The Patent Dragon's Zone of Soul Retraction

First, this:-



FINALLY... things are coming together with ...Stargazer Season IV: Nightmare Scenario - and that we can attribute to a pair of villagers who were fruitful and multiplied (and several villager zombies who got cured).

Elsewhat... Did some shopping. Ordered some stuff I've been meaning to get, and some imminent essentials. Spent one of my Christmas presents.

Bought Saints Row IV, half price on Steam. Now watching the download crawl by - gonna be a while... but instead of struggling to find something to watch in the meantime...

(Holy crap - is it Conference Championship weekend ALREADY??? Crazy...)

...I can carry on reading A Game Of Thrones. A fantastic read so far, and this is a book I've had for months, maybe year(s) (it was one of my Mission 101 "buy a book a month" books).

Two hours to go...

The final day of the Mission 101 "Gap Year" came and went on Saturday. What was there to report? Not a great deal, in all honesty, as it all just didn't come together. I did make good on my charity penalty obligations after the death of Gerry Anderson, and I nailed my fifth concert when I celebrated Spiritwalk II - but apart from that, nothing really worked out. The whole Mission 101 thing started well, but... *sighs* you know the story already. I have my reasons for failing to make a real "go" in the last year (and now you can make that TWO years) and two-thirds, which I've written about more than once, and going over it again and again won't change anything.

I will, however, be revisiting my old list, with a view to making some of those plans into reality. Some Tasks were started, only to grind to a halt as The Move started to bite, but I can do something about some of that, if I just apply myself...

...and let's not talk about the "+10" Project, okay? My plan to produce 100 story chapters in this year of the 10th anniversary of the first online Darkhawk story really isn't going to reach its goal, given that there are probably half a dozen chapters posted, and we're almost into the final quarter of 2013. I have material that needs type-up, and I may soon have a whole story to post, but I will fall seriously short of my target. And that rather sucks.

I know I can do better. I just have to do, not be distracted.

Meanwhile, a video...



Oh, and this from yesterday Saturday...

One of my greatest influences has left us.

Writing is suspended for the rest of the day. I just don't have it in me right now.

Update... I have just paid off my Mission 101 missed tasks penalties in one chunk - and then some.

So, forty-six Tasks completed means fifty-five failed, doesn't it? So where's the list of those?

Well, failed they may be, but they're not discarded, or forgotten, as I'll explain shortly. But first...

What Went Wrong? I started my Mission expecting things in life to stay the way they were at the beginning... and then they didn't. Free time, that most precious commodity, stopped being unlimited within three months of starting this project as I found sustained gainful employment - which has gone a loooong way to financing much of what has followed - and then last year, I moved house, and my whole world got turned upside-down. I still haven't properly finished unpacking, hindered substantially by the wait for the roof-work to be carried out, and the actual work itself (and subsequent leaks), meaning there was absolutely NO CHANCE of completing Task 53 - Deal with my overspill of crap to begin with...

These may sound like lame excuses, but the truth is the truth, and there it is.

So What Now...? I had considered starting a new list, New Year's 2013, but I couldn't even begin to think up a full list, even including the failed Tasks from List 2010-12. I already knew I wouldn't have the time to spare on another project this big, but the whole thing felt... unfinished. That's why I decided to give myself a "Gap Year".

"Gap Year"...? Starting today, I given myself one year to try and catch up - "fill in the gaps". I don't expect to complete all the outstanding tasks from the original Mission, but I'm prepared to give at least some of them another try. A fresh start will, I hope, give me fresh focus - the new/old list is coming VERY soon... and with no "penalty clause", as one of the first objectives will be to pay off the ones I incurred with all the failed or uncompleted Tasks.

The future begins... NOW.

Current number of items on the list: 101 (26th April 2012)
Variable contingencies (in brackets): None.
Tasks Completed (scored through): 33.5
- 3, 4, 8, 10, 18, 22, 23, 27, 29, 42, 43, 47, 50, 52, 62, 65, 67, 68, 70, 72, 73, 78, 79, 83, 85, half of 86, 87, 89, 92, 95, 96, 98, 100
Tasks In Progress (bold italic): 35.5
- 1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 10, 17, 19, 26, 28, 31, 33, 39, 42, 44, 45, 48, 51, 53, 55, 56, 57, 59, 63, 66, 69, 82, half of 86, 88, 90, 97, 99
Tasks Failed (scored through, red): 2
- 14, 64
Tasks Modified: 1 - Task 28
Tasks Changed: 4 - Task 8; Task 11 (twice); Task 64; Task 83
Tasks Open: None
List Last Updated: 21 September 2012

( And the 101 objectives are... )

Stay tuned for regular updates! Also, watch for posts at:
- Mission 101 Community at LiveJournal
- Mission 101 2010 Community at LiveJournal

So I dropped another one. It was wet and rainy, and I was so cosy indoors that I fell asleep past midnight. So sue me.

Frickin' janitor hasn't discovered headphones yet, so nyah nyah I'm watching as much as I can of the Monday Night Football (GB@SEA)...

*growls* My ankle does not like sitting in this office - I thought it was the weather, but now the sun is shining, and it's still aching. Is it the way I'm sitting...?

The Mission 101 conclusion draws ever nearer. If I finalise at least half my charity penalties, that'll be a Task completed (Task 82) - provisionally. I can't see anything else getting completed in time.

And now I hurt in TWO places...

( Warning - this is icky, but not otherwise offensive... )

Yeah, my elbow now looks like a false-colour image of a nebula taken by the Hubble. Sticking a plaster on it was A Bad Idea, it transpires.

Elsewhat... That's the AVENGERS BluRay on its way back to Amazon.

Oh, hold on...



I forgot one book on my "buy a book a month" Task list, and therefore yesterday's buying binge took me to the completion point for Task 29

29 Buy one book a month from an actual bookshop.

Okay, I might not have strictly bought "a book a month", but I did for most of the time, and and the end of it I had purchased 33 books, so that's as good as a *SCORE* for me.

That makes it one-third distance, with one full week to go. This weekend, I'll do some wrap-up, deciding which Mission-long Tasks are done, and which aren't. Right now, I'm scoping out some original comic art - maybe, if I win the auctions, I can snatch a victory, and another *SCORE*...

Today, I have been:-

...worrying about my road-rashed elbow from Saturday. It hurts, and it looks pretty angry - maybe I shouldn't have covered it up. Ayah...

...considering which of my Mission 101 Tasks I can now declared completed, now that I'm on the eve of the start of The Last Week. I can now start drawing up the "win/loss" table, and get a better idea of my charity penalty pay-outs. Big cats, not so big cats, and majestic warplanes can expect a share.

...printing off the return labels and sh8 for the AVENGERS BluRay - this sorry tale even made onto the TV, courtesy of BBC's watchdog consumer show. Pity they "tried" to be "funny" - of course you can't reach "The Iron Man" or Captain America for comment, asshole; they're fictional characters. Dumb-ass.

...continuing to find the smartphone to be a handy writing assistant, although I may end up spamming my general use email with revisions of the new Shadow City story. I may have to limit myself to one "port-over" a day, and only using my home net-conn.

Thankfully, this tasty little device survived the Saturday incident with only a scraped casing, which I shall leave as it is, to remind me to PAY ATTENTION ON THE SODDING ROADS. I really wish I'd been able to get one before Operation Haphazard, and set it up for blogging on the move. Yesterday's photos were taken, edited and posted to online hosting all via my new toy... oh, and I navigate around the pages of my phone's home-screen by gently stroking the belly of Storm of the X-Men...

Nice.

So, What's Next...? More writing, I guess, and Ultima Online tonight. One of the online video rental places have sent me a mail-shot, and given the AVENGERS mess, I might just sign up so I can rent the BluRay for free, then continue with the service, as I'd been planning to try out those kinds of services for a while now. Talk about expert timing...

Just this morning, I decided to commence releasing funds to my charitable causes for my Mission 101 penalty pay-out Task

82 - Give £1 to charity for every task not completed, and an additional £10 for every 10 not completed! (Currently at £11...)

as I've found a most deserving recipient in The Sophie Lancaster Foundation, which fights to prevent violence against people simply for being different. A cause very close to this Dragon's heart...

Additional... it's done. My total for this task now reads £36, more if the Gift Aid goes through - but I don't think I'll count that as part of my total.

Yes - success as I nail Mission 101 Task 4: Walk to another town and back in a day... and it nails me right back, just inside the town boundary on my way back. The pavement-dive was my own fault, not helped by my exhaustion although that is not entirely to blame, and whilst I must say thank you to the couple that came to see that I was okay, I must also say a colossal FUCK YOU to the prick on the bicycle who MUST'VE seen what happened, and just kept on going.

Fucking student. Has to be. Only they would be so self-absorbed to not give a shit about another human being in distress.