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Status Report (15 July 2023)

Status Report (15 July 2023)

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We’re making progress on getting the basement (that is, my living space, home office, and creative headquarters) repaired after last month’s flooding incident. The current state of play:

  • Furniture and almost all of my personal goods, including the bulk of my library, moved out.
  • Foundation repair and installation of a new drainage system and air-quality system complete.
  • Water heater replaced (this wasn’t on the critical path, but the old one was a few years past its warranty date, so better safe than sorry).
  • Replacement drywall hung, holes in ceiling left by plumber during emergency repair patched, everything trimmed and spackled and ready for painting.

We have painters scheduled to come in on 19-20 July, and the new carpeting should be delivered about then too. I’m hoping we can get the new carpet installed sometime between 21 July and 24 July. At which point, we’ll be ready to call the movers to bring back all my furniture and help us move all our goods back into the house.

Current best guess is that I’ll be able to call the move finished and release the storage pod we’re renting by about 26 July. At that point, at least, I’ll have my bed back and will have my workstation set up in its usual place once more. Unpacking all my books and games, and otherwise getting everything back to normal, may take some time beyond that.

Unfortunately, I am not making much progress on Architect of Worlds during this period of disruption. I’ve tried to do a few pages, but my current work area is very cramped and some of the physical materials I’ve been using are hard to deal with at the moment. I’ll keep at it, but I suspect the best time for me to forge ahead with that will be after that 26 July milestone.

Fortunately, there’s a solid weekend at the end of the month. I plan to get some minor creative work (notably my book review for July) out of the way over the next week or so, so I can focus on Architect editing and layout for 3-4 days at the end of the month. I see a good chance that, together with what I managed to knock out before the disaster, I should have enough new layout done to permit a free update for my patrons. Expect to see that by the end of July.

Meanwhile, I’ve been carrying out an interesting experiment with respect to my Danassos setting. I thought of a way to model some specific elements of the setting’s back story, and the results have been very interesting. Some revisions are underway to my “historical timelines” document. I doubt I’ll have a new version of that ready for anyone else to see by the end of July, but it’s already suggesting some new stories for that setting, and I suspect there may be some revisions to the Twice-Crowned draft before I’m finished. More about that as it develops.

Planning for July 2023

Planning for July 2023

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Well, as all my readers are doubtless aware, we had a small disaster at my home: some combination of a groundwater intrusion through the foundation, and a burst pipe, ended up flooding our basement. Since that’s my living quarters, telework location, and creative office . . . yeah, this was a big disruption.

So here’s the critical path for the next few weeks:

  • At the moment I’m standing watch while a crew of emergency movers finish clearing out our basement.
  • Tomorrow is the 4 July holiday, and we’ll probably be finishing up a few items and hauling out a fair amount of trash.
  • We have a crew coming in starting on 5 July to do foundation repair and install a new (and considerably upgraded) drainage system. That’s likely to take up to two weeks, so figure about 19 July to get that done.
  • We plan to take the opportunity to replace the water heater. May as well eliminate one possible cause for another water-based disaster in the future. Not likely to take more than a day.
  • Then it’s a matter of patching, priming, and painting drywall and replacing the entire carpet. Not likely to take more than a couple days, if we can coordinate the work efficiently.

Best guess, in the last full week in July I’ll be able to call the movers to bring everything back and help us unload the POD in which my entire personal library is now sitting. Of course, then I’ll be faced with the task of unpacking everything . . .

I do have my computer set up in the living room, so I expect to be able to make some progress on the Architect of Worlds layout, do a book review for July as usual, and maybe push a few other items forward. In particular, I suspect I will be able to release a free update for Architect late this month for my patrons.

Circumstances are not exactly conducive to major progress, though, so (unlike most months) I’m not going to set out any specific milestones for July. Look for a Status Report or two as the month moves along.

Echoes

Echoes

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While I continue rooting through my basement, boxing up the last scraps of small items I don’t want to discard, I’m coming across some interesting items.

Back in the 1995-2005 timeframe, I kept many handwritten notes in small notebooks. At the time a lot of my creative thinking happened at the office, or in other places where I didn’t have access to my computer or the Internet, so handwritten notes were very useful. Apparently I still have all of those notebooks, salted away on low shelves or in boxes that haven’t been opened in many years; very few of these got water-damaged in the recent disaster. So, for example, just today I found:

  • An extensive set of notes titled “Life after Steve Jackson Games,” in which I started planning an independent creative career. Most of that plan doesn’t seem to have survived contact with reality, but a few of its features do seem to have been implemented.
  • Huge piles of notes from when I was helping to develop setting material for GURPS Traveller, including the Interstellar Wars setting. More piles of notes that eventually went into Transhuman Space.
  • My own version of the Aldebaran Sector for Traveller, along with a contract (never completed) to write a GURPS Traveller sourcebook titled Grand Frontiers.
  • Notes and hardcopy of the rules for the Game of Empire system I developed for realm-level play in Traveller. This is the game that I refereed for a bunch of GURPS Traveller fans about 2000, developing a ton of background information (including months’ worth of Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society news items) for the Solomani Rim.
  • Notes for a new generic RPG system. Apparently I was already thinking in terms of developing my own rules mechanics so as to publish game material without running into licensing issues. Probably never going to be developed now, but still interesting.
  • Notes for a realm-management game set in Bronze Age Greece. I think this did get deployed in a GURPS campaign I was running back in the day, although one of my players reacted so badly to the system in its first session that the campaign disbanded almost immediately afterward.
  • Extensive notes for at least three genre settings. One these eventually gave rise to my first complete original novel (the unpublishable one). Another looks very much like an early version of my Human Destiny space opera setting. A third was a fantasy setting I had forgotten about entirely and might now think about revisiting.
  • Extensive musings on philosophy and theology. I’m almost afraid to re-read these in detail. I’m a cheerful solitary regarding such matters, so it doesn’t concern me that my ideas aren’t in lockstep with any extant school of thought. Still, I suspect the me of 2023 might find the me of circa 2000 kind of hard to take.

Quite the treasure trove. Hard to say whether any of it will ever see the light of day again – it’s not as if I don’t have enough creative work to do already – but it’s still interesting reading. All of it’s going in boxes to be preserved.

Special Status Report for Patrons (29 June 2023)

Special Status Report for Patrons (29 June 2023)

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This one is specifically for my patrons (and regular blog readers who might be interested in my creative projects).

As I mentioned on 23 June, we’re currently fighting a flooded basement which has knocked out my primary living area and home office. I haven’t been entirely cut off from the Internet, obviously, but I’m spending 12-15 hour days just keeping up with my day job and doing pack-and-move work here. Not much time left over for creative work, so (e.g.) Architect of Worlds is pretty much on hold for now.

Architect didn’t get enough new layout done before the disaster struck to justify a new update. There will therefore be no free update for patrons at the end of this month.

I also may or may not generate a planning message for July at the beginning of the new month. Things are too much in flux for me to be able to plan anything with a straight face.

The primary effort right now is to prepare our basement for a crew who will be coming in, starting on 5 July, to do foundation repair and waterproofing work. To that end I’ve packed up just about the entirety of my library and moved it to storage. Over the next few days we’ll be policing up any remaining small items, and moving the larger pieces of furniture aside so the crew has access to get their work done. After the foundation work is finished, we’ll need to paint the new drywall, get all the carpeting replaced, and then move everything back into place. I expect all this to take up the bulk of the month of July. It might even overlap into the first week or so of August.

I’m not entirely cut off. We’re also working to ensure I have a small home-office space elsewhere in the house while the work is being done. If that works out, I may be able to get back to some creative work in a limited way, even while all the repair and rehab are being done. I’ll keep everyone posted as things progress.

Status Report (23 June 2023)

Status Report (23 June 2023)

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Only a short note today, to report that I’m likely going to be getting little or no creative work done for at least a few days, possibly as much as a few weeks.

My living quarters and home office are in the finished basement of our home, and as of yesterday afternoon, that basement is being flooded. So far it’s not too bad – only a few of my possessions have been water-damaged, and the bulk of my library of books and tabletop games is safe for the moment. On the other hand, the bulk of the carpeting is water-logged and we’ve had to shift a lot of furniture around. As I sit at my workstation right now, the carpet under my feet is soggy and wet.

(No, the image above is eye-catching, but it’s not actually that bad. Even if it’s starting to feel that way.)

We have a specialist coming this afternoon to make an assessment and estimate what would be involved in repairs. I suspect we may need to move most of the furniture and items from my space into storage for at least a few days, cutting me off from my primary work machine and resources while repairs get done. In particular, if the flooding worsens, we may need to move everything to save my equipment and prevent significant losses to my library. In the worst-case scenario, it may be several weeks before things are back to normal.

All of which is to say that work on Architect of Worlds and other projects is at a standstill until I get my space back. I can’t even promise any free updates for this month, and I may miss my monthly book review for June. We’ll see how things go. I’ll post again as soon as I know more, and have some idea how long I’ll be offline.