Wednesday October 1st 2003 12:03 AM PST
You know that you go to Mijares far too often when the owner tells you he likes your haircut. Jen is a little
shocked with how short it is. She could not keep eye contact with me during dinner. Her eyes would wander
up to the top of my head as she tried to take it all in.
Wednesday October 1st 2003 12:37 AM PST
Last week George called me asking if i could do a little rush design job. Nothing too hard, just a few elements
for the Epic store. He needed to push a few areas around and was planning to get rid of the shoes section in
the back of the store. So long story short, he asked me to do 4 panels at 48 x 20 inches. Two were going to be
printed for light boxes and the others were just going to be dry mounted and put on shelve units. He came
over and we threw a few ideas around. The entire section was going to be for all the Paul Frank merchandise he
sells, so that made things easy. So i spend most of the night screwing around with a few ideas and trying to
make the WRONG stuff work. Finally at about 3 AM i broke down and just started over simple. I kept all the
colors bright and simple and stuck to the really bold logo elements. I took a CD with all the stuff over the next
day and George loved the stuff i had come up with, he just needed to get it all printed. He told me he was
expecting to spend around $500 for the prints. My jaw dropped. I told him that if he was paying that much he
was really getting take. I immediately got on the phone with the guys over at
Adage Graphics and got a price quote for around $300. So i upload all the files
to their ftp server and they say we can pick it up on Friday. Now after i left i got a little worried. I used these
guys all through college and they never screwed up a single job. I just started to worry that they might still not
have the same job quality. George put the stuff up Friday and rearranged the store. I was in avalon at the
time, but when i got back Sunday i dropped in just to check the stuff out. Ok, i really need to get back to
building things and making artwork. They came out perfect! I really felt so good seeing something that i had
spent most of the night working on come out looking really good.
Thursday October 2nd 2003 12:09 AM PST
HOLY SHIT!!! Did anybody else hear the new FLUKE (other than Will, and BTW thanks for telling me about this)
I know i am going to catch hell for attempting to write a music review, but damn. I'm always turned on by
angst, so when fluke started sounding more like something between front 242, KMFDM and a little Trent
Reznor, you better fuckin expect me to like it. These guys brought you every fuckin sound you're hearing in all
those shit car commericals, including Atom Bomb, which finally has hit as the new big shit in every BAD (and i
mean really SHITTY) trailer for every piece of shit hollywood is trying to sell the male 12 to 21 demographic. I
don't mean to make this a fuckin history lesson, but remember Wipeout. Wipeout had been out for over a year
when i finally found it, and at that point Atom Bomb was already an OLD song. All i can think of now is saying...
"what the fuck is Red Bull?" as you flew your fuckin AG system past billboard after billboard. So as always i've
missed the point. The new Fluke entitled "puppy" is still the same heart pounding techno, but you will get
something you don't expect. They've really pumped up the low end. There is more distortion and base on this
one than i could ever imagine. The overall sound is much more dark. I'll say that their numbing loops almost
border on Daft Punk, but they are not that happy. I don't think i'm making any sense, but i will say that this is
the first album i've heard in a long time that isn't just overproduced bullshit.
Thursday October 2nd 2003 07:01 PM PST
29 reasons why i want to leave california
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Collateral Damage
6th Day, The
End of Days
Batman & Robin
T2 3-D: Battle Across Time
Jingle All the Way
Eraser
Junior
True Lies
Last Action Hero
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Kindergarten Cop
Total Recall
Twins
Red Heat
Running Man, The
Predator
Raw Deal
Commando
Red Sonja
Terminator, The
Conan the Destroyer
Conan the Barbarian
Scavenger Hunt
Villain, The
Stay Hungry
Long Goodbye, The
Hercules in New York
I honestly have this vision of a mythical high school where the quarterback of the championship football team
becomes class president. WAKE UP EVERYBODY. THIS DUMB FUCK HAS NO EXPERIENCE!!!!!
Friday October 3rd 2003 01:40 AM PST
i need help. I'm working late again and flipping channels. Now what is fuckin wrong with me? i'm doing flash
animations of lion family blowing themselves up in natural gas home accidents, and watching Crash at the same
time. I was watching it for about 30 minutes before i noticed the sick humor of the combination of the two.
Well back to explosions.
(one last thing)
I just can't get my James Spader sighting out of my head for some reason. Just talking to him inside a Toys R
Us, just makes watching this movie all the more strange.
Saturday October 4th 2003 01:27 PM PST
So after a nice little dinner, i headed off to Zen Sushi to see Chris play the louge with the "Nick Luca Trio". It was not at all what i expected. Last time i saw him in Los Angeles, he ws with a band called Interlocking Grip. They were really just a little college town rock band, so that's what i thought i was in for last night. Instead they just played good laid back rock, almost a good jaz session, all they need is a sax player. Anyway, it was a good time.
Today i gotta get a bunch of work done. I've got Glenn checking in on me and i've gotta still get a couple things done for him.
Monday October 6th 2003 03:03 AM PST
There is one type of project that i can never pass up. Its the last minute, rush job, against all odds, uphill climb,
technically impossible, CD-ROM presentation. I've done a few in my time, so when Brian and Wendy called me
today asking for a little backup, i couldn't resist. So i went and hung out with them and drank. Its a hard job.
In between beers and food and wine i think we actually got some work done. Most of it was compression
drinking. (thats the time you've got when you're waiting for video to compress, and all you do is drink) So we
finally hit a nice little setting in Media Cleaner 5 that would let us have a good piece of video playing at 800x600
and still come off a CD-ROM without waiting too long. The really funny part about it is... I dragged my windoze
box over there to work on, and i actually was compressing video really fast. I always used to do this at 5555
and faction, and i took FOREVER. Back then i was using a radius board and compressing to sorenson on a old
G3. This was really nice cause it was the first time i really did compression using a 2.2Ghz processor. I still
think its funny compressing quicktime on a windoze box.
Monday October 6th 2003 11:14 AM PST
Ok, one last time just to be sure everybody is clear...
no recall.
nuff said.
Wednesday October 8th 2003 12:08 PM PST
So now that the circus is over, what are the TV networks going to do? So now that everything has happened the way it has, i really should have learned my lesson. Never be suprised by anything that happens in California.
Thursday October 9th 2003 12:59 PM PST
Horray for WILL!!!! he got us tickets to the HUGE movie event of the year. Yes thats right kids, we're gonna sit for 12 hours watching nothing but Lord of the Rings. AND in the FRONT ROW of the Cinerama Dome. Well its actually the arclight, but who cares. Our eyes will be burning and our necks will be cramped, but we will have seen all 3 movies back to back to back.
In other news...
I just got back from an interview that i've been waiting for for a long time. I think its time that i get back into the groove of the business and stop sitting on the fuckin sidelines. Even if i don't get this job, i'm already on my way to getting something else. Freelance shit it ready to kill me (and Jen) and i'm done. I've turned down a few little jobs here and there to clear out my schedule so i can start quickly if i need to. I actually told these guys that i can start monday. i really hope they bite. It would make me so happy getting no sleep all weekend long trying to find somebody else to do a whole lot of flash work on my last remaining client's project. Well i guess what i am saying is that i am ready. Ready to work for the man. Ready to have a business card again. Ready to have my cubespace again. Ready to have a place to show off my action figures. Ready to have an aeron again.
oh, and i gotta go to fuckin Jury Duty tomorrow.
and not JUST jury duty. GRAND JURY duty. I really can't afford to do this right now. I'm maknig this move and they hit me with this shit. I'll take 1 or 2 weeks no problem on a fuckin trial jury, but 6 to 12 MONTHS!!! I can't do that kind of time without it having serious effets on my MONEY! anyway in the interview today it was recommended that i wear a charles manson shirt.
Friday October 10th 2003 11:08 AM PST
I got up at the ass crack of dawn today to go to court. I figured on the worst case scenario, so i gave myself an
hour to get downtown. Well, 12 minutes later i remembered how fast i can get to downtown. I honestly spent
more time waiting outside the music center trying to get into the parking garage than to drive the entire way
from my house. So this is a Federal Grand Jury Selection, and the people came from all over. I really felt bad
for a guy sitting next to me that drove down from San Louis Obispo. So they made us sit for a long time. Well
what did you figure? Then they divided us up to the people that are going to serve and those ready to give their
lame ass excuses. Well i went with the lame asses. After waiting again i talked to a judge that didn't say more
than 2 things to me. "Yup, i'm gonna excuse you" and "have a nice day". I'll still serve on a petit jury
sometime after the 1st of the year, but at that point i really will have the time to be able to do it.
In other news...
Interview went well... but they did not hire me full time. Instead they have decided to give me a little 2 week
test run. That's good with me. I'll get some money and both parties will be able to see if they like the other.
Jen is really happy about it. So am i.
Jen's getting ready to leave for the weekend. She's hanging out with the girls in Palm Springs this weekend for
Annie's little bachelorette spa blast. Jen has been shopping for clothing, because after leaving the sorority and
becoming a teacher, she doesn't have any loose-fitting, low-cut, "skank" outfits. She had to stock up. I have a
feeling they will have a good time. Hopefully the police will not have to be involved.
Monday October 13th 2003 02:10 PM PST
So there is not a decent MAC in sight. I've entered the world of WINDOZE. I think i am the only person with a MAC in the office and its an OLD G3 running 9.1 YUCK! I've been set up on outlook, have a new email address and am all connected to the internal file servers. So i'm taking twice as long to go through flash files cause i'm just not that fast in the windoze environment. Well, i'm fast, just not as fast as i would be on a mac. So anyway... you'd think that at least i would have a kick ass box... right. I don't even want to look, but the monitors alone tell the story. 2 side by side 15 inch viewsonics. And anybody who knows me, knows that if it can't display 1600x1200 its a piece of shit. So i'm stuck in a place that really don't feel comfortable in. I just wish i could see all the windows of all my open applications. Here's a fuckin question for Bill Gates.... If its called windows, why the fuck don't application windows act like windows. I have flash open... the document in flash cannot move beyond the bounds of the flash application window. The windows version of a window is a container that does not need to be there. The application window is now open, and it takes up the area of the two monitors. If i MAXIMIZE it, it now will fill only one monitor. Hmmm? Thats not right. Now even when its open and covering everything, i still cant see my desktop. Well, i could go on and on, but i just forgot, i have a mac waiting for me when i get home.
Monday October 13th 2003 11:44 PM PST
i made an entry today and it got killed. For some reason, the ISP for my workplace just died out at the moment
i posted and it lost the entry. I couldn't tell cause nothing came back, i just hoped for the best. Well it didn't
get through. So now i my rewrite. But i know its not going to be as good the second time around.
hmmmm
what did i say the first time?
The guys i work with complain about the drive. Many live around the hollywood and silverlake area. So i
they're drive takes an hour. I got up late today and made it in 30 minutes. i left at 9:30 and made it by 10
exactly. I guess i finally figured that i should follow the law of driving in Los Angeles. "NEVER TAKE THE
FREEWAY" So i broke the law for a brief few minutes while i was on the 110, but that was all. So it was
something like... 110 to hill exit. south on hill to 3rd. west on 3rd through the tunnel. back onto the 110
(broke the law again for 1.5 miles) offramp to the 10 west, but don't get on the 10. Exit hoover instead. Just
gain sight of USC and head west on Adams. Adams all the way to fairfax (this is the HUGE trick). Fairfax (and
la cienega) to Jefferson, and jefferson to slauson and the office. So it works great. I actually was shocked how
quick it was.
So then being in the culver city area for lunch, it was only a short drive to playa del rey. I hadn't been to Senor
G's for lunch in YEARS so i had to check it out. Ben (the owner) is still running the place and the food is still
great. After lunch i headed back up to Manchester parkway and ran by LMU just to make my skin crawl.
Headed back by the house i used to live in and back to work.
I think i missed a few subtle details that i might have made the first time around, but who fuckin cares. Off to
bed, i am a working man now. (well only for 2 weeks)
Tuesday October 14th 2003 06:06 PM PST
so today was boring. I had too little to do and didn't have a whole lot of help. So in the long run i got everything done that i needed to do, but it took me 5 times longer than it should have. A good point of the day was a little trip to lunch with Jon Simon. I AIMed him today saying that i was again in the mood for good mexican fud. So i met him at El Abajeno and we hung out and just caught up on shit. Back to work where i built a seed sequence generator and finished off some encryption. I sent an encrypted string to Ian, the head geek here, and he claimed that he could crack it in 15 minutes. So, a few hours later he told me he got pulled away on something else.... :) Well its only 8-bit encryption, it shouldn't be that hard to crack. So if anybody else would like to give it a shot...
fcqfdabW88MKUQ=#%nfgpd~|$+)/)+cumweikndecxinaatb/"&"..,evrjxm2mmpp82{{}kyx|{jce{|z(##
Wednesday October 15th 2003 03:07 PM PST
So with all the talk of engrish.com i had to browse a little myself. So i found the most appropriate gift for my next door neighbor.
Damn Damn Damn If you're lucky when you're over at my house you'll hear the lady next door scream "Damn Damn Damn". Jon and Kate had both heard it when they lived in the same apartment. So i finally identified the lady one day while i was standing in my office. I actually watched her drop something in the alley and when it broke she spewwed forth the explitives. I was so happy that i had actually witnesses it first hand. Jon and Kate were never lucky enough to see the lady as she screamed, but only hear her. There was much speculation about who it actually was, but now that i know i might try to track down one of these shirts and attempt to ship one to her.
Thursday October 16th 2003 10:02 AM PST
So i took all surface streets across all of Los Angeles today. Its not much faster, but its much more interesting. None of the just sitting in one place on the freeway. I actually got to see a little part of Los Angeles that i had never been through. I took Montery all the way down to Huntington and then onto De Soto. De Soto goes forever, so i just kept going and going. When i finally hit 37th i figured i was far enough south to head west and avoid most of the downtown Los Angeles traffic. I hit an industrial zone in the city of Vernon. Gawd DAWM. I have never seen so many HUGE machine shops and industrial plants all slammed together in ONE PLACE. I must have drove for 10 minutes without seeing anything else. Anyway, 37th didnt have a crossing to the railroad, so i headed back north to Washington and took it accross. Then back to the old routine. Washington, hoover, adams, fairfax, jefferson. Now that i think about it, i wonder if i could make it across most of Los Angeles on streets only named after american presidents or famous people. I'll go drive over to Lincoln later today when i get lunch.
Thursday October 16th 2003 10:10 AM PST
So i am finally reading daypop and i saw this.
A G5 Mac Supercomputer. This is just so damn cool. All off-the-shelf components and only at a cost of a little over 5 million US dollars.
Thursday October 16th 2003 04:48 PM PST
I went to LMU. Most people know that. I also lived in Westchester during this time. Just off 76th street. So when i was on the 405 i would get off at the Howard Hughes exit. Back then there was NOTHING there. Well, i don't want to get into an argument about this.... so there was only an empty lot there. A HUGE EMPTY lot. I don't know how many acres it was but it ammounts to about 5 square city blocks. So i missed what happened. Now this area is home to a number of office buildings and a large mall. I thought this type of thing only happened in Orange County. You drive by a place one week.... and then next week.... there's 42 different restarants to choose from before you see a movie at a theater with 73 screens right after you've worked out at the 4 story gym next to the office building that there are 5 start ups in. So anyway, Jon Simon and I headed out to what most people call "the bridge" which is actually the name of the theaters there. The mall is actually called the Promenade at Howard Hughes. Yawn. So there's a choice of all the comforts of home. (see the beginning of "the beach") Jon and I went to Islands for lunch where we both talked about how utterly bored we both are. Its thursday and the workweek is grinding to an end. The bridge offered me no real boost the way i actually thought it would when Jon suggested it for lunch. I think i might take a page out of Wendy's playbook and head off to some spot on the other side of the globe. Well not this weekend. Can't miss the wedding. This is the one we've been waiting for. I sit here bashing Orange County and that's where i'm spending the weekend. Maybe if i get a chance after everything is over i'll head out to Dromo 1 and have a few more laps.
Monday October 20th 2003 08:33 AM PST
Monday October 20th 2003 01:27 PM PST
So back to work. I've been initiated into the debugging system here and now i have the great experience of responding to bug reports and fixing bugs across multiple platforms. The most fun bug so far has been an error with Netscape 7 on OSX. Well i didn't think there were any OSX boxes here at all. I was wrong. I was directed to a room full of testing computers that has any and all combinations of old operating systems and outdated browsers and plug-ins. SO on top of that the OSX box was running on a blue g3. TALK ABOUT SLOW. It should be illegal to run OSX on a box like that and expect it to be a workstation. Its fine for a sever. Actually better than fine. I've got a beige g3 running OSX and it hasn't had a reboot since i came back from hawaii.
anyway, i am getting off topic.
i've been testing and debugging all day so far, and i think i'm gonna doing it the rest of the day. Well at least i am getting paid.
Jen and I talked about the job last night. I think it comes down to this. I've been working at home and i don't motivate to do anything. So at the end of the week there is nobody to blame but myself for nothing getting anything done. Even though i don't like many aspects of working across la in an office.... At the end of the week, i did get something done, and i did get paid for it. well back to the grind.
Monday October 20th 2003 01:41 PM PST
so people just hate
George W, but these guys have the right idea. There's gotta be nothing worse than a voodoo curse to just piss of a religious freak. I think we should go one step further and performe a ritual to convert him to the islamic faith. The only problem is.... he'd probably try to tell the people of the world that his new goal is to protect everyone from voodoo rituals.
Tuesday October 21st 2003 07:31 AM PST
PM Delivery 10/24
panther.
I'll be up most of the night playing with it.
Tuesday October 21st 2003 05:27 PM PST
bored again. i am sitting waiting til i can go home. I know i waste a lot of time working from home, but when i'm sitting somewhere else doing nothing, its really annoying. I did get a lot done today, and i impressed myself by being able to write javascript that actually will work on netscape and IE at the same time. Well, only a few more days left and then back to workin in the little cave on a couple of macs.
Wednesday October 22nd 2003 07:08 PM PST
OMFG look!!! I'm still at work. I have not done this shit in so long! I totally forgot how much it fuckin sucks not being able to have dinner with my wife. Which last night's dinner was great BTW. We went to Islands for a cheep-ass dinner and stuffed ourselves. BUT tonight, i don't know where she is, and i'm not going to be home for awhile. SO... what good has come out of all this? Well i'll be able to drive REALLY FAST when i do get on the road.
speaking of driving fast. What's the worst buzzkill you can think of on the pasadena freeway? Yup you guessed it. Getting on the freeway right behind a highway patroll. On that north end of the freeway all the way up to the s curve under the train tracks.... you can usually hit around 90 and have a great time running the turns. Well i was going 55 today and it sucked. The rest of the drive was a little strange. I started throwing in a few random turns here and there to see if i could find a faster way to work. Well don't ask me how, but the drive ended up running through parts of Hollywood. AND it took just as long as it usually does. I guess i'm still looking for that mythical street where there are always green lights, no police, not a bump in the pavement, and NO OTHER FUCKIN CARS!!
Thursday October 23rd 2003 12:54 PM PST
I was listening to Eliot Smith today on the way into work. I had no idea that he passed away on the 21st. I am such a newbie fan, and i never would have known he died if it wasn't for daypop.
Friday October 24th 2003 07:50 AM PST
Flipping channels just now i caught a little bit NBC was covering about the Concord's last flight. They had a little
video of the plane so i actually stopped for a second to see what they were saying. all i heard was Katie Couric
say to Matt Lauer, "you know the concord flies faster than the sun..." in that moment i understood exactly
what she was saying, but i flipped the channel because i was so disgusted that millions of people watching might
actually think now that the plane flies faster than the sun moves around the galaxy.
In other pieces of disgust... Yesterday i was driving to work and there was a group of little school children on the
sidewalk in Los Angeles. They were all dressed up looking good for the day, and either their Principal or Teacher
or Some Administrators were talking to them. I was at a light and these people were about half way into the
next block. Just as the light turns green, the two administrators step off the curb without looking and jaywalk
right into traffic, almost getting hit by a LARGE truck in the process. Talk about setting up a good example. It
either ends two ways... You get fucking plastered into the pavement by a vehicle, thus leaving all these 6 and 7
year old children with the memory of your death. OR You set up the idea that this is the way to cross the
street.
Sorry, stepping down from the soapbox.
Friday October 24th 2003 02:03 PM PST
"Only with Mac OS X can you run Microsoft Office, Quark XPress and Adobe Photoshop, browse a Windows
network and use Unix commands ? at the same time."
--from the apple site
Friday October 24th 2003 04:37 PM PST
How do you spell "HAPPY"?
Tonight i spell it "APPLE".
They brought back LABELS!!! YAY!!! Why did they go away in the first place? Glad to see them back.
Sunday October 26th 2003 04:24 PM PST
I just came back from old town. I made a little trip to the apple store to try to get some junk for my computer. Well, didn't get anything. So on the way back i'm headed down Fair Oaks. Some guy is moving through traffic, so i end up right behind him, cause he's got the right idea. Then at the 110 onramp as we're approaching the red stoplight he slams his breaks on as hard as he can and locks up his tires. Not a problem for me cause i'm at least 100 feet behind him. And thats where i start to get confused. It takes me another 5 to 10 seconds to come to a stop behind him. I was not anywhere near the guy when he decided to slam on his brakes, but it seems that he was just a little pissed off. So i'm already laughing as i approach him, cause its not every day that you see somebody lock their car up for no reason whatsoever. So this is where is gets really funny. I guess this guy didn't like the fact that i was laughing, cause he rolled down his window and started thowing every obscene figure gesture that i've seen used in cultures in the US and UK. Now i just lost it. I let out the biggest belly laugh and started slapping my steering wheel. This guy was having a really bad day and i think he needed some love. So the light turns green and he peels out into a 25 mph zone and as soon as he's about 50 feet in front of everybody he slams on his breaks again. Now i don't know exactly what he was doing, but when he changed lanes and did it in front of other poeople, then i was really confused. For a second i thought he was pissed at me, and i can understand that. I piss off people on the road. But when he slams his brakes on in front of an old woman in a caddy, then... fuck i don't know what. This guy needs help.
Sunday October 26th 2003 08:38 PM PST
Just had a great dinner with my parents at Mijares. The food is always great and the drinks..... well DAMN. You
know if you've been there. So now Jen and i think we're gonna walk over to planet starbucks to get our fix.
We'll be back in a few.
Monday October 27th 2003 08:20 PM PST
it must be monday. I worked my ass off most of the day. At about 3:30 i had a client over to look at the work i
had been doing. He spent about 30 minutes on the phone with his partner talking about how the work was
good, but really need to be changed AGAIN. I had agreed to drive down to Palm Springs to install the new
version of their software on the kiosk in a children's museum. As the client it leaving i ask him in a very
informal way, if there is a delay on the check that should have arrived on the 15th of this month. He pauses at
the door and then moves back into my living room and sits down on my couch. He explains that somehow they
have paid me more than they expected and more than was originally in the scope of work. At this point i just
smile and say "ok, no problem, i'll talk to you friday" I literally walk the guy out of my house. So here's how it
is. I've been working for 3 months on a little project. The scope of work was laid out in July and everything has
been going according to plan. Now they've decided to stop paying me after they've only paid 60% of the money.
The really funny part is that i've done over 75% of the work AND i've done more and more little projects for
them that were never in the scope of work. Well... it was really nice of them to tell me about this now on the
27th, when the last payment was due on the 15th. This is really why i never want to do contract work again.
I'm sick of playing games. I've been spending the last few hours writing a little document that i'm going to have
my legal council take a look at. I've done work that these guys owe me money for, and there is no way i'm just
going to roll over without a fight. Well, the best part is that one of the little "side projects" that i did (with no
pay i guess) is a website that collects comments from a group that they sent a mass mailing to. The comments
are sent to their office so that they can collect the data and work with it. Well lets just say all the data is being
recorded, but its not going anywhere near their email inbox. RULE #1: don't fuck with me! RULE #2: when
you realize that I AM in control of your website, its usually a good idea to keep me me happy.
Wednesday October 29th 2003 08:22 AM PST
Tuesday was much better. I headed over to work for a client that i actually CARE about. Epic sports has been a
lot of work, AND the site STILL has not gone live, but they're fun to deal with. They've paid me a lot of money,
and i've actually done things for them that are FUN to do. So i went over there to shoot more merchandise
yesterday and make the final photo and shipping decisions for the site. Hopefully this time we'll get the site live
and start making them money.
As i was working at epic i remembered that Tony Hawk Underground came out, so i ran next door to grab a
copy. George and Vera always laugh cause i get they new Tony Hawk the day it comes out every time. They
actually have a PS2 Kiosk in their store on the quik side, and they always have a really old game in it. Anyway, i
started playing the game and i'm impressed. Neversoft did a lot of simple things right, and when you play the
game they all make it better.
First off, you used to gain stats by finding little floating logos. That seemed a
little obscure back in the old games, but that was the way it was. NOW, you actually have a list of objectives for
each kind of stat point. So if you want to increase your manual stats, you first have to manual for 5 seconds,
then 7 then 10. Same thing for ollie, speed, air, etc.
Second, you can actually get off the board and run
around. DUH, this one was easy. So now its almost like tomb raider when you're off the board. You can jump
up on buildings, climb over fences, and drop into halfpipes and pools from rooftops. nice simple one, and all it
really does is make the game more real.
Third, the goals are actually fit to a story line. THPS4 did a little of this. The goals fit a little to the environment,
like you were in the ZOO level and the elephant went on a rampage. Now in this one, its a little more
believable. You're a little nobody skater and you're want to live the life of a skate rock star, so you try to
impress people, make skate videos, get sponsored and win competitions. Oh, and all of this while running from
drug dealers and skitching behind cars to launch ramp across a river that's guarded by cops. Ok, so some of the
story is a little crazy.
All in all i just love the fact that your characters best friend is a hard core PYRO. In the first chapter he lights a
drug dealers car on fire cause they stole his deck. Then he just sits and watches the flames like the little freak
that he is.
Ok, anyway, only other feature thats great is the internet link for high scores and online play. All the scores
online are already out of control. People are hitting 23 million on a lot of levels. Well now i gotta get back to
work, so i'm gonna put the controller down for today. :(
Thursday October 30th 2003 10:50 AM PST
So i worked on a little bug for Media Revolution last night. I struggled with the code for an hour and finally realized that the version of the script that i was working with was a week old and did not include a few little additions i made. So today i got up early and drove into the office here in culver city to fix the bug. An hour and a half drive later and i find that two lines of code had to be commented out of a php script to fix the problem. :) isn't life great. Well at least it got fixed. It was my fault in the first place, i just don't know how i missed it.
So now i'm in culver city and gonna head back home. I don't want to leave cause the air is so much cleaner out here. well back on the road.
and i'll tell you the worst part of the day is that my MP3 player is not charged.
Friday October 31st 2003 07:57 AM PST
So the client that stopped paying me has been calling. I think they've figured out that after 5 calls (that i have
not returned) that something is up. So the last phone call was just at 7:30 AM. That's just not right. So i am
completely expecting Glenn to just show up at my doorstep next. Today is going to be fun. I can already tell.
