Waiting for Vacation

This is the last week of work prior to the Christmas break. I always have a lot of plans for the time I am off and I never get a chance to do any of them. This year will be different, I’ll finish the game, blender course in Udemy and start on my VR project with Unity and my apartment. Each of these should be very easy to complete and get started.

When it comes to Angie I am about fed up. I have spent a lot of money making sure she has a good Christmas and nothing I do is good enough. I am about to throw my hands into the air and give up on her. She said the divorce would happen in September, it is now December and I am pretty certain her last name is still Amsden. I pray everyday things will work out and I know God will answer my prayers as always but she is one of the most, if not the most frustrating person I know.

My family wants to have another get together at the cabin this year and need to know if I will be there. I received an email from Tyra Sunday needing an answer today. Because of that I really want to say no but I want to head out there.

Mental Health day

I needed a mental health day yesterday. It seems that every 8 to 12 weeks I need to take a mental health day. Just a day to relax other than a weekend day and yesterday was that day. Those are usually proceeded by a couple days I don’t want to talk to anybody. People don’t like that too much but it is what it is.

Sorry guys but some times it happens.

Angie’s Christmas

I had told Angie I would make sure she had a good Christmas this year and I will. Angie’s idea of a good Christmas is having enough money to buy a bunch of presents for everyone. That is always been their families idea of good Holidays as a whole. If it is Christmas, lots of presents, if it is Easter, lots of presents… any holiday, their idea of a good time is presents. This flies in the face of everything I believe it but I told her she would have a good Christmas.

I’ll put a long story short. She spent 1,200.00 and was upset because she actually spent an extra 500.00 and I was pissed she did that. She doesn’t understand that if you don’t have the freaking money, don’t spend it. What she did was steal money from her mom, telling all of her family I would send it to her, spent it and then told me. To top it off she didn’t know why I was mad.

All of that, telling her I would make sure she had a good Christmas was predicated on the fact she would be divorced when Christmas came around. Well, I’m pretty sure she is not divorced at this time but she still spent the money and expected me to bail her out….

Which I did….

Go ahead and pop me in the back of the head….

A Lawyer?

That is what I said, Angie sent me a message today that reads ‘We have to come up with the lawyer asap’. My thoughts are: ‘Who the heck is we’ and why. I am going to have nothing to do with her divorce. More to come when I find out more.

Angie called me last night to let me know what the kids wanted for Christmas and the items were reasonably prices. I guess with age come the wisdom regarding the cost of things you ask for… Nice to see them grow up. 🙂

I am doing really well at sticking to just one thing lately, not so go at sticking to my diet and exercise routine, better get that whip out.

Stick to it

There is only one way I can achieve my retirement goals and that is to decided on exactly what I want to do to have the residual income I need and stick to it. When creating entries in my daily journal, called ‘Journey’s’ I have been noticing entries I had made a year ago and more. The last one struck me as a reason I am not getting ahead. The reason/excuse, what ever you want to call it is I don’t follow completely through with things that will eventually make a difference.

I’m not sure if it is because I get bored, find another interest and get side tracked, I’m not really sure. My goal right now is to finish the book I already reviewed and complete the game. So far it is going well but when I run into a difficult area I’m sure that is when my attention wanders and I find another task to do and abandon the items on my plate.

It is time to finish my plate before I take another helping of another project.

Learn one thing well turned into two things and a GREAT Heart Rate Monitor

The two things are now ASP.NET MVC-6 and SharePoint. The SharePoint came from work and I’m not all that upset about it. I can still hone my skills in C# at the same time I am using that skill set and at the same time enhancing while I am at work. The best of both worlds.

Angie seems to be getting along ok without me getting a loan for her car. She was very sick and still had to move, hopefully she will be done by Tuesday because I don’t have her rent now that she has used it up for the move.

She has also turned on her phone number again, hope she keeps using it. She would never had had to do it if she did not turn it off to begin will but such is life.

I found my favorite workout tool. The Sosche Rhythm+ heart rate monitor. It cost me 79.00 (a lot more than that, explanation coming) but is well worth the time and money. Why did it cost so much? Chalk this up to your typical instant gratification syndrome. I wanted a heart rate monitor for use with my Peloton. Their monitor was 48.00 and I figured I could get one cheaper and better from Amazon and purchased a 28.99 and delivered on 10-20-2017. I gave it a couple of tries and it would barely sync to the bike. I then checked with Peloton and found one they recommended, a Garmin, purchased this and it was delivered on the 22nd. I opened the box and tried this that evening with basically the same results. This time the monitor paired with the bike but over 30 minutes showed a heart rate of 44 and a whopping 57 cal burned in 30 minutes. Note, both of these were of the chest strap kind and I really don’t like them.

This next time I decided to do some research and found one which was not a chest strap but you wear it on your forearm, no wetting of electrical contacts or the use of gels. I found a very large number of great reviews for this one and the less than positive review seemed more like user error than a problem with the device. Another plus was a review that specifically mentioned that it would pair with the Peloton instantly. I purchased this and in the mean time I also purchased Peloton’s own monitor (chest strap).

The monitor like I said earlier is the Sosche Rhythm+ and it is all everyone said it is. Paired instantly with my Peloton and matched the Fitbit heart rate precisely. This may have cost me 29.99 + 42.99 + 79.95 or 151.93 but it is well worth the actual cost of 79.95. Oh, the Peloton chest strap arrived on Saturday as well but I have not tried it out (It is a chest strap).

Have a great week and I’ll update you with how this item has fared throughout the week next Monday.

I’ll say it again – Learn one thing well

I have finally decided to learn one thing and only one thing well. I have not decided on what that one thing will be but will let you know what it is when I do. This one thing does not include Unity or Unreal, Python or C#, Maya or Blender.

For Modelers I’ll focus on Blender. For Game engines I will focus on Unity 2017 and dabble with Unreal Engine. For programming languages they will be C#, Python and JavaScript.

Those are obviously more than one thing so to clarify, I want to concentrate on one framework to build web applications. Now it is time to decide on what/which one. I think I am going to stick with ASP.NET MVC-6 for now.

Good one this last weekend, I told Angie I would not get a loan for a car for her, explained why and all went well. I then said if she wanted to come on down I could rent a car for her for the weekend. She then goes on to say “I need one for longer than a week. Can you give me 1200.00 and then rent a car for at least a week?”. Crap, you give someone an inch and then they try an take a freaking light-year.

Another Car

This will not be to for young eyes. I helped Angie get a car earlier this year. Knowing full well she jumped the gun, did not have it checked out and fell for her crap, “I really want this car and will be really pissed if I don’t get it…” yada yada yada. Well she got it and what a lemon that turned out to be. Now she wants another and expects me to chip in 2000.00 for her loan.

Chip in for her loan, no now she wants me to sign for a loan so she can get a car. No way, I spent the better part of the last 8 years getting out of debt and establishing my credit. The next load I get will be for a house and I don’t want any credit cards/loans tied to me when I do. This will help my retirement as well.

I finished reviewing the book “Mastering Unity 2017 Game Development”. It is a fairly good book provided you are very familiar with Unity, the interface and most of the ins and outs. I think if you are just starting out this book could be quite difficult but for those who are more advanced and know Unity well and have a very good grasp of C# it is a handy book to have.

Many items on the plate

I need to start concentrating on something. If I have too many items on the plate to concentrate on, nothing gets concentrated on. This weekend was great. I did nothing stupid, washed everything, kept the apartment clean, an extra workout and did not eat too much. After such a great weekend I ended up doing none of what I wanted to do. Working on the Tooling Material master form, Packt Publishing book review etc.

Time to start planning my work and working the plan.

New site covering miscellaneous activities including my favorite activity: Blender