CARRIE’S DAY OF ARRIVAL

Carrie missed her flight from Seattle. She was devastated and didn’t think she would get here.

Let’s start from the beginning . I asked her the night before if she was packed. She said she had everything ready and just needed to close the suitcases when she was ready to go in the morning. Things were not ready enough and she needed to switch things up and have two checked bags. Trying to pack at the last minute when you are not ready with the addition of not having travelled much (three times) she ended up forgetting a lot.

At the airport she checked in curbside which is fine but something I never do and was asked if she wanted a wheelchair. She said yes and they took her through security and onto the gate, which was great. Now things started to go sideways. She needed to go to the bathroom. In the bathroom she took some pictures, sent them to me, and finished. When she left the bathroom, she decided she wanted some cash, so she went to the ATM and after that turned around and the gate was empty. They had already boarded the plane and the aircraft had pushed back and left. This all stems from the fact she didn’t know the plane started boarding 30 minutes prior to departure and the doors shut 15 minutes after that. She went to the gate and asked if they had boarded yet and was told that the plane had left. She immediately started crying and needed to call me. Thank God the Delta personnel was there and took control of the mistake and reticketed her for other flights. This meant she had a couple more hours in Seattle, a five plus hour layover in Atlanta and would arrive in Tallahassee at midnight giving me lots of time before Daryl and I had to pick her up.

She was escorted to the new gate via wheelchair in Seattle and was met at the gate by a Delta employee in Atlanta waiting to take her to the next gate. After missing her flight in Seattle there was no way she was going to drink or eat anything and just stay put at the gate until her flight which is over four hours away. I called her after she arrived in Atlanta and after talking to her for a bit asked if her gate had changed because they frequently do. When she made the inquiry, her gate had in fact changed and the Delta personnel were upset that she had been left there for so long and wasn’t taken to the new gate. This was resolved and I got off the phone with her because I was about to leave and pick her up.

To finish, her flight arrived at 11:36 and by 11:50 she was letting me know she had her bags and was outside waiting. I had told her to text me when she arrived so I could meet her at baggage claim, but things were happening fast. I found her immediately putting her luggage in the car, stopped so she could go to the bathroom along with Daryl and then on to Whataburger where she got a chicken sandwich meal. Remarking that the sandwich was too big, and I could have some. She finished the fries and the sandwich, obviously she was hungry.

We arrived home at 1:00am on Wednesday morning and didn’t get to sleep till about 6:30am. We were both up by 1:00pm doing nothing for the rest of the day. Ordered pizza for dinner and went to bed at 9:00pm.

It was a remarkably busy day for her, and everything worked out perfectly. The road is no longer broken.

Carrie will be here tomorrow!

Yes, her panic attacks aside Carrie will be flying in tomorrow. I will meet her at the airport and stay home the next day as well just so she gets used to being here and I just might kiss her a little bit.

Had to do a little cleanup during the weekend because of this freaking cold or whatever it is.

Quick edit here. Carrie is on her way. I finished cleaning up in the this morning, it is now Tuesday and have things pretty much ready. She called me a bit ago and she missed her flight. I am quite sure this has her completely frazzled! She will be just fine. She knows I’ll be there when she arrives. She won’t be here till midnight now, five hours later than she should be but all will be ok.

Living room cleanup and new bit of furniture

I purchased a new portable computer table to get all my junk off the coffee table. This is just the right hight and will be easy to roll out of the way when I’m done with it. It also gives us a place to eat when Carrie gets here and a more organized living room for her. I don’t want anything around that could trigger any kind of panic attack.

The computer table is working better than I expected. The next Item to add to this will be an EcoFlow River power station to place on the bottom rack. That addition will make this a truly portable computer work station. Plug it up in the corner, when I need it next to me unplug the station, which had been charging and wheel it to my location. The power station should be able to power the computer cart for 15+ hours at a time.

Some of the best news ever! Last Wednesday I sent in my income taxes and on Monday my Oklahoma taxes arrived in my checking account and on Tuesday my federal taxes arrived. That is a record for Oklahoma and ties the record for Federal at four days. Four days might even be a record itself. This influx of money will help tremendously for Carries vacation.

FINALLY HAVE THE TREASURE CHEST WORKING AGAIN

I buckled down and deleted the original chest top and start that portion from scratch.

After creating a new cylinder, I deleted the bottom half and tried everything again. Modeling the top from the begining and the results were the same!! How frustrating can that be?

I started to try one thing, move it then try another and move it to see what geometry was being created. I also noticed that when I went into edit mode, the proportional editing button was selected. That is a problem. To make a long story longer, I ended up separating the side panels with the ‘y’ hot key and selected all the curved top pieces with the ‘L’ hot key and left the sides unconnected. When I scaled with <Alt> + ‘S’ everything seemed to work perfectly with the top. I then selected all the side faces, pressed ‘e’ then cancelled the extrude and scaled with <Alt> + ‘S’ to create a thickness toward the center.

Is all that, correct? I don’t think so because Kent did not do two separate extrudes and scales. In the end it will all be good.

Correct Chest Top
Model after corrected top

I’ll add a bit more here. Like I said earlier, I started over with the top and completed the portion I could not get done using a technique that worked but was incorrect. After watching ‘again’ I realized that when he selected the entire top model, he did not press the ‘L’ key as I thought, he pressed the ‘A’ key. This led me to believe the side planks were separated as I thought and that using the <Alt> + ‘S’ with everything selected would work as shown. I tried everything again and I was correct. Everything worked exactly as he showed he just needed to be clearer about separating the side planks. Anyway, all looks great now.

BLENDER ABOVE 2.80 HAS A BUG

Yes, I do have to check this out more but when you select multiple faces, click ‘E’ for extrude, right click and then <Alt> + ‘S’ to extrude along the normals it pulls the faces along the normals and does not ‘extrude’. I’ll post some picks below. I will need to check this out more as I said but it looks to be a bug or above 2.80 this function has changed, and I have not seen the ‘new’ way of doing this.

Did some investigating on this ‘bug’ and will try a few things when I get home. On item I notices was one side on the back of the model was moving in a strange manner and one that I did not anticipate. This may be caused by not resetting the scale/rotation/position with <Alt> + ‘a’. This is an issue I have run into and can affect what you are trying to accomplish in random ways.

I keep trying different solutions and nothing seems to work. I will not delete the entire top half of the chest, create a new cylinder and start that part over. Frustrating, especially when you have quite a few years modeling in Blender and then the simplest thing throws you for a loop.

Blender EEVEE is seems to be working

At least a little bit in the rendered view window. The materials definitely need to be fixed. They look horrible. I’ll check on Andrew Price’s site for materials as well as others I have access too this week. I’ll post what I find below.

I will also complete the Treasure Chest model with Kent Trammel on CG Cookie which will help tremendously with materials in EEVEE. I’ll get materials for those renders (I’ll post here) and at the same time work on setting up lighting and materials for the spaceship corridor.

Getting sick all the time

For some reason I’m feeling sick all the time and I’m not sure why. I’m dizzy, my stomach feels nauseas etc.. Maybe I need to just relax when I get home, clean the bedroom because I have let that go. I took off the sheets, washed them and never put them on the bed. Then I was just very lazy and have not made the bed yet.

I opened my spaceship corridor in Blender 3.0 and tried a render using Eevee. I was not surprised that it did not work. The panel lights, overhead and low-level light worked but there was no light to see any walls or details.

Update Blender, start python again

Updating Blender to open in Blender 3.0 was extremely easy. Just open it up. Apparently, I did not have any version specific items in my spaceship corridor file. Now it is on to converting the textures and materials.

I completed a render last week that shows some differences that need to be addressed. I had a glow around some of the lights down the corridor and lights on the door at the end. After the render, the glow is gone, and the green controller lights seem to be gone. Time for some more modelling.

I started Mosh’s Complete Python course and am getting used to the extensions needed within VS Code. Some of which I already had and others I did not have.

Additionally, I am trying to schedule the publishing of the posts when I think of it, usually Monday evening or sometime during the week prior to posting.

Finished the first week of the year

The commitment is being kept. You heard that correctly. During this week I have been updating my Blender to 3.0 (I also updated to the current LTS version). Next is looking at pulling in my space ship corridor project I did with Andrew’s tutorial to the latest Blender. After that I need to see what I need to do to update materials and textures to work in eeve, get a render of that to post and place on my desk top. That will accelerate the desire to complete this first project.

I also started a new Python course on ‘Code with Mosh’. Like I said last week I already pay an annual fee for his all of his courses and I get them for 25%. Not a 25% discount but 25% what everyone else pays. I think I’m grandfathered in with that price. Whatever the reason, I’ll take it and finish all of his courses. Not all of them this year but a good percentage.

First four-day weekend of the new year with a new focus

Yes, this is the first four-day weekend of the year and my focus this year at home will be number one, Carrie. then the rest of the focus will be back on Blender and additionally, Unity 3D. Working together and I may throw a bit of Unreal in there as well.

The first thing I want to do I decide on a project. Marvin at work I think has given me that first project. I will be converting my spacecraft corridor for using with Blender 3.0 and Evee. That will be the first part of converting that background image into an animated screen saver.

That was the first step. The second step will be investigating how to convert the model. Most items will convert simply fine except for the materials and textures.

Additionally I think I will be hitting Code with Mosh hard this year as well. I’m paying for an annual membership for his courses and I think he is an outstanding teacher so I shall take advantage of that.

New site covering miscellaneous activities including my favorite activity: Blender