Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr

Chanakkah on a Really Tight Budget

Money was really tight this year. At the same time, it Kat and I’s first Hanukkah as a married couple, and I wanted to do something fun with it 🙂 Fortunately, fun isn’t always expensive. So, a few bucks at the various dollar stores and Big Lots, I got an interesting list of things for …

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Finally, back to it…

I paused doing the weekly publishing for three books for a while – I had a couple of good reasons for doing it. One of them was monetizing my work. For quite a while I’ve had a plan, but haven’t had the time to execute it: an app for iOS and Android to act as …

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The World Ended… No Wait, It Didn’t!

Another year, another Apocalypse, it seems.  People just generally seem to be in a hurry for the world to end.  I’ve had an interesting fascination with it, too – not the world ending, it will end when it end.  Instead, with the people who say it’s going to end, and with the amount of times it’s …

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Conventions for 2012

For the last three or four years you can find me doing a “con” – the Great Plains Renaissance Festival. Now, the reason I do it is simple – I get booth space for free, and in exchange I run the Kansas Authors’ Pavilion, an event where local authors get to connect with the tons …

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Back Into Game Development

At the beginning of 2012 I got frustrated with contract work again, and I’ve remained frustrated pretty much the entire year. And I’ve got a whole list of reasons why contracting frustrates me: Customers don’t bother getting the deliverables to me on time, forcing projects to end up being way late. That, of course, leaves …

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Ready to resume in 2012!

OK, I’m way ahead in my writing – IZ is now over 13,000 words long, and Autobiography of a Super-Villain has passed 14,000.  Awesome 🙂  A couple of weeks after the first I’ll start publishing again:  IZ, Autobiography of a Super-Villain, Muse, and (just added to my lineup) The Story of Gamer Zone 2.0 will …

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Day 8

[plotovertime field1=”Weight” field2=”Heart Rate” field3=”Resting Heart Rate”  field4=”Workout Length” field5=”Gut” field6=”Chest” field7=”Bicep” field8=”Setups” field9=”Pushups” field10=”Dips” width=”700″ height=”400″ type=”LineChart”  maxdays=”30″ options=”‘pointSize’: 6″] Felt “out of sorts” today – so made it a very short workout.  I might have been able to go longer, not really sure – entire body feels “bleh”, so I might be coming …

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Day 7

[plotovertime field1=”Weight” field2=”Heart Rate” field3=”Resting Heart Rate”  field4=”Workout Length” width=”700″ height=”400″ type=”LineChart”  maxdays=”30″ options=”‘pointSize’: 6″] This was a “sort of fail” day.  I was going to go for my first run (you’ll notice this entry has a different entry format – “upper body” days show various bits about the upper body, “lower body” days show …

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Day 6

[plotovertime field1=”Weight” field2=”Heart Rate” field3=”Resting Heart Rate”  field4=”Workout Length” field5=”Gut” field6=”Chest” field7=”Bicep” field8=”Setups” field9=”Pushups” field10=”Dips” width=”700″ height=”400″ type=”LineChart”  maxdays=”30″ options=”‘pointSize’: 6″] OK, now we’re talkin!  Nice, solid workout – stopped a bit short of “to fail” on a couple things, mainly because the shoulder started to hurt.  No biggie, but I don’t want to tear …

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Day 5

[plotovertime field1=”Weight” field2=”Heart Rate” field3=”Resting Heart Rate”  field4=”Workout Length” field5=”Gut” field6=”Chest” field7=”Bicep” field8=”Setups” field9=”Pushups” field10=”Dips” width=”700″ height=”400″ type=”LineChart”  maxdays=”30″] Well, damn.  I’m not liking this trend – yet another day without a workout.  Instead, started the day looking at a house with Kat, then spending the rest of the day under the Jaguar trying to …

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Day 4

Shabbat (Sabbath, in not-Hebrew 😉 – which means no workout.  A chance for the body to rest 🙂

Day 3

[plotovertime field1=”Weight” field2=”Heart Rate” field3=”Resting Heart Rate”  field4=”Workout Length” field5=”Gut” field6=”Chest” field7=”Bicep” field8=”Setups” field9=”Pushups” field10=”Dips” width=”700″ height=”400″ type=”LineChart”  maxdays=”30″] And another fail – two in a row! Grrr!  On the other hand – extremely physically active day.  Ended up helping my friend The Plumber most of the day, then spending about four hours in the …

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Day 2

[plotovertime field1=”Weight” field2=”Heart Rate” field3=”Resting Heart Rate”  field4=”Workout Length” field5=”Gut” field6=”Chest” field7=”Bicep” field8=”Setups” field9=”Pushups” field10=”Dips” width=”700″ height=”400″ type=”LineChart”  maxdays=”30″] Fail.  Ended up being a busy day, including my last night of teaching at Pixel Time for the year.  Wasn’t even an active day either.  Bummer!

Back to it…

It happens with me off and on – I get on a good roll with working out, then I fall off the wagon. Well, it’s time to get back on it again. Last time I stopped was rather weird – I’m not used to living in multi-family dwellings. In fact, it’s something I’ve avoided most …

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Day 1

[plotovertime field1=”Weight” field2=”Heart Rate” field3=”Resting Heart Rate”  field4=”Workout Length” field5=”Gut” field6=”Chest” field7=”Bicep” field8=”Setups” field9=”Pushups” field10=”Dips” width=”700″ height=”400″ type=”LineChart”  maxdays=”30″] (First time I’ve gotten to use my new WordPress plugin, Plot Over Time 🙂 First day back in – so today was just a quick warmup workout. Since Sunday I started taking my vitamins, and taking …

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Odd reminder on my writing and publishing tasks, and blogging with Siri

Every Thursday night I’ve been teaching a WordPress class and this week was all about monetizing websites. This really covered pretty much all the different possible ways to make money off a website. This includes things like writing books and selling them online. This suddenly remind me that I have two unpublished role playing playing …

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I Survived The 2011 Kansas Earthquakes and…

OK, I’m a jerk to say this but… I kinda like the whole earthquake thing.  I’d like it a lot more if it wasn’t damaging peoples homes, of course! I happened to have Photoshop open working on another project, so I snagged a photo out of my photo gallery (it used to say “I think, …

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A Sarcastic – but honest – look at Facebook’s new features

The folks at Happy Place created a nice map that sarcastically covers all the new features of Facebook’s revamped page.  Click for the full sized image – it’s worth it 🙂  [singlepic id=33 w=320 h=240 float=right]    

WordPress classes start again!

It’s almost that time again 🙂  Starting September 8th, 2011 I’ll be teaching my WordPress classes at PixelTime again – this time with even more sections!  Newly added to the class is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for WordPress, and iPhone Optimization (I suppose it should be “Smartphone Optimization,” since it includes Android, too). The whole …

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All Three Books Online

OK, it took a week longer to get all the supporting infrastructure up and running, but I finally have the beginnings for all three books online! Muse is mainly a matter of doing the edits that The Editor has indicated as I place them online – so that one is easy.  It did end up …

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NuPenny, Wichita, Kansas

Yesterday I saw a couple of posts about NuPenny, along with the fact it’s in Wichita, Kansas – wow, art news from Wichita that actually made it national! 🙂 If you haven’t seen it – it’s a toy “store” near the Donut Whole on Douglas.  I say “store” because it’s really an art installation that …

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Deciding the fate of my writings

In the process of ripping and shredding everything and deciding on an entirely new set of priorities there’s still a few loose ends to decide upon.  I intentionally avoid anything that’s going to add an extra bit to my workload at the moment, I follow my reduced work hours fairly well, spend more time with …

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Announcing Three Serialized Books…

It’s been decided – I’m going to be serializing three brand new books by myself here on MidnightRyder.org.  This should be fun 😉 First off is “Muse.”  Book one of three, Muse presents a whole new take on the human mind.  What if those little voices in our heads were more than just our own …

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Baby Jaguar Update – those stinkin’ blinkers!

I said when I bought the the Jaguar it was going to be a restoration project – and it’s definitely turned into that 🙂  I also said I was going to post updates… OK, I’ve been rather slow about that. 😉 I’m not sure if I mentioned it in my previous post, but, the car …

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Life, Reformed: Keep Pushin’ On

Well it’s comin together I finally feel like a man, oh yes I do I never thought that I’d be where I am, oh Everyday I wake a little bit higher Whoa I keep pushin on, oh yeah — REO Speedwagon, Keep Pushin’ On Well, I still haven’t gone insane from my work-a-holic reformation.  I’m …

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Life, Reformed: Life So Far

So what happens when a work-a-holic decides to change his ways?  Does insanity ensue? Surprisingly, no.  Heck, for that matter, I’m surprised how (relatively) easy this has been so far!  I’ve been going to bed pretty close to on time – an hour late one night, and two hours late the next night (OK, I …

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Life, Reformed: Addendum

I had a couple of conversations with folks today that resulted in a couple more items for my change list.  Friend B didn’t know that Friend A and I had chatted, and what he had to say – basically, a way of getting some blind feedback from a couple friends without cross-poluting the conversation too …

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Life, Reformed

It’s interesting what can be a wake up call that you need to make some changes in your life, how deep those changes need to go, and how many time you’ve had to cover the same territory. (Side note:  most of this post was done last night, with the final paragraphs done today.  I like …

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Re-Introduction

I blame this on Don Rhoden and Anthea Burson. After reading my various writings that appear in this section, well, you can blame them too. 😉 I popped in a new menu and category on the site after a conversation about poetry and various writings with them on Facebook.  See, from time to time I …

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Share The Stars, Part 2: You

I wish I could share the stars. I don’t know when I started going out onto a dirt road and looking up at the sky by myself.  It’s a moment of escape – the noise of the city is gone.  There are no people scowling at me or smiling at me.  The lights that cloud …

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