Ravings of an Undead Cheese Minion

A year to review computer science.  To finish my master's degree, get some certifications, get a new job, prep to move states, and redo my portfolio and demo reel.  To get my first few big  coding projects off the ground, as opposed to the little ones I've done.  To finally start producing art regularly, and get through the rest of my beginner learning materials.  To start working hard  on my writing so I can start communicating with publishers in 2025.  To self-study engineering so I can be more prepped to attend school again in 2025 or 2026 (and get it done for good). To start prototyping my dream theme park resort.  To finally run my first marathon and start putting on some muscle.  To practice music each day, actually message people back, and get through my gaming, show, and reading backlogs.  To do all the things I should've done a long time ago, that I have tried to do many times and failed, but at least am doing now. And this time will be different.  here we go

By the time I reached the train station, she was gone. The city around me was silent and filled with a cool heaviness. My breath fogged up in the late September air, but only for a brief second — a wisp of smoke ascending to the black sky that glittered with tiny winking diamonds. Skyscrapers glimmered underneath the moonlight. Mists swirled and eddied, but only at the level of my chest, as though I was wading through a river. Above me, the sky was clear, offering a dark window into deep space. An empty bullet train sat along the electromagnetic railway, at the station, destinations flashing across its LCD screen. And then it took off into the mists, without a single soul therein. I shouldered my bag and shook my head in disbelief. Was what I saw even real? Or was I chasing after my own delusions? Maybe I was finally descending into full-blown insanity. Yet I could’ve sworn I saw someone, beckoning for me to follow her, running and laughing through the gloom and the dancing fog of a

Jim Jim

I'm keeping the previous post up, but I feel a lot better now. My goal is to go back to my roots, to not really start over, but rather pick up where I left off.  Winter 2015 and Spring 2015 were my best academic semesters. I was still full of hope as I was fresh off my mission and had just entered the CS Animation premajor. I started to slip a little when I hit CS 236. I'm picking up where I left off there. My goal was to be as good at coding as the pure CS guys and be as good at art as the pure animation/illustration students. And with writing I will no longer use my variety of pursuits as a reason to not perform at my highest level. So, time to try again. At some point, I'll be valuable enough where I won't get cut, or if I do, I'll have enough of a side business going that it won't matter much. I'm still doing the MSEE though. In the future, maybe 3 years out. 

I have to run a bunch of errands tomorrow, in order to prepare for leaving town. Mostly: dropping off my cousin's Christmas present, packing, doing some last-minute shopping for the road trip, and dropping off my DreamWorks gear at UPS in order to be shipped back.  And that leads me to all these questions. Should I be canceling certain subscriptions? Do I even buy my Disney World tickets? Do I even deserve to? I registered for the runDisney race well before I got wind of any layoffs. And I just don't know what to do anymore.  It doesn't feel like a) I actually worked at DreamWorks , and on a film that everyone will see, and b) I lost that job only 13 months after getting it. My second layoff in a row, a 100% layoff rate for all the full-time jobs I have had. I had the opportunity of a lifetime, and it was taken from me. That little Windows ThinkPad with the CentOS machine in the NBCU data center -- I'll never get to use it again. I'll never participate in chats agai

It's something that I hate How everyone's disposable.  

I wrote about "debug bleed" a while back -- where you get so wrapped up in a coding problem that it takes away time to do the rest of your life, and it derails everything. Then your apartment gets messy, your hobbies are untouched, you forget to exercise, your gaming backlog grows uncontrollably, your sleep schedule is all out of whack...you know what I mean.  I was reading about the BYU ACME major because I've always been curious about it and knew some students in my early CS classes (and later math classes, for me as a lowly math minor) who were in it. I briefly considered switching to it when I first got rejected for CS Animation but it would not have been practical time-wise to do anything other than the math minor because of how behind I was in math at the time (and since I got accepted into CS Animation with my next application, it was all good).  The trap of local optimization is listed on this ACME "Benefits and Challenges" page . And I've realized

PSA: Do not set fire to random trash in the parking lot.  Fires can destroy property and kill people. Campfires are great, randomly lighting fires in the middle of the parking lot near residences is not. If you play around with open fire, you are an idiot. You think you have control of it. You don't.  That's my soapbox for today. 

I looked up engineering licensure requirements for CA, UT, and FL, the 3 states I'm most likely to reside in long-term (though most likely not Utah). It looks like a master's degree counts as long as the school's corresponding undergrad is accredited. It is also my understanding that you can take FE / PE from an area other than what you majored in, so you're not locked in by your degree.  As a result, I'm proceeding with my self-study for now, then I'll probably just do the msee on cu-boulder (coursera) once I've completed the osee on github plus some meche stuff I've added. at cu boulder online, you can take the courses for noncredit, do the homework assignments, then pay for the course and take the exams. So you can go at a slower pace and still eventually get the degree, which would work well if you've got a lot going on (I do).  this doesn't change my commitment to CS and graphics -- it's still a high priority for me, I will finish this M

it's nice to set a goal for 400 words per day, but it doesn't always seem to work?  I've made goals for art, coding, and music, and they work better if I have a more in-depth routine. I've felt my skills in each slowly improving, but not so much in writing.  So I'm starting with 30 minutes + 400 words, with 200 as an OK fallback. I doubt I'll be able to write 400 words in 30 minutes, but I can find a way to fit in 30 minutes of writing. 

It's the dark time of year in Utah. The sky is filled with fog. There are no stars. The trees are dead, and the ground is white and brown. The air quality is terrible. There is no more birdsong. Outside, it's freezing, which means that indoors it's boiling.  I know that I need to get out of here soon. I was happy when in California for Thanksgiving, being with family -- then when I returned to Utah, everything came crashing back down. All the spark in me has died out. I feel like a hollow shell, with nothing but a black void within.  I made the mistake of checking my DreamWorks chats since I haven't been removed yet. I won't be removed for another 2 weeks. I saw all the pictures from the Trolls wrap party. Everyone was so happy, and it broke me all over again. That was my only movie and I might never get to work on another one, because of stupid outsourcing to Canada.  But here’s my name for proof I guess. I wanted to finish my career there at DWA, or stay until I t

Mark Directory As -> Sources Root do this for the src  folder source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13157815/why-does-intellij-idea-suddenly-not-recognize-tests-in-test-folder-anymore 

We waited so many years for Visual Studio for Mac so we didn't have to boot into a Windows partition, and now they're discontinuing it? How long has it even been live for, like a year? Lmao, screw Microsoft for doing that. 

Finally figured this out through a lot of googling -- you hit Mode and then Adjust. Then you can easily scroll through the 4 US time zones it supports.  And it is usable again after being stuck in my closet for who knows how long! 

 

Constantly iterating until it's right. Condensing so I'm only attacking one CS course and project at a time. With EE, it will be 1-2 at a time. Coursework is getting organized elsewhere. The goal is to finish the majority of it by EOY 2024.   [ WARM - UPS ] Technical warm-ups: Cybersecurity Creative warm-ups: write a sentence, browse Inkblot [ FITNESS ]  Lifting Running GET READY FOR DAY, BREAKFAST [ DIGITAL ART ] Artwork Warm-ups: 2 poses, hands/feet, faces, anime, anthro Drawabox Current 2D course: Intro to Art and Drawing 50% rule: Digital painting in Photoshop Current 3D course: Intro to Animation Pipeline 50% rule: 3D art in Maya or Blender [ CS - 1 ] Computer Science Warm-Ups Cracking the Coding Interview, DSA, and Leetcode.  [ CG - 1 ] Computer Graphics Warm-Ups: Shaders, whatever current course we're on Computer Graphics via Master's Thesis [ MUSIC ] LUNCH BREAK, PLW Music: Clarinet, singing, piano [ CG - 2 ] Computer Graphics: More thesis work -- Finish thesis

I have long had an issue where I couldn't properly timebox my coding, because a massive bug would appear and suck out hours and hours. My debugging would bleed into subsequent timeboxes.  This would lead to issues like: scrambling to finish animation homework because I spent 20 hours fixing a systems programming bug. In the end, the lab is still turned in late, AND the art sucks and is ALSO late.  The issue is different for self-paced courses or readings. It just causes zero progress the moment I get stuck, like where I'm at in khan academy. And I was stuck on some simple priority queue stuff for months in an attempt to timebox my DSA review.  So, what is the possible solution to this? When the timebox is hit, don't go more than 20-30 minutes over. If you are stuck on debug bleed, then you do not fully understand the issue, and what is going on in general. As a result, you need to stop, leave some notes for your restart of understanding the logic of what you need to do, and

May as well start on the New Year's stuff right now.  Other than generic stuff like "be x minutes early everywhere" because I suck at being on time, all new year's resolutions will fall under these 10 categories:  Lifting Running Digital Art Computer Science Music Graphics and Games Industrial Controls / Theme Park Design Cybersecurity  Reading, Languages, and Writing Imagination and Visualization  Each focus area will be worked on daily.  Will update once I've selected actual objectives and  an autopiloted sequence that will allow me to achieve them. Thankfully, most of my sequences are already organized in Asana, Trello, and Obsidian. 

 [ WARM - UPS ] Technical warm-ups: Cybersecurity Creative warm-ups: write a sentence, browse Inkblot [ FITNESS ]  Lifting Running GET READY FOR DAY, BREAKFAST [ DIGITAL ART ] Artwork Warm-ups: 2 poses, hands/feet, faces, anime, anthro Drawabox Current 2D tutorial 50% rule: Digital painting in Photoshop Current 3D tutorial 50% rule: 3D art in Maya or Blender [ CS - 1 ] Computer Science Review: Study of formal CS Computer Science Interview Prep: Cracking the Coding Interview, DSA, and Leetcode.  [ CG - 1 ] Computer Graphics Study  Shaders, Graphics CodeX, Digital painting algorithms  Open source: Moonray, Krita, Blender Computer Graphics via Master's Thesis [ MUSIC ] LUNCH BREAK, PLW Music: Clarinet, singing, piano [ CG - 2 ] Computer Graphics: More thesis work -- Finish thesis ASAP Game Development  [ INDUSTRIAL CONTROLS ] Industrial Controls: Warm-up with Duolingo math. Then: ECE, ME, Embedded, PLCs/Scada, Math/Physics.  Theme Park Design AFTERNOON BREAK (3:00 WALK) [ CS - 2 ] Com

The Monday after playing, I will look over my next hymn assignments and play them once each, alongside my normal practice routine.  The Tuesday after playing, I will set aside an entire hour to drill myself on these pieces (though maybe the first 10-15 minutes will be spent on clarinet, voice, warmups, and other piano things) Probably the Thursday (?) after playing (TBD), I will figure out a church building I can go to in order to practice on a real piano.  Once I feel about 85% confident, I will simply play them through daily until the next playing assignment Sunday arrives. Maybe I will have 1 or 2 more hour-long sessions.  This way, I am not cramming. Will iterate and improve. 

Just going to keep revising this until it's optimal.  Technical warm-ups: Cybersecurity Creative warm-ups: write a sentence, browse Inkblot WE GO JIM  or whatever the zoomers are saying now  Lifting Running GET READY FOR DAY, BREAKFAST Artwork Computer Science Review: Study of formal CS Computer Science Interview Prep: Practical CS. Cracking the Coding Interview, DSA, and Leetcode.  Computer Graphics Study (Including open-source graphics projects: Moonray, Krita, Blender) Computer Graphics via Master's Thesis LUNCH BREAK, PLW Music: Clarinet, singing, piano Computer Graphics: More thesis work -- Finish thesis ASAP Game Development  Industrial Controls: Warm-up with Duolingo math. Then: ECE, ME, Embedded, PLCs/Scada, Math/Physics.  AFTERNOON BREAK (3:00 WALK) Computer Science: Applied topics. Work on website, ideas for freelancing, and our sequence of CERTS, special topics, and PERSONAL PROJECTS. Current: Excel. Next: Mobile apps, mainframe, QA, etc. Writing: Include reading, an

I've never kept a Duolingo streak for longer than maybe 5 days. The owl is hunting me, and will probably brutally murder me and my entire family once he finds me.  However, I try to use it for Spanish and Japanese. I've done coursework in Spanish. Not so for Japanese.  I tried the music and math apps today. Took like 5 minutes to do a lesson in both. The music was basically quizzing me on where C and D are, so I'm not sure I'll get more out of this than I would from Open Music Theory, but it can't hurt either.  The math was just basic multiplication. Am I really going to drill myself on basic math as someone who has completed an entire math minor?  Well, I restarted Khan Academy from basic counting a while ago, planning on going all the way through ODEs to review before pivoting to Susan Rigetti's guide on undergraduate level math (which will hopefully provide the foundation I need for topics like control theory, advanced computer graphics, and mathematical cryp

Finally sticking to my high-level schedule and paring things down enough so I'm not working on too  many things at the same time. I did pretty well today, EXCEPT... I started at 9:30 AM instead of 8 AM.  I did NOT get to my evening gaming and game development session.  I did NOT write enough for NaNoWriMo, but I did write. Winning this month is unlikely, but I will keep going for it anyway.  Could've done a bit more thesis work.  The evening pentesting and IT session did not happen.  Trello board hasn't been touched.  Some mosquito tasks have been skipped: Amazon returns (hope the window hasn't passed), need a haircut, etc. Otherwise, actually did pretty decently. 

I am someone who likes to have a zillion failsafes in place.  Tier 1:  The best positions for me to apply for are research within computer graphics for Fortune 500 companies . Stable, high-paying, remote-friendly.  Tier 2:  I am also qualified for full-stack web development as well as technical artist positions that are more technical than artistic , such as tools programming. For the former, I am not current with my JavaScript frameworks. If I do the Odin Project, I'll get a review of JavaScript and Rails. If I follow that up with Full Stack Open, I will finally know React, probably just in time for 50 new frameworks to pop up.  I'd rather stay out of web though. Additionally, other non-web software engineering positions will open up especially if I get AWS certified, etc. I could gun for FAANG, but I don't think I want to. Graphics programming is an option, but I would need some additional projects to beef up my CV. And Leetcode. So much Leetcode.  QA, UI/UX are also at t

 Because the last post ended up being venty, here we go:  Cybersecurity Warm-ups: write a sentence, browse Inkblot  Lifting Running GET READY FOR DAY, BREAKFAST Artwork Computer Science Review  Computer Science Interview Prep: Cracking the Coding Interview, DSA, and Leetcode  Computer Graphics Study (Including open-source graphics projects: Moonray, Krita, Blender) Computer Graphics via Master's Thesis LUNCH BREAK Music: Clarinet, singing, piano More thesis work Game Development  Industrial Controls: ECE, ME, Embedded, PLCs/Scada, Math/Physics AFTERNOON BREAK (3:00 WALK) Computer Science: Work on website, ideas for freelancing, and our sequence of CERTS and PERSONAL PROJECTS. This also includes special topics that I think I can get through quickly, such as QA and a quick review of Excel. The idea is that as I upskill I will gradually be able to apply for more and more jobs -- a wider variety.  Writing: Include Reading, Language Study Apply for jobs while listening to some music. I

I hate applying for jobs. So far, 19 applied, 5 rejections.  2 of them were jobs I wrote extensive cover letters for and was at least somewhat excited about, so screw both of them.  I spent forever  describing to Daktronics about how I was equally interested in computer hardware, software, and graphics, as well as what I was doing to self-learn electronics and low-level programming, only to get a generic rejection email. Seriously, I wanted  to dive into the assembly! I was super excited about this company, but nope. Even better, I could've just been at DreamWorks until I retired, I loved  that job, but no, I have to go through all this crap for the 500th time. I don't want  to work anywhere else. I thought companies wanted longevity.  Anyway, I'm sure I'm going to see 500 gajilion of these boring-ass, depressing auto-responses:  Ugh. Gross. I hate the guessing game of figuring out what these companies want.  Anyway, here's what I am going to do every day:  Cybersec

behold a green screen shader 

(Jessie and James slap their Pokémon back to normal) Jessie: Snap out of it! James: Get over it! Jessie: Are you going to let show business beat you? James: Or are you going to beat it? Jessie: It's a very long climb up the stairway to stardom. James: And there's no elevator. Jessie: But you'll never reach the top unless you keep on climbing. James: It may mean years of rejection, but, if you keep on trying, you may just see your name up in lights someday. (Arbok and Weezing are touched) Jessie: Hey, watch out, world! Because these are the stars of tomorrow! Meowth: Or the day after. https://poohadventures.fandom.com/wiki/Lights,_Camera,_Quack-tion/(Transcript)

One of the first videos (https://www.ctrlpaint.com/videos/unplugged-pencils-and-erasers) references a previous video lesson AND homework assignment about drawing cell phones .  There is no previous video lesson that contained a homework assignment, or drawing cell phones. I think  this might be why I petered out last time I tried CtrlPaint. Either that, or I started it over the summer, and then I started school and started getting owned by my CS classes -- i.e. I didn't finish (and let's be real, tablets without screens are a horrendous way to learn and should not be recommended to anyone). I can't remember.  I am going to make a list of homework assignments in CtrlPaint and put them here, then eventually put them on my website.  1. Cell phones thing?  2. Cell phones WITH BLUE PENCIL ??? (will modify as I go along lol)

I wish employers would still do this: Give me ONE job.  Let me stay there for at LEAST 5 years. Ideally 40.  Let me be buried in code and numbers all day... And I will never leave.  Until I'm dead in the ground.  I hate instability. I hate job hopping. I hate change. What do I love? Learning, pushing myself to excel daily, and becoming the best coder, artist, and writer the world has ever seen. WITHOUT moving companies!! Considering the instability of all my fields of interest - SWE, cybersecurity, animation, gaming, theme parks - it might be better to go into business for myself. See if my writing, art, or game and app dev takes off. For theme park design, I'd design my rides virtually, and propose them to someone as a proof of concept. This would still be stressful -- my dad is a business owner, I've seen it firsthand -- but I also can't lay off myself. I will always have that job, even if no money is coming in currently. It will still be mine. It can't be taken a

 This week's assignments (by Saturday): - Pixar in a Box: Hair science - Voronoi algorithm: Finish pseudocode completely. (Most important) - By Nov 6 finish "Moth-Bitten Library" for Drawtober, which I'm doing in November now, trying to build a bank for Thanksgiving.  - Finish Sketch with Asia, do one CtrlPaint lesson - Write a green screen shader - Get down piano pieces for church - Submit for writing group 318  - Start NaNoWriMo (gonna do it with Eternisummer) so get the 1667 words/day. read first as a warm-up.  - Week 1 of Intro to EE course on Edx - Fortune Quest -- finish writing for it.  - I want to work on a video game concurrently with some other software project. Decide the first one.  - clarinet: fully play through all concert pieces 1x - maya: finish chair model - Data structures (interview prep): finish priority queue and make a list of the core ones we want basically memorized. I need to not just implement them, but also be able to explain how they work o

Choose Edit Mesh -> Delete Edge/Vertex. 

I made that post about my October goals and then got my butt kicked, mainly due to the layoff completely tanking my morale.  So, let's try again.  Today is a kinda flex-day but we are getting back to it as soon as lunch is over.  Fun stuff: Success:  I already made my final Lagoon trip as it is now closed for the season. I went swimming outdoors while it was still warm, and did 2 races. I have also eaten Reese's pumpkins, ghosts, and bats lol. I did some great fall walks and took some trips to Wilkerson Farm, though not a ton.  2 more trips to Wilkerson Farm. 1 trip to Cornbelly's Lehi and 1 trip to Cornbelly's Spanish Fork Go to Witchfest / Ricochet Canyon to ride Rattling Iron Read scary stories on the Noctrium, and a few others. Watch 1 horror movie, maybe even just The Conjuring again Watch Over the Garden Wall as I've heard lots of good things about it, plus it's supposed to be a great show for fall Clean and decorate for Halloween (yes, even for just a day

It's technically still fall, but winter in Utah really starts around Halloween. It's 29F. I'm cold. It's winter. 1. All bathrooms are closed at parks and trails. The implicit assumption is that you will not leave your house until May. So if you have to pee, you are out of luck.  2. Your windshield constantly fogs up, so you have to run the defroster. This means you can't recycle air. Instead you have to breathe in the nice gas fumes from the freeway.  3. All theme parks and water parks are closed.  4. Whenever you are running and see ice, you have to slow down to a walk so you don't fall and get hurt. I've fallen on the ice while running too many times.  5. Everyone blasts the heat like crazy. So you go from freezing to melting constantly.  6.All the layers you constantly have to shed and re-don.  On the bright side, the bathroom at Vineyard Grove hasn't closed yet.  And at least the bugs are dead. 

And it's time to start. Almost every company asks algorithm questions for some reason. I enjoyed those courses, but can't always pull things out of my hat on the fly for an interview.  For example, an interview asked me once to design an LR1 cache or something (?) and I legitimately had no idea what they were talking about. Obviously, that didn't go so well.  I didn't do much Leetcode grinding, despite enjoying the problem-solving, because I have so many interests and commitments. And to solve those problems you've kinda got to sit with them for a while, can't just crank them out in 15 minutes. So it's hard to balance and thus I don't do it a lot.  After today, my final day of work, or at the very least by tomorrow, my new life begins. I will do my best to not miss any days of Leetcoding -- but first, 2 weeks to re-code data structures (I should be able to spin them up from scratch) and finish Cracking the Coding Interview. After that, some easy problems

"I can't change the weather." Or can you?  Get the daily forecast and then change it to be whatever you want. 35F too cold for you? Crank it right up to 75F. Wish it wasn't snowing? Change it to sunny, stat. Wish you were in Cancun? You are now. That sunshine sure feels nice, doesn't it?  With Weather Wish, deny reality just as you deny the existence of the abyss that we've all been hurtling towards since birth.  (I'm going to make an Apple Watch version of this too, plus maybe a home screen widget and the ability to adjust longer-term forecasts. And maybe custom photo backgrounds. Got to differentiate it from the few other ones that are out there.)

I was going to list this on my other blog post. However, I didn't.  This will need to be as school-like as possible, with deadlines and everything. The deadlines will be flexible, but only slightly so. The pace will be decent, but not killer, and the tests open-book. Each course will have a project too -- if it makes sense to do so.  general idea to finally finish this Finish CS, physics I, and math review by December, or February at the latest. That'll be brutal, but necessary.  Finish OSEE -- with MechE minor -- in the recommended 3 years, if possible. But, it can be extended to 6 if necessary. Basically stretching out a semester into a year.  Finish my PLC courses all by the end of 2024.  Get CompTIA and CCNA by May 2024, or at least by EOY 2024 Finish art self-study CORE -- the stuff we've been wanting to do for forever -- by the end of 2023. The rest of the stuff can take until 2024 when we will start Cubebrush.  For writing, I want to get to writing 3000 words a week,

...not studying engineering.  For the record, I do NOT regret majoring in computer science. I loved all the classes and the animation emphasis. I just should have double-majored. I mean, the entire time through CS, I was secretly thinking, "will I actually be able to design roller coasters with a CS degree?" But I liked it, so didn't want to switch out, and had too many credits anyway. These feelings only amplified when taking over the TPED club. Reading about PLCs, and from my communications with Birket Engineering, it does seem possible to get into controls software engineering. But, you can't get a PE with a CS degree. And actual engineering graduates will take precedence over you for jobs. Case in point, just got passed over for a Universal Creative engineering job, even though CS majors are listed as one of the majors that is accepted.  Emotions are still high for me, in a negative way, due to getting laid off from DreamWorks starting on Friday, 2 days from now.

I've spent many hours over the past few years trying to figure out the optimal bank of knowledge that I need in order to become highly competent at everything I'm interested in. I've constantly revised my self-study sequence, and it's taken me much longer than ideal to get to the point I'm at now -- and I'm still quite behind. But with this most recent layoff (hooray for round 2), I've got some time to re-organize and re-commit.  My end goal is to build my entire dream theme park resort virtually in a game engine, complete with schematics to show its feasibility. I will do this entirely on my own. In case something happens to the game engine itself, as much logic and asset data as possible will be abstracted out into engine-independent classes and folders. Once it's built virtually, I might get some rich person or company to build it for me, if they are impressed enough. If not, or if that takes away my creative rights to my rides or something, I'll

A few years back, I was approached by an Amway scammer at Nielsen's Grove Park. It is generally very difficult to break out of their conversations. I didn't know anything about Amway at the time, nor was that name explicitly mentioned. However, something about the whole conversation seemed off, and I figured out pretty quickly afterwards what it was.  I'm pretty sure the dude that talked to me in Target today was another Amway scammer as he had a very similar conversational script to the first guy. Also he was dressed way too nice for a grocery store, was alone without a shopping cart, kept talking about owning a business, etc....there were a lot of signs. A lady gave me a nice way out of the conversation by asking if I was in line. I'm not sure if it was intentional or not but I'm pretty sure she realized what was happening, lol.  At some point I'm going to clob together a set of common patterns to ID these people because it's very annoying when someone see

terminated gray and grim clouds blot out the sunlight summer is gone and winter is nigh trapped in the north with no firelight to warmer lands the birds will fly but I will remain, amidst impenetrable white stars in uncaring night skies the dream has died and so have I

I like the hardware, yes. I'm definitely going to keep wearing the ring and sleeping with it. It's cool tech.  However, it was not worth the membership cost, or the stress associated with the terrible scores it gave me even when I was sleeping really well . Checking the scores regularly made my sleep significantly worse. To be honest, the Circul+ was better, although the hardware was crap.  It would also tell me that I wasn't getting enough REM on nights where I was remembering like 10 different dreams...because when I was having REM, it thought I was awake. It kept scolding me in the readiness section for doing everything wrong with my sleep hygiene. I had no issues sleeping until I started using this thing. I gave it time and it didn't improve. So, canceled. Again, I still enjoy wearing the ring, will continue to do so, and may reinstate the membership later...But probably not. 

Starting these on 9/30 for an extra day, here goes nothing: Lifting Achieve 10% body fat Lift 5-6 days a week How I will achieve this:  Automatically by my routine. The 6th day will be super light and short before long running. Even 10-15 minutes is worth doing.  Running Hit 4-5 miles per day during the week and 14-16 on Saturdays Run the St. George Half and the Haunted Half How I will achieve this:  Automatically by my routine. I'm already hitting that mileage.  Rendering Do all the Drawtober prompts. This is slightly more than 1 piece of art per week.  Finish Pixar in a Box Do 25 CtrlPaint videos and exercises (trying for 31 or even the full thing) Finish basic Maya review.  Continue with daily warmup sequence, Drawabox, etc.  Watch shows every night.  Game for 30 minutes a night at least, and 45 minutes on Friday/Saturday, optionally with some gamedev time too, and time to review Pokemon strategies. Exception: Monday night due to school and work, 5-10 minutes is fine. Sunday is