So… what am I up to, you ask? A lot! (Updating my blog, for instance…)

I keep attempting to update my blog from time to time, and I keep flopping at it.  What happens is that I write a small bit about what I’m up to from time to time, and end up getting sidetracked.  The blog entry ends up stuck in “draft limbo”, where I never go back and finish it, and instead try and start another new entry.

So, today I decided I’m going to do a “mass update” of sorts, hitting the highlights of various projects and things I’ve been up to, and how I’ve been feeling about certain things.  These aren’t in any particular order, just how the come offa’ the top of my head…

Finding My (Religious) Voice

I’ve gotten quieter and quieter about religion in any public fashion.  I’ll talk one-on-one about religion, but rarely do I talk about the things that really bug me on Facebook, or in a public setting like my blog (which, well, sometimes I think of as private and that no one reads them, but, trust me – I see the stats, and often people bring up what I say on here outside of the blog!  It’s almost creepy sometimes, but it’s SUPPOSED to be public on here anyway 😉

Recently, that’s started to change – and expect to finally see some of the stuff that annoys me on here.  I’ve got some real problems about what people focus on, as opposed where scripture tells us to put our focus.  Let’s face it, people pick and choose what they want from scripture – myself included – even when they flat out say they follow the whole scripture.  Is there a logical process to how we prioritize how we follow the 613 Old Testament laws and the 1050 New Testament laws?  There should be, and it falls down to Yeshua’s proclamation of the two greatest commandments:  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might”, and “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”  Everything stems from those two laws – and once you accept that, understanding how it all fits together makes sense (to me, at least.)

But, that’s not quite all I’m going to talk about.  I may dump those in their own blog category, since not everyone who reads my stuff is interested in religion (on the other hand, those who don’t like Christians much might want to read it to get a different perspective from someone who’s a Believer and doesn’t agree what what he’s seeing 🙂

And, for those so inclined in believing such things:  every time I speak up, God re-enforces the fact I need to speak up more often, and more loudly.  At some point I’ll sit down and write what that means, but this is just a “brief”, not a full set of stories 🙂

Conversations With The Plumber

Anyone who’s known me long enough knows I’d really like to be back in front of the camera again – it’s enjoyable to be on screen, even if it’s just online.  But, well, it’s not a priority for me.  There’s very little profit involved in me in front of the camera.

However, The Plumber (Brandon at Plumb Crazy, LLC) and I were talking, and came up with an idea, a combination of comedy and marketing.  I had joked quite a few times about recording our conversations and calling them “Conversations With The Plumber” and making them available online.  We’ve decided to do it.  Two cameras, two microphones (those are still on the way, at the moment), and about an hour of conversation.  The first one, which didn’t have a set of mics, had horrible audio, so I just turned it into a teaser and called it good:

Tomorrow we might shoot the first episode (the mics won’t be here yet, but it’s also cool enough in Kansas that we won’t need to have the A/C in the truck running, which was the source of the horrible audio), and I’ll probably cut it into an episode Tuesday night and upload it.  I’ll be posting those videos on PlumbCrazyKansas.com, Plumb Crazy’s Facebook page, and maybe on here, too.

It’s a pretty wild marketing plan, over all – if it should take off, it could be a seriously fun way of making sales for Brandon. 🙂

The topics covered in there are “anything goes” – whatever comes out of one of our mouths is the starter for the conversation, and we just roll from there.  It could be politics, economics, quantum physics, astrophysics, astronomy, religion, or just whatever happened stupid the day before.  There’s an attempt to be “clean” about it, but I’ll end up having to beep some language here and there.  And not everything we say will make the cut – I’m hoping to cut the best bits into episodes, hopefully about 5 – 10 minutes long.  Some people, well, will be just plain offended by what we say.  That’s just the nature of it, of course.

CloudPages and Other Projects

Right now I have no lack of work to get done.  A quick glimpse:

• cloudPages is a pretty groovy professional oriented cloud based file sharing system that’s being fast tracked in development
• Beran PSM is a project status management system custom built for a local construction company that keeps track of all the projects, and alerts everyone involved to status changes, etc.
• RetroBreaker 1.1 landed for Mac, iOS, and Android.  Now it’s time to find a couple hours to look at the Ouya, Windows, and the next update.
• The iCareING Notebook is a cool medical project app for people with special needs kids, or medical conditions that need tracked.  The 1.1 release is coming soon for iOS, along with releases for Android, Mac, PC, and possibly some BlackBerry models.
• I have updates I’m doing on the Wichita Highland Games & Celtic Festival site, which rolls around once a year.  a little more complicated this year, though, because the director is getting an awesome chance to tour the world with Manilla Road, a heavy metal band 🙂
• Sometime at the end of July, I have a mega-presentation for cloudPages to do, that introduces the project to the local community.  This outlines what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and what secret sauce we’re using to differentiate ourselves from things like DropBox.
• I’m throwing just a tad of effort into helping a local business get back and going again.
• I’m founding a new professional organization, the Kansas Game Developers Association
• I’ve started a new website as part of The Save Ferris Project, Indie Game Life, which will be headed up by my friend / brother, Jeff Wilson (as a volunteer thing, until we get the site on it’s feet enough to give him a real job with it.)
• I’ve got two games in development:  “Control Issues” is a prequel of sorts to the upcoming Jumpman: 2049, and a pinball game.
• And, of course, the books that I’m writing

That’s a “quick version” of the list of things going on, work wise.  There’s still more.  I talked with the Wichita Business Journal recently, and gave them the rundown on what I’m working on, and after I got off the phone I realized there were still three more projects I hadn’t told them about!

I’ll post some updates about them as I get the chance.

Erasing The Past

The nice things about all those projects:  it’s time to take on my past, and fix it.  I have the resources (or they are coming) to finally do it.  Eliminate the remainder of my past debts, and fix my taxes.  That’s no small thing, of course, but it’s worthwhile.  There’s always a fear that I’m about to have to deal with more stuff everytime I get paid for a project.

Right now, we (Kat and I) can pay the bills, with enough left over for me to attack all this.  Sure, I can’t do something ultra-cool like go out and buy a new car (though, the $1300 1982 Mercedes 300D – AKA, The Joker – still runs fine, except the screwed up cooling system) or buy neat stuff.  That’s OK – I don’t really want neat stuff, I want to pay off old bills, and get on solid footing, permanently.  Once I get that done, I can look at taking over the world 😉

Improving My Health

So… I guess, technically, I’m now a “cancer survivor”, though in my case it’s really BS.  Here’s the deal – I had a growth on my face start about three (maybe four) years ago, and then it turned into a small hole in my face that never quite healed up.  Well, in my broke situation, there was never enough money to go to the doctor.  When I got married, I had insurance, but I was still pretty money focused – if it was something really bad, I was going to need to have enough money to have it fixed.

Now that there’s been an influx of cash, and I have insurance, I went to the doctor (heck, I HAVE a Doctor now!), and had it check out.  It’s either Basal Cell Carcinoma or Squamous Cell Carcinoma (after some research on the later, it’s probably Squamous, based on what I read.)  Well, it’s been removed.  And there was much rejoicing.  Yes, it’s cancer, but it’s about the most minor version of a cancer you can ever have – the fatality and complication rate of squamous cell carcinoma is around 0.3%.  If you have to have a cancer, those are the ones to have.

Next up is my teeth – I’m afraid I don’t really have the money to fix them right (well, the right way still isn’t quite available yet:  using dental T-cells to produce dental buds, have them implanted, then grow new teeth in place), but I’m going to improve the situation considerably.  I’m probably going to call them Monday to start setting up an appointment to look into what’s going to happen.

The rest of my health over the last year has improved considerably, too.  I ride my bike 1 mile every morning, just to get my heart rate up.  My cholesterol levels are good.  My resting heart rate is good.  My blood pressure is good (well, most fo the time:  when I went to the Dr. originally to find out what was on my face, it was 138 / something.  When I showed up to have it removed, I was back to normal, 113 / 86)  Plus, I have other workouts that I try and fit in as I can.

I’m still overweight, which is very much on my list of things to fix – right now I’m at 220, and I need to be below 200.  One step at a time, right? 🙂

Married Life

You’d think with everything I have going on, I hardly get to spend time with my wife.  It’s true that we spend less time together than we used to – a lot of that has to do with her having homework and school (she’s getting her MBA).  But, I try to let business interfere as little as possible with my time with her.  Let’s face it:  no matter how successful I am in business, it’s not nearly as important as my wife, my friends, and my family.  🙂

So, that’s the update 🙂  Far from complete, but it gives a snapshop of what’s going on 😉