It is a juggling game

Between writing, CSharp, Excel and Access VBA it has become a juggling game of which to work on when.

I start getting into and having progress on my book and my job raises it’s ugly head and I start working in excel and access full throttle. At the same time I keep thinking of the progress Blender has made and I have completely missed out on the as well as Unity. What I may end up doing is cutting into my sleep time during the week by a couple of hours and write during that time, devoting my daytime at work to excel and access. Work is where I use those programs the most, I would say about 95 percent of the time they are used at and for work. The weekends will then be dedicated to Blender and Unity.

More random words

Dead, Museum, Disorder, Journalist, Wars.

The journalist, while taking the day out for a trip to the World War museum in the city was taken in by the art of the two wars as portrayed in pictures. He reflects on the disorders caused by different conflicts around the world now and wonders how the dead really dealt with them. PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) being just one and the many other so called disorders created by the gulf wars. Gulf war syndrome, what a joke, are the solders of today seemingly wimps compared the soldiers of yesterday?

(Note, these are random thoughts using the random words placed in front of my and do not reflect my opinion on way or another)

Udemy Course: Becoming a Writer: part Deux

This will be the second installment of exercises I have done during this course.

Udemy Course Exercise 4: Finding the Good

I decided to pick a person I worked with at a company a few years ago.

This person was very good at presenting our company in a good light. Creating fantastic presentation with power point although a little long at time.

I believe this person to be a very religious person possibly mores so than I at the time I worked with him.

He was a fantastic father and spending much time with his son whom I know he loved very much and acting as coach for his baseball team.

He was very good at politicking and trying to get that point across to me.

Udemy Course Exercise 5: Processes

Getting Computer ready at home after work:
1) Take dock from day storage and plug in
2) set dock on table near the back with cord for computer to the right
3) Take computer out of day storage
4) Set computer on table, attach power cord from dock to the computer on the right side
5) Remove 128g memory stick and mouse from computer bag
6) Remove 1Tb hard drive from case and plug both into the dock, location optional
7) Open laptop computer and turn on.
8) Tap spacebar and bring up the password box.
9) Enter password, press enter.

… The computer is now ready to use for the entire night or weekend if it is Friday

Udemy Course Exercise 6: Principles

I’ll use creating an mBOm from Engineering as my example. The example of setting up my computer would not work in this exercise.
The three main principles in creating an accurate mBOM from an Engineering BOM would be.
1) Make sure you understand the build structure and what parts need to be created as subassemblies etc..

2) When signing off on the Engineering, upon seeing a group of parts that should or will be purchased together, have Engineering create an assembly rather than you creating a manufacturing parts.

3) Opposite of two, if there are assemblies that can not be purchased and installed as an assembly have Engineering eliminate that assembly and purchase the details without having to create phantom assemblies.

All of these exercises have been fun to do and at times very stressful because I don’t know if I am doing well or not. Does that matter? No it does not it us just my way of over analyzing everything I do. I did another random connection and here is that one.

Random Connection Part Deux

I felt a sense of sadness when I witnessed a physical offense against a nameless Hindu minding his own business at the airport this morning. I know it is a fantasy but some day this world will be free of such violence.

(I don’t recall exactly what the random words were (I think some were ‘Sadness, Hindu and fantasy’)

Udemy Course: Becoming a Writer

I have started this course through Udemy and have been doing the exercises as drafts here. I won’t release them as individual posts rather I will group them here.

Exercise One: Lists – Computers I have had in my life:

Gateway laptop
HP Pavilion
HP laptop
Microsoft Surface Book
Microsoft Surface Pro 3
Asus Gaming laptop
Alien ware
MacBook Pro 17″
MacBook Pro 13″
MacBook Air
TRS80 Model I
TRS80 Model III
IBM PC Jr.
Packard Bell
Toshiba laptop
HP tablet computer

This was a three minute writing exercise, letting my thoughts flow. I had to pick a topic and just create a list writing for three minutes only. I had forgotten about a few of these and I missed some as I look back on the list.

Exercise Two: Why? – Why I want to write three minutes

I want to write because I want to get my ideas out in public
I want to write because I would like to be a published author.
I want to write because I like to write and want to get better.
I want to write because I would like some residual income after I retire.
I want to write because it would be a great hobby when I retire as well as creating some income.
I want to write because I think I am good at is now.
I want to write because I want to get my opinion known.
I want to write because I would like people to read my blog posts and get something out of them.
I want to write because I love some of the things I do and would like to share those ideas.

Exercise Three: Random Connection -Words beach, foam, madness, athletes and portrait

I picked five words and given three minutes construct a sentence, paragraph.

Standing on the beach, my favorite beach on the island of Kauai watching the foam created by the breaking waves I’m thinking of the madness of it all. The surfers out, waiting for the waves show what athletes they are with the balance and vision to ride that perfect wave. Their eyes studying the horizon, watching the swells makes for a great portrait in my minds eye. With all that said, making a living as a screenwriter would me much more difficult than making aircraft. I’ll just lay back on the sand and contemplate my coworkers while on my vacation and smile.

Book Research and Writing, a lot of work

I don’t know how many times while reading a technical book, it does not matter if it is a book about programming in C Sharp or creating a circuit and then sketch for an Arduino project I always find some sort of technical error in the text. The first thing that could come out of my mouth would be something similar to, “Well, mister/miss author, you certainly did not do much research on this code.” Or, the author will walk you through a group of steps performing a function within the application and you believe ‘your’ way to be much less time consuming or more intuitive.

I have found this is not necessarily correct. I have spent more than a few hours working in Microsoft Visual Studio, creating and deleting solutions trying to find the best way to perform a specific task. Needless to say I have at my disposal now multiple ways to accomplish the same goal and now I must decide on which procedure to publish. Do I assume the one I publish is the best overall or do I publish all of them possibly leaving out a set of steps one of my readers use that they think is less time consuming or more intuitive.  That sounds familiar doesn’t it?

I have been a technical reviewer for some publishers, most of which involved C Sharp code and 3D models. I have always been given the manuscripts to review however it was like pulling teeth to get the models and code out of some authors to review prior to publication and one particular book I never was able to see the code or models. In my experience I can see how some reviewers can and do miss errors in the code or procedures. My dilemma, publish what I think to be the best solution, publish multiple solutions or all that I found. Something to think about.

On another subject, I completed the 16 hour C# course in Udemy this weekend. Started a course about Excel Dashboards with interactive charts etc., ultimately completing this course last night. Today I am starting “Becoming A Writer”, I guess I better start this course.

Everyone have a great day and Wonderful Week!