The sonuvabitch works!!!! Bwa-hahaha! The button states all highlight correctly, the menu doesn't jump nearly as bad as it used to! It all links back to the main screen like it's supposed to! It was due at noon, and I just got it working now seven and a half hours later, but by Yoda it's working.

You just can't rush art. Or this, either.

Last night Jessie and I saw the Empire Brass in concert in Sursa. I was pretty worn out before that from a day spent working on projects, but I walked out feeling great. One of the many highlights of the evening was hearing Rondo alla Turka played on a tuba. These people are amazing.

The documentary is pretty well in the can. I'm going to add some music that Scott and I forgot last night and maybe clean the audio in one section (weird buzz), but the big work is done. Now to finish my animation and assemble the corresponding DVD, and I think I'm done.

Here's something for visual-types and internet tab users such as myself- foxpose. It adds a little box at the bottom the browser window that displays clickable thumbnails of all the tabs you have open. Install 1.5 first, though.

The rough cut of the IGT documentary is done, so this weekend we'll go back to editing. Nothing major needs to change, thankfully, just a lot of cutting in one particularly long segment. That, and fixing the part where Greedo shoots first. We were very tired. After class last night, Scott and I went to Cheeseburger in Paradise. I really don't like Jimmy Buffett, as a cursory glance at my facebook music list will indicate, but this restaurant has it's own sort of vacuum-sealed charm. The sweet potato chips are delicious and cheap for a big plate, and the bar staff did something funny for someone's birthday while we were there- the birthday victim tucks a big napkin into their shirt collar and the employee stands up on the bar with some kind of small cake or cookie covered in whipped cream that is flung from a napkin for the victim to catch in their mouth. I couldn't see too well, but it was funny. Then some guy started playing guitar too loud for a Wednesday night, including a too-loud version of Wish You Were Here, precluded by Wonderwall. If you're going to apologize to the audience for playing Oasis, don't play Pink Floyd wrong- two negatives don't equal a positive.

Here are two reasons so far this week for me to feel smug: article and article. The first article says that introverts get more out of independent thought than people who require external stimuli to constantly entertain them. The second article is my favorite, though: visually-minded people have better creative ability and often filter out a lot of information.

Scott and I were up quite late last night editing our documentary. He’s a journalist, so working with him is a bit different from the artists I’m used to in a good way- he used a method of logging our roughly twenty hours of footage with a spreadsheet with tape names, time codes, and dialogue prompts. Thanks to this, we got eighteen minutes of final product done in four hours- far better than the standard one hour of editing for one minute of footage. I went home and slept for three consecutive hours before my cell phone alarm I set as a failsafe started blasting a midi version of Stars and Stripes Forever and vibrating loudly on the metal box fan in my room. I planned it that way, and I pretty well jumped out of bed to shut it off. The documentary is coming along nicely. Tonight we present it for “critique.” I use the quote marks because I haven’t had an honest-to-goodness critique since undergrad. Everybody is so nice here that it’s next to impossible to hear anything negative about my work. At USF I had a professor threaten to shoot me with his paintball gun because I didn’t have my drawing done, and later tell my then-girlfriend that he would put me in a rocket and send me to the moon if she didn’t get her work done. The scary thing is that this professor here at BSU isn’t a ball breaker during class, but her grading certainly qualifies. I want to do well on this because I genuinely care about the project, more so than any paper I’ve written.

One more thing: Firefox 1.5 is out now. All of my (cool) friends have probably already installed it, but I felt I should bring this up.

So it's come to this- I'm a media darling again. (If I wasn’t so opposed to wearing yellow and purple, I could be a Laker) Last week I got to test the new xbox for the CMD, and then I was interviewed by the CMD, newslink, and the star press for the aforelinked story. The console that I tried ran pretty well, with none of the crashing bugs that I read about on Slashdot last week. There don’t seem to be any standout games as of yet, so don’t be too disappointed if you don’t see the new console under your tree/ in proximity to your menorah/ wherever the hell the mores of Festivus dictate gifts are to be placed. My quotations in the article are probably what I said during the interview, and I must commend the reporter for making some sense of what I was trying to say in my addled, sleep-deprived condition.

Thanksgiving break was enjoyable- I got a little bit of work done, but mostly I just read, ate, and traipsed around the fort with Michael. We went shopping on Friday and Saturday, much to our shared chagrin and amusement. I found gifts for a few people, and I picked up a tie for myself because I feel that I should be regaled in diagonal stripes should I ever have cause to dress up again. I also saw two people with matching rhinoplasty bandages- I know there’s a story there. They looked like a married couple, so did they just roll over one morning and mutually decide that they were ugly? Did they meet at a convention for people who look like California condors? Boggles the mind, it does.

On Saturday night I dug out my old Fireball Island game. Michael read the rule book out loud with consideration for emphasis given by the author. We each played two pieces to make things more interesting- I was red and orange, and he was blue and purple, the plucky little amputee who lost his arm many years ago. Fireball Island is not meant for the good and noble. The object of the game is to make it to the top of a mountain with a fire breathing demon head, steal a large plastic jewel, and escape to a boat at the end. To this end, each player is granted the limited geologic power to smite the bejeezus out of opponents with strategically deployed red fire marbles that roll around and destroy players. I hope I’m preaching to the choir here, because if you haven’t played this at least once in your life, you’re missing out. Michael’s blue player emerged from the plastic jungle victorious, despite being repeatedly nuked by my Damaclean fireballs, and despite me splitting hairs over the rules of when cards can be played and some tom-foolery at the end.

Here's a little preview (no video, sorry) of my forthcoming documentary with Scott on the Indiana Ghost Trackers: I have footage of one of them interviewing a moderately mentally handicapped guy about a ghost of a little girl that talks to him though an oscillating fan in his room. The fan had no comment at the time of the investigation.

SNAFU: my animation project is behind schedule, to the point that I've pretty well jettisoned the simulated cloth in favor of solid puppets. It's a pisser to be sure, but I have to get this project done. I got the cloth to work to the point that it would hang from the figure properly, but it couldn't react to the figure moving fast enough, so the arms would move through the cloth and the garment would fall off. This isn't that kind of movie, so the only cloth in the scene will be the curtain, if I use cloth at all. At the current rate, I could have it working well enough two weeks after the project is due in both classes. The up-side to all of this is that I'm spending long periods of time in VIA-1 in AB, much like I used to do at USF. VIA-1 is a nice lab, but the room has old fluorescent lights instead of warmer incandescent lights like VIA-2 and the USF animation lab. If I could logically fit another abbreviation into this paragraph, I would.

I found this rant while browsing IM profiles, and it reminded me of my friends in undergrad.

Here's me incrementally burning my fifteen minutes of fame: iPod finger. I was interviewed last week by a collumnist for the Star Press that my boss knows and who is married to a guy I'm working with in the Journalism department, neither of whom know Kevin Bacon. The print piece has my mug grinning above an illustration of what using an ipod is supposedly doing to my poor joints. Honestly, I haven't had a problem with my joints yet, despite all I use them for. I play guitar, type, play video games, and crack my knuckles alternately all day- using an ipod isn't high-impact.

Last night I watched the Colts game with a group of grad students. We ate oven-baked nachos and cookies and laughed at the opposing team's coaches with their matching hoodies.

You've got to be kidding me. Pretty soon it'll be possible to do the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.

Halloween weekend was fun, ergo I didn't get anything done, ergo I haven't had time to blog this week. Last Friday Gerry and I went to a basement party at the house next door. Usually these are worth making an appearance at, as the young lady of the house is quite pleasant to be around, but this event had live music by a local band called "Charlie Don't Surf." Any band that takes it's name from a line in Apocalypse Now is probably cool, but these guys backed it up with some really great meandering psychedelic rock. Their setup had parts from a cardboard robot costume scattered around, and a cheesy Troma film projected on a sheet in the background. Fun times.

Saturday was the big party day around here, so I got all dressed up for the occasion. I made a green mesh apple and attached it to a plastic bowler hat so that it covered my face. If you aren't familiar with French surrealism, I'm not about to explain the painting I was dressed as, but a lot of people did get it. The first party I went to was at my boss's house, a legendary yearly celebration where they decorate the entire downstairs from floor to ceiling with Halloween brickabrack. It's funny to see what costumes faculty come up with. I wasn't the only painting there- one of the art professors was dressed as the Mona Lisa. He wasn't as greenish as the original, but he did have a beard, so there was still that element of the unexpected. One of my favorite professors was there as the obsessive-compulsive Dr. House from the TV show, complete with a few days of stubble and a bottle of pills in his pocket. My boss was dolled-up (ahem) as a goth raggedy-ann doll. I didn't happen to win anything at that party, but I wasn't aware of a costume contest until the winners were announced.

The next party I went to was in Windemere apartments. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy- just turn left at the lady who turned into a pillar of salt last week and you're there. It's a nice place to visit, especially on weekends when all the undergrads throw parties. This one had the requisite beerpong and bad music, but it also had people who knew what I was dressed up as. One of the girls was rather shocked to see me as the guy from the Magritte painting because her boyfriend was the same thing 500 miles away. I wonder what the global total was? Certainly no more than six billion. I received a ribbon for "most original costume," which means that they didn't get it either but they appreciated the effort. There was a guy dressed as the pope, and he was such a nice guy. Of course, the best costume there was Gerry as Batman. This year that goes undisputed because nobody challenged him to do a flip.

On the issue of USA Today altering a photo of Condi Rice:
I used to do digital image correction for a living (well, at least for Taco Bell money) during undergrad. It's standard practice to sharpen the eyes of any subject, as it makes the photo more attention-grabbing. People notice eyes more than anything else in the photo. I don't believe that this was done on purpose. I don't really even care to make any other comment than to put up a picture of Cthulhu with the demon eyes- the first thing I thought of, naturally.

Seriously, whoever worked on that photo can be replaced with five minutes of searching monster.com for recent college grads with Photoshop skills- a number that rivals the population of China. The job market is grossly oversaturated, and mistakes like this can ruin you.

I was under the impression that the universe and I had an understanding: don't bug me when I'm eating alone unless you know me. Seems logical, right? Today, this social contract was broken by a bespectacled tablewipe with a penchant for gab. I was sitting at a table, just reading a newspaper and eating my waffle fries, when the cleaning guy came to wipe down the table next to me. He asked me if the newspapers on this table were mine, and I said no. He took them and I went back to reading and eating. Then he came back to clean the table, and told me that somebody else would get the one I was sitting at. Most people would see this as the end of social pleasantries, but not this guy. He wanted to interrupt my daily reading of the op-ed page with his feelings about the chemical makeup of the table cleaning fluid. He told me that the bottle said it would irritate the skin and eyes, but that he had gotten it in his eyes a few times and it didn't hurt. I nodded politely, recalling the scene in the Mos Eisley cantina where Greedo confronts Han, and realizing that I was outgunned by a spray bottle filled with what he hypothesized was salt water. I was cornered, prone, and I still had half a sandwich to go before I could leave. He kept insisting that the chemical wasn't harmful, but I didn't want to find out. He left eventually, after talking my ear off.

Back to the academic grind for me today. Not academic in the traditonal sense, perhaps, as I'm rendering a movement test right now. The arms get a little weird when they're raised above shoulder level.

I bought a new amp yesterday- a decently badarse 500 watt that's a behemouth compared to my little practice amp. I had resisted getting a larger amp before now because I didn't need anything huge, but the new one sounds good even at low volume. I underestimated my little Mexican strat- it sounds pretty good through this amp. When I tried the amp out at the store, I used a cheap beginner model because I figured the sound would compare. It turns out that my guitar sounds much better. I haven't tried my distortion pedal yet, as the natural gain is already pretty good. I'll be practicing with a drummer soon, so I wanted to get an amp that could be heard over that. If we happen to record any of the cacophony, I'll post the highlights.

Thanks to what I suspect were updates to CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) in blogger, my old blog template didn't really work anymore. You may have noticed the gaps in the top of the page large enough to insert a proper analogy about the size of the gap, and then some. I'm still trying to decide if I like the monochrome green.

Trading one campus for another, I'm currently sitting in the Middle Ground coffee shop in the middle of Kenyon. I'm here for the family weekend, when the students somehow drop what they're doing to indulge a mob of blood-related tourists. Michael has been gracious enough to show us all the places he would be going to anyway, like his room (messy as mine), the newspaper office, and other points of interest. The paper office is in a tower in the old part of campus, making it cooler than any other office I've seen, even counting my own with the purple wall.

We got into town yesterday in time to see a wind ensemble concert that Michael was in. It was an enjoyable show- I hadn't heard live classical music in longer than I care to admit. We all went out to dinner at an Itialian restaraunt where I saw an old guy eating dinner with a head-mounted flashlight on his forehead. The food was good too, but the guy is more blog-worthy.

We went to see Michael performing in one of a series of vocal groups in the evening. Most of them were fun and entertaining, save for the first, the (group)*. Their style hearkens back to a day when gay wasn't analagous to being fabulous or talented. And just because the song "Good bye my Coney Island Baby" is an old standard, that doesn't mean it was ever a good song. My enthusiasm for traditional acapella music is normally strained at best, and Michael tells me that one of the guys in the group is a dick, so in my estimation the whole lot of the limp-wristed bluebloods can sod off. The other groups were great, though. They sang for the sheer love of it, and one group even did a humorous reinactment of a scene from The Lion King.

I got to meet Rebekah, whom Michael is quite taken with. She's nice, and every bit the introvert that I am when I'm not around my family. She reminded me of a young Audrey Hepburn (see Charade), if that means anything. I met the Greek professor, who imeediately identified me as a grad student (wether by conspicuous black bag or emmaciated physique, I don't know). I saw Michael's suitemate in passing on an elevator, and then later on I saw someone that we assume to be related to his suitemate alseep on the couch. We went to a midnight pancake breakfastand ate until the smoke alarm went off from the cooking.

I'll probably post some pictures of this trip later tonight or tomorrow when I can get them off of my camera. It's time I stopped abusing the free wi-fi and went to find my family in their various locations.

*edit, 5-12-06: While I enjoy the churlish ability to scattershot-libel anything that comes to mind on the internet, it is not my intent to tarnish the name of the group I previously bitched about in this post. Apparently, this post came up in a Google list as the one negative result, and I don't want to be that guy. That said, I still don't like most acapella- possibly because I'm an idiot.

And Dummy begat Dummy:

This is the first render I've done of my latest creation- a marionette for my animation project.
All of the joints are articulated like a puppet would be, and it even has kung-fu grip modeled after GI Joe circa 1968. My next challenge is to build a skeleton for it and make a cloth kimono that will move realistically, then see if I can make some sort of gravity field. If I actually totaled up my list of problems with this project it would come to 99 (one external issue not germane to the project is conspicuously absent), ergo I have little time for anything else.

Some schools throw you out for having this much fun.

Serenity was awesome. Comparing it on its own merits to the Star Wars prequels on their own merits, Serenity is a better movie. I think it helps to have seen the Firefly TV series that precedes the movie, but most people I've talked to disagree.

I'm really tired. My days are filled with things I really enjoy doing, but I think I've reached a saturation point. I'm doing all kinds of production and tech related stuff; so much so that I barely have time to eat, sleep, or even clean my apartment, which looks sort of like it was transported from the Gulf of Mexico right now. There's a Treehouse of Horror (number 2, I believe) where Homer is sent to hell and forced to eat donuts constantly for eternity, much to his delight. That's my life right now- I asked for projects, and I got them.

Freedom League: I had this one on the back burner for awhile, as I didn't think it would ever get out of development. It turns out that my colleagues Gerry and Ryan are still serious about doing it, so I'll be working on this quite a bit for the next month or so.

Animation: I'm modeling a series of wooden puppets for a movie based on the short story In a Grove. The finished product will go on a DVD for my digital production class. Two birds with one insofar very large and difficult stone.

Documentary: Sunday afternoon I'm going to a meeting of the Indiana Ghost Trackers to start a documentary about them and their activities. There is some added mystique here because my partner and I have heard of other students who have started documentaries on this group, only to stop abruptly and never release any footage. What could this mean? We're grad students, though. Dogs in the refrigerator don't hold a candle to three hour methodology classes.

I'm also helping a friend of mine out with his thesis. Normally academia and I mix like oil, water, and feral cats, but here's what I get to do: I record ten minutes of me playing the top ten most popular games of last year, and get paid for my time. It's some kind of comparative study about violent video games here and in Asia. Anything for a friend, that's my motto.

Amidst all of this I'm still buying comic books. This is worth a paragraph because next week is the first issue of "Infinite Crisis," a gigantic hoopla in the DC universe that's been slowly building for years. The whole thing is being orchestrated by a team including Geoff Johns, the great comic author Gerry and I got to meet last Spring. The story so far has been broken up in small pieces in individual books, so readers have gotten different versions of the story depending on what they normally read. All these parallel plots have been coming together recently, and it's been interesting to see it all happen with what I know about story design and nonlinearity now. Is it obvious that I don't date much?

Tomorrow's my birthday. I'm pretty sure I'll be 26, if my math is right. 26 going on 12.

The transition to cooler weather here is usually one of my favorite times of the year because my allergies don't bother me anymore. This week, as the pollen count dropped, I got a cold, so I felt kind of crappy for a few days. Especially Sunday, when I had allergies and a cold. Monday night I quarantined myself in my apartment to get healthy again, and got a fair amount of reading done during that.

I saw Corpse Bride, the new Tim Burton stop-motion movie. The character design is incredible- like, Studio Ghibli incredible. Each character has a distinct way of moving that conveys the vocal performance very well. The story comes from a Russian folktale, hence it doesn't really follow the story pattern that we're used to. I don't know how this movie will do in the long run- it's a thinking movie in a pretty wrapper. It's also a musical, which I did not expect.

I figured out how to use simulated cloth in Maya this week. It's all physics-based, so there are a bunch of variables to play with. That, and the effect happens without keyframing anything, so the material just reacts to whatever happens in the scene. It looks darn cool. I'll probably be using this in my animation project this semester. I like my animation instructor- he's more art focused than Matt was, so I think they could have worked well together. One of my geekier tendencies is that I keep an all-star roster in my head of academics from the different institutions I've attended.

Tonight I'm going to go see Serenity with at least one other devout fan of the Firefly TV series. I'm all geeked out for it, too. I read the comic mini-series over the summer, and if I knew how I'd be swearing in Chinese to express my anticipation.

I haven't blogged lately because I've been helping so many other people with their blogs lately that I'm a little tired of it. The university is sponsoring a group of students to blog and podcast about life at BSU. That is, everything is furnished by the school, but the school doesn't have any editorial control over the content. It should be a good project. I did research over the summer looking at what other schools call "blogs." Most were just static html pages, ostensibly written by students with no prodding (ahem) from their respective colleges. There was even one school that posted mp3 files of students reading a script about how great the school is. No RSS enclosure, just a file on a server, so technically it wasn't really a podcast. My current role in the project is general tech support- help students where I can with wordpress and report any bugs I find. A few students have yet to do anything significant on their blogs, but most are off to a great start. Seeing how the project is growing through them is really interesting.

Yesterday this blog turned 2. The past year (as marked by this blog's age) passed much faster for me than the first year when I was working in Fort Wayne. My posting regimen has dropped off considerably, due to the ammount of work and other opportunities I have now. I started this blog because I had nothing else to do, and now I'm so busy that I often can't think of good topics.

While I've been away at school my parents have carried on with various forays into modern technology, at times without the direct supervision of my brother or myself. A few weeks ago my Dad got a camera phone, so now I get pictures of the dogs in my e-mail every once in a while. This is innovative in a way, as the intended use of a camera phone is to take blurry, washed-out snapshots of car accidents and morons making strange faces. As I always suspected, they invested in a new deadbolt lock as soon as my brother and I were out of the house. This is notable because the can be locked with an infrared remote keychain. In order to open the door you must have the key in your hand, meaning that you cannot be wearing night vision goggles when approaching the locked door. You also can't make references to a game that only one other person you know has played.

Another fun technology that I got to mess with is my Dad's new car with a GPS navigation system and DVD audio sound system. The whole deal is voice activated, which is supposed to make it easy to use, but the way it works is more akin to programming. To tune the radio to 98.9 FM, I hit the button and said "FM nine eight point nine." It repeated this back to me in a neutral female voice (with a familiar disinterested tone) and tuned to the proper station. The way I said it was like running a program or script in a command line: radio\FM <98.9>. This is a good deal more complicated than just hitting a button on the radio. The GPS is kind of funny because it doesn't know how to get around Fort Wayne any better than any other non-native. The DVD audio sounds nice, and the car came with a mix DVD from Acura to demonstrate how different genres sound. The funny thing is, the track listing includes "Do You Realize?" by the Flaming Lips, "Let's Get it On" by Marvin Gaye, and some Faith Hill song. Such an amorous mix is sort of odd from a car company to a customer. It also has a truncated version of "O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana by Carl Orff that sounds really cool.

I'm not really sure that DVD audio will catch on in a big way, though. I recall seeing an article in Wired that showed how most current music is recorded and engineered to be loud without any volume variation- everything is constantly spiked. Also, the big trend in music sales is compressed digital audio files with mid-range two channel quality for use in digital music players. There doesn't seem to be a way to have anything more than two channels with headphones, and DVD audio has more than that at a bitrate well beyond 128 kbps. It seems like a great idea that came at exactly the wrong time. I suspect that the new format was intended to boost lagging music sales and to try to create a format that can be easily copy protected. The thing is, the standards for the format were established in 1996, before copy protection in general was rendered useless by the power of internet hobbyists who break encryption for fun. I'm interested to see where this format goes. It sounds fantastic, that's for darn sure. Something epic, like the Raiders of the Lost Arc score would sound great. On the other hand, something like "Never Mind the Bollocks" is meant to be two-channeled and fuzzy. Miles Davis would probably sound great.

Things are starting to approach stability here. My schedule is free of conflicts and I think I know my weekly routine for work, class, and school work. Computer animation will be just as time-consuming as I remember it from USF. Visual Storytelling, it turns out, is a documentary film-making class. I don't know what I'm going to do for that project yet but I get to work with a friend who collects tech like my old roomie Todd. Digital production seems to be a good excuse to learn a new program and make something with it.

My severe allergic reaction to good weather has kicked in, so I'm on claratin bender this week until a good morning frost or two comes in to kill the pollen. I'm no botanist, but it is my opinion that plants suck. Just give me my oxygen and leave me alone.

Gerry and I were watching the tsunami coverage on TV the other night. The news stations are so in love with the disaster and the spectacle of people displaced by the thousands that after about an hour even we two media crazed twenty-somethings couldn't take any more. To pick our spirits up, Gerry opened up a pack of big-league chew bubble gum and we split the whole thing. It's quite impossible to be somber when you have a speech impairing mouth full of sickeningly sweet bubble gum.

After much running around, I believe I have a workable schedule:
Grad-level Computer Animation (art)
Digital Story Design (icom)
Visual Storytelling (journalism)
My work hours are mostly in the mornings, and my classes are in the afternoon/evenings.
I really hope this works. I got used to drawing up my own schedules in undergrad, where my advisor would sign anything I put in front of him. Now I'm off to see about getting a meal plan, and then I'm going home to read the New Yorker and watch an episode of Dead Like Me.

Let me be clear: cookies and I go back a long time. Despite my slight build, I love cookies in a very deep and meaningful way. When I saw a new kind of soft cookie for sale, the "soft baked Chips Ahoy," I naturally wanted to try them. The competing (and far superior) "soft batch" cookies from keebler are a favorite of mine, and they always remind me of one of my old roommates. This new kind? Not so much. They aren't baked so much as they're shaped out of dough and grease, which leaves a strange aftertaste. To underscore my desire to warn the world, I took the trouble of making a picture of Yoda admonishing the world against these. Ignore me if you will at your own peril, but who among you would ignore Yoda?

Yesterday:
At a quarter after 7:00, I awoke to the sound of trees being pruned and the wood being shredded in the parking lot outside my window. As I was leaving for work, I discovered that all of the music on my iPod was gone after some technical difficulties I had the previous night. I was digging in my bag and got a paper cut. I got to work and was told that because the icom grant dried up, my graduate stipend for the coming year will be about $1600 less than last year. I'm still having difficulty with my fall schedule, which is partially not my fault. After work, I walked home and got stuck in a torrential downpour halfway. I needed to go to the store, but I couldn't because I needed to make sure my rent check would clear and my last paycheck would be deposited properly. This particular area on the north end of shit creek is starting to look familiar.

So far, today has been better.

I've been messing around with the beta version of M$'s new "Acrylic" vector graphic program. I like what I see thus far. Hopefully this is free like windows paint. It's quite useful if you know Adobe Illustrator well. One thing that I love about it is the tracing option. Illustrator has the option of tracing vector lines over raster graphics, but it's just point, click, hope for the best. Acrylic allows the tracing to be fine-tuned. The image below was created in such a manner. It made a zillion points and lines, so editing the image is near-impossible due to the time it takes to change anything. Still, I like what it does. The beta's free of you can find it on the microsoft site.

The next version of Firefox will support vector graphics. I can't wait to see what will be possible. I imagine a mix of vector shapes and javascript could create some really interesting embedded menus- window interfaces in web pages, scalable graphics, even (dare I suggest it?) zooming interfaces! It's almost too much.

I thought about sending this link only to my brother, but this is the sort of thing that must be shared with as much of the world as possible: Conan O'Brien vs Bear.

Hypothetical situation:
If you ran a big expensive web server, would you delegate the responsibility of fixing a mid-grade but oft-recurring security issue to a sleep-deprived student worker making minimum wage? How many other state-funded institutions could get away with this, or do get away with this? Just a hypothetical, mind you.

I was in Hobby Lobby earlier (craft-kitsch for miles) looking for linoleum for ink prints. That's not the point, though, just the context. As I was searching through the bizarre menagerie of truly awful decorative crap, I passed an old lady in a wheelchair being pushed by another woman. The elderly matron was stooped forward with that sort of listless expression that old people get upon the realization that they've outlived the Prussian Empire, clutching a cane. As I moved down an aisle to get out of her way, I heard her let loose with a belch worthy of a high school tuba player. It was outstanding. I know it was her because I heard her laugh out loud about it right after she did it.

More Google Earth fun: the Sphynx
Go to 29° 58' 32.01" N, 31° 08'13.91" E.
To the north and west are a few pyramids and some ruins of something. Then continue northwest to see a huge cluster of newer symmetrical buildings that I'm guessing are residential. Zoom in all the way you might see a guy in a red fez. If you know why to follow him, you're my kind of people.

Things I have accomplished at work today:

Unlocked door.
Found that I am the only one here.
Logged in.
Checked work e-mail, confirmed that half of the department is out for one reason or another.
Checked personal e-mail.
Turned on music, updated podcasts.
Started working on Emens calendar stuff.
Found conch shell, blew into it. Nobody came to investigate.
Worked on Emens calendar stuff.
Watched the trailer for "V for Vendetta."
Purchased beverage, Dr. Pepper(x1) from vending machine. Stamina +10, temporary "caffeinated" status effect
Stole some fat kid's glasses to try to make fire.
Gave up on fire.
Listened to omnipresent sound of computer fans.
Made umpteenth mental note to have network cable replaced because it seems to be frayed somewhere within the plastic and periodically loses my connection.
Started blogging.
Entered another calendar event.
Listened to Black Sabbath out loud on my speakers, a rare event reserved for when I'm alone in the office.
Killed a wild pig, mounted said pig's head on a stick for symbolic effect or something.
Held my hand up to the vent above me, muttered about lack of air flow.
Sat idle thinking of things to write here, felt a little bad about not working.
Went back to calendar entries.
Procrastinated leaving work due to long walk in weather that weather.com claims "Feels Like: 112°F."
Ate granola bar(x1). Stamina +15
Satisfied with getting most of my work done, logged out and left the office.

Burst into flames.

On Saturday I went to Indy to see the movie Howl's Moving Castle and a Black Keys concert. Between these events, I wandered around as I am prone to do when given leisure time in a city. Howl's Moving Castle was great. Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli have created another fun, complex children's movie full of amazing characters and locations. I thoroughly enjoyed it. After the movie, I drove to Broad Ripple to see what it looks like in the daylight. It was about this time that the rain started coming down in buckets, and the streets were flooding. I got soaked even though I had an umbrella, so I sat in a starbucks until the weather subsided. After I had dried off a bit and changed into my flip-flops, I went to Keystone to look for good stuff on clearance at Pottery Barn. It's that little streak of suburbanite in me that I can't seem to fight. I ended up buying some coasters because I need one for my desk, and I found little candle holders for 45 cents, which according to the employee at the register, was the cheapest she'd seen anything in the store. I felt pretty darn good about that. After that, I ate dinner and wandered around Borders to kill time. The show was going to start at 9:00, and my socks still felt damp, so I made a quick stop at Target for dry socks. I got to the concert early, just in case it started on time. I don't know what made me think it would, but you never know. It turned out that there was an opening act planned, much to my dismay. Spookie Daly Pride notwithstanding, I've never really liked opening acts. I'm there to see a specific band, not a band that sounds similar to the main event but isn't as good. After a half hour of standing there staring at the stage, a voice over the PA said that the opening act had to cancel. At this point I figured that the Black Keys would be on soon, so I made my way to the front of the crowd. I was so close that I couldn't hear the vocals very well, but I was right in front of the drummer and I was getting the guitar sound directly from the amp. It was an amazing show. They played all the songs I wanted to hear, including "the Breaks" from their first album, which I love. The crowd was really into it, which is nice. When I first got there I noticed right away that half the guys there were tall skinny crackers with long hair. It was euphoric for me to be in a crowd like that.

Those of you who use Google Earth, try this:

Go to 29˚ 20'16.54 N, 101˚ 42'17.56W. The object itself is diffacult to see, but the shadow on the ground is unmistakably a giant easel. This is the world's largest Van Gogh sunflowers copy, located in Goodland, Kansas. I was marooned in that little town during a blizzard while on a trip during undergrad, and I haven't forgotten this landmark.

Edit: The above cooridinates should read 39˚ 20'16.54 N, 101˚ 42'17.56W. 39 instead of 29. This makes a big difference. The wrong coordinates put you in the middle of nowhere, instead of the middle of nowhere with a kitch landmark.

I work as a happy little cog in the university PR machine, so periodically I look at what other schools are doing to promote themselves, then figure out how to do it better. Case in point, the map. Well, I just got a link that blows us away. Franklin and Marshall University has a great little animated pitch for applying to their school. If you like Terry Gilliam or historical humor, then give this a look.

This is my new clock. It came with a craptastic Office Depot logo on the face, so I painted over it. It's a cloud from Super Mario Brothers, those of you who missed the 8-bit era. Click on it to see the full-res version and my decidedly sub-pre-Raphaelite brush control.

I had a good three-day weekend, and I have pictures to prove some of it. Gerry, Tom, and I all went to the Indianapolis zoo on Sunday, where we saw several creatures that were more photogenic than we are. Ditto for our trip to Broad Ripple (more on that below). Click each image for the full version.

A young Baboon chewing on a branch.











If there's anything in nature funnier than a baboon's red arse, I have yet to see it.








I wish I could have taken this one closer. It's some kind of monkey lounging in a log.









Tom communes with nature. Lorakeet eats, bites Tom. It would have been a better story if he had shrieked like a schoolgirl, but he was tough. Then we all went and used the free hand sanitizer.







This eel can do whatever it darn well pleases, as far as I'm concerned. It's things like this that keep me out of non-chlorinated water.







After the zoo we drove around downtown looking for somewhere to eat. As a rule, there is never any convenient parking in Indy, so anywhere we wanted to go was going to require a zig-zag trek through the city's commercial center. A short walk later we arrived at the Ram. Tom swore it was good, and it had TVs with sports, so Gerry wouldn't get fussy. Fun for the whole family, right? Well, sort of. The menu was a gallery of giant size burgers and multi-meat sandwiches. I don't like beef, but I found something that fascinated me: a burger made of bratwurst with mustard, onions, and cheese. It was delicious. Maybe it was the euphoric effect of prolonged exposure to sunlight and fresh air, but I really enjoyed that brat burger.

Broad Ripple is the sort of place that people in my demographic go to on weekends. We played pool for awhile, then wandered down the street to see the rest of the area. After a few stops, we ended up at the Rock Lobster. This was probably my favorite place. They play good music, and the back end is an open-air patio, so it isn't too smoky. I had a couple in me, so I had my hair down, and Weezer was playing on the speakers. Some crazy chick started air-guitaring, so I did too, and then another guy was talking to me about playing the guitar. I may have let it slip that I can play Led Zeppelin's "Over the hills" (which is partially true) and "Stairway to heaven" (which is mostly untrue). Yeah, fun times. We crashed with Tom and drove back home the next morning. Gerry and I stopped at Mcdonald's for breakfast, and as we were going to sit down, a septuagenarian man said "hey, nice shirt." We turned, and he was wearing the same American flag shirt at Gerry. Old men have similar tastes.

Later on that day we went to a cookout at our neighbor's house. It was a simple affair of lawn chairs and a charcoal grill. Then we watched the Muncie fireworks display from the roof of a parking garage on campus. This was a good vantage point, as it is safely removed from the rest of the town. Townies and phosphorous charges are a dangerous mix.

I bought a CD after hearing some of it in Tom's car. "A Grand Don't Come for Free" by the Streets. They're a British band that combine strange brass samples and odd drum beats with half-sung, half-spoken lyrics. The album tells a story of a guy trying to get money and handle a relationship with a girl he meets in the second song, then breaks up with in the tenth. The thick accents and the story remind me of Guy Ritchie's early movies. It's well cool.

A couple of noteworthy links:

Liquid Man
An interview with the guy I buy comics from

I'm going to Indy at some point this weekend, but I don't know when. If I remember, I'll take my camera and post pictures here with blogger's new image serving feature. Speaking of which, I tried the new MS blog service that some of the CICS people here would like the students to use. The image upload feature on that reprocesses the image and spits out a really crappy, pixelated image. The test pic I uploaded was 24K, and it looked fine. The pic that it displayed was poorly aliased and the file size was 48K. Unacceptable, if you ask me. I'd almost rather see students using xanga. If anyone out there is looking at different free blog services, I recommend Blogger or Livejournal. I've done a pretty good amount of research lately at work, and those are the two standout choices.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the wedding of my old friend Sarah and the newest induction to the Fools, Kris. The services were held in the lobby of the Embassy Theatre, a beautiful old building with handmade wall sconces, intricate floor tile patterns, and naught but the finest metal folding chairs for the guests. The ceremony proceeded as such things do: music, vows, and that feeling of giddy solemnity that is exclusive to weddings. The collective esteem for the happy couple was palpable. This wasn't one of those weddings where you sit there and cynically envision the pending union as a commuter train careening off of the tracks into a herd of cattle. These two are far too cool and likeable. Gerry and I will die alone, so we can at least glean some vicarious matrimonial joy from this. The open bar and the large dinner spread at the reception didn't hurt, either.

The reception was quite pleasant. I wore my brand new coat that I purchased at a significant discount, along with a newly-acquired dress shirt that wasn'’t such a good deal, but actually fits my Ent-ish frame pretty well. The social setting was peculiar though. The party consisted of people with the stamp of approval from two very nice people, so socializing was easy enough even for me. Sarah is still as sweet as ever, though she has developed an assertive wit in the years since I knew her in high school. Kris is, in all regards, a great guy. I caught up with a few other people who I hadn't seen since high school, and met a couple of new people as well.

If you're like me, with such an insufferabley high opinion of yourself that you must tell the world about the minutiae of your life via a blog, then click on the link graphic below to take a blogging survey created by a PhD candidate at MIT.

From an interview with Billy Corgan:

"They proved me right, which is that the whole indie thing is just a pose. I can'’t say that about everybody, but our general feeling in the Pumpkins always was that people took the indie route because deep down they knew they didn'’t have the talent to make it on the mainstream level... If you'’re going to play music at a high level to a large audience, it can'’t really be about you. You have to make it seem like it's about you, but it has to really be about others, it'’s really about sharing. And their indie-cred mentality really is about, '‘What'’s it got to do with me?' and '‘Can I find people who agree with me, who think like me, who dress like me, smoke pot like me?'’ They'’re just assholes. It'’s simple." -Billy Corgan in Paste magazine, referring to the Zwan breakup.

This pretty well sums up quite a few people who have frustrated me, particularly in undergrad. Just because someone dresses as though they are avant-garde, and their work doesn't make sense without lengthy discussion or knowledge of the inside jokes of their peers, that doesn't mean they're genius. I used to hold myself to their odd standard, and I eventually gave up drawing because I didn't feel I was at their level. Only in the past year has it become clear to me that I needn't conform to the standard of people I don't care about. I'm an animator, damnit. I'm a content designer, a storyteller, an (extremely) amateur musician, a decent writer, and I came here to use these skills to better myself and learn to create new things. Gad it feels good to say that.

My brother and I just scored 3424 on Oregon Trail. He didn't want to start as a carpenter because they have no money, but I wanted to because they can fix things. Case in point- an axle broke and we fixed it. Booyah! And being a carpenter means that your score is doubled in the end. We lost one member of our party, a poor sap named RED SHIRT. His name was in all caps because the Apple IIe emulator defaulted to caps. This poor soul bought it while crossing the second river we came to. Since this was a watery demise, we didn't have to bury him with a clever epitaph. He probably just floated out to the gulf of Mexico. It's just as well, though: he kept eating all the hard-tack and he kept telling us all that he was the Les Claypool of the jawharp. We continued on westward at a strenuous pace, stopping on occasion to hunt. My years of bragging about what a mighty hunter I am went up in smoke when I only brought back 75 lbs of food. Then Michael tried and killed a bear. Another time, he got stuck walking around when he ran into a pixelated cactus. We ate well. Further along, we came across a tombstone from the previous owner of the game. It was a simple affair with this curious etching: "Here lies andy" next line: "peperony and chease" (misspelled pizza references suggest that this person probably should never have left Independence, Missouri). EDGAR was bitten by a snake, and MICHAEL came down with cholera after we let some strange Shoshone Indian help us cross a river. The stupid jerk didn't know what he was talking about- the wagon tipped over and we lost two spare axles. I should have known something was up when he requested two sets of clothing as currency for his services. Everyone lived through their particular ordeals after that, and we made it to the cool part where you have to guide the wagon on a flatboat down a river, avoiding identical rocks as you float by. This is where I made up for my inadequacy as a hunter. I deftly maneuvered the wagon down the river, past the three arrow signs to the trail on the shore that marks the end. We made it, in fair health but good spirits.

Summer is an odd time here. You’d think it would be easier to get around in a college town during the summer when the population around campus clears out, but it actually got worse. The amount of road construction around here has made everything inconvenient.

I went out to dinner with several of my classmates last night to the local Mexican restaurant. It’s not quite on par with what I’ve had in California or Fort Wayne, but the cheese enchiladas satisfy the monkey on my back just fine. We talked about all the things you might expect- Star Wars, the Office, David Sedaris- stuff like that. Then, much to my foundation-rattling shock, I was asked about doing some freelance animation. There’s a lab here on campus that I can use for such a project, and I’ve been looking for an opportunity to ply my trade. Sometimes I feel like I haven’t used Maya since it was installed on a UNIVAC. The project is a promo video for a company in Indy that makes gigantic lawnmowers. The kind of mower that causes a noticeable decrease in oxygen output from the grass it mows over. The big selling point is something about how the blades move, so in lieu of holding the camera three inches away from a six foot span of gas-powered spinning blades (ostensibly blades of death), a CGI shot will serve just as well to show the process in detail. That’s where I come in. I do hope this pans out. There has been an offer of money, but before I give a quote I need to know exactly what sort of shot will be needed. The way it looks now, there will be modeling the under side of the mower, animating the action, match-moving the model to live footage, and compositing the video- which might be done by somebody else, I’m not sure. Ye Gods it feels good to talk about this stuff again.

I’ve been meaning to blog my feelings about Revenge of the Sith for some time now. It'll be long-winded and geeky, and probably meandering, so skip this unless you really care about Star Wars. Obviously, spoilers abound, so stop reading if you haven’t seen the movie (then find the nearest available geek and explain your situation- we are available 24/7 to remedy this problem). I have a new perspective on the Jedi and the Old Republic now. I always held the belief that the Jedi that kept order before the Empire were wise and just heroes, and above all that they were independent of any governing force but virtue. This is the model set by Ben Kenobi in IV, and this paradigm endures in every other piece of supplemental material. In this movie, we see the Jedi in a different light. Their ties to the Senate are so complete that they can’t fathom why the Chancellor should ever be considered a threat until he kills four Jedi right in front of Mace Windu. Anakin enters at the Shakespearianly awkward time of seeing Master Windu about to kill the Chancellor, and suddenly everything the council has said about justice and fairness is called into question by the wrathful expression on Master Windu’s face. But why should Anakin even listen to him? The Jedi council made it abundantly clear that they didn’t like him even when he was just a grubby little kid from Tatooine. Anakin represented a break from the status quo. He wasn’t an adorable little youngling waving a lightsaber around in Yoda’s intro to laser blocking class; he was a sweatshop mechanic from the ass-end of Hutt controlled space. Anakin’s tenure as a Padawan learner the academy on Coruscant was difficult as well, even though he possessed natural ability. Obi-Wan was the only Jedi who didn’t regard him with disdainful eye-rolling, but it was several years before he saw Anakin as a friend and not an awkward inheritance from Qui-Gon. Anakin persevered out of a desire to promote justice in the galaxy. Strictly speaking, this desire is against the Jedi code. But Obi-Wan, one of two surviving Jedi when all is said and done, points out "only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes." Yoda, by contrast, persists in advising Anakin to go against his natural instincts. Anakin is constantly caught between the opposing viewpoints of those who seek to maintain or create some kind of order after their own design. The one good thing Anakin had going for him was Padme and the possibility of becoming a father. In less turbulent times, when he would have time to think rationally, Anakin may have realized that this was his way out. He could move out to a little chateau on Naboo, raise twins (surprise!), fix up a T-16 with Luke and Leia, learn to talk to his wife like a grown-up, and grow old bullshitting about podracing with the old men in the village. What would be the alternative, really? If he had allowed Master Windu to kill Palpatine, the Jedi would be pariahs. As we all know, even the most self-serving weasel can attain unparalleled popularity if he manufactures a war against beings that look different to boost his career. The Jedi were too close to the senate to see what was going on, all the while preaching a life without attachment. Alas, the Last Temptation of Anakin ends as expected. I blame the Jedi council for what happens to the galaxy. Yoda takes a different tack with Luke on Dagobah, much more straightforward than he was with Anakin. No more platitudes about avoiding the dark side- he sends Luke into the cave to face his dark side before he ever learns of his heritage. That's the Yoda I remember- not the CGI imp acting as a general in the clone wars, but the wise old master preparing a farm boy to save the universe by showing him what he will have to overcome.

There it is. Most of you shouldn't have read all of that. If you did, well, on your own head be it.

I've finally ended my self-imposed boycott of all music published by RIAA-affiliated record labels. I still don't like them as an organization that takes money from artists and files massive scattershot lawsuits, but my big reason to stop buying their music was that they wouldn't endorse a legal download alternative. That was the case two years ago when I started my self-righteous stand. Now you can't go anywhere on the internet without finding somebody who will sell you digital music- even walmart is trying some sort of download system. The classic litmus test for when a technology has caught on firmly is when the yokels get access. If wallyworld is digitally offering their brand of sanitized pop and rock music to the hilljack masses, then it appears that digital music has caught on.

My first purchase? The new System of a Down album. It rocks quite a lot. If you could imagine a huge truck full of rock with big letters on the side that spell “ROCK” speeding down the highway on fire, then you'd have a good idea of what is on this CD. The second track contains the oft-repeated lyrics “why don't presidents fight the war/ why do they always send the poor.” If there is one good thing about corporate music, it's that the desire to sell music and make money trumps the right-wing pressure to quash dissenting material.

One other thing is worth blogging: on my way back to school, I almost hit a deer on the interstate. I saw one run across the street just in front of my headlights so I slowed down, and then a second apeared on the road. It saw me coming, got scared, and ran straight across. I pulled over on to the shoulder and avoided it by probably ten feet or less. My reaction saved us both. All the deer did was panic, crap on the side of the road, and run. Yet again, thank you violent video games. The deer and I would have been in serious trouble without the reflexes I've developed during countless nights fragging zombies and terrorists.

Done.

"The next time you see the homie and his rims is spinin',
Just know my mind is workin' just like them (The rims that is)" (Jay-Z, 2003)

The time before finals week that some refer to as "dead week" is truly a magical time. Long stretches of desperate productivity punctuated by periods of sitting perfectly still to wait for my head to stop throbbing and my vision to clear. This is the time when I prove that I've retained a semester's worth of learning by going through a week that, due to sporadic nourishment and restless sleep, I will not remember when it's over. I'm living on sandwiches from the atrium, tomato soup cups, and horse-pill multi-vitamins. I'll go on record as saying that grad school is a terrible idea, and should only be attempted by people with the willfully stubborn chutzpah to ignore the good advice to stay away. Thankfully, I get that ability from both of my parents.

And yes, I cited Jay-Z according to my AP style manual. I'm only being mildly sarcastic there.

T.S. Elliot was absolutely, prophetically right when he wrote "April is the cruelest month." The weather was great a week ago, and then on Friday the temperature dropped along with every form of precipitation possible. Last night at 11:30 it was snowing as Gerry, Tom, and I worked to unload a couch and an entertainment center from a moving van. It's a bit of a long story, and I'm tired and hungry right now, but suffice it to say that you find out who your friends are right quick when you need people to help carry an overstuffed sofa down a slick, snow-covered ramp, across a wet parking lot, up four steps, through two doors, up a narrow flight of stairs, and (somehow) through an awkwardly shaped entrance to an apartment. For whatever reason, nobody wanted to help us, so the three of us worked out the problem through trial and error involving angles that no furniture should ever be in.

Operating Instructions:

1. Connect the spoon to the handle.

2. On the base of the handle, push the black power switch toward the spoon bowl to turn the power on.

3. Push the red button on the top of the handle to activate the spoon light.

This poetry adorns the transparent bag that formerly held my newest tchotchke, a light-up lightsaber spoon. Gerry and I were at walmart earlier to buy food and examine the summer movie promotion swag. Naturally, it's all Star Wars stuff, especially the cereal. Menacing portraits of characters from the third prequel mugging over bowls of milk-soaked cornflakes for the length of the aisle- it's quite something. We stopped to admire a box of crispix with a mail-away offer for an R2-D2 bowl that makes character-appropriate noises when acted upon by some outside force, such as the weight of cereal in the bowl. Gerry and I deliberated over this and determined that the cereal would indeed be a worthwhile purchase with the offer of a bowl resembling an astromech droid. How can you go wrong? A few feet from this was a box of apple jacks emblazoned with Anakin Skywalker. I'm not sure the cereal company meant for me to associate their cereal with the character responsible for the wholesale slaughter of nearly all of the Jedi in the Republic, or the personification of Campbell's archetype of evil, but the important thing is that the box contained the lightsaber spoon. I don't eat cereal, as it doesn't work to carry milk and cereal in my cupped hands as I walk to work. Gerry is more the cereal type, so we agreed that I would buy the cereal and he would eat it, but I get the spoon. For just shy of three bucks, I'd say I got a good deal. I opened the box and the prize was right there on top. We could hardly contain our enthusiasm as I struggled through the layers of plastic packaging to assemble my new utensil. I deliberately avoided pressing any buttons to save the surprise of the color of light that would soon illuminate the plastic spoon and every bit of food I will ingest for the next few weeks. I assembled the item according to the instructions above, moved the small black switch up, and pressed the power button. Gerry and I both gasped audibly as the spoon lit up blazingly red. It looked even cooler with the light out- my kitchen was illuminated by a spoon. It's worth waiting for the sun to go down to eat with a lightsaber spoon, in case any of you need a little extra incentive for Passover.

I'm in the library doing research in the journals and publications archive section right now. As I was returning what I needed, I found a collection of book-bound issues of "The Illustrated London Press." I opened up the January-March volume 1937 to peruse the old European art-deco advertising that I like so much, and I found a big article from February 6 with photos of Nazi Germany. One line from the article jumped out at me: "...the Chancellor declared that the Versailles Treaty was now at an end, and that, Germany having attained equality, there would be no more "surprises."" Hmm. Surprise! I'm always fascinated at how the world kissed Germany's collective ass when it was kind of obvious from the photos of their army marching in the street with rifles that they weren't done causing trouble. Folks were simpler back then.

So, what did everybody else do on Saturday? I worked on homework, saw Sin City, and later in the evening Gerry and I watched Rudy with one of his co-workers who may or not be my best friend in the whole world, I don't know. She left around 1:30, and Gerry and I hung around for a minute. He gave me a comic to read, and as I was leaving we both heard a strange buzzing noise. It wasn't in the kitchen, it wasn't the computer; curiouser and curiouser. The noise was louder in the hall and up the stairs, so we went to investigate. The smoke alarm was going off in number 10 upstairs. Being the noble Jedi that I am, I pounded on the door, but received no response. The next logical step (courtesy of Gerry) was to check the doorknob for heat a la the method demonstrated by Dick Van Dyke in the old filmstrip we all had to watch every time the fire marshall came to the school, or the cub scout den visited the fire station. No heat, but no answer at the door either. So, though I am loathe to use the phone except to call Gerry or a relative, I dialed 911 and tried to describe the abstract concept of theoretical fire through a locked door to the bleary-eyed third-shifter at the other end. She said that she would send someone out. I waited at the window for the truck while Gerry bravely brushed his teeth in preparation for dealing with the firemen. Dental hygiene goes a long way with our brave civil servants, after all. I waited outside in case the driver had trouble finding an apartment complex on the third busiest street in north Muncie, and my phone made a noise. It had made a little chime when I dialed 911 the first time, so I looked to see if I had missed a call. There was no evidence of this, so as near as I can tell the fire department pinged my phone to triangulate my location from the tower. In short, very cool. The truck arrived shortly, all lights and sirens like a bat out of hell. I went out to meet the firemen and to explain the situation. Gerry and I tried to reach our landlady and got her voice mail. The firemen climbed up a ladder to the third floor window and determined that the alarm was going off even though there was no smoke. The truck left, and Gerry said that I could post this from his room. He's trying to sleep right now, so if I may I'll speak on his behalf: "Loyal, get the hell out of my apartment. It's two damn thirty." Well said, fool, well said.

I've felt pretty good lately, despite a newly acquired sore throat from one of several germs that have hit half the campus recently. I was a little concerned earlier this week when I came home expecting to find a package from Amazon and all I found was a note saying the box was on the floor. I looked down, and much to my disappointment, there was no box. I didn't pay Amazon thirty bucks for a nice note of intent from UPS, so I set about searching the area for my stuff. It wasn't in the other building, and it wasn't on the other two floors, so I immediately assumed that my box had either been mistakenly picked up by another student living here, or that it had been stolen by some grubby little neighborhood coke addict. I hoped it was the former option, so I could get my stuff back without going to a pawnshop, but I also secretly hoped it would be the latter, because in my mind that scenario ends like the “stuck in the middle with you” scene in Reservoir Dogs. I got back from class later and found the box by my door with a nice note from #9 saying that she had picked it up without looking at the address. The funny thing is that the box was meticulously taped back together with scotch tape over the packing tape. Funny because the box only had to go two flights of stairs down to me, and because that means that the accidental recipient opened the box to find the new Dropkick Murphys CD and the latest book by Sarah Vowell. I'm sure that she didn't expect that, but it would be great if it was a coincidence because that would mean there was somebody really cool living here. I'd have someone to talk to without having to walk across the parking lot.

I have the CD on now, and I love it. The second track is a cover of “Fortunate Son.” It rocked on the live CD, and this studio recorded version is just awesome. Picture a skinny cracker standing in front of his computer speakers rocking air guitar and mouthing the words. It's funny. There's also a cover of a song by Motorhead. Dropkick Murphys doing Motorhead is the best combo since black and tan.

The book in the box was a surprise. It isn't actually supposed to be released until next month, or so I thought. The computer at Amazon wasn't going to ship my order until the book was released. I wanted my CD as soon as I could get it, so I set it to ship the items separately. The package shipped that day, and the invoice said that the book was included. Yadda yadda, now I have the book.

I got another CD that I ordered in the mail recently as well: Carla Bruni. I can't spell the title, and I'm looking right at the CD case. It's something foreign, probably French, and about as far removed from drunken blue-collar punk as one can get, but I like it. I heard a song from the album on WBNI (Fort Wayne public radio) while driving south of Hartford City a few weeks ago, and it really stuck with me. I couldn't write down the artist's name while driving in the dark in the middle of nowhere, so I just chanted her name like a lunatic for about five miles so that I would remember what to look up on Amazon. The CD is about to be released domestically, but the new edition will be on V2- a subsidiary of Virgin, a member of the RIAA. Luckily, the import is from some European label that the RIAA Radar site said was safe. I paid a little extra, but I can sleep soundly knowing I did the right thing.

Just a quick note to welcome Tom to the blogosphere. He brings a wealth of knowledge and raises the bar for personal hygene among the people that I link to.

I've added more links to the list on the right. It's "Drawn," a blog devoted to graphic design from all over the place. It's an RSS feed too, for those of you cool enough to care. I'm also adding Penny Arcade because I read it and enjoy it. I put boingboing up there too, since I get almost all the interesting stuff I post or forward from there.

Break is going well, as breaks go. That is to say, I haven't done anything strenuous. I've gotten some reading done, visited my alma mater, and played video games. Any of these could be worth blogging about, if I had the accumen to do so anymore. I've lost that bloggin' feeling. I don't plan to quit, but I'm not all that happy with my blog writing of late. I think I wrote better when I was miserable and unemployed a year and a half ago. I had more time to sit and think, rather than constantly running around without time to think. I am quite a bit happier now so I suppose it's a fair trade.

It's been said by someone far more altruistic than myself that we should try to leave the world a better place than we found it. This is a lovely idea, but I think my fellow students and I may have blown it this past weekend. We shot a movie in an old building full of rusty nails, splintered wood, over one thousand various athletic t-shirts, bats, beautiful antique wood panels, and water damage worse than the Lusitania. It did not have heat, running water, or electricity in the traditional sense.

I started a post about this after the first weekend of shooting, but it occurred to me that the post would contain spoilers galore, and some of my blog audience will see the movie at some point. It's a shame, too, because there were some good stories involving me in the back of a cop car and a temperamental fog machine.

This past weekend was my second weekend working on the movie. The presence of feeling in my legs was a sign that the weather was better. We worked for over twelve hours a day both days, relying on flashlights to work where the work light didn't reach. There was a funny incident on Saturday night when an actor stepped into a dark hall and two bats swooped right over his head. He wouldn't go down to the other end of the hall where his next shot was, so I took my flashlight and the fog machine to smoke the bats out. This must have worked, because we didn't have a problem with bats for the rest of the weekend.

For some reason, many of the eating establishments in Hartford City do not take any sort of magnetic card payment. The first weekend we ate at a recently opened Chinese buffet where the young woman at the register claimed that they could not accept electronic payment because it was Sunday. I'm not sure what that meant, but we figured that since they had only been open for a few days that their system wasn't perfect yet. I'm also not sure what was significant about it being Sunday, but it would be funny if the bank owner was a burn-out turned born-again fundie who refused to let his computer work on Sunday. The next weekend we went to Subway and my order and my friend's order were half done when we learned that they didn't take cards either. This is a national chain, mind you. My friend commented that he and his girlfriend had paid with a card at a Subway in the hills of Virginia just a few months prior. Fortunately, Pizza King was up on current technology circa 1995, so we enjoyed mediocre pizza and luxuriously standard indoor heating.

It was a good weekend for me.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I will not be going overseas this summer. The cost of the trip is way above what I’m capable of paying for. This presents a problem, because I need some sort of “cultural immersion” to graduate. This can be done in America, according to the vague guidelines laid out by my advisor, so I’ve been looking for somewhere to go, some place to stay, something to look at, and some way of presenting it online. I know someone who went to Southeast Asia to work at an internship for a few weeks, and this sounds appealing. If I could get a month-long internship at some game design place it would definitely help me more in the long run, and maybe even pay a little to offset the cost. This is, of course, a best-case scenario. I may end up reading a Paris travel guide and building a web page with the photos I took a few years ago when I was there with the USF art department.

I sat down here in the library with intent to blog, and now I can't think of anyting to say. Spare moments like these are few and far between. I have a few minutes before work, and I can't think of anyting on my to-do list that can be effectively accomplished in twenty minutes or less, so here I am. With nothing to talk about. Maybe something interesting will happen later, like an armed peasant revolt from south Muncie, or something.

I haven't blogged in a while because I haven't done anything blog-worthy since my last post. My lack of leisure time coupled with weather patterns rivaling the last ice age have made any real activity impossible.

I went to a concert in Indy the other night. The main act is one of Michelle's favorites, which is why I was there, but it was the band before them that really caught my attention. They're called Spookie Daly Pride, and to try to explain their music in text would not do them justice. Most bands have that one guy who looks kind of odd, like he was raised by wolves. This band was four of those odd guys. The lead singer/piano player would play the piano with his feet, pretend to fly, and every time he finished a cigarette he would place it on an amp, and the guitar player would pick it up, take a drag, and stamp it out. This happened several times, like a ritual. I bought their CD before their set was over, I was sold.

Yesterday I assisted in taking a stray cat to an animal shelter. This may seem remarkable in itself, but it was nothing compared to the interior of the shelter. Cats. Wall to wall, floor to ceiling, everywhere. The odd mix of strays reminded me of the asylum in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Some were friendly, but all of them had their own unique neuroses. One of them had a thing for climbing on backs (I have little claw marks on my shoulder from that one.) One of them was the largest cat I have ever seen from being overfed by some old lady. Seriously, this cat was immobile. It was chapter one in the lesser known of T.S. Eliot's works, "Old Possum's Book of Impractical Cats." I can laugh at it because it can't chase me.

Tomorrow I'm going to a Halo fragfest with people from my classes. It ought to be fun, if the last one was any indicator.

My apartment has power again as of last night. I've had the heater on as hot as it goes to try to bring the climate back up to room temperature; so far, so good. The apartment above mine has had the heat on full too- when I got up this morning, the kitchen floor was cold but the air around my head and up to the ceiling was noticeably warmer. The refrigerator works, the hot water heater works, the clocks are all reset, and things are getting back to normal.

Much to my own surprise, I've been productive in the past few days. I drove back to my apartment to check my mail for bills and to make sure the possum hadn't figured out how to open the window from the outside yet. So far, so good. The place was cold, but the water wasn't frozen, so things seem to be okay. As I was leaving, I did see smoke coming from Gerry's window, but it was only a little, not the sort of thing that is really worth freaking out over. :)

The day before that my brother and I helped the new pastor at the church I'm most likely to attend when I attend such things move in to her new house. My brother and I hooked up her computer and fiddled around with her TV, VCR, and DVD player with some degree of success. I assembled a couple of TV stands, which made me quite happy.

Today I did actual work. My brother and I rented a "Rug Doctor" carpet cleaner from the local grocery store in order to fill our grunt work quotient for the month by steam cleaning parts of the carpet here at home. When I was about four or five, I wanted to get one from the store because of the little cartoon Rug Doctor had arms and a face, so I thought it was a robot. It turns out that Rug Doctor is, in fact, not a robot at all. Instead, Rug Doctor is a moderately heavy red plastic shell with a water tank and a vacuum motor. The instructions are printed in a peculiar fashion on several surfaces of the machine. Ideally, this is so the operator can refer to them while standing behind the operating handle (provided that the operator is no more than 4'5'' tall). It worked well enough, and now I'm waiting for the carpet to dry so that we can put the furniture back where it belongs.

All time before this week was spent resting and recovering from the semester. The best way for me to do this is to read, watch TV, and play video games. This provides a serviceable segue into me listing the media that I've enjoyed and why, as I am prone to do now and again.

Books:

• Superman/Batman: I started this one almost as soon as I got home because I needed a break from academia. Something fun, but still well-written.
• Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes: I've put off reading this series for years, even though I've heard glowing praise for it and I like the author's other works. I've enjoyed it so far- it's very subtle in it's storytelling method, (not at all like my normal comic choices) and almost perfectly diametrically opposed to the aforementioned Superman/Batman book.
  

yet to read:

• Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency: I got this one for my brother for Christmas. He thanked me, and then told me for the umpteenth time that I need to read it. I'll see how far I can get before I return to school.
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance: I've found that it helps me to read at least one book that isn't required reading every semester, usually a little bit at a time in bed at night.
• Eats Shoots and Leaves: Because punctuation can be fun too.

Games:

• Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater: Periodically, I play a game that reminds me why I love new media so much. This game serves as a rebuttal to the crotchety old Philistines who see video games as digital playthings with no real value. The game takes place in a jungle in western Russia in 1964, where several people are vieing for power over things that could mean the difference between a prolonged cold-war and widespread nuclear war. A scientist trying to defect to America with plans for a nuclear capable tank, a huge unclaimed war chest pooled from the resources of several nations left over from World War II, a radical faction within Kruschev's army looking to seize power, and several other characters all play significant roles in the story. There really isn't a way to accurately describe the game, or to relate the impact the story had on me. The whole time I was playing, I kept trying to think of how to use this as an example in classroom discussions next semester. It's a shame that the nature of the game makes the story inaccessible to so many people, as it must be played in order to be understood. As the title suggests, the main character does in fact have to eat snakes. This means spotting them in the jungle, killing or trapping them, and eating them in order to keep the character's stamina up. Not just snakes, though: rats, birds, stolen Soviet rations, and eventually packs of ramen noodles found in a base supply closet are all required for survival. When the character is injured, he must tend to his wounds with medical supplies. For a bullet wound, the bullet must be removed with a knife, then the wound is treated with disinfectant and two different kinds of bandages. The level of detail is spectacular, and it kills me that I don't have anyone at school to discuss this with.

I head back to school this week. My classes are all in order now, and my schedule looks great. I have evening classes Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and a project that I can schedule whenever I want. This will make my work schedule so much easier to figure out- no more six-hour Fridays.