Monday August 2nd 2004 09:27 AM PST
Saturday Jen and I got up early and got her car down to Hock's honda in Alhambra. She failed smog and another repair shop had quoted
us $1000 for one part. I looked online and found an after-market part for $375, so i decided to ask Jimmy at Hock's. When we got it
down there he looked up the part and sure enough its $1000. So, he's gonna dig around and find if there is another part he can use by
another manufacturer. Meanwhile i dropped my car instead and had its major 60,000 mile service. At this point we're already late for
breakfast at the huntington, so we raced off. We got to the Huntington at about 9:15, only 15 minutes late. There was a members
pancake breakfast and Jen's father and brother were waiting for us. So we ate breakfast and started the grand tour of the grounds.
Now, we all know this place like the back of our hands, but we were there for close to 5 hours. Bob had made a Tea reservation in the
tea room, and could only get a time at about 1:30. So from about 10 to 1:30 we walked EVERYWHERE. I don't think we missed a single
gallery or garden.
So when we finally got to the tea room we were dead tired. We stuffed ourselves in usual fashion, and then headed home. Jen and I
promptly took a nap, and i heard later that Bob and David did the same.
A couple hours later, Will called and then came by with his G5. We did a full backup of his old disks and moved all the data over to his
new drives in the G5. While everything was moving over the network, we went to Mijares for dinner. Dinner took a little longer than we
had thought, cause the wait was a little long... So we headed right to the movies after dinner. (yes, if you have not already seen the
Borne Supremacy, you should go see it). We got home around midnight and got right back to work on Will's computer. Config php and
apache and a couple other things. geek fun.
Sunday was relaxing all around. Jen and I slept in and did nothing all day long. Finally at 4 we met my parents over at Jen's father's
house. He had decided it was about time all of us went to the Saddle Peak Lodge. So we headed out to Las Virgines (Jason should
recognize that one) and headed into the Santa Monica Mountains. The restaurant is an old hunting lodge that specializes in game dishes.
So everything on the menu looked extremely good. My parents seemed to really enjoy themselves, and Jen and I had a great time.
Thursday August 5th 2004 09:30 AM PST
on auto blog its mentioned that there is a
6000 pound weight limit.
Well i've been saying this since January
Monday August 9th 2004 01:46 AM PST
Jen and I were going to have a nice little dinner at Trio tonight. We've been trying to lay low for the weekend and relax, but we
thought we would get out of the house for once. I got down to Huntington Drive and Garfield and headed East on Huntington.
I came to a light at Granada and stopped. At this point i am in the rightmost lane and the first car at the light. There are a
couple cars beside me in both lanes. At this point, Trio is a little over a block away, and i can see the parking spaces for it are
ALL empty. Jen and I are already talking about it. We think at this point that they may have gone out of business. The light
turns green and a proceed East. The light at Oak Knoll a block later is also green and i proceed through the intersection. On
the other side of the intersection I begin to signal that i am going to pull over and park. Now at this point i am already slowing
down. I never had a chance to get above 40MPH and my approach to the parking place i've chosen is nothing but nice and
slow. I know this because the entire time i'm trying to figure out why there is nobody parked there, and why there is nobody
in the restaurant. The parking places are the kind of spaces set at a 45 degree angle from the street. Huntington has 3 lanes
of traffic, then almost a full lane of space between traffic and the actual parking places. I pull nicely into a space and am
approaching the curb with my bumper, when... Jen and I hear the screech. A half second later we find ourselves being pushed
sideways and up onto the curb. The guy behind me was not paying attention at all and inadvertently followed me as a moved
to my right in order to park. By the time he pulled his head out of his ass, he was already on top of us going about 35MPH.
Jen and I were a little shaken, but we got out of the car, and I asked the guy driving if everybody was alright. He and his 8-
year-old daughter were in the car. At this point he did not seem at all concerned with his own daughter. He just needed the
time to start yelling at me. His daughter is really shaken up and he could give a fuck less. Jen gets on her phone and calls San
Marino Police. She gets somebody on the phone and explains the situation, tells them that there are no injuries, and asks if
they could send an officer. Meanwhile Mr. Brains just calls 911 and starts to say that he needs Paramedics for his daughter.
Jen and I already know this is going to be a really fun situation to deal with. So we start to exchange information. Thank
(insert your favorite deity here) that the San Marino Police showed up. (now that is the first time i've ever said that). 3
Officers show up and really do the best job i think they could have. They questioned Mr. RearEnd and calmed him down. They
were extremely helpful in explaining all the options that I had. AND FINALLY, they were smart about all the evidence right
there in front of everybody. They took time to measure skid marks, note positions of the cars, the point of impact etc. The one
office that was taking a statement from me and Jen gave us the option of having the insurance companies deal with the
investigation, or let the SMPD deal with it and the report. I could tell with their observations of the crash scene that they
would be in the best position to document what was there. I will now retract all evil statements i have ever made about the
SMPD during my lifetime. They were more than helpful while working with us.
On the subject of Trio. They're closed for the summer. :( So after all that we didn't get a good meal. I guess its a lot better
that they were closed. Nobody was on the sidewalk or on the street in that block of San Marino when the accident
happened.
My car was hit in the back right wheel. It was turned inward so now it looks like a good deal of body work will need to be done
to the car. We got it towed back home, and we'll deal with it when we can.
Thursday August 12th 2004 12:24 PM PST
Don't send help. I wish i could stay here forever. Jen and I are just sitting on our asses in Avalon. We're
forgetting about the car accident we were in, and just relaxing. We've been here a couple days and still got a
couple more days to go. So far we've eaten every good place we can think of and stuffed ourselves. BUT we're
staying in Hamilton Cove, so as usual the stairs help us work off all the stuff we eat.
Well picture time.
We went up to the Inn at Mount Ada for breakfast the first day we were here. It is the most prominent HOME
in avalon, but it seems to be the best kept secret in town. Neither I or Jen had never been there, but it was a
great surprise. So we've also been to Armstrong's, Villa Portifino, and the Sandtrap. We've still gotta get over
to Buffalo Nickel, but thats probably going to be tonight.
The town itself is a zoo, but we've been swimming over in Hamilton to avoid the crowds. We took the cart out
today in the morning and visited the Inn at Mount Ada again for breakfast (yes it was that good) then we drove
all around town. We hit all the "high roads" with the great views.
Sunday August 15th 2004 09:49 AM PST
Tuesday August 17th 2004 04:43 PM PST
I met jon for lunch today at Sakura. We ordered entirely too much food, and then proceeded to eat almost all of it. I've been
in a coma since i've gotten back to work. my productivity has been affected. maybe caffiene will help :)
Wednesday August 18th 2004 01:37 AM PST
when i worked on movie web sites, it usually resulted in me NOT wanting to see any movies. So now, you'd think, that because i work on video game sites, i would not want to play video games. Well it could not be further from the truth. I picked up Doom3 the other day and have been playing like crazy. I played a little of spiderman the other day at work and i'm thinking of picking that up too. But there are a few games that i am really looking forward to. First is X-Men Legends. Now, i'm a little too close to this one, cause i'm building the promotional site for the game. But the materials that i've seen are looking great. The guys down in print have made some great package artwork, and we're ready to lauch a new section to the official site. I just want to get my hands on the game now.
BUT that's not the game i'm really looking forward to.
Rockstar is doing another Grand Theft Auto. This one titled "San Andreas". From the limited material on their site so far it is obviously set in LA and the valley probably in the 80's and 90's. It looks fuckin hot from what i've seen so far. I do have to laugh at their ESRB "bugs". They actually put a RP (rating pending) on their site. :) The ESRB should just not even bother and give them the M right off. GTA Vice was "M" and it was honestly one of the most fun games i've ever played.
Thursday August 19th 2004 09:27 AM PST
So i've gotten to a spot in the Alpa Labs Level 2 where i drop out of an air vent into an autopsy room. Inside the room is a guy
in a bio suit and he starts talking to you. If i attempt to leave this room via one hallway the game crashes. So i uninstalled,
saving my games, and then reinstalled hoping it would fix everything. I thought maybe there was a problem with one of the
pak files maybe. So i got everything back in place and then started the level over instead of loading directly into the autopsy
room. I blazed through the level and in the exact same spot it crashes. Hmmmm So now what? I can't play any further in
the single player mode, so i guess its time for mods and multiuser.
So i started digging for mods. The first one i came across was the Trent Reznor mod which includes original sound FX made by
Trent. Guns actually sound like guns and demons sound much more demonic :) I'm gonna stay away from all the cheat mods
cause it just ends up spoiling the game. But i did start to dive into the multiuser arenas. I just gotta tweak my config now to
get a stable fast framerate. If its anything like quake, the game won't look anything like it does now when i've got my config
done.
Friday August 20th 2004 10:31 AM PST
So i got 2 back to back spams (and they actually got through my spam filter) and i almost died laughing. The spammer had
inadvertently made a political joke. Both spams were for Penis Enlargement. First one to bush@iriggs.com and the second to
arnold@iriggs.com. :)
Sunday August 22nd 2004 10:00 AM PST
I started to think about my doom 3 problem. If i could just avoid the one hallway that was crashing the game, everything
would be alright. So i really felt stupid when i figured out the solution. All i had to do was turn on "noclip". This actually
allowed me to walk through walls. I got to the location that had the problem, and then just walked "outside" the walls of the
map. I could examine the hallway from the exterior of the map, and then i moved past it. I reentered the map just down from
the hallway, and NEVER looked back. So i've made it to delta Labs Level 3, and from what i hear, Jason is quickly catching up.
Monday August 23rd 2004 01:48 PM PST
Saturday Jen and I managed to waste away most of the day with stupid running around. Steve-O called at about 11:30 and
told me tickets for Inland Invasion went on sale at 12. So i hung around to buy tickets. After we had acquired 4 tickets we got
out of the house. Jen needed to get her wheels aligned and I needed to drop a DV tape at lightning dubbs. So we ran to drop
the car off in La Canada, and then ran out to the closest lightning dubbs in burbank. So we find that lightning dubbs is not
open on the weekend. Well DUH, they don't have any work to do... most of the movie studios are closed on the weekends too.
So we were a block from Dalt's Grill, so we grabbed some lunch.
We headed back to pick up the car and then just headed off to do more stupid stuff. Jen got lottery tickets and i went to radio
shak. I figured it was about time i do the little bright white LED flashlight mod. We both got home and did our own thing for
awhile, then we got ready to go over to Jen's dad house. He had invited the group of people he sits with at the LA Orchestral
Philharmonic over for cocktails before they went to that nights concert. He had also hired the 2nd chair violinist to play a little.
So Jen and I were also invited along with my parents. We all sat around having a good time, and then listened to a selection of
music that Julie (the violinist) played for us.
After the little event, Jen and I along with my parents headed out to dinner. We hit macaroni grill, and had a less than
mediocre dinner. We'll not be going back there for awhile. But after dinner we hug out with my parents and heard all about
their Peru trip. They just spent 2 weeks in Peru and had a DUMPLOAD of pictures.
Sunday i slept most of the day. I just needed to catch up. Then the rest of the day was spent finishing Doom3. Finally around
midnight i killed the final boss and completed the single player part of the game. well now onto multiplayer. I gotta relearn all
my quake moves, cause "Look, Good against remotes is one thing. Good against the living...that's something else."
Friday August 27th 2004 12:14 AM PST
So i've been working my ass off for the last 2 weeks on this site, and it finally went live.
X-Men Legends Go check out the site
Friday August 27th 2004 01:27 PM PST
Super Special Thanks to
Andy for this one.
Pleasanton Real Estate (be sure to pay attention to the 3rd picture)
Saturday August 28th 2004 10:39 AM PST
our apartment is a fuckin disaster. Jen and I have ditched the idea of sleeping all day long in the hope that we can get the apartment cleaned. So i usually start by making more of a mess. I've got a plan to do a small painting, just so i can say at the end of the year that i actually attemped to fulfull one of my newyear's resolutions. i've also got a school of fish to program. There's a ad banner we're doing at work, thats for a particular fish movie, and i've been asked to do a little work on the background FX. Trust me, this is a hell of lot better than the grunt work i was doing yesterday. That was just putting 18 new pieces of artwork and descriptions and new sale prices in 24 different banners of all different sizes. Oh, and don't forget the alt gifs. Those are always a joy too. Well its give and take. The X-Men site was a fuckin dream. The client wanted nothing but kick ass fan site, and we had a lot of fun building it. But... i don't get projects like that all the time. The rest of the time its fuckin banners.
Saturday August 28th 2004 03:22 PM PST
Sunday August 29th 2004 06:09 PM PST
so the apartment is still a mess. what did you expect? Jen and I had a lazy weekend, and Jen really got prepared for school starting tomorrow. I did get the fish done, and i actually did start the painting that i was thinking about doing.
we ended up going out to Becham last night and really having a good dinner. We order as we usually do. start off with the onion soup, and then the filet. The soup came, and actually was so pungent that it was almost offensive. BUT it tasted amazing as always. Every once in awhile you'd get a wiff of the cheeze and it almost knocked you on your ass. But we both ate without quitting. The filet came, and as always, was almost the best steak you can get anywhere. So we sat around drinking and finishing off our dinner and had a great time together.
Today we went to staples and then Bristol Farms. We ended up getting makings for lunch and dinner. We came home, and ate, and Jen headed out to put the final touches on her classroom. I sat here and painted.
I think i'm going to bed early tonight. I know as soon as the work week starts i won't be getting a lot of sleep.
Monday August 30th 2004 04:55 PM PST
If you have not already read about this incredible protest method, you really should take a look.
The bike shows creativity and technical knowhow. Just the kind of thing that tight-assed people hate.
Well, i've been reading a lot about Joshua Kinberg and his preparation to show off his new protest-printing bike. It just pisses
me off that he got shut up. The police just arrest him, throw him in a holding cell, and detain his bike. Now all his work is
ruined just because somebody doesn't want to hear his message.
I feel embarrassed to be an american today.
Monday August 30th 2004 05:36 PM PST
i give myself an hour every morning to get to work. if something goes wrong, i usually can get around it quickly and i'll only
take another couple minutes to get to work. BUT TODAY... the thing you don't count on is that construction workers pouring
the concrete for a foundation to a new skyscraper. Usually hill street flows quickly cause its 3 or 4 lanes all going one way. The
construction closed it down to one lane, and the construction guys were directing traffic so that each cement truck could pull in
one after the other. So long story short, the traffic was bad and all the streets that would get you away from the construction
were just as bad. it was a long drive.
Then i get onto la cienega where it goes over the top of culver city and into ladera heights. For once i hit the light just right
and there was NOBODY around me. Open road in front of me. So i'm going about 80. I hit the top of the hill and fly under the
bridge. Scan the bridge quick and check the onramp in front of me. DAMN! CHP getting onto the road right in front of me.
There was no chance of him pulling me over cause he was still about 200 meters in front of me, and probably had not even
seen me yet. BUT, i had to slow down to the speed limit and crawl along behind him. What a fuckin buzzkill. And my drive
had started to get better.
Tuesday August 31st 2004 10:59 AM PST
So apple has released their new iMac. A nice little G5 in this baby.
