Doc Brown says “the future is not written”

This weekend, this Saturday actually, promises to be promising. Saturday there’s a tournament down in Indianapolis. I’m not sure what weapon(s) to fence. My foils are currently out of comission so maybe I won’t be fencing that. But sabre could be fun and I’ll look at the list and see what epee may hold. I’ll probably be riding down with Big Joe, maybe Emma, maybe Paul. That could be a fun crew in a car.

Afterwards, Joe and I are headed up to NW Indiana for a little bachelor party celebration. I’m told there will be a hayride from location to location. I intend to hit on every pretty woman I see and see what comes of it. I just need to remember to dress warm and bring the self confidence.

Now I’ve just got to get through Friday, which really only entails a sabre class and I’ve already got the content of that class planned out. I hope to get some work done on the Yoshi costume too tomorrow. Check back on Monday for a full report (or maybe partial report depending on how well things go ).

I thought I had it

For a moment there I thought I had my fencing software scoring box all figured out to work on USB. But I don’t. The details are messy for most of you so I’ll spare them. But on the upside it is Wednesday meaning that I do not have to get up at 5am so I’m staying up late to ensure that my sleep schedule continues to be totally messed up.

Aside from that I’m looking forward to Nad’s bachelor party this weekend, thought the details are still TBD. Which reminds me I need to do a few other things. And with that last comment this post becomes almost worthless, so I’ll seal the deal with a joke:

Q: How many boring people does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Just one.

Meebo and Import

If you’ve already subscribed to the news feed you’ve probably noticed it going nuts this afternoon. The reason is that I’m slowly importing my old posts. The export/import system that WordPress has “works” but when you’ve got a lot of entries they cause a server timeout, so I have to do it in chunks. So far I’ve got 2.5 months in.

[EDIT: It's all in now! Woo hoo! Only took all friggin day...]

The mebo thing is gone until they can figure out a way to not make the client so annoying to me when I load up my own web page. I still like the idea.

So Far? So-so

I really wish I had more control over the site lay out. I want the flickr feed to not be so lame. I also wish I had two side bars and not just one.

In the mean time I’m playing with the meebo widget. It lets you IM me from my web site. I don’t know how much utility you’ll find in it, but it is a neat concept. The idea is that it is a web-page based IM client. It adheres mostly to the Jabber protocol so I can actually log in with GAIM and get your messages, but it is kind of annoying unless you use their web-page based client. *shrug* we’ll see if that stays or not.

[EDIT: Dickerson should love the meebo widget as it was created with AJAX]

Regardless, I think this move will be for the best. Besides, the comments here have avatars and I’m not usually a fan of ‘em, but I found a nice image of Venom from the Spiderman comics and he has an expression that makes you want to write the caption “It’s just one of those days…”.

NEW BLOG URL!!!

This blog is moving to http://tildewill.wordpress.com/ There’s new RSS feeds and stuff. I’ve also signed up for a flickr account so you’ll start seeing more pictures again especially since I can easily blog from flickr about a new photo. THERE WILL BE NO NEW POSTS AT THIS ADDRESS. THIS SITE WILL DISSAPPEAR AFTER OCT 10th or so. I’m working on exporting the entries so you can find them in the new place. But yeah, update your bookmarks/feeds whatever and I’ll see ya over there.

Free Home

As the complexity of maintaining a web site grows, and the ease of using pre-existing tools increases, I find myself unable to justify the annual cost of having my own web space, so I’ve taken up web-residence here. I’m working on exporting the old entries so I can import them here, but that’ll be another night’s project. Well, maybe tonight if I get ambitious… in the mean time I’ve written a little bit in the “About Me” page (see left side bar).

I want a Walmart for business services

I’m not talking about FedEx Kinko’s. I’m talking about all the Tax, Legal, Insurance, Real Estate, and Advertizing issues that come up in running a small business. I don’t want to have to keep track of twenty different bills for a CPA, a product lawyer, 10 different insurance providers, and all the places that I have to go to get my company recognized. I just want to walk in to  “Small Businees Mart” or whatever, and have all those people at my fingertips. One check, one monthly bill, whatever, and I get access to all these professionals who know what a business of one person needs.

And ya know what? I think there’s a market for such a place. I wonder…

The week thus far

Monday, no beef, but I think it was the beginning of my friend-withdrawl. I had dinner with Dickerson and Lady Lauren Sunday night. I always feel a little empty after Dickerons leaves. I’d also seen a lot of Nads lately and I knew I wouldn’t see him for a few weeks.

Tuesday, it all fell apart. Everything. The friend withdrawl. The 5AM at the YMCA. My supply of Cocoa-Cola ran out the day before so I ended up having a monster headache from caffeine withdrawl. That and I miss having a girlfriend; someone to talk to about my life. Instead I have a blog and friends who get bits and pieces. I went through my home school class, ran some errands while tears ran down my face form the headache, came home and took a one hour nap before I had to wake up for my evening class. I wasn’t going to be a good coach so I wrote a note on the door and went home.

Wednesday, much better. I woke up to have lunch with my mom. I don’t like to think of myself as one of those people who always goes to the parents when he has a problem, but it was really nice to talk to her and get some of it off my chest.

Today, back on track. Somewhere on Tuesday night I picked apart my life enough to know what parts were really eating me. Some are in my control, some not so much. Other things aren’t in my control, but I tip the scale in my favor (like finding a date). My coaching style has started to change as of recently at RCF too. I make kids do push-ups when they’re late (they’ve stopped being late and have started to call me when they’re not going to be there, it’s awesome).

In quasi-unrelated news: My ex, Kris, is going on a date with her ex, who cheated on her. I know she probably reads this so I’ll just leave you to make your own conclusions.

What’s It Worth

So cruising through my current insurance policy for RCF I realized that I do not have coverage for any products I manufacture. This includes my Software Scoring Machine that I’m eager to distribute. So now if I want to go forward to this I have to go get something like product liability insurance. I don’t know where to get that, and I’m sure that none of my existing insurance companies provide the kind of coverage my business needs so I’ll have yet another bill to manage. I’d like to say I have faith in the population and that no one would get hurt or incur financial losses because of my great new invention, but that’s not realistic.

So now what? Can I really sell this thing at the price I want and not incur a financial loss of my own? Is there any insurance against a bad business venture? Because more and more that’s what this thing sounds like.

It’s Like I Have 20 Kids

Last night after Friday Night Fights at River City Fencing, I left feeling pretty good about a well run tournament. I had gone out to Stak ‘N’ Shake with Steve to have someone to talk to for a while and partially to keep him out of trouble. So I got home close to 1AM and crashed in my bed.

Four hours later my phone is ringing. I didn’t answer it, but good phone calls never come at 5AM, ever. So I checked my voice mail and it was the parent of one of the fencers at Friday Night Fights. Their daughter hadn’t come home last night and they were trying to track down who she might be with. So I gave them the name of the guy she was hanging out with since he was a Purdue fencer. I decided to stay up in case they needed my help for anything and an hour or two later I get a call that they found her and she’s ok.

But it was just like when my brother disappeared, only instead of feeling like a brother, I felt like a father and I worried about all the things that could have happened to her and how I could have prevented it if I had been paying attention more closely. it was not a good feeling at all.