I don’t know why I can’t seem to finish anything. I swear it must seem to everyone that I have a goal of starting the most projects in a lifetime without finishing. I probably won’t finish that, too!

What are some of the things I have started?

* paintings
* music (songs)
* programming (so many ideas)
* tarotwicks (see programming line)
* sdsmedia
* slay for pay
* building a studio
* basement
* learning java (this one is ok)
* photography
* art (in general)
* music, songs, and bands
* this post (most likely)
* lots of emails that needed to be sent
* the draft worked (this post might make it)
* every song I have ever written pretty much
* paintings (sorry, carly)
* college
* high school
* broadcasting school
* I should have just said school
* drawings
* books (reading)
* books (writing…like the overlords)
* wicks anything
* monitoring system
* bounce manager
* band management
* learning new languages

When it’s all said and done, if I have done it, I have quit it. What does that mean? What purpose does it serve? Perhaps I just like trying a lot of different things.

Perhaps I just get bored easily. I can’t say that I always like a challenge, because I am very happy when things come together easy. I guess I should change that to: “I don’t *require* a challenge.”

Whatever the reason, back in the recesses of my mind, I want it to end. It should be as simple as that. Of course, in order to stop quitting, I must quit. What a paradox, eh?

At least I was able to write this post, which is really just a test of the G1 app wptogo. I even added a pic I took at the BLS concert to try out the picture feature. Overall, I think I will stay with postbot. I will post my official review a bit later.

Just a taste of something me and my brother-in-law are working on. The song is called “Become a God”. Click the the link below (mp3).

Become a God

It’s a beautiful autumn Saturday. A nice breeze. A light rain. The leaves are falling more and more with each passing day. The yard is covered with wonderful oranges and browns. College football is on in the living room.

BAM!

Now, it is time to face the music. My disorganization and procrastination has put me in a very difficult position. I am behind with my work. I am behind with my family. I am behind with my life. I have to tackle this now or something is going to give. What do I need to organize? In a word, everything. I have way too many things going on in both my business and in my personal home life to be able to successfully keep up.

Here is a quick list:

• Projects
• Tasks
• Deadlines
• Team schedules
• My schedules
• Notes
• Ideas
• Code
• News
• Documents
• Syncing all of this between computers

Here are the tools I have at my disposal

• Mantis (Bug tracker that is also overMISused as a project management system)
• File servers everywhere (Yah, just directories full of shit.)
• eTools (Document sharing used by some people.)
• Sharepoint (Document sharing that we are supposed to migrate to at some point.)
• Trac Wiki
• Fisheye / Crucible
• phpbb forums

So far my research has uncovered many different techniques. I am discovering the best course of action is to define what I want. The easiest way to state what I want is: “I want to organize everything listed above (the quick list) in such a way that all of the information I need is at my fingertips when I need it.” That’s not asking too much is it? I should probably just design and build a robot secretary. That’s a separate post.

Bringing a little order to chaos

The first missing piece of the puzzle is something that allows me to organize my projects. My wife created a OneNote notebook for me and it looks like a great way to organize the information I have for my projects. It doesn’t help me with deadlines and planning, though. I may not be utilizing it to its full potential. Here is a link outlining the various project management tools out there. It’s really a desert out there for anything that doesn’t mimic Microsoft Project.

At this point, I do not think adding another piece of software to the mix of tools I have available is going to help anything. I need to figure out how to make the best of what I have. I have to use Outlook, so I should be figuring out the best way to leverage Outlook. You will find no real help with available plug-ins. The vast majority of them are related to spam control or something stupid that doesn’t have any value where organization is concerned.  From the multitudes of available plug-ins I have found the following to be, at a glance, usable:

Don’t get me wrong. I see a lot of plug-ins out there and I am sure they are helping a few people out. For the most part it seems like plug-ins are made for an individual or a small group of individuals and it eventually finds a place on the Internet for the vast anonymous cog to consume it.

My Bottleneck el Supremo

Email is definitely a bottleneck for me. This is a single point of failure in my process because most of my work is born from email. I need to be able to find stuff quickly and right now this is not happening. In order to use Outlook effectively I need to start working with:

Changing the scenery a bit (the theme). Might as well talk about design. Want a clean wordpress theme? Try Corporate, Blue Dream, and the Google Chrome Theme. That about does it for me.

Installed some usefulLESS plug-ins to play with. Time for prep work. Time for prime-time. What the hell am I talking about?

I am supremely lazy when it comes to web design. Therefore, I appreciate a nice theme to use. However, those are few and far between. The internet is jam packed full of blogs that all look alike. Mostly because these poor bastards share the same laziness. Perhaps some are inept. Either way, I think it’s my responsibility to make a decision on a theme as a starting point.

Is it weird or normal to smell when something is about to die?

http://www.askmehelpdesk.com/paranormal-phenomena/wierd-death-smell-67790.html

Sort of. The site is back up, at least. Who really knows if I will ever post anything useful.

Basically, I deleted the config file for wordpress a few months ago and it has taken this long to fix it. I care.

This post is not meant to be very informative. It is more for my notes than anything else. I should make it private, but I am not going to do that. I have not been very good about keeping this blog active, so I am going to dish out anything I can to let folks know what I am up to. Especially people from mysticwicks.com.

So, let’s talk about Tarot readings.

As it pertains tarotwicks.com, a reading will be a totally different experience than what people are used to receiving. One could almost say (and I am sure some will) that we are twisting the Tarot. I say, if using every possible resource available to provide someone with the power to answer the questions they are asking themselves, then fine…we are twisting it. During the first wave of development, however, the tarotwicks project will deliver exactly what a person would need to provide a reading for themselves.

Let’s outline the Reading process.

The user does not have to register or sign up for anything to be able to request a reading. The user will be presented with a list of available spreads to choose from. Perhaps they will given some tips on which spread to choose depending on the question they are trying to answer. The spread choices will be limited. Registered (known) users will have many more spreads available and eventually will be able to design their own spreads to choose from. Spreads that are created by registered users can also be made available to the general community or even just specific friends.

Once the spread is chosen, then tarotwicks goes into action. I am not going to go into low level details at this point. Basically, some numbers are kicked out and the corresponding cards are displayed to the user. This would be a thumbnail type view at first. The user will be presented with the reading with the entire spread in view.

The user will then be able to click on a specific card. Clicking on a card brings up general details regarding the meaning of the card. It will be up to the user to correlate the meaning presented with the question they are trying to get answered.

As you can see, tarotwicks.com will not be giving a reading. The sole purpose of the site is to guide a user through the reading process. It could even be used as a tool for learning the ins and outs of giving a reading. We can even have dedicated users that could assist with questions that users have regarding a reading they have been given.

Users will be able to register with tarotwicks.com and this is encouraged. Known users will be able to save their readings, share them with other users, add notes, request help, add new spreads, etc.

Anyway, this is a brief overview. I have to get ready for band practice right now. I will start typing up the real requirements laid out for phase 1 development. Candice and I have already defined what is needed for the 1.0 release and it is time to make this happen. So, stay tuned.

The tarotwicks.com project has now graduated from a small Mysticwicks.com project to something a bit more grandiose. The Twickster will be an online application that will assist users in guided readings. At first we will base everything completely on the Tarot. I have recruited 3 of the brightest engineers I know to assist me in this venture.

We are using Trac to manage the project. (http://dev.tarotwicks.com)

I need to post my notes on the Trac install. It was actually quite a nightmare because I didn’t want to run the standalone version. Bleh. Anyway, its up and running now and that’s what matters. We are going through some push and pull right now at work regarding project management software.

Anyway, I don’t know if I have a document that outlines the entire Twickster experience from start to finish. I have been writing documentation on the project wiki, but it is not a complete and total view. It also uses buzzwords, which have to be explained. G asked me to explain the project to him on Friday WITHOUT the terms and I almost couldn’t do it. This is my attempt to outline the project using everyday language, not Twisms.

Where did the Twickster come from?

Ok, so my wife asked me if it would be hard to develop a tarot reading generator for the Tarot forum on Mysticwicks.com. I said, not really. And then a few weeks later (yah, I’m slow) I started thinking of the best way to do it. At first I was just going to write a Vbulletin plug-in that would do the job. Then I started thinking it might be fun to have a separate site which Mysticwicks.com users could log in and get readings, even save them. My first notes even required Vbulletin user integration at phase I.

From there my thought started whirring around about how best to build the application to produce the best readings. I started thinking about the possibilities of running information obtained by the user through various routines that would find correspondences via various numerological and modern Kabbalistic. These correspondences could then be used to weight the chances of drawing a particular card in a reading.

This Suggestive Randomness would give the application an edge when producing the right user experience to strengthen the psychological aspects of a reading. This also changes the way one would have to think about divination. The assisted reading is based on you and ultimately done by you. The Twickster is a genius at math and able to perform complex equations that would take us forever to complete in a blink. The Twickster gives us a medium and an opportunity to get the best reading we could ever have. It is the best reading because it is done by the only person that could ever really tell you what is going to happen to you.

You.

So, from the small reading vbulletin plug-in springs the might Twickster which will be a very unique site in the social genre. Next post I will explain just exactly what the Twickster is.

<van> Ah, te Thelemic way
<van> .svn 93
<pq> SVN Revision 93: by svn on 2007-04-06T16:21:28.328249Z [5 paths]
<pq> r93: Deleted junk files

So, the Jetta took a header. It overheated for the last time on 95 today as we took the trip to Delaware to pick up my stepson. So, now I have to figure out how I am going to fix it. It’s been a long time since I worked on a car and I stayed away from ‘Newer’ cars. Today’s older cars are yesterday’s ‘Newer’ cars. So, I can break down and put the car in the shop, but damn…I hate that. You never really know how much it is going to cost. My other choice is to try and fix the damn thing myself.

So, research begins…

First stop, forums.

http://autoforums.carjunky.com/

Wow. It’s really slim-pickings out there when it comes to automotive forums. Bleh. I always search for a good forum first. This must be habit. I also know that this is not the best way for a research expedition to happen.

hours later

Fuck it. Going to the shop!

many, many hours later

Ok, so more research and I can nail it down to a few different problems:

1. Water pump. It seems that VW put in shitty water pumps for a while and didn’t issue a recall. So, now 100k miles later everyones water pump is going to hell. Now, my wife did tell me that the she replaced the water pump a few years ago. However, it was done by a VW dealer. =\

2. Bad Maintanence. I have found that the Jetta requires new coolant be vacuum filled. Bleh. If you don’t do it this way then the About.com answer guy says to will always overheat. Guy says to call the local VW dealer to see what they charge to do it.

3.  Thermostat? Too easy, will never happen for me.

Oh noes!

Occasional problems on this vehicle are failures of the Timing Belt and Mass Air Flow (MAF) Sensor ( 4 cylinder engines only), the Ignition Power Stage (1.8L engine only), the Intake Manifold Air Induction Passages (1.9L engine only), and the Water Pump, gasoline engines only.

Problems with the Water Pump can result in engine overheating. The cost to replace the Timing Belt is estimated at $62.00 for parts and $195.00 for labor on the gasoline engines, and $63.00 for parts and $175.50 for labor on diesel engines.

The cost to replace the MAF Sensor is estimated at $380.00 for parts and $58.50 for labor. Volkswagen has issued a warranty extension due to the high number of MAF Sensor failures. MAF Sensors are now warranted for 7 years, 70,000 miles on 1999 through 2001 models.

The cost to replace the Ignition Power Stage is estimated at $125.00 for parts and $52.00 for labor.

The cost to clean the carbon from the Intake Manifold Air Induction Passages is estimated at $11.00 for parts and $169.00 for labor.

The cost to replace the Water Pump is estimated at $81.00 for parts and $208.00 for labor. All prices are estimates based on $65.00 per flat rate hour and do not include diagnostic time or any applicable sales tax.