back from the beyond

I'm back at work today for the first time in two days. I was out sick again. I thought about blogging while I was home, but then didn't. Go figure.

So, what was my second sick-out like? I got pretty stir crazy. I was thinking about wandering around my apartment in my pajamas and making a photo documentary of my time home sick. The thing is, before I started to snaps shots of Mount Jenga and some empty pudding cups, I came to my senses and realized that no one on Earth would actually care about any of that. So, good thing then.

I'm glad to be out in the world again. It felt very strange to step outside, just as it always does after a prolonged stretch of time cooped up inside. Amanda had surgery this morning to get her wisdom teeth removed. I'm dying to know how she's doing. I'll be spending my weekend as the Health Brigade making sure that she's comfortable and resting up.

The Last Samurai is a so-so movie. Elektra is a lousy movie. Resident Evil 4 keeps getting better (though the voice acting is still total ass) and Burnout Revenge totally r0><0rz. I guess that's it for me. Nothing all that exciting ever happens when you're home sick.

Unless you're Ferris Bueller. And I'm most definitely not Ferris Bueller.

grumpy ain't just a dwarf in the woods

I'm in a pissy mood today. I could tell I was going to be in a crappy mood when I had some serious road rage issues directed towards the world's slowest motorcycle on the way to work today. I mean, seriously though, have you ever - EVER - seen a motorcycle that goes the speed limit? I didn't think it was mechanically possible for a motorcycle to even go 25 mph. And yet, I find the one that can when I'm running late for a department meeting this morning.

Anyway, it's just kinda' all been a slide from there today. Everyone around here is telling me to go to the doctor to have my cold taken a look at. I'm starting to feel like Jim Henson. I keep saying "Phht. Forget it. It's just a cold and I'll be fine." For all I know, I've got Indonesian Bird Ebola and I'll be dead by this time next week.

Last night I had a nightmare that I was surrounded in the woods by a pack of rabid raccoons who were carnivorously tearing apart a family of dear. All the while, they just kept staring at me like I was next. It was unsettling, to say the least.

All of my afternoon meetings were cancelled and rescheduled, which is maybe a good thing since I'm so rosy and social today. I wish the Presidio had a batting cage.

rooni, i'm comin' home

I'm feeling particularly moody this evening. Not sure why. Well, that's not entirely true. I know a few really good reasons why. Unfortunately, I can't really talk about them. Suffice it to say, everything in my personal life is fine. It's not located there. But, I'm feeling moody about other aspects of my life.

Doesn't help that I've been listening to Ray Lamontagne at work today. There's something about his album that's like sitting in front of a warm fire. It makes you feel fuzzy, deadens you to the world a bit and seeps into your bones.

All day long, all I've wanted to do is blow off work, drive down to Amanda's office, pick her up and going out for a picnic somewhere. Someplace quiet and calm where we can just sit together, enjoy each other's company, and I can feel peaceful.

Maybe part of this funk I'm in is from a week of crappy night's sleep. My cold seems to hit me hardest now in the middle of the night. I wake up repeatedly every night with coughing fits. Niquil doesn't help.

Somehow it's past 6:30 already. Last time I checked, it was about 3. I dunno where the day went. Guess I'll get out of here and head home, spend my evening with Manda like I've wanted to do all day. See if her smile can't shake off this funk I'm in.

It's been known to happen.

hi ho hi ho

I went back to work today after my snot-filled, mid-week vacation. Today has repeatedly felt like Monday; despite it's most certainly not being Monday.

I got the article done. Now it's waiting in an in-box awaiting PR approval. But, at least it's out of my hands.

Manda and I are having some friends over this weekend to watch the Super Bowl. We did this last year and had a really nice time. I couldn't tell you who even played in the Super Bowl last year, but I can tell you that the blueberry yogurt fruit dip Amanda made was a hit. I was asked today by a friend who's coming on Sunday "Will Amanda's World-Famous Fruit Dip be there?"

I'm really tired of coughing today. Thankfully I'm in a sound-proof office, so the rest of the company isn't sick of hearing me cough. I'm also sick of being clammy and cold from having a fever break at random intervals.

Maybe it's time to go home early.

back in block

I have writers' block. I've been asked to write another article for Game Developer magazine, this time on Smart Combat Music Interactivity. I'm blogging as a means of stalling because I'm tired of writing sentences and then erasing them.

I hate writers' block. It makes me feel stupid, as though I don't have the ability to make a cohesive point.

I'm starting to feel guilty about blogging instead of writing, so I guess I'll go try and plug away at it.

800 words isn't a lot. I don't know why I'm having so much trouble.

butterfly in the sky?

Last night sucked. Sickness took complete control of me and at about 2 AM I woke up shivering like crazy. For over an hour I lay there like that until my erratic breathing woke up Amanda who then proceeded to take care of me until I fell back to sleep.

I don't know what the hell was wrong with me. I didn't have a fever; and yet I couldn't stop shivering. Beyond that were the very odd thoughts kicking around in my head. First a little background ...

[wigglyDreamSequence]
Last Sunday, our typically very quiet street was strangely noisy early in the morning. People were laughing, talking, and somewhere nearby someone was practicing the saxophone. This was new. I've never heard a peep from our street before and it all took me by surprise.
[/wigglyDreamSequence]

Now, back to last night. For whatever the hell reason, I was CONVINCED as I lay there shivering last night that the previous Sunday morning had been like an episode of Reading Rainbow. I know I wasn't asleep; I was shivering like mad and fully awake. And yet, there I was completely fixated on a TV show I haven't seen in about 20 years.

I kept picturing book illustrations with a narrator's voice (much like Alfre Woodard's, believe it or not) and small ensemble jazz underscore playing along with it.

"Myyyyy Streeeet." said Alfre, drawing the vowels out in a soothing childlike way. "By Marcus Dellwater. Illustrated by Johanna Lundbourne. As read by Alfre Woodard."

"My street is aliiiiiive. Morning, Noon, and Night my street is alive with the sounds of the City."

Et cetera. The entire childrens' book wrote itself over and over again in my head while I tried desperately to stop shivering. I have no idea what the hell was wrong with me, but I lived some weird hour-long Reading Rainbow waking nightmare last night and find myself thoroughly baffled by it this today.

Being sick sucks. Your brain does weird things. Your body feels terrible. I can't wait to get better. Being sick totally sucks.

But, you don't have to take my word for it.

post-nasal drag

I'm getting sick. Today is one of those days where you can feel yourself deteriorating over the course of the day. I've been sneezing like crazy, coughing for weeks, and now I've got the post-nasal trip hat-trick to go along with everything. Sucks. If I didn't have a meeting in an hour I'd go home right now. As it is, I think I'm leaving after that meeting today.

Bleh. I hate being sick.

mad props to the tunesmiths

Songwriting is a tough art, and one that isn't often given very much credit. Sure, there are people like Rufus Wainwright, Joni Mitchell, or Bob Dylan who often get credit for their songwriting; but usually it's due to the depth of their lyrical content.

And yet, there are some songwriters out there who - although they probably wouldn't like to admit it - write fluff when it comes to lyrics, and yet are absolutely rock solid with their songwriting skills.

Chief among them has to be Rivers Cuomo, frontman and songwriter for Weezer. This dude is incredible when it comes to writing a memorable song. The lyrics are totally disposable and are often simply a multisyllablic means for delivering the melody. But, holy hell, what melodies ...

There are few people who can write a melody that makes me addictively need to listen to it 8 or 9 times in a row. Mozart, Irving Berlin, Gershwin, John Williams, Michael Jackson ... that's the caliber of melody we're talking about. Something that worms its way into your brain on first listen and starts to replicate. Your normal thoughts and your internal monologue are soon dodging between notes of a tune that refuses to leave you alone and the only cure is to listen to the song again, which unfortunately merely continues the cycle.

There's something quasi-Sado/Masochistic about it, to be honest. But, damn if I don't enjoy torturing myself with a good melody. Truth be told, I'm extremely envious of composers and songwriters with that ability. Take a listen to Weezer's "Perfect Situation" to see the kind of thing I'm talking about. I couldn't tell you a single lyric in that song, and yet I've listened to it about 5 times already this morning just on the strength of the tune alone. It's really an exceptional melody.

i sense an ugly trend

Don't get me wrong; I love Apple. However, I have to take issue with a weird trend in Hyper-Disposable technology that Apple seems to have started and other companies are now following suit with.

I think it all began with the iMac. When Mac released their first iMac, the general trend in personal computing was to simply update the processing and RAM capabilities ever year or so and a family of computer typically looked the same. However, the iMac added into the mix the concept of personal style. First came the blue and white iMac in April of '98. 7 months later came the Lifesaver-colored iMacs. Then came iMac Rev D only 3 months later which was a processing power up-grade. Then 6 months later came the Blueberry iMac. 8 months later came the Indigo- and Ruby-colored iMacs. Then Graphite and White iMacs. Then this monstrosity. Anyway, you get the point.

The consuming public was constantly being presented with new options every couple of months making lots of people who had already bought an iMac think "Damn it! Why didn't they have that color when I bought one?! That one so matches my drapes/shoes/dog/whatever." Anyway, I guess it was a successful approach for Apple because they then did the same thing with the iPod.

iPod, iPod Mini, iPod Nano, iPod Video, etc. You see where I'm going with this. Anyone who buys an Apple product has to worry throughout the next 6 months to see if Apple will suddenly announce the iPod [insert your own name] edition which would have been so perfect, if they hadn't just bought the green one with less storage space.

Anyway, it's kinda' lame. But, just as Apple became the trend setter that changed all computer peripherals from beige to Lifesaver colors, then changed portable music accessories to all match the iPod, they also seem to have their followers in the hyper-disposable tech sector.

Nintendo is the chief one among them. For years, the Gameboy was the standard of handheld gaming. Then after all of the Apple stuff went down, the market got hit with a quick succession of 5 different Gameboy incarnations in about 2 years. There was the original GBA, then the flip-top GBA, then the retro "it looks like the old NES" GBA, then came the DS, and then the GBA Micro (just like the iPod Nano).

So, what makes me bring all of this up? Nintendo announced today the DS Lite. Besides just needlessly creating another version of their existing products, Nintendo also continues their practice of copying Apple's design sense and have restyled the DS to look a helluva lot like an iPod.

[antiNintendogripe]I'm so done with Nintendo. They continue to make bizarre choices when it comes to console hardware development, have all but admitted that they haven't had any good ideas since the original NES, and seem to jump at the chance to ride the Apple Design bandwagon rather than innovate in smart ways, as opposed to innovating in retahded ways like they seem to so frequently attempt.[/antiNintendogripe]

So, yeah. The moral of the story is: Nintendo is lame and hyper-disposable technology annoys me.

Andy Milonakis is not allowed to read this

I was typing up some feedback today for a co-worked (it's Review Time everybody!) and was trying to write the phrase "despite the crunched time schedule." Instead, I typoed it as "despite the crunked time schedule." This made me laugh and I thought how funny inadvertent Hip Hop was. That then made me laugh and think that "Inadvertent Hip Hop" was a funny title and I should do something with it.

However, the more I thought about it, the more it seems like some sort of lame Performance Art piece where someone like Tom Green would run around the street with a microphone trying to get old people to say something hip-hoppish (hip-hoppy?). So, I retract my "good idea" label and instead label it as "verboten."

By the way, I was surprised to find while writing this that it's much easier to find a site dedicated to Verboten than to Tom Green. None of his fan sites seem to be functional links anymore. Verboten, on the other hand, is apparently a reference to everything from a movie from the 50s to The Church of true Israel, to a German religious site whose summary in Google reads "Warning: Do not click on this link; it is forbidden."

How can you not click that link after you see that? Those wacky Germans ...

goodbye, 1997. hello, 2001.

Well, I finally did it. Throwing caution to the wind, I jumped head-first into 5 years in the past and finally have OS X running on my Mac at home. I have to say, I'm loving it. I have a used G4 that I just configured to run everything, after installing a DVD drive and reformatting the harddrive.

Now the only problem is that I don't have any applications for it. I spent a few minutes dragging and selecting items on my desktop with the new Wacom tablet I bought, but that's about it. Oh, and I downloaded some Widgets. Most unique of them for me has to be the SMPTE calculator widget. Good stuff.

So, now I just need to get Photoshop, Office, Flash, Logic, and maybe the most recent Myst game. I'm also really excited because the installation of OS X Tiger now means that I can finally use the iPod Amanda and her parents got me for Xmas. I can't wait to download videos for it. I can't wait to try and put together a little collection of my favorite music videos. So far I know I want to snag Weapon of Choice, Bedtime Stories, Free As A Bird, and some Bjork stuff. I haven't watched those videos in a long time and they've stuck in my mind since I saw them. Can't wait to try and find them again.

Anyway, that's my big new news. Bignoonoos? Bignunus? Sure, bignunus. Why not.

some Monday toxic gumbo

Lots of random stuff today, I guess. Nothing that's all that interesting, though, I suppose.

I totally love Sirius satellite radio. This weekend I was driving around listening to the music stations and found three stations that are bananas, B-AN-AN-AS. One's a modern rock station, one's a classic rock from the 80s and 90s station, and the other is called Hair Nation and is basically the soundtrack of 6th through 8th grade for me. The only problem is that they so frequently all play good music at the same time. So, unlike regular radio where I have to search hard to find something I don't mind settling on, I had to choose for instance at one point between a new Beck tune, "One Night Love Affair" by Bryan Adams, and "Wanted Man" by Ratt. That is a tough choice.

I got an email today out of the blue from an old friend from High School, Otto Lai. Haven't talked to him in years and years and he found me through myspace. Otto's a great guy and an extremely gifted cartoonist. The inside cover of my senior year book has a message from him that says "When your brother or sister have kids, they can call you 'Uncle Jesse.' Yee-haw!" and is followed by a cartoon of two dogs doing the nasty. You know how there are people from high school that you forget ever existed and then other people that you think about regularly and wonder what they're up to? Otto falls into the latter category, so I'm glad I heard from him. As best as I can gather, he's now a digital artist living in NYC, so good for him.

I finished reading The Divinci Code last night. I'm torn about it. I loved the plot and I loved the proposed historical revelations contained within it. I just didn't like the characters. So, I dunno. I don't want to ruin the book for anyone who hasn't read it and wants to; but I will say that if what it says is true, I wouldn't be surprised in the least.

Um ... what else? My cat had a nightmare on Friday night. Skeleton Key is a disappointing movie. Band of Brothers, on the other hand, rocks like a hurricane. Oh, and Resident Evil 4 is lame. If anyone is looking for a good zombie game, don't get Resident Evil 4. Some of my complaints about it might be ultra-picky game designer gripes, but I really just am not enjoying it.

Games are progressing constantly in terms of what they allow the player to do. More and more frequently, gamers are finding that their imaginations will lead to puzzle and problem solving solutions that are creative and non-linear approaches to the problem, and that the game designers have allowed for it. It makes for a great game experience. God of War is full of those kinds of moments. Moments whereby you think "I wonder if I can do [blah]?" and sure enough you can, which makes you feel like a badass.

But, Resident Evil 4 just keeps frustrating me. Let me paint the scene: I'm a government agent [voiced by a terrible voice actor] who has been sent to Genericsberg, Europe to rescue the kidnapped daughter of the US President. For whatever reason, I stumble across a village of angry villagers who want to kill me for no reason. Anyway, when you enter the Village of A-holes, the entire town turns out to kill you. So, I'm standing there looking for a way out the situation and it occurs to me "Oh, snap! There's a two-story building there! I know! I'll dash inside, run up the stairs, and then use the stairs to bottle neck the A-holes and kill them one by one as they try to come up the stairs!"

It was a perfect plan. So, I head into town and sure enough, the townsfolk start to advance in a murderous rampage. I make a mad dash into the two-story building, snake my way through the living room, around a corner, through the dining room towards the stairs only to discover: there are no stairs upstairs. The stupid two-story building doesn't have any way up to the second floor. So, instead, I find myself trapped in the bottom floor of this house with Zombie-Villagers smashing their way through the windows and doors like it's the freakin' "Thriller" video.

Anyway, things like that really annoy me in games. I guess I've rambled long enough. Seacrest, out.

sometimes I forget where I work

And then there are other times where I randomly pass George Lucas in the hallways. Today was one of those times.

the congressional time-out chair

Manda and I were listening to NPR this morning as she dropped me off at work (my car's in the shop getting a tune-up) and the topic of discussion was the "culture of corruption" amongst the Republican ranks and what, if any, sweeping reforms might be enacted as a result of so many hands getting caught in the proverbial cookie jar.

And I have to say, I'm shocked if anyone in the world actually thinks that there will be some kind of massive reform from this whole Abramoff debacle if the Congress is left to police themselves. These aren't 7 year-olds who are still learning Right from Wrong. They knew what they did was illegal, and they knew that it was going on. It makes me want to vomit any time I hear a congressman say "Well, if these allegations are true, I'll be shocked and surely we should push for reforms." Bullshit. I mean, honestly, here's a quote from Rep. John Culbertson (R) from Houston, Texas:

"I've never encountered any member of Congress who appeared to me to be engaging in unethical or illegal conduct."

Can we, as a people, line up and take turns peeing on this a-hole from the balcony of the Senate Chamber?

Anyway, I get disgusted just thinking about all of this crap. Our government is so broken right now. I have no idea how it can be fixed. What makes me saddest of all is the realization that such a small portion of the country even seems to care. It's the pervasive apathy that allows these elected Tools to fuck with our money, fuck with our liberties, and fuck with the world like it's a plaything for their moral pulpits.

Bah. I have to stop. I'm just getting more and more angry the more I think about it. Suffice it to say, 1.) I'm not surprised by any of it, and 2.) I don't expect anything to change.

I mean, seriously, multiple state constitutions require that a bill pertain to only one subject. Why isn't this applicable to our federal government? Why is the legislature at the federal level even allowed to tack on Alaskan Drilling into a Pentagon Budget bill? It's ludicrous.

Assholes, the lot of them. Has integrity ever existed in politics?

earth science lesson for the day

Pardon me, Mr. Godwin, while I step in and tackle today's Earth Science lesson. Today, we're going to learn about The Atmosphere. The atmosphere is a big layered ball of gases that surrounds the Earth. What separates one layer from another is how they're defined in terms of their temperature, the gases present, as well as their electric properties.

Now, the layers of the Earth's atmosphere are as follow, going from closest to the Earth to furthest out into space:

- Troposphere
- Stratosphere
- Mesosphere
- PainInTheAssosphere
- Thermosphere
- Exosphere

Today, we'll be focusing on the PainInTheAssosphere. Situated between the Mesophere and the Thermosphere, the PainInTheAssosphere is the magical, mystical boundary within which cell phone calls get stuck.

See, cellphone calls - just like light - apparently also act like a wave and a particle. They're a wave because they're a wave and they're a particle because they apparently get stuck to the PainInTheAssosphere like some sort of freaky Earth Science velco.

Then end result is that, after having had your phone turned on for weeks, old Voice Mail messages that people left for you weeks ago will show up out of no where many weeks late. This happens when your cell phone Voice Mail messages get stuck to the PainInTheAssosphere. They can then only be dislodged by the act of Angels bowling, which also creates thunder and then you get your voice mail.

This is the best explanation anyone has for why the hell I'd get a three week old Voice Mail message from Amanda this morning, or why - days after I got back from visiting PA - I had a backlog of messages that pertained to my trip suddenly arrive about a week and a half too late.

And that is the wonder of the PainInTheAssosphere. You may begin polishing my Nobel Prize for Science.

Oh, and just for the hell of it, here's the website of everyone's favorite chemistry teacher: Don Sloat.

first of a new dying breed?

Okay. Ignore my stupid title for this entry. I had know idea what to call it. Anyway, I've been listening to the new Howard Stern show on Sirius Satellite Radio. Good stuff. It's strange; I had this weird feeling that it would feel just as though his show on terrestrial radio had simply resumed. But, it doesn't.

The sound quality is different. Something about the EQ on their mikes makes it very different. An, on top of that, there's just a whole different vibe to it. Having to pay for the service made me feel as though I was in some sort of club. It's a little hard to explain, but it was as if I had gained access to the Stern Clubhouse. It's still weird to hear cursing on the radio. It shouldn't be weird. I curse all of the time with everyone I know in normal conversational English, dammit. But we've been so conditioned to think of a handful of words as off limits to our airwaves that I still feel like a kid at the back of the school bus giggling about words like "scrotum" and "assmunch" everytime they curse on Sirius.

I also feel like I'm listening to technology that's in its infancy. The reception on Satellite radio isn't what I thought it would be. Go under an overpass? Lost reception. Drive near the ocean(!?)? Lost reception. I don't know. It's odd. I like having it. I love conceptually that it's a place for commercial-free, censorship-free radio; but in practice, I still hear commercials and it seems like they have a little ways to go on the reception issue.

But, all of that said, I don't feel unhappy with it. Like I said, it's like hearing it in its infancy and I'm okay with that. I know that it's going to grow and improve. I know I'll be telling my grandkids one day "You know, your old Granddad had Satellite Radio back on Earth when it had just been invented. Back then, it went in our 'cars' and the mutant genetically modified fruit hadn't yet forced everyone to evacuate to the Moon."

Yeah, it'll be a grand future ...

hahaha for sale?

The end of the previous year means the beginning of 2005 video game awards. As such, I'm trying to get together a bunch of things to submit through the industry for our various titles.

So, I'm making music medleys and trying to video capture and edit ... video. Blah blah blah. Fun times.

I bought my very own Munny on the way home from work on Friday. Now I just have to figure out how to customize it. That's going to mean looking online for paint recommendations, sculpting material recommendations, etc. It should be fun, though. I'm looking forward to it.

Anyway, thought I'd leave you with this today. It's an eBay auction I found. Please let me know if you can figure out what it's for. I'm at a bit of a loss.

so munny and they don't even know it

I'm a happy little camper today. Last night, I discovered Munny.

A bit of background before I get to what Munny is: I love action figures - grew up with them, still buy them from time to time. I was telling Amanda the other night that action figures have this special kind of magic for me by which they turn fictional characters into something tangible. There's a special tactile transformation that occurs for me when I can touch the vinyl surface of something that captured my imagination on the Big Screen, the pages of a comic book, or a novel.

So "I dig action figures" is my point. The next logical step to me was to always want an action figure of myself. When I was in college - and I wish I could remember the origins behind why - I created two custom Jesse Harlin action figures out of customized and repainted Star Wars figures. They were funny enough. I had fun customizing them. Good times. Apparently those action figures were taken around by my friends while I was over in England and I was able to still hang out with them in some small capacity.

Anyway, enter Munny. Munny is a vinyl toy whose entire purpose is customization. Munny (like other custom toys such as Dunny, Stikfas, and Qeester) was designed with the notion that its blank features would have endless possibilities for customization and redesign. I'm totally enthralled.

Just to give you a sense of what a blank Munny looks like, check out this pic. Now, to see some cool customizations, take a look here. By the way, for Shepard Fairey fans, there's a Dunny here that he customized with his signature OBEY iconography. Just scroll down most of the way to the bottom to Dunny No. 41.

Very creative stuff. I'm picking one up on the way home from work and I'm gonna start designing Munny Harlin. Sometimes it shocks me just exactly how many new ways I can find to be a nerd.

ho-ho-hone your puzzle skillz

Attention GROW fans, there's a small new GROW available for Christmas.

"But, it's already January 5th, Asshat," I hear you say.

Well, I didn't find it until today.

Cripes. You're so unappreciative.

five things I learned on Winter Vacation

This was a nice vacation. Spent lots of time with various parts of my family and Amanda's family. There were a lot of things learned as well, so I thought I'd list them here.

1. Much like the weather, Family is extremely unpredictable. Whether it's who they choose to date or what they think you "need" as a Christmas gift, there's just about no way to predict the full reactions and life paths of your family. There was no snow so there was no White Christmas; but on the bright side other hand, there was a $100 gift card for coffee to someone who doesn't drink coffee and an insulting Christmas ornament that referenced a very painful period in someone's life. Whee.

2. There's nothing in Alabama that you need to see before you die. For Christmas, my mom gave Amanda a book called 1000 Places To See Before You Die. Nothing in Alabama made the list, apparently. Though, surprisingly, Amanda and I have already been to a number of the places that did make the grade.

3. Peter Jackson should have either made King Kong or Jurassic Park IV: Dinosaurs Hate Monkeys, but not both. I second the sentiment I heard from someone (second-hand) at ILM when they said, "King Kong is the best 2 hour movie I've seen in a long time. The problem is, it's 3 hours long." Question: how do you manage to remake an hour and a half movie so that it's twice a long as the original? Answer: insert an hour long Dinosaur Parade and any other idea you have knocking around in your head into it. A warning to you, Peter Jackson: my bladder will punch you in the face on sight.

4. The cost of real estate in the San Francisco Bay area is criminal. It's something I've known for a while; but it was further drive home by a trip to Virginia over break. Oddly, nice houses there are also about $350,000 just as they are in Pennsylvania. In San Francisco, $350,000 either buys you a small house an hour and a half outside of any of the Bay Area zip codes or it buys you a crappy 1-bedroom apartment that your landlord will creatively rename a "condo" just to make sure you don't totally feel like you just took it up the pooper.

5. I don't pack enough clothes when I go on vacation. I thought as I was packing, just like I always do, "Eh ... whatever. I'm a guy. I don't need to pack much. Just pack half as much clothing as you need to wear and then recycle stuff. Genius." Here's the flaw with that plan: I only packed half of the clothes I needed. And it wasn't like I set out all of the clothes I would wear and then divided everything evenly in half. Nope. I packed plenty of undies and socks; but when it came to shirts and pants, that seems to be where I made most of my selective wardrobe editing. If anyone sees pictures of me from this vacation, they might think it took place over two days because I'm wearing one of either two outfits in every picture.

Anyway, that's my five things I learned. I'm really looking forward to 2006. Hope it's going to be a good year with lots of new opportunities and successes. Time to run; its time to go eat some yummy New Year tacos.

quick update

Xmas = cool. Manda got me an iPod. So, now I = happy.
Philly = cool. We're hanging out with my sister and family and enjoying ourselves.
Wawa = cool. It's the freakin' best.

Now we're heading out to see if after Xmas sales = cool. I'm going to look for games, books, and legos. maybe star wars figures too. Who knows.

Anyway, good times. Hope everyone out in wherever you are had a good christmahanukwanzika.

I'll post when I can and after I remember the important thing I felt like blogging about but have since forgotten.

jotting it all down

Well, the article is done. Everything has been approved and apparently it's all a go. So, come March or so, I'll be a published author.

Cool stuff. Guess that's it. Not much to say, just the news of the article.

I think what makes me happiest of all about it is that I've really been working hard here at work to help integrate the QA department into our Audio work. The old way of doing things was to basically tackle all QA ourselves when it came to Sound implementation. But, I've been working to enlist the help of QA and it's been a big help to both departments.

So, I'm glad that I can write up an article all about what I've learned over the last year and a half refining those relationships. I hope people find it interesting to read about. Well, by people I mean "game audio nerds," of which I'm one.

Anyway, I'm babbling. So, now I'm done.

holy freakin' freholies!

Just checked the weather for Philly this coming week and was very, VERY happy to see that they're forecasting a White Christmas.

Please allow me to take a moment and make this emoticon:

c(l': D

(That's a very excited me in a snow hat, by the way.)

Anyway, I'm thrilled. I can't remember the last time I saw snow, let alone saw snow on Christmas. I'm one happy camper. : )

'tis the season for slacking

I've slacked on blogging recently. There's been a bunch going on.

Christmas is almost completely done, in terms of shopping and gift arrival via the postal service. I just have a few last minute things to iron out, none of which I can mention because of certain someones who read this blog. But, everything's gone well so far and, for the most part, it's been a pretty disaster-free Xmas (knock on eWood).

Today I'm spending my day writing an article for Game Developer magazine. I need to get it written and finished by tomorrow so that our PR department can look it over before everyone goes on Holiday Break, seeing as how I have a January 2nd submission deadline for the article.

Other than that, Manda and I have been making arrangements for our holiday trip to Philly. I'm excited. The word is that my sister is going to pick us up from the airport. Big step for someone who's been driving for about a month.

There have been a bunch of things I've wanted to blog about, but never really did. I just want to go on record as saying that Randal from The Apprentice is a total dick. I was rooting for him up until the moment he won. If you don't know the story of what happened, read about it here. If you don't care, just know that a guy who seemed nice, sincere, and full of integrity seems to have been a selfish a-hole all along. Disappointing to see.

I dunno. I guess that's it for now. I need to buckle down and write this article so that it's done by tomorrow. Wish me luck.

By the way, is it just me? Or does it seem completely retahded that Blogger's spell check doesn't have "blog" in it?

decking the halls of eCommerce

The Christmas present-buying continues. I can think of three things I've bought in the real world. Everything else has been purchased online. Still, I'm getting close to being finished now.

I even went so far as to make an Excel document to help me track expenditures and the status of various people's presents. The problem is, there's nothing that quite says "YOU'VE LOST ALL HUMAN WARMTH AND SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS" than figuring out the Conditional Formatting Rules for a Christmas list. Santa doesn't do it that way; I've seen the list. It's just a big hand-written scroll of parchment that reads:

TAMMY - NICE
TIMMY - NICE
TOMMY - NAUGHTY
et al.

Anyway, now I'm just waiting on packages to arrive in the mail and see if the shipping I've paid for pays off. Hopefully everything will arrive on time. We'll see. Maybe I'll go out and pick up some more Christmas stuff tonight. Then I can update my spreadsheet more. Festive!!

the flannel steak in the heart of crap

I was having a conversation with a long-time friend of mine today and he made mention of dinosaurs.

For some reason, that made me think of the Was Not Was tune "Walk The Dinosaur." Why that song and a higher percentage of the lyrics than I'd like to admit were waiting on deck for me to think about them, I'll never know.

But, it got me thinking about all of the bands that used to drive me crazy that have vanished. I went through high school during the Grunge Era, but I wasn't into grunge. I was into pretencious art-rock crap like Rush, Yes, ELP, and ... Yes again. Anyway, to me grunge was an obnoxious genre that marked the death knell for vocal harmony and the guitar solo. 10 years on, I've come around and changed my view on grunge. I like it a lot now, or a fair bit of it anyway.

And one of the biggest reasons is that I realized Grunge was the thing that killed the lumbering hulk of the Early-90s Pop Monster. Was Not Was, C + C Music Factory, Fine Young Cannibals, Ace of Base, Go West - all of them died a horrible dead at the hands of Kurt Cobain. And I thank him for it frequently.

So, here's to you, Was Not Was, may you rest in peace. Congrats on being the only band that seems to have fallen through the 90s Nostalgia strainer into the great Cosmic Garbage Disposal in the sky.

"Boom boom. Ackalackalacka boom. Boom boom. Ackalacka boom boom."

happy birthday, ry

Yep. Today is Ry's birthday. He's a grand old 28. Thankfully for Ry, he's not spending his birthday today grounded like he did over so many birthdays in the past. How do I know? I can't seem to get a hold of him.

So, Ry, if you're reading this: happy birthday and give me a call. I can't seem to track you down today.

Anyways, that's it. Happy Birthday, Ry. You smell like a monkey and you look like one too.

a legacy continues

Not too much going on with me these days other than Dragon Quest VIII. The latest edition of a game that first started out on the NES is pretty fine. I'm really enjoying it.

There isn't enough music in and what music they do have is implemented pretty poorly, but I guess it's one of those things you become more and more aware of the more your into it yourself.

Anyway, the game's great though and I'm really enjoying it. If anyone is looking for a good turn-based RPG, give it a go. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Some time really soon I'm going to have to take care of my Christmas shopping. Time is really shrinking rapidly and I'd say only about a third of my presents have been bought. I should really get on that.

yakity yak

Had a good time this weekend. Like I mentioned last week, I ended up heading into The City with Amanda to do some speaking on a handful of roundtable discussions at Gamespot's G.A.M.E. convention.

It was fun; they're good guys. Met a lot of nice people and got some hands-on time playing the new Zelda game. For anyone interested, it may look drastically different, but it still plays exactly like The Wind Waker. Take that for what it is.

Amanda was kind enough to snap a picture of me while I was up on stage:



Then she was kind enough to take another picture of me when we went to Staples of me as a snowman:



So, good stuff. It was a fun weekend.

yeesh

I've been a Howard Stern fan for years. As a Stern listener, you hear all kinds of bizarre people come on and promote themselves. Sometimes they're happy with being on Stern's show. Sometimes they're not. When they're not, it makes you wonder why they're there at all. The Queen of this weird conundrum is Underdog Lady.

If you're not familiar with her, Underdog Lady is a woman who dresses up like the cartoon character Underdog and then makes appearances at parades and things around the Northeast of the US.

Now, I've heard her on Stern a bunch and she's pretty wacko when she's on. The story seems to go that years ago they invited her on, she did her normal routine, they laughed, and she got indignant. That's where the trouble started. Once she was offended by the fact that they found her funny instead of treating her with reverence, Pandora's Box was open. Stern's fans started to show up at her events and torment her.

So, anyway, she became kinda' legendary for going onto Stern's show after that in an attempt to not get any more publicity from him. It's not really an approach I understand, and for Underdog Lady it became a regular thing. The problem is, every time she came on to say "Leave me alone" more people heard her. I definitely hadn't heard her the first few many times she was on. It was only many years into her campaign to be ignored that I heard her for the first time. So, clearly she doesn't seem to understand that she was working against her own muddled goals.

Anyway, someone is making a documentary about Underdog Lady. If you want to see a really crazy trailer, head on over to Art of Madness and check it out (click the Trailer link in the upper right corner). There's something about the film that reminds me of another documentary that I watched a few years ago called "Jupiter's Wife".

Unfortunately for Underdog Lady, that's not necessarily a compliment.

spreading the word

This was a nice surprise. I've been invited to speak at G.A.M.E., the Game and Music Experience being hosted by Gamespot this weekend at the Moscone Center. They're having a couple of roundtable discussions and I've been invited to talk on the Breaking Into The Industry (Sat, 12:10 and Sun, 1:00) and Games and Music (Sat, 3:15) discussions.

Should be a good time. I just hope I have something interesting/helpful to say.

Perhaps it's naive to say, but I feel it's so much easier to break into the industry if you're looking to do anything other than Sound. That's not to say that doing Sound for games is impossible; it's not. It's just that there's a glut of people applying for a very small number of positions.

Plus, these days there are academic programs being taught at the collegiate level for programming, game art, and level design. There is, however, no collegiate degree program in Game Audio. You might get a single class, if you're lucky. And you've really gotta' search to find them.

Anyway, I'm going to go talk on Saturday and hopefully I won't sound stupid or crush someone's dream.

freakin' eWatched-Pot

I'm waiting on no less than 6 very important emails right now. These are responses to things that I've sent out over the last few days. Things that are relatively important, some of which are pretty urgent.

I hate waiting on email responses. It drives me nuts. I've never been very good at just chilling out and letting responses come in time. I'm the kind of guy who used to hit "Refresh" every 15 seconds, until Gmail added in its auto-refresh niceitude.

Bah!

I don't want to be that guy who pesters people with "Hey did you see my other email?" emails. So, I'm just sitting here babysitting my inbox. It's about as exciting as C-SPAN.

giving thanks

Yeah, so I'm about 5 days late with this, but I woke up this morning feeling like I should list all of the things I'm thankful for this year.

So, here goes:

- I'm thankful for my girlfriend who is undoubtedly the most wonderful person I've ever met in my life.
- I'm thankful that, in a year full of so many horrible tragedies worldwide, everyone I care about is still healthy, happy, and well.
- I'm thankful for the ever growing sense of security and roots I have in my life, and that the unstable tumult of my early twenties fades with each passing year.
- I'm thankful for the decline in stress and increase in Peacefulness this year has seen for me.
- I'm thankful for our cat.
- I'm thankful my car is still hanging in there even after 153,000 miles.
- I'm thankful for the 22nd Amendment.
- I'm thankful for my job, the experience I've gained, and the creative possibilities available to me over the last year.
- I'm thankful that my kid sister is growing up healthy and well.
- I'm thankful to have found a way such as Blogger to keep in touch more frequently with people I don't get a chance to see as often as I'd like.
- I'm thankful I went back and beat Metal Gear: Snake Eater. It was a really great game and I'm glad I didn't just give up on it.
- I'm thankful that Techno Squirrels' career is going well.
- I'm thankful for the memories of our Hawaiian vacation.
- I'm thankful for The Cheesesteak Shop.
- And I'm thankful that I get another chance at another year to make the next one just a bit better than the one before, which is all anyone can really ever ask for.

So, guess that's everything this year.

'tis the season

Amanda and I started our Christmas shopping today. Besides just kinda' getting the lay of the land and figuring out some budgeting, we also started to try and track down a few items.

Now, I'm not going to say who it was we were looking for or what item it was, but we did find something in our online travels that was pretty amazing.

I present to you The Fine Art Martini Frog:


For those who don't feel like following the link to find out more about it, this is a four foot tall, hand-painted bronze frog holding a martini glass. If you asked me, I would have put the price tag at something like $50.

Oh, how little I know about art, apparently.

This stunning beauty of a piece of crap is going for (drum roll please) $11,900.00! Twelve freakin' thousand dollars!! And that's apparently on sale from its original $16,000 dollars.

Good gravy. I think the thing that amazed me most of all was the ability to add it to your shopping cart with a Quantity tab. As if anyone on earth would need more than one of these if they had a spare $25,000 lying around. To quote Andrew Dick, "ri-doik-u-loise."

it's not the rush of remembering

My brain feels like mush. I'm pushing myself really hard to complete this massive Word document by tomorrow and I'm starting to really just feel ... stupid.

I'm not sure why the simple act of thinking can be so incredibly fatiguing when you do it intently for so many hours on end.

I feel dumb even writing this, as though I'm saying:

"me head hurt. me not like thinkin'. thoughts hurt jesses brain lump."

But it's more than that. It's not like I have some problem with the act of thinking and would prefer to coast through life easily. I'm talking about the fagitue of many longs hours spent trying to organize and write all of the details needed for a 30 page technical document. It's tough.

Anyway, I'm getting there and will get this thing done; but man o' man, I'm really starting to feel it.

shove it, Frampton.

I've been listening to a lot of music here at work while I work on some massive Word documents these past couple of weeks. As such, I've been running my iTunes playlist into the ground of late. This morning, I couldn't stomach the thought of hearing the same songs over and over and over again for another week (albeit, a short week).

So, today I dragged in a good 20 or so additional CDs and ripped them all into iTunes. First of all, iTunes r0><0rz. So, way to go Apple. But, second of all, I ripped one album in particular that I've been LOVING today.

The winner? Peter Gabriel's "Secret World Live" which could possibly be the greatest live album I've ever heard. Gabriel's a genius and he has an incredible talent for finding just the right guest artists to play live with him.

On Secret World Live, Gabriel snags Paula Cole before she became famous and then dropped off the face of the Earth again. Their two voices, backed by a killer rhythm section, make for a very enjoyable double album. And yeah, it's so freakin good that I love the inclusion of two discs.

Anyway, if you haven't ever heard it, check it out; you won't be disappointed. If you've heard it but not recently, listen to it again. And, I dunno, if you're listening to it right now, then you get a gold star.

not much going on

Not to much to blab about. I was out sick yesterday but still ended up working most of the day on some documentation work at home. This weekend Manda and I are gonna' go see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Maybe play some more Beyond Good & Evil. Who knows.

Anyway ... uh ... whoooooo!! Wild times!!

Or something.

not very "ah ... niiiice"

Apparently, according to CNN, the country of Kazakhstan is threatening to sue comedian Sacha Cohen (better known as Ali G) over the derogatory image he portrays as the character of Borat.

1.) That's nuts.

and 2.) That's nuts.

On the plus side, it's fun to see the words "cow-punching" on CNN.com.

Look out, Mike Myers. Germany may not know about Dieter yet.

the Tide™ of change (now with Stainlifter)

There is one last great melting pot in the United States. Say what you want about socio-economic strata or the tendency for ethnic and religious groups to gravitate towards themselves geographically. All of that aside, there is still one great unifying aspect of our society that can bring all ages, races, and religions together:

Laundry.

Want to see diverse American society working together closely in harmony? Go to any Laundromat. Amanda and I went to one this Sunday with a huge load of clothes, pretty much everything we owned to be honest. While we were there, I kept staring around the place at the other people.

And it struck me, there's a lesson here somewhere. People of all ages, races, and creeds - who so frequently can't agree on politics to the point of violence - can apparently wash their underwear together in public without any problems at all.

The only people not represented? The Rich. I swear, if there were ever to be a French Revolution-style revolt against America's wealthy, the organizers should plan, meet, and recruit from Laundromats. They would never be found out - ever. And the Privileged would have no idea until the scent of Revolution and Mountainy Freshness™ was in the air.

But, by then it would be too late.

So, you know, my advice to the Rich is this: keep your windows open and don't trust the Snuggle bear.

date night

I'm really looking forward to tonight. See, tonight Amanda and I are heading out on the town to a night of dinner and a movie. The dinner: North Beach Pizza. The movie: Chicken Little (for lack of anything else).

And I have to say, I guess there's an odd little part of me that's kinda' surprised that we're going out on a date tonight. Not that there's anything wrong with our relationship that would prevent us from going on a date. Entirely the opposite. Here we are 5 and a half years into our relationship and things are stronger and better than ever. And I guess on one level it's that success that surprises me.

See, I think my surprise comes from not really having any sort of relationship role models to from which to judge a successful relationship. My parents divorced after 24 years together. But, they fought like crazy for about 20 of those years.

Then again, I also found out lately that they got married after only knowing each other for 5 weeks. Ridiculous. The fact that they stuck together for 24 years is insane, in light of that fact.

Still, from what I knew growing up, a long term relationship wasn't one full of romance (or even kindness, for that matter). But, here Amanda and I are five plus years into this wonderful relationship and it just keeps getting better. Our trust strengthens each year. Our understanding of each other strengthens each year. It's just ... nice. Peaceful. Secure.

And as much as I hate to say it, none of those are really adjectives that I ever really associated with long term relationships before. To me, people growing happily old together was a Hollywood creation based on a myth left over from the 1950s. Sure, it's what I always wanted. Did I really know if I'd find it at all? No. Was I cynical? Yes.

But here it is and I treasure it. I find that the older I get and the longer I'm lucky enough to be with Amanda, the more life surprises me with how generally nice it can be. The TV myths of life, love, and the pursuit of happiness don't seem like myths anymore, but doofy reflections of what I now know can actually exist.

And I'm glad to know it.

So, here's hoping everyone out there can have a nice weekend with someone special. Hug somebody. Or if you can't do that, call somebody. It's a good weekend for it.

speaking of calls ...

This is why people don't like automated phone systems. Sometimes they do things like this:

[storyTime]
My cellphone bites. It broke a while ago in a couple of different ways (through no fault of my own, mind you) and I've put off getting it fixed after hearing about some Cingular Repair Service horror stories from my brother. Well, while procrastinating, my phone continues to be a big pain in the ass for both Amanda and I.

So, I finally decided to try and get it fixed. First, I looked up all of the info online and tried to do their automated online repair service. After the website refused to recognize my phone's serial number, it told me to call the automated line.

So, I called, I hit "1" for English, and then I wait through a LONG speech about how I should call the same number I just called if I'm calling from my broken phone. Eventually, I was asked to enter my Wireless Phone number. No prob. Seems like a okay system so far. I enter my number and it tells me that it's directing me to an agent.

The thing is, it doesn't. It directs me to a new "Welcome to Cingular's Blah Blah Blah System" part of the phone tree. I then have to sit through the same "If you're a moron and calling from your broken phone" message that I heard the first time. After that, we get down to business:

If you're calling because of something or other, press 1 (I can't remember).
If you're calling because your phone has been exposed to liquid or some other sort of physical damage to your wireless handheld phone, press 2.
For all other questions regarding inoperative wireless handheld phones, please press three.

Now ... I'm thinking "This kinda' sucks, but at least it seems to be taking some pertinent information from me and we seem to be getting somewhere." So, I hit "3."

It then asks me to enter my phone number again. Now I'm starting to get pissed. This is just wasting my time and I've already done this.

But, whatever. It's a roadblock. So, I enter the number (again) and wait.

And wait.

And am finally told that I'm being transferred to the first available agent (again). Once more, I'm waiting.

Then, out of nowhere, I get a rapid busy signal and the thing hangs up on me.
[/storyTime]

Awful, terrible system. It wasted my time, it got me angry, and it didn't get me any closer to fixing my phone problem. Worst of all, I know that I have to call back and go through it again just to try and have the phone fixed still.

Sucks.

just got the call

My sister just called to say "I just passed my Permit Test!!" : )

So, except for not being able to find her Social Security card and needing to get a replacement, my sister is now able to drive.

I can't wait until Christmas when she can chauffeur Manda and I around Philly. Mwahahahaha...

the well-oiled machine

Last night, I joined Amanda down in Santa Clara where she was managing a vote collecting station for the Registrar of Voters (RoV). (For those not in CA, we had a special election yesterday.)

I really enjoyed myself and was thoroughly impressed with a number of things.

First of all, Amanda's a great leader. She was the manager of the entire operation last night. Her crew was largely hand-picked by her from people she knows from work, home, etc. and - as far as I understand it - her crew was also largely brand new to working for the RoV. Regardless of having 15 or so completely inexperienced people milling frantically around with a County's votes, everything went smoothly. There weren't any problems - big or little - and everyone seemed to always know what it was they were supposed to do. Manda handled it all quickly, efficiently, and professionally. I'm very proud of her. It's rare that I get to see her in any kind of a work situation. I'm really glad I had that opportunity last night.

Secondly, I was really impressed with how organized the entire Registrar of Voters machine is. I've never given the process of voting much thought before: mark the sheet, put it in the privacy sleeve, slide it into the box. That was the end of my involvement and the end of my apparent interest in what happens to my vote. As far as I knew, the box itself counted all of the votes.

Anyway, it was cool to see more of the process. Confidential bags of votes come in, things get sorted into different piles, all of the precincts are tracked on a big white board, lots of people are working in well-organized collaboration to get everything sorted into the right areas before the votes are then trucked off again to a larger sorting location. All along the way, there are people with specific jobs handling very small, very specific tasks. And yet, it's in combination that all of these little tasks get everyone's votes delivered into the right hands.

The last few elections have gone a long way towards doing their best to disenfranchise me and make me loose all faith in the democratic process. Last night reversed that a great deal. Or, I guess you could say, franchised me?

Anyway, it was a good night. Rooni, thanks for asking me to be involved.

maybe those Subway schmoes really are artists

Coming from Philadelphia as I do, I feel I know something about what makes a good sandwich and what doesn't. It's probably crossed the line long ago into some kind of sandwich-snobbery; but it's who am I and I can't fight it.

Over the last two weeks or so, I've been packing my lunches for work and it's common for people to ask me what I'm eating. So far, it's been mostly peanut butter. I either have peanut butter and banana (note: not fried a la The King) or peanut butter and grape jelly.

Unfortunately, this lead today to a discussion of some of the nastiest sandwiches I've ever heard of that other people seem to enjoy. Sure, peanut butter and marshmallow fluff isn't my thing, but it isn't ridiculous. Nor is peanut butter and Nutella. But ...

- peanut butter and lettuce?
- peanut butter and dill pickles?
- peanut butter and salami?
- peanut butter and Miracle Whip?
- peanut butter and tuna?
- peanut butter and Cheese Whiz?
- pepperoni and jelly? (Ben, you're gross.)

Those are all an affront to the very Sandwich name.

tell it on the mountain.com

This morning, Ry sent me a link to a Church Sign Generator. Funny stuff. You can basically just type in whatever you want and it'll toss it up on a virtual church sign for all in your little suburban town to see.

After playing around with it for a little while, here are the best I could come up with:





And my favorite so far:


Good stuff.

visiting an old friend

Today I had the opportunity to stop by and visit with a friend I haven't seen in a few years. Her name is Claire Clay and she was murdered just over two years ago. I feel terrible that I haven't been able to visit her grave before now; but at least I finally was able to pay my respects.

Claire was horribly murdered at the age of 25. It's just so incredibly tragic. I don't know of many other people I've met in my life who were even a tenth as vibrant and full of life as Claire. She touched a lot of people's lives and was a teacher at the time of her death. It just makes me angry that she was taken from those kids. Everyone who met Claire was better off for it.

Take, for instance, my mom. My mom has had a dream for years of opening up a Performing Arts venue where local people can perform and showcase their talents in the suburban Philly area. It's a wonderfully generous dream and so in keeping with her giving nature that it's no wonder we call her "Mother to the World."

About ten years ago, Claire organized a performing arts cafe in our high school that would perform on Friday nights and gave all of the school's underground and underexposed talent a showcase to have a voice of their own. I can't express to you how much this meant to my mom. She'd always liked Claire, but here was this sign to her that she was doing the right thing. Claire was a huge source of inspiration to my mom. Even as I write this entry, Claire's framed picture hangs on my mom's wall in her office as a memorial and a reminder of her incredibly inspirational spirit.

Now, one thing my mom has been doing recently is organizing trips for Western dancers to travel to Poland for an international Dance festival. It's been progressing over the last two years and the ball is really starting to roll. Now, over the last two years, she has been trying to organize a University affiliation with a particular woman at a particular university here in Pennsylvania. She's been contacting her off and on for two years without much success.

Today, my mom and I visited Claire's grave. When we walked up, we both said our hellos and then my mom kissed her fingers and touched them to a picture of Claire that sits beside the grave. No sooner does she do this than her phone rings.

It was the woman she had been calling for two years with the news that it looks like my mom will get her university affiliation and a huge influx of students interested in the trip to Poland.

I'm not a religious guy. But ... I don't know. I would love to believe that Claire was looking out for my mom at that moment. My mom thanked Claire profusely after that and cried on my shoulder, telling me how happy she was that Claire was still helping her with her dreams. I got pretty choked up too at that moment.

When my mom wasn't looking, I turned around, thanked Claire and then - with a wink - flicked a booger onto the grave of the person across from her.

I think Claire would have liked me messing with her neighbors.

wagons east

Tomorrow I'm off to Philly for a few days to celebrate my sister's birthday with her. She turns 16 and we're gonna try and teach her how to drive. : )

Or, you know, start to teach her how to drive. So long as I'm not the one in charge of teaching her how to renew her registration, she should be fine.

I'll blog if I get a chance. If not, I'll be back on Monday.

Have a good week, everyone.

By the way, is it just me? Or does it not make any sense that "blog" isn't in Blogger's spellcheck?

an open letter to civic planners

Dear Civil Engineers,

What in the Sweet Holy Eff is wrong with you? Is there something in your All-Purpose Civic Rulebook that states:

Rule 9.) Any government building housing Traffic Court must be one of the hardest buildings in the city at which to find parking.

???

Annoyed,

- Jesse Harlin

Serieusement. I got my traffic ticket taken care of; but it was annoying to try and find parking. As was the case when I had to go to the Hall of Justice in LA. As was the case in New Jersey. As was the case in Philly.

By the way, classiest part of my trip to traffic ticketland? The people standing in line behind me who were looking through mugshot books for people they knew.

And finding them.

Classy, kids. Classy.

some things are universal

No matter what religion you are, no matter what Higher Power you're speaking to for a big ol' cosmic free pass, the two inescapable truths seem to be Death and the DMV.

I spent an hour at the DMV today waiting to change my address and renew my registration. While there, I saw these three gents.



The pic might be hard to see in its small form. Click on it for the larger version.

You're looking at three Buddhist monks sitting in line at the DMV so as to renew the registration on the MonkMobile or something.

It's moments like that that I have a camera phone for.

canned evil

I went to get myself a soda out of my Diet Cherry Pepsi Fridge Pack today, and instead I pulled out this:



Yes, I realize you're thinking "Wow. You went to get a soda and pulled out ... a soda? Way to go, genius." But, what the picture doesn't show is that:

1. The can is severely dented.
2. The top is completely sealed. And
3. The can is completely empty.

Not a drop of soda in it. I was kinda' baffled and showed it to my friend Harrison. He decided that it must contain some kind of curse, as though I'd stumbled onto Pandora's Pepsi Can.

I have to say, I understand Pandora's dilemma. I'm dying to open this thing ever since he told me it might contain something evil.

Maybe there's a genie in it? I guess I'll never know. If I open it up, it just becomes a dented can. With it closed, it's a mystery.

i rool skool

From now on, you can call me Sensai 'cause I'm Master of the Bejeweled Dojo.

I know I was talking a bit before about the timesuck that is Bejeweled and how I had been in "The Zone" earlier. Eff The Zone. The Zone is nothing compared to the Zen-like state of oneness I achieved with Bejeweled last night.

I was getting ready to leave work, was waiting for everything to shut down, etc., when I fired up Bejeweled to kill some time. What I didn't know was that I had just begun a 2-hour game of Bejeweled that would shatter my 18,750 high score.

Two hours of sitting in my office so long with only my thumb moving that the motion sensitive lights kept turning off on me ... Two hours of getting up and heading down to my car with the game paused, then trying to pick it up again to convince myself that my office didn't have special powers that would allow me to reach such great heights of Bejeweled. Two hours where I realized I could run down the battery and perhaps kill the game without having it ever record my high score.

Two hours with one game of Bejeweled when I should have just driven home and hung out with Amanda. My high score is now 89,520. One day, The Sensai will break the 100,000 point barrier.

But, you know, maybe when I have 3 hours to spare.

wereholes

I don't know what causes it. Maybe it was due to the half moon last night? Who knows. What I do know is that last night - on my way home from work - everyone around me was driving like assholes. It was odd. Everywhere I went on my way home, people were driving dangerously: cutting each other off on the freeway, merging at breakneck speeds into stopped traffic, etc..

Here were my two favorites.

"Scene 1 - In Which Asshole Alpha Takes The Long Route"

So, I pull up to a stop sign outside our office (see figure 1).


Figure 1.

As there's a car coming up the other way - without a stop sign - I wait like a good little driver before I can make a left turn (I'm the green car). Well, Asshole A decides to slow down and approach the intersection by wiggling their car slowly back and forth a bit. After coming to a stop half turned in the middle of the intersection, I decide to go. Once I'm gone, they then wiggle their way past me straight down the rest of the road they were on. (see figure 2).


Figure 2.

"Scene 2 - In Which Asshole Beta Does Some Rethinking"

Later, while driving through some of the backroads of the Presidio, I find myself driving down a little two lane road. Coming the opposite way is some car with his high beams on. That makes them an asshole to begin with.

However, I notice that I'm somehow not getting any closer to them. Disorienting as it is, I eventually figure out that they're reversing up the street at about 30 miles per hour. The end result is that I'm not passing them and their high beams continue to blind me. Eventually, they do a three point turn in the middle of some intersection and go about their merry way.

I mean, honestly ... one of those weirdos driving on the road in a night would have been enough. But both of them within 5 minutes of each other? And then everyone else being weird on the freeway? I just don't get it.

oh, how the mighty have fallen

Manda and I went out Friday night to the movies and saw Chicken Little, Disney's newest animated film and the first in their attempt to make a CG film comparable with Pixar.

If I were Pixar and saw this film, I'd probably send Disney a letter afterwards that read:

from: weRule@pixar.com
to: theChumps@disney.com
subject: holy eff, man...

Dear Disney,

We here at Pixar knew you guys were fucked when we said we weren't going to renew our contract with you. But, man o'man ... we had no ideajust how fucked you guys really were! Thanks so much for making the "Disney Is So Undeniably Mega-Fucked Demo Reel" known as Chicken Little as a means of clarifying. We appreciate it.

Drinking champagne and dancing in the streets,
- Pixar

Seriously, this film was ass. Once the greatest animation company in the world and an innovator in every sense of the word, Disney has fallen to the ranks of 9-th rate imitators. They try to do a little bit of what everyone else who has made a CG film in the past 5 years has done, but without really achieving any one element. The end result is a hodge-podge of unfocused slop.

Honestly, watching the film is like watching a series of board room meetings. Five minutes into the film you can see the meeting where someone said "We must use licensed pop music frequently, just like Shrek." Ten minutes in you see the "Pixar is all about heart-warming Parent/Child conflict stories" meeting. After about an hour, there's the "You know what was great? The old Warner Brothers approach of making jokes that only the adults in the audience will get, while still making it entertaining for the kids" meeting.

The problem though is that - like anything else - if all you're trying to do is emulate other people's work and creative energy, you can't possibly recreate it sincerely. And that's where the whole movie falls apart. The sad thing is that all of those other animation companies were inspired by the work Disney did successfully for 70 years. Now the innovator is trying to play catch-up in a world that passed them by years ago.

Chicken Little isn't the answer. The script sucks, the licensed music soundtrack sucks, the basic execution of the whole thing sucks. Somebody over at Disney better stop analyzing A Shark's Tale and start innovating again. Until then, Disney is just going to continue crapping on their legendary name.

fill in the blank

Driving home last night from work, I found myself behind a car with a bumper sticker that read "BUSH KNEW." It hit me at that point how sad it is that I had no idea what the bumper sticker was trying to say. Which of the many things was it trying to tell me Bush knew?

- Bush knew in advance about the 911 attacks?
- Bush knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
- Bush knew that Iraq had nothing to do with 911?
- Bush knew he was lying when he made his case for war?
- Bush knew in advance about the Valerie Plame outing?
- Bush knew about plans to oust Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez?
- Bush knew the war wasn't over when he declared "Mission Accomplished?
- Bush knew that you can't successfully win a war against a noun like terrorism, drugs, or poverty?
- Bush knew well in advance about the severity of Hurricane Katrina?
- Bush knew Michael Brown didn't have the qualifications to head FEMA?
- Bush knew oil company revenues would sky rocket during his administration?

There's probably more I'm forgetting. Point being, it's sad. The words "BUSH KNEW" are trying to be so powerful and poignant. Problem is, there are so many things that it could refer to that it almost loses all of its meaning.

Feel free to add any more you think I'm forgetting.

if you want to be happy for the rest of your life ...

Manda and I have found a wonderful new hobby that we enjoy spending together. No, it's not one of the typical couples hobbies (antiquing, wine-tastings, being old). No, instead we've discovered the joys of blowing up cars.

Lest anyone think that Demo discs don't work for video game sales, here's a nice little story. Manda and I buy some Official Playstation Magazine Demo Disc so that we can check out Sly Cooper 3 and Rachet: Deadlocked. Sly Cooper = more of the same. Rachet = a radical change to something oddly more akin to Republic Commando than any of the other Rachet and Clank games. Regardless, we were luke warm on both of them.

Now, Amanda decides to select the demo for Burnout: Revenge. Personally, I couldn't have cared less (note to idiots: the phrase is "I couldN'T have cared less" as in "I care so little, there isn't any less that I could care about the issue at hand." Not "I could care less" which means "I care to some degree." and goes against the snarky point you're trying to make). I don't like racing games. Never really have. Something about trying to just get a car around a track as fast as you can without crashing seems to put it somewhere between chess and fly fishing in terms of excitement for me.

But not Burnout, baby. I didn't realize that the entire point of Burnout is to smash cars up as much as possible. Knock your rivals into walls. Fly off of jumps and land on traffic. Drive an SUV into oncoming traffic with the only goal being to create the greatest amount of monetary damage possible.

This game rules. The physics are rad. Taking out rival cars with a well-placed shunt into a wall results in a slo-mo cut away shot of them smashing in a ball of fiery vehicular wreckage. Hoo nanny; it's fun.

I guess the moral of the story is, "The couple that smashes the shit out of rival sports cars together, stays together."

That's my relationship advice for the day.

people to watch out for

Bits and pieces of things today. Here's a list of things that you might want to watch out for:

- Southwest Airlines is policing our t-shirts now.
- Anti-video game lawyer Jack Thompson has lost his mind and is now designing games himself.
- The nation's grandmothers are organizing against the Army.
- China's cheap labor costs are causing some seriously nasty requests from US companies to their workers.

And on top of all of this, another Category 5 hurricane is hurtling towards Florida.

Bad times.

totally illogical

I bought a $20 upgrade for LogicAudio Pro 7. I did it to stay up-to-date with the current versions.

You know what though?

This thing is trash. Total trash. Apple totally fucked up Logic in this version and it's pissing me off.

Oi, Apple, stop messing with Logic and fix what you broke, jerks.

I mean it. This sucks.

handing out awards today

My neighbor officially wins the 2005 Worst Freakin' Car Alarm Award.



(Kudos to Ry for the Photoshop update on the trophy.)

Anyway, congrats, Jerk. So what set you over the top? Well, for one thing, it's the fact that your car alarm was the loudest I've ever heard. I mean, it's like they actually think some one two states over will hear it and think "Holy Crap! Those poor folks in California! Someone's stealing their car! I'd better get over there fast!"

Add on top of that the actual tone of the alarm. Now, most alarms are just a monophonic "HONK! HONK!" or "WHOOP! WHOOP!" Whatever. This jerk's car is breaking new ground with a polyphonic alarm. Two pitches playing together in harmony alerting the world that someone nearby slammed a door too hard.

Now, harmony is new for car alarms. What are you going to do with a polyphonic car alarm? What interval do you use? Good question. Whoever invented this car alarm, however, apparently decided to go with one of the most obnoxious intervals of all time: The Tritone!

For those who don't know, the tritone - or diminished 5th (or augmented 4th) - is a very dissonant interval. It tends to grate on the nerves and was even known in the Middle Ages as "the devil's interval" because they hated the sound of it so much.

So, with a volume firmly set at 11 and the siren's call of "TRITOOONE!!! TRITOOOONE!!! TRITOOOOONE!!!", you - Neighbor Jerk - are this year's winner of the Worst Freakin' Car Alarm Award.

Congratulations.

trimming the fat

I've been listening to The Beatles white album a lot today. I found it tucked into someone's iTunes list on our network.

I gotta' say, it's always been one of my least favorite Beatles albums. It's just always felt to me like it was all over the place and extremely disjointed. But, not in a good way like a Beck album. More in a bad way like ... well, like the white album.

Anyway, I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but today I decided to just start unchecking the tracks I don't like. Lo and behold, I was left with an incredibly solid single album's worth of Beatley goodness. It's got some really great song writing, really great production work, etc.

One of my favorite moments? Track one, Back In The USSR. There's just something so "eff you, Brian Wilson" about it. As if Paul felt the need to say "Brian, mate, you're trying so hard to do what we do; but look how easy it is for us to do what you do." Snarky.

Only downside? Though she's never bothered me before (with the exception of some stuff on "Double Fantasy" [Kiss Kiss Kiss anyone?]), Yoko's voice is really starting to grate on my nerves.

Anyway, in case anyone's interested, here's my proposed track list for the white album:
Back In The USSR
Dear Prudence
Wild Honey Pie
The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill
Happiness is a Warm Gun
Martha My Dear
I'm So Tired
Blackbird
Piggies
Rocky Raccoon
I Will
Julia
Mother Nature's Son
Sexy Sadie
Helter Skelter
Revolution 1
Good Night

another round, ner vod

Just finished a little interesting task. I got an email from Ryan Kaufman, game designer/author/and Mandalorian Language Beta Tester. Turns out that he'd written the first Mandalorian folktune out of all of the work Karen Traviss has been doing on creating the Mandalorian Language for a number of her upcoming Star Wars books.

Ryan emailed me and asked if I could plunk out the tune on the piano and send it to Karen so that she could hear it. "Not a problem," says I. Thing is, once I started, it was too hard to just leave it at just the melody; so I figured out the accompaniment for it, too.

It was nice to get to return to the good old mando'a days of Republic Commando, if only briefly and peripherally at best.

Still, it was nice. Ryan wrote a nice folk tune and it was fun to hammer out the harmonization.

If anything, it convinced me that I haven't lost all of my musical knowledge over the span of the past 12 months of spreadsheets and Williams editing. So, that's a good thing.

not nearly as entertaining as "A Bug's Life"

We have ants in our apartment. As far as I can tell, they are entering our apartment through a hold in the wall behind our behemoth of an entertainment center, marching their way around the living room rug, and then disappearing into some sort of worm hole near the sofa. Try as I may, I can't seem to follow them to any sort of destination. They march halfway around the rug and then ... turn around and go back the other way.

So, now I need to go buy ant poison. Fun.

I didn't sleep well last night. I had two stupid ideas, both of which worked beautifully in concert to give me a restless night's sleep.

Idiotic Idea 1.) Leave the door open to our room to create a cross-breeze.

I've been really hot at night ever since ... well, ever. I'm just hot at night always - at least, when I try to fall asleep I'm hot. So, I leave the window open and turn on a fan and then by about 3 in the morning I'm cold. But initially, I'm really hot. Some mornings I wake up to find that my t-shirt is soaked with sweat (TMI, I know). Anyway, I thought that leaving the door open would allow for a nicer cross-breeze and I would be able to fall asleep easier.

Didn't work.

Idiotic Idea 2.) Let the cat sleep at the foot of our bed.

I thought, "Well, if I want to let the door stay open, then maybe the cat will come in and snooze on the foot of our bed like she did all day Sunday." I don't know why I wanted this. Maybe just due to the inherent Normal Rockwellness of it all. Regardless, our cat sleeps during the day, not the night - and I should have thought about this.

At 5:30 in the morning, she climbed up onto my chest and wanted to play. When I was tired and grumpy at being woken up, she climbed off of me and started to mess with Amanda. Luckily, I was able to get the cat out of the room before Manda woke up.

The moral or the story is: Jesse doesn't know what he's doing when it comes to sleep.

back in the saddle again

Vacation is over. The housewarming party is over. All were good. We got a lot of nice compliments on our apartment and on our decor which felt nice since I'd been cleaning, painting, and whatever all week long.

Some odds and ends:

1. It came to my attention this weekend that not everyone knows the word "spum" yet. Fair enough, since I invented it only a few years ago. I guess it takes longer than that for a word to work its way into the culture at large. None the less, for those who don't know, here's the def:

spum ('spuhm) n. Unwanted food or waste - typically liquid or gelatinous in form - that clings to one's clothing without their notice, putting itself at greater risk of spreading to other clothes/people/tablecloths/etc.

I just ruined my favorite pants because I didn't notice that there was some spum on my shirt sleeve.

There you go.

2. Eyezmaze has some great little time sucking games on it. My favs happen to be the GROW series. Originally, there was simply Grow. Well, I'm happy to say that there are now three different versions of Grow: Grow, Grow Cube, and Grow RPG. Good stuff; they're all very fulfilling to beat.

3. The Blogger spell check is retahded. I spell-checked my post here to find that I had typoed the word "originally" as "origially." Doesn't look all that tough to me ... but to Blogger, it was suggesting "Wriggling," "Heroically," or "Wrigley." Lame.

'Kay. Time to listen to "Rocky Raccoon" while I dig through a week's worth of piled up eMail.

frantic

house warming party tomorrow. cleaning today. no time for capitalization or full sentences.

emergency planning 101

I don't know why, but I've had a very Zombie-filled vacation so far. While doing various art projects, cleaning projects, and art cleaning projects, I've occasionally been turning on HBO or On Demand for some background noise.

And I've ended up watching three different Zombie movies this week: Night of the Livin Dead, Resident Evil 2, and Shaun of the Dead.

Here's what I've learned:

1.) In case of a Zombie infestation, get in your car and head for the highway. Zombies are slow and don't drive. If you make it to the highway, you're totally safe.

2.) Head to Hove Mobile Park, ND. What is this place? It's a tiny little town in North Dakota that has an official population of 2, according to the US Census. That means there's a lot less people to have to keep a watch on.

3.) Invent and/or bring along a sniper rifle that shoots flaming bullets. Aparently, guns and fire are your best friend in case of Zombie attack.

4.) Aim for the head. I don't know why this is, but it just seems to be so. For some reason everything in a Zombie can continue to function when reduced to dead tissue. Something freaky and ugly will reanimate them and they'll just keep on keepin' on no matter what you do to them - unless you obliterate their brain.

"But Jesse," I hear you ask, "Isn't the brain just as much dead tissue as the rest of the Zombie? Doesn't that seem to not make any sense?" Believe me when I say "true dat." That said, if Zombies do start to attack my little Hove Mobile Park safe haven, I'm not really going to try and have a philosophical debate with them.

Anyway, that's the plan. Highway, North Dakota, Flaming Sniper Rifle. Clearly my vacation is being used to really figure out some heavy-duty stuff that benefits all of Mankind.

I'll let all ya'll know when I figure out the plan for Vampire Mummies.

the continuing saga of bungled-up bench

I'm heading north again right now, back up to West Elm for the second day in a row.

I picked up our new storage bench yesterday, brought it home, and started to build it. Now, I'm an IKEA veteran. I've got a black belt in hex key and majored in modular furniture construction in grad school. At first, I was uber-impressed with West Elm's instructions. Everything was well labeled. All of the parts were well labeled. All of the steps were written out in clear and concise English. Kudos.

Unfortunately, when I got to Step 2 I found that the instruction diagrams no longer matched the pieces of furniture in front of me. As we continued to put it together, Amanda and I discovered that Wooden Dowel Hole (B) was drilled too far down and caused two dowels to push against each other at a corner joint. End result? Broken bench due to wood buckling and splitting.

I was pissed.

I called West Elm this morning. I asked for the sales lady who helped me yesterday. After treating me like a stalker ("Sir, we're not allowed to give out information about our employees' work schedules."), we chatted about the effed up piece of bench on my living room rug.

Much to their credit, they offered to 1.) replace it for a new one, and 2.) build the new one for me so that it'll just be waiting for me to pick it up when I get up there.

So, I'm taking broken-old-bench #1 to replace it for nifty-new-bench #2.

We'll see how it goes.

found lots of Johnny Bench baseball cards, though

Vacation. It's typically a treasured word. I'm in the middle of one right now; and yet, I barely care.

See, I got to a point at work where I hadn't taken any vacation time and was about to max out on my allotted amount of stored vacation hours. So, rather than simply work without getting any vacation time, I'm taking this week off so as to allow myself another week's worth of hour storage. There's no feeling of needing to decompress for a stressful period at work. There's no feeling of relaxation, freedom, and escapism. I'm just burning vacation hours. Woot.

So! My "vacation" so far? Totally focused on fixing up our apartment in preparation for the Housewarming Party we're having on Saturday. Manda and I have been hanging pictures, painting pictures, shopping for lighting and home accessories, etc.

Speaking of that, I spent two hours last night poking around online trying to find a nice bench we could put in our living room. I was shocked at how long it took and how difficult it was to find something. I've become so spoiled in the Google Era of the Information Age that I get frustrated if I can't find the information I'm looking for in under a minute. To search for something for two hours is nearly unheard of for me these days. I'm clearly not a research scientist.

Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, Pier 1, Cost Plus, Macy*s, Sears, JC Penney, a dozen random online furniture stores, Scandinavian Designs, Craigslist, eBay, Ikea ::shudder:: - none of them had anything. It's not like we were looking for some ridiculous bench that no one else has. I just wanted to find a nice, simple black or dark wood bench, preferably with some storage, for about $200. Apparently, though, that isn't what sells, because the world has got some freakin' tacky taste in benches.

Take, for instance, Benches.com. All ugly. It's an entire website devoted to nothing but benches and I couldn't find a single, simple black bench. Am I nuts to expect that to exist?

None the less and frustration aside, Froogle eventually came through after two hours and a billion permutations of search terms and I discovered a cool modern furniture store that I didn't know about before. West Elm has the perfect storage bench that we wanted. Ry, you might be interested to know that the prices for their modern stuff are relatively reasonable and they have a store in Santa Monica.

So, today the house work continues. I'm headed up into Marin to pick up the bench and some other little things like a shower curtain and a floor lamp.

It's not the most fun vacation in the history of ever. But it's getting stuff done, so it's good.