Waffle

There's a new update today for Invasion, introducing some new characters late in the game.

For the record? Driving is awesome.

I just had my first driving lesson and I'm really glad I finally got started on that. It's a lot of fun. I must not be completely hopeless at it, because I was allowed to drive (slowly and awkwardly, and with the instructor keeping close to his shotgun seat pedals at all time, but still), to the drop-off place, over about a kilometer of road used by other vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians. At the end of the lesson, the instructor said that while it was clear I wasn't eighteen anymore and I wasn't picking it up as fast as a person at that age would, I was doing some things surprisingly well. For the record, steering is going well, gear switching (it's a manual transmission, because automatics are considered bad for moral fiber on the European continent) about average for a first try, and the pedal work really needs work - and different shoes. The instructor recommended that I took frequent classes, two a week or more, which I agree with. I need to get everything into body memory.

American readers, friends and especially friends of Aggie's, are often surprised to hear that, at age 36, I can't drive, but that's actually pretty normal in the Netherlands. Several other people at the office don't have a driver's license, though most of them gave up on the idea after a number of lessons or failed exams - the standards are pretty strict here, and the lessons don't come cheap (mine is &eur; 38/hour). That is the reason, though, why I want to do it here, rather than in the US - because I'm not eighteen anymore, I want a certified instructor and an exam I can walk away from knowing that I've learned what I needed to learn to drive safely. If I get mad manual transmission skillz thrown in, I'm not complaining.

The cost is the one factor that bothers me though. That's going to have to come out of my savings, or rather, my ability to save in the next few months, or until I've got that license. Both my tax refund and the windfall from quitting the studio will take a few months to arrive. So until then, I'll likely be spending all the money that I would otherwise have have saved up for my emergency fund on those classes. It'll be worth it in the long run - even in a country where it's normal not to drive, a driver's license will make you more marketable, and it's an often convenient skill to have. But I'm still not happy about that immediate effect. I'd like the money to come from somewhere else. So increasing my income is once again on the agenda.

When I moved the studio PC to my apartment, I wrote:

it won’t kill me to scan from Windows XP for a few days.

That rather presupposed that Windows XP would go on working, which turned out not to be the case. The PC now reboots and enters an endless reboot loop for no apparent reason. I've tried System Recovery, and while that seemed to break the loop, the PC will run for about half an hour, then suddenly reboot and enter an endless loop again.

I can't even begin to figure out how to fix this, and I don't have time to take the PC to the shop for repairs until at least the weekend. A Windows reinstall is not an option as that would also destroy all the hours of work I spent configuring the Ubuntu linux installed on this dual-boot system as well. And in the case of a hardware problem, that would rob me of functionality I can use to troubleshoot the hardware.

So I'm going to focus on getting the linux installation to recognise the scanner. At least that problem is tractable. I can ask around and figure out what to do. And if the system starts rebooting spontaneously from linux as well, I'll know I've got a hardware problem..

Hints and tips on both the scanner issue (the scanner is an EPSON GT-12000 which SHOULD work under Ubuntu as it worked from the LiveCD. It was present and switched on when Ubuntu 8.4 was installed) and the possible cause of the reboot loop are highly welcome and may just save the comic - the odds of new Feral updates appearing are nil until I am able to scan from a reliable system. Comments recommending me to get a Mac will be treated as spam unless accompanied by donations of € 500 or more. Besides, the iBook I've already got also went into a reboot loop earlier this week (it got better).

Update: Glorious SCSI-based A3-scanning under Ubuntu now works. I don't like the look of Ubuntu 8.4 much, but I can deal with it. So all I need to do for now is change my boot parameters so I default to linux again. I'll leave the Windows OS on the PC for a while in case I can fix it somehow.

Aggie's facing a huge workload, and my schedule has stabilised a lot. I'm drawing two pages of Invasion a week even though that's set after the end of Feral. So we've decided that it's time for me to get back to drawing it myself, all the way to the finish, starting with the next update. The next update will be on Monday, August 18, because we've been unable to get the update done this weekend.

I'll run some filler though... even if it's just a re-run of an old story. There must be something I haven't dug up yet from the old galleries. Sorry.

Not everyone liked Aggie's work. I enjoyed her take on the story a great deal, and learned a lot from the six months she worked on it. Especially when it came to tightening up the scripts. I think you will see that reflected in the new pages I'll be drawing.

Proof that WordPress is a lot harder to understand than Movable Type: because I linked to an older post in my previous post, I got a pingback:

Waffle » Blog Archive » Financial decluttering got results quickly

New pingback on your post #1659 "Decluttering, tightwaddery, time management, organisation - it's all one, really"
Website: Waffle » Blog Archive » Financial decluttering got results quickly (IP: 74.50.25.160 , chariot.lunarbreeze.com)
URL : http://reinderdijkhuis.com/wordpress/2008/08/09/financial-decluttering-got-results-quickly/
Excerpt:
[...] [...] Waffle Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection. Project Wonderful - Your ad here, right now, for as low as $0.00 « Decluttering, tightwaddery, time management, organisation - it’s all one, really [...] [...]

You can see all pingbacks on this post here:

http://reinderdijkhuis.com/wordpress/2008/08/09/decluttering-tightwaddery-time-management-organisation-its-all-one-really/#comments

Delete it: http://reinderdijkhuis.com/wordpress/wp-admin/comment.php?action=cdc&c=782
Spam it: http://reinderdijkhuis.com/wordpress/wp-admin/comment.php?action=cdc&dt=spam&c=782

Why is the Project Wonderful link included in the excerpt? Does the pingback code scrape the published HTML Pages or does it take its info from the templates? Neither should be necessary at all! It's bad enough that the template structure is so impenetrable, (which is why the all-new Waffle still looks terrible in Internet Explorer) but I don't see why it should be abused in this way. Pingbacks should contain excerpts from the post, and nothing else.

This makes my pingbacks look spammy. I'd better turn the feature off until I've resolved the problem (or forgotten about it. That also works for me).

Yesterday's financial decluttering sure delivered results fast: my tax forms are filled in and ready to send (after scanning them so I have a copy), and let's just say that if my calculations are accurate, which they should be because it's, you know, my tax form, I'm a happy pauper indeed.

I don't keep paper copies of my forms and haven't done so for a while... but I do still use paper forms. They're multi-platform, portable and I find them easier to use than the Tax Administration's various PDF's, web apps and standalone apps. As long as they keep sending me paper to fill in, I'll keep using it.

The other day, in the midst of what looked like becoming an ongoing conversation about tightwaddery, I posted about decluttering for the first time in months. That's no coincidence. There are four aspects of my life that I tend to get antsy about at the same time: money, clutter and mess in the house, my terrible time management, and my terrible organisation. These subjects are closely related: my disorganisation and clutter affect my ability to budget effectively; my poor time management affects my ability to budget, but also my ability to increase my income and my ability to fix the other problems.

Last evening, I did some financial decluttering: I went through the many files in the desk safe and threw out:

1. anything that was more than 10 years old (10 years being how far back an audit might go in theory);
2. anything sent to me by the Tax Administration, the local authority, my insurance company that was strictly informational except the very latest version of the document in question;
3. anything that was the debris of my financial administration, i.e. empty tax return papers, "sketches" of my old tax returns, scribbled notes, etc. It's possible that these things might be involved in an audit in the future, but I'll take that chance.

I also sorted everything that was unsorted, which I'm afraid was a lot. It was the most tedious way I could think of spending a Friday night, but it did help me feel better about a number of things:

1. I found out that I had everything I need to be able to file my tax return quickly so I can be on time for the extended deadline of September 1 (budgeting, time management, organisation)
2. I also found out that I had paid National Health Insurance advances over 2007 and 2008, which I should be getting back now that I'm on a salary and paying taxes/national insurances by the month. (budgetting)
3. Looking at my bank statements, I realised that for all the disorganisation in my budgeting cycle, there's one thing I'm pretty good at doing, which is saving. I put € 1600 in savings the month after I came back from Aggie's, and have enough saved up to cover a month and a half's frugal living expenses, a plane ticket (return) to the US if booked early and coverage for the financial time bomb I mentioned earlier. That time bomb will be defused once I've filed my taxes (budgeting)

So that's making me feel good about myself. I'm still not done with this round of decluttering and it's going to be a difficult one, because the last one was less than six months ago. But I need to do it just so I can move all the stuff from the studio there. There's a lot accumulated there over the past seven years.

More proof that the improvement areas in my life all relate: because I did not allow myself to go to the supermarket over my lunch break this week (budgeting), I was able to have shorter lunch breaks (time management) and I could use the time to make phone calls, dealing with some studio-related issues and contacting a driving school (organisation). That made my lunch breaks the one moment during the day when my own disorganisation didn't bite me in the ass constantly.

Invasion will update again on Friday, August 8.

In fact, weekly updates will be pretty much assured for the next month or so. It will also update on the ROCR archives, though it won't be shown on the front page there.

There's a lot being added to the archives. Stealth updates are underway for The Lives of X!Gloop and once that's done, for The Eye of the Underworld. I'll unveil those as complete archives when they're done. They've been milked more than enough over the past few years for me not to feel like I should run them on the front page, but I do want them under the WillowCMS umbrella now.

It's said mostly about items of clothing in your closet, but I've heard some radical declutterers apply it to just about anything. It's bullshit. I have personally brought back items of clothing from retirement after 5 or even 10 years. For example, I used some of my gnarliest old band sweaters for winter running early this year. The big old drawing table in my bedroom has been gathering dust there for years and years now, but when I'm done moving my stuff out of the studio I'm leaving in a month or two, that'll be the one I keep (if anyone is interested in buying the lightweight white drawing table that I'm now using in the studio, please let me know). Typically, if it's still functional, I'm not going to throw it out. There's stuff I want to sell on eBay though — but "did I use it in the last year?" is not a criterion. Rather it's "would I want to keep it if I moved house?" The answer is "no" for some items I bought in the past year, and "yes" for some items I haven't even seen since moving into my apartment.

(This has been on my mind on and off since I started decluttering in earnest back in February, but this post was triggered by a line in this post, which is otherwise pretty good)

One of the most infuriating things about Ubuntu is the way it will tease you with a system that recognises all your devices, like, say, an Epson GT-12000 A3 scanner, running from the LiveCD, beautifully, but when you actually add, say, an Epson GT-12000 A3 scanner to an installed system, it will make you jump through hoops and tear your hair out. I've installed the sane package (much to my surprise - I'd have expected it to come with the initial OS install, especially because a front-end was automatically installed at that time. Also, sane runs from the LiveCD) and the Avasys drivers that Epson recommends, to no avail.

Oh well... I'm sure I'll get there some day, and in the mean time, it won't kill me to scan from Windows XP for a few days.