A General Life Reorganization
I’ve decided to improve my life. I’ve let things go. I’m not sure how or why it happened, but it did and it’s time to tie up the loose threads.
I have a presence on 3 different blogging engines. Well, 2 really. I have this blog, which I’ve been devoting to technical stuff. I also have a MySpace blog, which I used for generic life stuff. And I have a presence on FaceBook, which isn’t bloggy, but is still a social networking kind of thing. It’s too much. I’m going to keep the MySpace and FaceBook accounts as pointers to here, but that’s about it.
This blog is going to undergo some changes. I’ve already condensed the Special Education and Family categories into a general Life category. While I’m not really a fan of vanity blogs, I do find myself reading some on a daily basis because of the content. Rachel Lucas, frex, is snarky-funny, while Kris, in New England has some very nice photography and journal posts. Plus, in light of the above, it doesn’t make sense to put my hiking/photo stuff on one blog and my technical stuff on another. I need to keep it simple.
The WordPress blog engine that I use will also eventually be replaced by my own Crucible engine. I discovered a couple of programming errors in some code that had me stuck and I discovered a fix yesterday. This hurdle had me stuck for weeks, ’til I finally ignored it and moved on to something else. When I took a fresh look at it yesterday, I had a fix written in about 20 minutes. More on this later.
I need to improve my overall health. While I’m not fat, I am overweight enough that it’s unhealthy. My diet sucks frankly and it’s time for me to decide whether I’d rather be mountain hiking or eating chocolate. In my youth, my metabolism was such that I didn’t have to think twice about it. Now, approaching 42, I want to be able to hike mountain trails like I did in my youth. Last week’s hike up Galehead and South Twin Mountains showed me that my legs and heart can not only still handle the workload, but that I can beat “book time”, the estimated times listed in the AMC White Mountains Guide. Still, hiking up the Twinway really took it out of me.
I have a lot of projects and interests. Not only do I write software for a living, but I have numerous software projects, game projects and fiction projects. I’ve also taken chess back up and am playing on-line at Chess World. Couple all of this with my family responsibilities, including being the father of a 6½ year old autistic boy, and my life is quite full. All of that is one reason why I decided to resign as webmaster of the Tewksbury Special PAC (Parent Advisory Council). It was just too much, to be beholden to others while watching most of my other projects lie dormant. The seeds of Crucible, in fact, were ready for planting about three years ago, but it’s only been this year that I’ve been able to work on it. While I like to think that I was able to help the PAC get off the ground, my half-hearted continued involvement was going to be a burden to both of us. It was time for me to move on.