Friday April 2nd 2004 11:47 AM PST
So my power went out at about 11PM last night. The entire area around me in south pasadena was dark. I walked outside with a
flashlight and talked to my neighbors for a couple minutes and then walked back inside where i realized how fuckin bored i become
without electricity. Well at least how bored i become without electricity in the dark at 11PM. So i rummaged around in the dark for a
few candles and sat around for about an hour sketching in my sketchbook. I used to do this all the time for no apparent reason, but i
have to tell you its a nice way to spend some time. A roommate in college would do it at 3AM. I'd get back into our apartment from
working all night in an editing bay or the screenprinting studio and i'd find him sitting on the couch with 3 candles, drawing some crazy
shit. AND he wasn't one of the drug using roommates! So i always was a little puzzled with the ritual. But nontheless, i sat in the dark
last night drawing.
Well back to the grind.
Tuesday April 6th 2004 01:37 AM PST
theres nothing quite like the feeling of being fucked by taxes, but hey, that's what today was all about. I've gotta come up with a HUGE
amount of $$$$ in the next 10 days, but there's nobody to blame but my own damn self. Well at least there are a few job possibilities
on the horizon. I've got a day of work at one company on wed, and a contract that starts with another company on Thursday. Only
problem with the contract thats starting is its Marina del Rey. So i'll be driving my ass off for a couple days. Well at least its money.
Tuesday April 6th 2004 12:46 PM PST
i went to my parents house last night for dinner. while we were all hanging out my dad took a look at his cable bill. they asked me how
much i was spending on internet connection and cable. they're spending more than i am and they are getting the same service. So as
we went through the bill we noticed things like 35 cents for the cable remote, $2.50 for the on-screen guide, and $5.50 for the cable
box. Well the problem is... they don't have a cable box, a cable remote, and therefore no on-screen guide. Today my dad called em on
it. They reduced the bill and made it retroactive to when the cable company took the old cable box. Just makes you pissed at every
company out there with 10 page bills. If you don't have a magnifying glass chances are they're sneaking charges in there somewhere.
Wednesday April 7th 2004 01:33 AM PST
So Jen and I went to border's for no apparent reason tonight. We wandered around looking for a couple books. Jen got a few and i just
walked through the computer section. (BTW watching voyager right now, and the "my people" man is now talking about the animal
guide) So back at borders... I flipped open a book on bash and shell, and then a few other books on subjects i know little about. Then i
turned to the mathematical section right next to the computer section. Immediately i open a book called
Chaos and Fractals. In 5 minutes i "geeked out", but i wasnt about to spend that
much money on a math textbook. So now i'm sitting here watching voyager doing web searches on fractal equations. (what i loser)
Thursday April 8th 2004 07:50 AM PST
why am i up so early? Seems like the problem is not that i'm up early. It looks like my old code adjusted for a east coast server time.
Now i gotta go fix it.
Tuesday April 13th 2004 09:08 AM PST
So John and Kate Bell got into town this week. So Jen and I have been getting out a little more than usual. (and i've been drinking a little
more than usual). They arrived last Wed and we went out the first night with them to Cafe Santorini in old town pasadena. Its kinda
funny because we all seemed to have our regular orders there. Anyway... as usual it was a great meal. John and Kate were both on a
east coast time still so we got them to bed.
I was expecting to be working on Thursday and Friday, but that didn't happen, so Thursday got freed up to go with them to Lunch at
Zack's with the DVCC crew. Jen was on her spring break, so she came along too.
Jen's brother David has his break too last weekend, so we rescued him on Friday night and hung out with him. We just took him out
to dinner at Hamburger Hamlet and sat around and watched PCU. He hadn't been out of his house all week, so we needed to hang out
with him a little.
Saturday night was the big night out. 10 of us met at Dominico's for PIZZA and BEER. And damn did we eat a lot. There was a idea of
going to the movies, but most people really just wanted to hang out and shoot the shit with John and Kate. Will and I both have a
terrible dislike for crowds on a Saturday night (unless they are waiting in line for a geek movie), so we ruled out just about everything in
old town pasadena or hollywood. The only thing left was the bar at the Ritz Carlton in San Marino. When we arrived we had no problem
getting a huge table outside on the patio where we ended up sitting the rest of the night. The place actually was full, but not really
really packed like most places would be. At this point i had already drank enough at Dominico's but i'm a glutton for punishment. At the
ritz i finished off most of a bottle of wine, a newcastle and then dug into the tequila. Well needless to say i WAS NOT driving. Will had
begun off the night picking Jen and I up and driving everywhere. (thanks dood)
So that leads to a Sunday morning with the worst headache in recent months. And on top of it Jen is up at the crack of dawn getting
ready for easter morning with her parents. So i had to drag my ass out of bed and get ready. We arrived over at their place at 8:30
and had breakfast with the family. Then the ritual hunting of eggs and chocolate begins. Then to golf. I started watching the early
coverage of the Masters at Jen's parent's house. Right after the final pairing with Mickelson teed off we ran over to my parent's house
for brunch. So over at my house, my mom had cooked for the massed. My brother, uncle joe, vera, jonathan and jenna (and we
dragged jen's brother with us) were all there. We had a great meal and sat around blabing about all the usual crap. After we were
pleasantly stuffed, we sat the rest of the afternoon watching the rest of the 2004 masters championship (and watching the lakers fall
apart). After a certain point, we didnt even bother switching the channel and checking on the lakers score. It just got too depressing.
So we were all silent for Mickelson's birdie put on 18 and all cheering when he made it. Jen and i dropped David back off at his house
and then inherited a HUGE farmer john ham that Jen's father had acquired at a grocery store. So suddenly Jen and i have WAY TOO
MUCH FOOD in our fridge. I cooked mashed potatoes and we had ham that night. Jen and I both had done so much eating all day that
we didn't make much of a dent in the food .
Monday jen had to get back to work, and i did a bunch of little things at home. We went over to the Snare's house to have dinner with
Kevin Shannon John and Kate. We hung out there just catching up and had a great dinner cooked by Shannon.
John and Kate take off for the east coast today and i don't think i'm going to get out of the house that much for a little while. I'm burnt
out. Damn, but i'm gonna have to start driving to work.
Tuesday April 13th 2004 09:16 PM PST
i gots a job. gotta drive across LA into marina del rey tomorrow. the ipod is charged.
Wednesday April 14th 2004 09:55 AM PST
Drive was not as bad as i had expected. 110 freeway south to hill exit. south on hill thru downtown til i hit 3rd.
Right on 3rd and FLOOR IT. Its really fun flying through the 3rd street tunnel, and it cuts out a SHITLOAD of
traffic. 3rd street turns into another 110 onramp, but now you're past the 101 congestion and you end up in
the right lane going directly onto the 10. The 10 always piles up, so you just have to ditch off of it whenever it gets bad. In my
case it got bad right around La Brea, so i bailed out and headed down to adams. Adams all the way west til it hits fairfax, then
south to jefferson. Jefferson then will get you all the way to Marina Del Rey. So all in all not bad.
Wednesday April 14th 2004 10:10 PM PST
HOLY SHIT!!! Kobe just made two of the most incredible 3 point shots i have ever seen, and both of them were clinch plays! So after it
was all over the Lakers are the Pacific division champions. Well thanks to the Warriors beating the Queens.
As Kobe ran back toward the Lakers bench after the buzzer, Shaq and everybody else came out to celebrate. Shaq can CLEARLY be
seen saying (smiling) "MOTHER FUCKER" in the slow motion as him and Kobe celebrate the win.
Thursday April 15th 2004 11:04 AM PST
Random on the ipod just produced "Papa Loves Mambo" followed by "Bucephalus Bouncing Ball" by Aphex Twin. Somehow it
flowed together.
Thursday April 15th 2004 05:11 PM PST
Today i have done nothing but flash. ALL FLASH ALL DAY. and on a really slow ass computer it BLOWS. But i'm getting
everything done. The MAC tech here does not like me AT ALL. I wanted a copy of BBEdit on my system, so i asked yesterday.
He got around to installing it for me. Yup, thats right kiddies, i don't even have ADMIN privileges on the fuckin workstation i'm
on. Then while he was working he got all pissed off cause i'd customized EVERYTHING i could on my system. They had the
toolbar all STUPID so you don't have to use the keyboard. LOOK!! Click on GET INFO!! (dumbasses) So i pulled all the shit out
that i know the keyboard commands for. Then just to be a dork i put a shitload of spacers and breakers in the toolbar. So the
FINDER looks like crap, but it works for me. Then i changed the Expose settings, so that if you pop the mouse into the top left,
it panes all windows. Well this guy sits down and complains about my toolbar, then he tries to go to the apple menu. Well the
window that hes workin in disappears cause of the Expose pane action. so he has to go open the window again, then boom, he
pops right back into the top left and it disappears again. HEHEHEH I watched him do this over and over as he was trying to
change settings. I started to ask him to turn on apache, but as i was explaining it to him, i just gave up. About the time i was
talking about the httpd.conf file it became VERY clear that this was more trouble than it was worth. At least i've got BBEdit,
and i don't have to use TextEdit.
Friday April 16th 2004 03:35 PM PST
i was up til about 3AM last night. Jen kept me up because she needed help with her report card comments. She types them
out and then i print them on avery labels. Then she can stick them on the report cards, and she doesn't have to hand write 20
copies. Problem is, i've got a stupid way i lay out the template, and feed the printer, so Jen needed me awake to do it for
me.
Well the result is... I can't fuckin keep my eyes open. I've been dozing off all day long. I walked over to Fatburger and that
was the end of me. After lunch my body has just refused to stay alert. I even stopped by Gelson's and bought a couple can's
of AMP. All that did was make my body twitchy. My eyes still won't stay open. BUT during the day i've found a number of
really funny things with Illustrator 10 and Flash MX 2004. Now there are two basic ways to get something from Illustrator to
Flash. First you can have Illustrator do the translation from Illustrator vector data to SWF. Use the save for web option then
select SWF output. This does a decent job, but don't expect ANYTHING with gradient fills to work. The other way is to save the
ai file and then import it using Flash. Now in this case Flash does the translation. Again it does a decent job, but the gradients
fills are trashed again. Even more of a problem is the color shifting when you import a CMYK ai file into flash. Now just talking
about this is making me tired again. The end of the story is. Most of the artwork that the artist built for me is useless cause
the translations just trash it. well back to work.
Friday April 16th 2004 03:54 PM PST
there is a girl here with more Atari Teenage Riot than i could ever have imagine existed. So the day has been filled with VERY
PISSED OFF music.
on another note: a person downstairs (right over the balcony edge) has their email checking every 2 minutes. Every time a
new mail comes in it makes a sound. Its not that annoying, but the sound is the EXACT attention sound that they play before
station announcement on the Metro Gold Line. So i find myself saying, "The Next Station is... " every couple of minutes.
Sunday April 18th 2004 09:41 AM PST
while driving the one way stretch of huntington drive yesterday (next to arcadia golf course), A golf ball came down at a near
vertical trajectory to the pavement. It hit about 6 feet in front of my car while i was going about 50Mph (For Milkshake thats
about 80KMph). It bounced back so quickly that Jen missed it completely. I started laughing a very sadistic laugh thinking
about the possibility of me going just a little faster from the last traffic light. Jen asked me what the hell i was laughing about,
and at that point i realized she missed it. I quickly explained and her eyes got HUGE as she looked over at the people playing
golf. With her close contact with golf balls, i don't think she's going to drive that section of Huntington again.
Then about a few seconds later, i'm still going about 50, and now in the center lane of this road. A car turns into the flow of
traffic without looking. He turns from the left side of the street and drops directly into the center lane. And he has the
common decency to do this about 30 feet in front of me. So i have to swerve to avoid hitting him.
Two blocks later i make a left onto Colorado, and there i drop into the right lane. As soon as i make the turn there is a small
street that intersects Colorado. This street has a stop-sign Colorado has none. A nice little old woman comes barreling down
this street, ignores the stop-sign, THEN looks to her left, sees me coming right at her, and promptly slams her breaks on to
bring her to a stop directly in front of me in the right lane of Colorado. Again, i have to swerve to avoid an accident.
Then finally, i'm on the 210 freeway at the California/Colorado exit ramp (which really should be the 210/710 interchange, but
we'll get into that later). There are two lanes that may exit, and I'm in the leftmost of these two lanes. I got into this lane to
pass a LARGE truck that had made two lane changes already to get to his position of the right exit lane. (both previous lane
changes were not signaled) So go figure that as soon as i am passing this truck, he decided to make another un-signaled lane
change directly into the side of my car. Now this time, as well as to swerve (and not into another lane of traffic cause thats
just
stupid. I had to go partway onto the shoulder) I had to also use my horn cause this dumbass didn't even look when he was
making the lane change.
So i have not been in an accident in awhile. I know that my number is up. Thats just the odds of it. My odds were a lot better
a week ago when i was not driving 50 miles across los angeles every day. I guess i should not complain. I do have a job. I
guess the question i have
is... given the 4 possibilities, which accident, if all were unavoidable, would you choose to be in?
1. Golf Ball Impact (50mph)
2. Rear End the non-right-of-way merging traffic (50mph)
3. T-Bone the Old Lady(45mph)
4. Front-right side impact ("get stepped on") by a Pickup (70mph)
Wednesday April 21st 2004 11:57 AM PST
i just witnessed a mac tech sit down at my computer and do one of the dumbest things i have ever seen. On my desktop is a
icon for the primary hard drive for the computer. he click on it and hits get info. in the info window there are permissions for
the items on the hard drive. every file on the hard drive has its own permissions as far as who can read, write or execute the
file. each file has these permissions for a good reason. some files should not be writable by ALL users. Well, this mac tech sets
the little info box to owner "nobody" and then sets everything to read and write. For about 5 seconds i watch in disbelief. All
he has to do at this point is hit one button that is labeled "apply to all enclosed files" in order to fuck the computer. I stop him
and grab the mouse. I ask him if i can do one thing before he continues. I then eject my ipod and let the mac tech continue.
So now i'm on a computer that does about half of what it did about an hour ago. Half of my apps are fucked because their
prefs files are now global writable (and they don't like it). So i'm just laughing. I don't think i'm going to be on this computer
for much longer. Its just slowing me down too much.
Thursday April 22nd 2004 01:45 PM PST
I have no idea why i am so tired. I've had consumed more caffeine than a small country today. All its done is make me
twitchy. I still can't seem to stay focused. Well it doesnt seem to matter anyway. I've got one site in for review and now all i
need to do is nitpick changes. I'm waiting on an artist to complete many of them before i drop the changes in. On my other
project, i'm also waiting on the artist to complete the artwork. Well at least nobody's waiting on me right now.
Thursday April 22nd 2004 02:08 PM PST
Its beautiful outside. There is a great ocean breeze blowing and the sun is out. BUT INSIDE... i'm working in a 2 story building
thats open air in the middle. The roof has skylights that let all the sunlight in, and for the most part that's nice. The problem
is... there's not enough power for the AC to overpower the sun. The place is turning into a fuckin greenhouse, and i've gotta be
upstairs where its a LOT hotter. So every break i get i walk downstairs into the lobby. The front door stays open and theres a
wind tunnel effect about 20 feet in front of the door. You can stand there for about 30 seconds and cool off.
Friday April 23rd 2004 10:06 AM PST
Jen's going to the Zoo today with her class. So that means last night i needed to make animal nametags for the kids. We had
to make them a little different cause we didnt have the right stickers, and Staples had already closed. BUT we decided to go to
Crown City Brewery in the middle and just sit and relax. Stickers got done late after a few pints.
Friday April 23rd 2004 10:16 AM PST
Random Work Related Email: Request for work crew to clear the rooftop of a building in downtown Los Angeles.
I guess there is going to be a very large staged event done by the Army at E3. The rooftop has to be cleared because they're
probably landing something BIG on it. (can anybody say Blackhawk?) The funny thing is, they do this every year. They know
their recruiting market very well.
Friday April 23rd 2004 11:10 AM PST
Saturday April 24th 2004 10:41 AM PST
I don't care WHO THE FUCK YOU ARE, you don't ring my doorbell on a SATURDAY unless you're fucking bleeding. AND if you
ring my doorbell on a SATURDAY before NOON, then there should be a clause here that i can cause you to bleed. NOW on top
of that if you ring my doorbell on a SATURDAY and you're well dressed and you're carrying A BOOK (thats obviously "the
WORD")...i should be able to SCREAM AT YOU.
The bible has a huge missing piece of Jesus's life. Everybody knows about it, but it seems that everybody just goes along like
there's no problem. I'm willing to speculate that between the age of 12 and 30, Jesus probably slept in a few times. I'll go as
far as say he probably got pissed at people when they woke him up.
Wednesday April 28th 2004 01:14 PM PST
i started the drive home last night at about 7PM. The temperature in marina del rey when i started was just great. A little sea
breeze and it was nice and cool. I had no idea that yesterday was a record breaking day. UNTIL i really got moving. My car
was in the shade, so there was no reason right off to open the windows. I got on the 91 and then on the 405. At this point
i'm just a little inland, and the car is getting warm, so i roll down the windows going about 80 and it hits me like a blast of heat
from an oven. I couldn't fuckin believe that i'd drove less that 5 miles and there easliy had to be a 10 to 15 increase in air
temp. By the time i got home it was miserable. Even with the windows down i was roasting. No AC in the car is starting to
become a pain in the ass. But the house was hot as hell too. I got all the windows open and the fans working, but it ended up
being a really hot night.
Friday April 30th 2004 05:50 PM PST
You know how you really hate those Fridays when you have to launch a web site? Could there be a worse time to launch then
when you want to go home for the weekend. Well we were suppost to launch TWO sites today. One of em is up
Shrek 2 the GAME
Waiting for approval on the second.
