July 15, 2014

No seizures this morning, so I got to work on time. That was nice.

I am one step closer to finishing my book cross stitch. At this point I feel like I could have almost made an entirely new one in the same time it has taken me to cover up the smudge. I finished the design covering the smudge and it looks kind of alright. I am hoping that when I finish the matching design on the other side of the cross stitch that it will look better. I still don't think I will like it as much as my original design but we'll see. I've also thought about adding in more randomness but I'm already afraid of it looking too cluttered. I wanted to give it to the librarian at school but I might end up keeping it and making another one, hopefully without a smudge.

I decided to take a break after finishing the one design so I switched over to finishing the note I started writing my friend awhile ago when I got tired of writing “the quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog” over and over again with my left hand. The note itself is legible but I need to keep practicing my left-handed writing. You can tell by looking at it, at least with the style based on Courier New, that I am going slow and don't have complete confidence in my abilities. At times I try the “fake it 'til you make it” philosophy but then it starts to get sloppy. I'll get there eventually. Or move onto something else.

Speaking of, after finishing the note I practiced drawing flowers. Some of them were better than others but they weren't terrible. It would be nice to get away from trying to draw realistically, because I want it to be perfect and it never will be. I need to try getting the general idea of something, so you can tell what it is based on, but not get too specific. Like a cartoonish kind of thing. It would also probably be good practice trying to get the general idea of stuff before I launch into a bunch of detail. I also need to work on drawing stuff in steps. I've seen plenty of pictures and videos depicting the drawing process and they almost always start with rough guidelines and then build up from there. I need to figure that out.

I also read while I was at work and learned that Henry Hudson, the dude the river is named after, might still be alive, in a Schrodinger's cat kind of way. On his last voyage he wanted to explore further but his crew had other ideas so they mutinied and put him and his son and some other people in a small boat and sailed off. None of them, the small boat party, were ever seen again. So, the mystery that is his whereabouts is kind of a like a box. Maybe. If we ignore the average lifespan of human beings. I really need to read a book about him and see what some of the hypotheses are in regard to his goings-on after the mutiny.

Tonight my goal was to play BF4 because the new DLC came out today. I don't think I ever got around to playing the last DLC. I think when I played a few weeks ago, and completely sucked, I tried getting into one of the latest maps but it had already changed when I got in. So, my goal was to actually play this DLC, even just a little bit. And I failed. I blame the game. When I first opened Origin I checked for updates and there was a short download. It should have been a long download but whatever, I opened up the website, found a suitable server, and tried to log on. It said I needed the DLC. I went back to Origin, checked for updates, and it said my game was up to date. So I tried repairing the game. That took awhile and after restarting Origin and logging back into the website, I tried to join a server. Once again, I was lacking the DLC. After thirty minutes of trying all the various things I could think of I got Origin to start downloading the DLC. In the end I don't think I did anything that I hadn't already tried several times but technology sucks sometimes. An hour and a half later, the DLC was done and I was ready to play, but I didn't end up playing because it was already ten o'clock. I didn't want to get into a big game that late at night. At least when I have to get up in the morning. I'm too old for that shit. While the DLC was downloading I did jump into Minecraft for a little bit so I at least got to play a video game tonight.

During all of that, I watched YouTube videos, because that is what I do. I need to do a better job at doing something worthwhile with my evenings. Even if it is just a little something. I could do better.

In a last little bit of news, my laptop should be here on Thursday. It shipped yesterday and I am waiting with great anticipation. Or at least slightly greater than mild anticipation. I might be downplaying it slightly with that last sentence.