Confession: Your Pet Project(s)

[Stormwaltz]

Short term: Read more. Up until college, I read a book a week. Now I'm lucky to read one every three months. (Real books, not manga...)

Medium term: I'm designing a play-by-email 4X space game. More specifically, I'm doing a ground-up redesign of a friend's game to focus less on building and blowing up fleets and more on strategy, economics, and roleplaying. I'm about halfway through the manual (~150 pages).

Long term: Save money. No one in my family has any savings. We're all working class, and have always lived hand-to-mouth. I have a tendency to live that way too, though I could save a little each month. ATM, I only have about $1000 in the bank (I had twice that much, but then Stuff Happened) and about twice that much in a retirement plan. Not much of a disaster cushion.

[Morat20]

Short-term: I'm working on a paper exploring some methods of attribute reduction in time-series data, using genetic algorithms. It'll be my first publish, assuming I get it to do anything worthwhile.

Medium-term: Write my thesis, get my Master's.

Long-term: Space, man. Once the space elevator is up, I'm taking me a trip.

[schild]

Much like Stormwaltz.

Short: Read more to further myself. I haven't done that in forever.
Medium: Make a game. Within the next 2 years. Something fantastic.
Hard: Save money and make f13 a full time job for at least 1 if not 12 people.

SS Rank: Sometime between Short and Long, I'd like to learn myself some useful skills. Like making arcade sticks or my own furniture.

[Sky]

Why 12? Should be 13. Then you can be the f13. Like the fantastic four or something. But not quite as fantastic, maybe fabulous. Or whatnot.

[Yegolev]

Schild would be either #1 or #13, depending on mood.  I assume he meant to use the word "other" in there, with himself a given.

My short-term is now focused on doing Very Little That Does Not Need Doing.  The Winter Hell is finally over.  Things that need doing include changing two light bulbs, having two prescriptions filled, picking up my contact lenses from Sam's Club, closing gaps around the basement wall, replacing the basement doorframe, and maybe fixing up some HVAC exhaust vents.

Medium is to finish some games, like a couple Shin Megami Tensei, FFXII, etc.  And do the taxes.

Long is to get the boy into college.

[Signe]

Change the light bulbs so you can find the perscriptions and you might have the energy to do all that work around the house, Four Eyes.

[Yegolev]

I bought some extry, so I'm really Fourteen-Eyes.

[gimpyone]

Short:  Learn proper usage of the semicolon.  Finish the quarter with a better GPA than last quarter.  Read the New Testament in Greek for practice.
Medium: Finish Undergrad crap.  Learn to drive myself around.  Read Creative Work to people outside of my friends.
Long: Get published.  Build a house.  Convince the UFC they need to sponsor a Special Olympics branch.  Profit.

[AmdJunkie83]

Short term:
I'm working on building a new bedroom set. All oak and black satin paint. Doing a six drawer dresser, two night stands and a bed.

mid:
Eventually i will get back into school, Fall hopefully, and finish a degree in something worthless like photography

long:
I'm working on teaching my self html, php, and asp. Considering I work on it about once a month it will take ages

[Margalis]

Still working on my tactics/card game. It is *really* hard to program all day at work and then program when I get home. I also got stuck for a long time on a resource model but I think I'm past that.

[Moaner]

Short term:  Finish my CCRN (Critical Care Registered Nurse) certification.  Play VF5, F1 and Crackdown until my eyes bleed.  Spin records while eyes recover.

Mid:  Actually distribute my music somehow... maybe.  Finally buy a Nord Modular G2 and have sex with it.

Long:  Build a modular synth.  Work as a flight nurse for at least a couple of years.

[SnakeCharmer]

Short: 'Finish' my four stall garage.  By 'finish' I mean decor, wiring it for internet / cable, finding a decent used oven to put in there for parts baking, find old style Coca-cola vending machine that works for cool beer storage :)

Mid: Finish the build up on the 302 that is going into the '68 Mustang Fastback that I am off frame resto-modding,

Long: Finish resto-mod of the '68 Fastback

[Calantus]

Short term I want to figure out what I want for breakfast, make it, and eat it. Nothing else I want to do can be classified as short term. :P EDIT: Short term goal accomplished: Crunchy Nut Clusters were prepared and eaten as required.

Mid-long term I want to learn more about music and musical theory, as well as learn an instrument or 2 (though mostly as a way of gaining insight). I've been scratching the surface quite a bit lately and have found it pretty interesting. Plus I have a whole bunch of questions that I want answered like exactly what is a 4/4 beat? Now I know its 4 quarter beats to the bar, and I can tell you what it looks like in sheet music, but what does that mean?

Long term I'd love to study, formulate, and write philosophy. Mostly as a personal exercise to examine the philosophical workings of my own mind, and to refine my political and ethical beliefs. I also think it would be amazing to have other people read about and debate a work of philosophy I'd created.

[Hanzii]

Short: Finish the goddamn downstairs batthroom which still looks like somebody threw a 'nade and closed the door (should be short terme but ended up long term)

Mid: Make a mark at my new job (start on the 1st - I'll be writing again)

Long: Write a book. Any book.
         Learn some close-up magic - I want a skill I can impress the kids with (apart from just being cool dad)

[Sky]

find old style Coca-cola vending machine that works for cool beer storage :)

Going to be tough, the old coke machines I remember had 8oz bottles.

[Riggswolfe]

Short: Get rid of my ADHD-like inability to write a story longer than 20 pages without getting distracted by a new idea. I'll start by trying the write everyday thing and settling on a genre once and for all.

Medium: Finish a novel. Just one damn it!

Long: Become an author and write books about how it's never too late to start. Finish my epic trilogy. Have "Tolkien who?" on my gravestone.

Mine have been slightly clarified:

Short: Finish my writing research: On Writing by Stephen King (some of his advice is very, very pratical and this is the first book I felt like actually helped my writing) , Elements of Style, and Hero of a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.

Medium: Stay with my commitment to write a minimum of 10 pages a day. Finish a book by next Fall

Long: Get one book published, minimum.

[SnakeCharmer]

find old style Coca-cola vending machine that works for cool beer storage :)

Going to be tough, the old coke machines I remember had 8oz bottles.

Are you sure?

One of my dads friends had one in his garage, and I could swear it worked with beer bottles.  But hell, that's been...20 years?  So my memory might be a little fuzzy.

[Big Gulp]

Okay, my real pet project?



I've been doing this for about 2 months now, tattooing myself and friends.  I started out damned shaky, to where I need to eventually repair the early work I did on myself (the line work wasn't good), but I've improved dramatically.  I figure I'll keep on this path, tattooing friends, and eventually open up my own shop.

[Sky]

I knew a methhead bass player in Frisco who did tats with a gun he made himself. He was the total McGuyver of tattoo. He came over one day, asked for an old tape player, a pen, , duct tape, a guitar string and some india ink. He put the tape motor on the pen, ran the string through it, dipped it in ink and started tattooing himself. He was actually quite good at doing aztec glyphs.

I had a laugh when my singer decided to see how it felt and tattooed a line on his finger.

[sinij]

Why 12? Should be 13. Then you can be the f13. Like the fantastic four or something. But not quite as fantastic, maybe fabulous. Or whatnot.

You only need at most one person doing it full time, it much better to pay-per-article to editors.