identity. After all, I’ve been online quite a long time and I know a lot of people exclusively online. I just expect that my time spent in front of a computer in general has slowly become so minimal that my digital presence has suffered and I really don’t miss it all that much.

In the end though, I’ll still be here tweeting, blogging, and posting images to flickr. I promise not to go insanely huge amounts of time without some kind of update through one of the three mediums. As you no doubt know by now this site, JaceFuse.com gives you a quick peek at all of those mediums. On the side bar (currently to the right [subject to change without notice]) you will find both my FlickR and Twitter feeds. Couple that with blog entries and my many daily logins to MySpace (thanks to my iPhone) I’m an easy person to keep track of.

Do know, though, that I have been sketching out some ideas in my head (and on paper) concerning my novel. Writing a book with such a convoluted time line really has been difficult for me. I don’t consider myself an outstanding writer to begin with, and relying totally on creativity doesn’t help much when I’m intentionally creating a story that is supposed to be both twisted and seemingly self-contradictory. The novel is still a top priority.

Right now I’m about to get ready for class.  I’ve actually missed a few classes lately and I’m not very happy about that.  I’ll be focusing more attention on class, though.  No need to miss any more.  I’ve been doing so good (in my weight loss) and I would hate to interrupt my progress now just because I’ve become apathetic about everything else in my life.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to shower.  You can contact me me through the normal channels if there is any old junk you might want to inquire about.

So, uhm, yeah.

Starjumper: Clandar

February 3rd, 2008 | Posted in Artwork, Starjumpers | No Comments »

Clandar is the “exterminator” on the Tandorian Starship Solarchick. He handles all of the dirty stuff like nasty alien infections, annoying politicians, and greedy businessmen. He also likes pizza and video games from Earth. He also has a cheerleader fetish. (Actually, I made that last bit up right now just to screw with Google searches.)

Starjumper: Tazmos

February 1st, 2008 | Posted in Artwork, Starjumpers | No Comments »

Tazzo Hemoso, aka “Tazmos”, is one of several supernatural characters in the Starjumpers novel. He plays an important role in regards to helping Paulina Headronis figure out who she really is. He sometimes interjects his commentary into the book through a first person narrative.

Think of Tazmos as the wise-ass sage.

Nalias thought about this for a moment and then turned to Tamos. “You said the Earthen IOU wants to go where it is going. Wouldn’t it be best just to sit back and let it all play out its natural course?”

Tazmos replied “your intervention is part of the natural course.”

“What do you want me to do?”

Tamos just smiled and said “you’ll know what to do when the time comes.”

“Why do the so-called wise-men always say shit like that?” Nalias stood up and looked at the ship’s monitors. “It doesn’t really help, you know.”

“It isn’t supposed to.”

“Then why did you say it?”

“Just to fuck you with.”

With that last statement there was a sound like ripping paper and Tazmos stepped out of the scene as an animated character might step off of the edge of a torn sheet of paper.

Nalias sighed. “Dickhead.”

Renee “Sweeny” Flintlemire

January 24th, 2008 | Posted in Artwork, Pictures, Starjumpers | No Comments »

Renee “Sweeny” Flintlemire

Inspired by boredom in my algebra class, this was drawn in 1991. There aren’t many school-doodles that I’ve kept this long but this one not only exists in the original form but also this “pen-over”. The original was a light scribble in pencil, while this one is a more defined with thick lines of black pen ink. The eyes are filled in with pencil, and the lips and double-triangle ear-ring are filled in with pen.

So, uhm, yeah.

Trisha Talacoalabara

January 19th, 2008 | Posted in Artwork, Starjumpers | No Comments »

 

One of my favorite images of Trisha. This one was created in the summer of 1990. Once again, Nalias’s floating utility bot is pictured with Trisha.

Old Artwork (Trisha)

January 10th, 2008 | Posted in Artwork, Pictures, Starjumpers | No Comments »

The old Jacefuse.Com (circa 1997) had an art gallery, a poetry section, some idiotic little rants, and eventually a few really interesting pictures of UFOs, mating spiders, and my beloved Camaros. I have no intentions of putting the old site back up (at the moment) but I do intend to reintroduce some of the worthwhile bits back to teh En7aN3tZ. FNORD

Pictured here is Trisha Talacoalabara, one of several characters from my novel. The floating droid is actually Nalias Trason’s. I’m not sure why I always picture him with Trisha. Maybe I should have drawn Nalias more?

This picture dates back to about the last week of April ‘96. I was doodling in the orientation class while being hired at Trane just as I did in every other class of my life. I was so focused on the drawing I was paying absolutely no attention to the teacher/trainer/instructor/HR drone/dipshit running their mouth about something that might have later proven somehow important. It probably had something to do with attendance.

I don’t remember anything about that class other than drawing this picture. The original is looking kind of rough and this scan is a very low DPI compared to modern day scanners.  

So, uhm, yeah. Shhh. I’m working on a top-secret art project!

Jace vs. The Universe…

November 19th, 2007 | Posted in General, Starjumpers, jacefuse.com | 1 Comment »

I have this slight problem with wanting to take on too many projects at one time. My current projects include (in no particular order): Building an Arcade Machine, organizing my junk and disposing of much of it, consolidating my computers down to just two plus server, learning Japanese so I can play Japanese RPGs (which counts as a totally different project), finding time to play more games, becoming comfortable with SQL, attempting to master CSS, get into more advanced Javascript and XML (Ajax Style) style development, contributing my coding skills to opened source projects (but more importantly using my skills to code), getting more involved in the social aspects of the web (beyond Chat Rooms), redesigning this site, spending more time blogging, and writing a novel.

That’s an awful lot of stuff if I actually stick to doing it. I’ve slacked seriously on the Arcade Machine and the Japanese, and I just don’t have much time for games. In fact, those things that I do work on I don’t dedicate too much time to. The worst part isn’t that I’m not doing the stuff I want to do because even though progress is slow on all of it, much of it is actually making progress no matter how slow. The worst part isn’t even that I lose interest in some of it. The absolute worst part is that that there are still yet more projects I want to get into but I keep holding back on knowing I haven’t even finished the things I’m working on yet.

I’d like to get coding on the Mac, putting my coding skills to use in general (especially in opened source projects [including games]), I would like to write my own usable GUI, I’d like to buy the newest Photoshop for the Mac and become as good with PhotoShop as I was with DPaint back in the day, I’d like to buy a Wacom tablet and get into art again, and I’d like to get back into writing music.

What I really need, though, is to work on self-cloning. I’d have an entire Army of Fuse! If there were like 10 to 20 of me I’m sure I could get everything I wanted done. First off, only one of us would have to go to work, and that would only be once every 20 days or so. Of course, this would be a little confusing for my co-workers, who would no doubt assume I was retarded and incapable of remembering things from one day to the next. I would just send the same me to work every day, but that would be horribly cruel to concentrate all of my torture on just one of me.

I could divide myself into different units, each with different responsibilities. It would have to be by totally random drawing because I can’t have myself arguing with myself over what I’m going to make myselves do each day. Those of us that didn’t like it would be voted off and sent out to be someone else.

The only problem I can see with this is deciding what to do with myselves after all of the projects are finished. I tell you, we’re going nuts over here.

So, uhm yeah.

I was going to write something in this whitespace but I don’t have time.

A look back at my online-writing…

November 9th, 2007 | Posted in General, Starjumpers, jacefuse.com | 1 Comment »

I have written a lot of stuff over the years. I’ve been online since around 1990 starting with the BBS’s and moving to a local ISP in 1997. Between 1992 and 1999 I ran a BBS of my own from 1 line to 10 lines by 1996. In most of that time I have been writing in forums and writing crap articles about whatever misguided opinion I might have had.

When I entered the internet my writing took off and I have been posting online since the first few days I logged on. I even have a five digit Slashdot account (which is geekier than most people but still not as geeky as those dorks with 4 digit accounts).

Many other sites popped up where either my posts, or featured writings appeared. And as the years pressed on the continuously increasing number of these kinds of sites just diluted their value. Practically everybody writes posts, blogs, or other such things now. So it’s not as big as a deal as it once was.

Searching for my name, I find quite a lot of junk. A good majority of it is at Slashdot, but it also winds up in a few other places I had forgotten about. Fortunately most of it doesn’t show up — because it’s probably not very relevant. I’m very glad about that because as it stands now a lot of the writing I did from 1991 until today I certainly wouldn’t want compared to my writing today.

It’s not just that my ideas have changed in a lot of areas, that happens. It’s just that sometimes I find things in my writings that I have since worked on about my views or even my writing itself. I still rarely proof-read, though, a habit I need to get myself into some day. Overall, I feel I’ve improved as a writer by a large enough magnitude that to look back on my older bits I sometimes wish I could pull them from the web entirely.

Again, for the most part it isn’t the content of the writing. Even if I don’t agree with it now, that’s not that part that bothers me most. It’s just that to see myself expressing an idea that I once believed but failed to justify the belief adequately in words makes it appears as if the belief (whether I still hold it true today or not) was the result of poor analytical skills on my part.

That is, if I was wrong but made damned good arguments as to why I thought I was right, then at least I only look misguided. But if I was wrong and backed my ideas with a puked up stream of unintelligible font engine fodder then I not only looked like an idiot, but an illiterate one.

This isn’t to say that I think I was an idiot, because I personally happen to have been there and I can personally insist it didn’t appear to be the case. It’s just that when one writes as much as one would be prone to write after this kind of digital exposure for so long there are abound to be a few chunks of text out there that demonstrate one or the other of the above possibilities.

Obviously there are also bound to be cases where I was right, very clearly, but sounded like one of the many mindless sheep spouting off the frequently regurgitated crap without adding any real insight of my own. I see these kinds of posts made today by people and I instantly spot them for what they are because at one time I wrote that crap too.

Since I am writing a novel as most of you know, I do pay attention to my writing quite a bit (even if I don’t always proof-read). Getting into the blogs lately has helped me write by forcing me to write every day no matter what. This is really getting me motivated on my novel.

Starjumpers.Com may go online sooner than later (I already own the domain) but I will probably be blogging about Starjumpers more in the upcoming weeks. I can see myself putting a lot more work into it now. I won’t blame the Mac, nor the blogs, but I do think my focus has changed and I’m compelled to move forward with it. I’m also sure I’ll be blogging about it quite a bit.