Oh No, More Damn Joe Stuff!

The Guardian of Computer Hell I’m going through the change. The last few days made a decision for me. I am doing a full conversion to Windows 10 and Linux (Ubuntu Studio 19.04) as quickly as possible.  I discovered that the problem is not simply the conflict between the Apple and Adobe “phone home” requirements - checking through the internet to see if I am “authorized” to use that specific machine, that specific piece of software. It required delays at the start of every work session. Every time I used Adobe InDesign or Photoshop using the Macintosh with MacOS 10.15.2 there was a delay rom 15- to 45-seconds after my first mouse click or typing a single character before it had a response. The next few strokes or clicks had less delay and after a few minutes I was able to do my work.  The problem was not with “phone home” codes, but a new disk formatting schema that Apple instituted. APFS replaced the old options. You can no longer format using the previous standard Mac HFS

The More Damn Joe Stuff has been a great exercise. The Robot of Gmail is trying to change the tone and when I post "Damn" as the name it sends me warnings - "Are you sure you want to use this name?" But this development has helped me come up with something that gets through their blue nose filters. The Patreon work is teaching me that I need to adjust my tone, and being as my whole life is about self-education, I will educate myself. And change. moredamnjoestuff@gmail.com will become mdjoestuff@gmail.com. The blog will become the mdjoestuff blog. The video channels will be on YouTube as the mdjoestuff video channel. And the more damn joe stuff will become the mdjoestuff@gmail.com Patreon project. My own process of growing the fuck up has to be modeled in my own behavior. What good does it do to teach something they do not see me doing. Radio theater. Role-Playing Games. Recovery. Self Education. Education by topics. Real Beginner education to defy the tren

Old Saying -- "90% of the work takes  10% of the time.  The last 10% of the work takes 90% of the time." True. But Frustrating. And Apple makes it more difficult. The new Upgrade to Apple macOS Catalina has been a disaster. Apple has changed code to prevent Open Source programs from running, which is a marketing decision. That means I cannot use Audacity to record the voice track for my Patreon promotional video. I would have to use GarageBand or Adobe Auditio n. Except it is not my first rodeo with Apple. I kept an old boot disk with OS 13.6, which ai refuse to update. I can use Audacity on that disk. But it means rebooting and losing my use of Audcity , Photoshop , and other system-dependent and registered programs. Or I can boot to Linux Ubuntu Studio and lose access to my documents on the Mac disk. But then I can use Audacity and one of the many, many open source video editors. But I need my documents. And I really need Photoshop to do the wor

Details? ORFA is missing, but that's easy to correct. I'm coming up with a visual appearance for branding the MDJS project - Patreon, website, card... it will have to be a two-sided card. But smaller and larger versions of a banner. I'm debating how to set up the web page - as part of the oakandlotus.com publication site, or the more spiritual and non-profit concept of thewayofservice.org. And I am clearly undecided if I list it as Patreon or MRDS... but that will be easy to clarify. Less details, with some eyes. If you look at the page, I would really appreciate some feedback. It is my hope that I announce the video(s), website, and Patreon campaign are all live next Wednesday - the next Day Promo. As was yesterday. Today, for day non-fiction, I spent time working on this and with a local vets group doing some organizational work for a local support meeting - expansion, public contact, and how they operate. It was a very productive session at Denny's. I

Going to the new week feels right. on the new Planet Joe I'm focused on a specific area - one of the five I was already juggling. But the focus is different. Monday was Day Joe and I focused on things around the house. My phone (Galaxy S8) is no longer charging - direct wire or wireless charger - so I may suddenly lose that connection. I have the old iPhone SE which I think will work - I'd have to take out the sim card yadda yadda yadda. I don't know if the SE is modern enough to work on the system. If the S8 craps out. And I still have about 9 payments to make on it. (I'm adjusting to the phone but really do not like the side touch - if you breathe on it wrong (like if your mouth was near the phone in a phone call) it opens an app. Sometimes it sends a message in fluent Gobbledegook, which gets embarrassing. But that took a lot of my focus on Monday. Tuesday was Non-Fiction so I did some work on the Patreon Video, which they seem to require to open the full P

"The Way of Services" is another MDJS Project. More later. A big part of the Patreon project is for me to finish production, or reproduce, on a number of videos. They will include 12-Step Recovery, PTSD, Role Playing Games, and other topics within my MDJS umbrella. This is the kind of thing I have done without backing, and I think with backing I could make it even more meaningful tot he potential audience. And I do have six tracks oån the MDJS calendar, so spirit and Recovery are already in my sites. From my Facebook post earlier today. ----------------- Part of the process of More Damn Joe Stuff is video. I have a sense of design and illustration to make almost-animated instruction or tutorial films. This is a sample. I'm pleased with the design and would like to produce a voice track and find appropriate music. The soundtrack you here was from one of many Creative Commons repositories and was chosen - strictly - to suit the time int he animated film. It could

Many years ago, when my life began the process of rebuilding my sense of identity. I did something I have since called "The Embracement." About a week or so at a time I looked at what I could remember of my life. I have one memory before there were words, so I'm thinking less than a year old. Just sensation and images, all comfort and beauty of the world of night and snow, light and moving into a warm room. And I remembered the ceramic heater, couch-on-legs, and crawling across a specific linoleum tile. Years later my dad confirmed it was the living room of a house we moved out of when I was 18 months old. So - two memories from the first two years. Retrieved by ending the self-medication that allowed me to survive, and the beginning of the process.  I journaled and specifically mediated to see what ages brought to me. I was only 35 so it wasn't that huge. It was sometimes traumatic, sometimes magic, and year and year built up to get me to where I lived at the mome

Real, physical healing. For the past three months, I've been involved with a fight to keep my right leg. Literally. It has happened a couple of times before but a bump to the inside of my right calf did not heal, and did not heal, and grew, and opened. It looked like some cougar sized animal had just taken a bite out of my leg. And it became infected, turning the whole lower leg red and angry. The actual wound was under the open part, and the rim of the real wound just upleg from the 5.7cm by 4.5cm  open area three new wounds appeared, joined together to form one large crescent shape wound over the existing chasm. I've been through this before and, thanks to some people I know with experience, I know I would have been able to lose a leg, stay sane and sober. But I don't want to. Whenever a doctor uses the word "amputation" I perk right up, pay attention, and follow directions. At this point, I should mention that it was not painful. It should have been,

Threads can be complex, and are not always of the materials expected. I'm trying to put together the Patreon project. I have a reprieve on survival mode - I lost my roommate and gained a freelance assignment that will net me what my roommate would have paid for August and September. So before the end of September, I need the video Patreon wants for my project page, the website with the detail of what I propose to do with support from Patreon, and the tracking of the subscribers to share progress and finished products through this thread. Threads. There is the Recovery thread. This will involve video production with print backup for specific issues that rise up when people try to stop using drugs and/or alcohol. These include PTSD, Adult Child of alcohol and other dysfunctional families, Sexual Abuse, Abandonment, personality development, communication, emotional sobriety - all covered with thirty presentations of the Haunted Recovery curriculum taught at the Healing Place

Many years ago I wanted to put together a band. I knew the mood and the name, but this is s far as it went. Hurricane Dorian was a near miss, but where I live we barely got wind and rain. A few miles away got over 8 inches of rain. Here, barely an inch. Selfish I know, but I like a near-miss better than the alternative. My life has become a hurricane in the past few years. And I think I found my feet, to stand on my life and ride through the storm. And the only way the storm will end will not be good for anyone but me. I do know that. But it is my intent to ride for as long as possible. Storms are not a new idea. For me or many of the people I have known.

One part of the project is to break the thinking of polarity. Instead of two sides of an issue, four or more. This is a big part of how I think about any issue - four, at least. I'm not visible, but I'm busy. That has been the pattern throughout my life, but this time it is doing what is required to build a Patreon campaign. They want a video - I'm doing a video, but not with my face moving. Maybe with my face, but much more showing the products I've already done. And I've done a lot, some of which will play into the new Patreon stream. I will pick the best soundtracks from the ANONYMOUS REVIEW PODCAST to become the soundtrack for several YouTube videos that will serve as an educational series on the history of AA and the Twelve Step movement. The same will happen with the SPONSOR PODCAST to provide a solid soundtrack for additional, related educational videos. I am pulling together an in-depth video to introduce people to the world of Jorune, a fantasy

SSC 13 is done. I wanted to add more, but enough is enough. It will go out in the next day or so. I'm also putting some polish on ORFA , in a vertical, letter-sized edition, for Skyrealms of Jorune . I have some work yet to do for that world, but this marks the end of the Segment: Sho-Caudal project. Thirteen issues, about 300 pages. I had about twenty people around the world supporting me on this and I hope they feel I did right by them. I had hoped the book(s) would provide a stream of income through Amzon.com, but that is not happening. It may build for something good later, but for the moment I need to shift lanes. MDJS  stands for  More Damn Joe Stuff , was intended as a project to garner support from Patreon to accomplish specific projects. There are several tracks - 12-Step Recovery, Role Playing Games, Self Education, and some personal projects. The Patreon channel will show as MDJS, with tracks for: Role-Playing Games - Old-style tabletop, pencil-paper-&-d

I had ideas. I had plans. Things that were going to ready and on Amazon by August. Reality has gotten in my way. Again. Anybody else?

Margaret Secara (Pierce) "Maggie" A friend died unexpectedly Friday night. She and I were chatting on facebook a couple of hours earlier (giggling over pictures from us with friends at a party in 1977 which she had uncovered) and a couple of hours later her husband heard a thud from the next room. He found her on the floor, CPR and 911. She was pronounced at 11P. A friend who was in the pictures notified me Saturday morning before it was announced on Maggie's webpage that afternoon – after her family had been notified across many time zones. Within the next few hours over 500 people responded. Grieving requires simple honestly. First about the shock, then about the loss, but for me, it has had to move into a celebration - say that name, tell the tales, keep them alive in memory, and introduce them to people who will never get to meet her. It keeps her alive for just a bit longer. And grief is best processed in the sharing with the other people who know that spec

At 16 reviews Adobe/Kindle will open new promotional tools to me for promoting the current book and, hopefully, the several that are about to follow. I have 11 reviews so far. I'm hoping my readers will post, even if they didn't buy from Amazon. So that means I just need five more to open the tools. Five isn't bad. And if you have reviewed, tell your friends. Or you enemies if they might like the book. It will confuse them, and isn't that satisfying?

Well, this self-publisher. I'm not a believer in Astrology but there is the amazing coincidence that the most negative experiences of my life have happened during Mercury Retrograde. My heart attack, diagnoses with Diabetes, death of my father, and other such landmarks. A friend warned me that Mercury would be Retrograde until the middle of August. But I didn't know that until after the next event. Immediately after getting CLIMBING THE SPIRAL MOUNTAIN up onto Kindle my computer decided to take a shit on me. It has happened many times in the past two years (I'm on a Macintosh) but I've gotten very good about paranoid backup prices. It only two days to diagnose the degree of the problem, erase, install Mac OS 10.14 from the ground up, restore documents, Adobe programs, and start the nightmare of restoring online accounts for things like Amazon, Kindle, a dozen email accounts, and many other websites where I visit for information (almost all of which need new passwo

An Unrelated Photoshop job to distract me from the pain. I said I was going to track what I was doing, but got distracted with the Mac acting up, slowing down, freezing... again. I'm now an old hand at restoring the system from an Internet install. I had backups set but it looks like the last couple of days work (work on Segment: Sho-Caudal #13, More Than This, and the I Don't Wanna Cook Book, and other juggling). One of my regular tools (Dropbox) put up a notice than I had too many registrations on their server, all for the same account. I have to re-register every re-installation of MacOS as a "new computer" and Dropbox has a limit on the number of "machines" I'm allowed to connect to the servers. I went thru and deleted twenty accounts - that that was not the total they showed. Just what would bring me under my limit. So I know that I have recreated machines twenty times, according to DropBox. I allow that this includes defunct iPhones (two

In addition to the Kindle store, CLIMBING THE SPIRAL MOUNTAIN is now available on most online bookstores and professional library services. https://books2read.com/u/mdK7d3 It's a start. Now I have to push for reviews from people who have actually read the book. No paid revies, no "called in favor" reviews, and nothing by me under another name. Real readers. Who else would you trust? --- Now I start with the existing playbooks and the re-release of THE SONG OF ORPHANS. I hope to have my existing catalog updated by the end of the year. It is satisfying to open the new edition of my favorite novel to any page and not be embarrassed by what I find. It is also gratifying that every page moves me forward in the story.

Out for a sweaty Sunday drive. I have a lifelong tendency to feel like I have not done anything. Sometimes that is a bleak view of my entire lifetime of accomplishment, but more often it is simply feely there has been no progress in any of my activities.  Recently the old self un-appreciation has started to creep back, so I think I'm going to use this blog as a diary. Just to remind me. I probably won't keep it going very long. But it might be good for me. In the last ten days... My novel CLIMBING THE SPIRAL MOUNTAIN is being read by a few people around the country. And out of its 186,000 words, a friend found three problems. Two were simple spelling errors where the error is actually a word, therefore invisible to the A.I. spellchecks, and the third is a simple logic problem where my lead character packed his bags with old and new clothes, and pages later, he decides to wash the new clothes to get some of the stiffness out of them. Three  DONE . The skids have been