Author: Chuck

I’ve got two posts up on SFist this week, one about an iTunes promotion and the other advertising the WonderCon. Which means that in just a few short months I’ve gone from any pretense of thoughtful opinion and commentary on tech stories, to being a shameless corporate shill.

As I find myself working for big corporations, and more and more often defending other big corporations online, I have to live in constant fear that I’m turning Republican. At the moment, I believe I’m still safe.

My friend and ex-college roommate John found this website recently and commented he’d read the archives, which prompted me to read the archives, where I discovered a couple of things:

1. I can be a really whiny little bitch.
2. I’ve been remarkably lucky to get the jobs I’ve gotten.
3. My last job was really unhealthy.

At the time, I wrote it off as sacrifices you have to make for the sake of working for a big corporation that gets the A-list titles the proper amount of exposure, and it’s the price you pay for working for something that you feel passionately invested in. Well, I’m working for another big multinational entertainment consortium at the moment, and I’m on a project that I’m emotionally invested in, and I’m making enough money to live comfortably. And it’s like night and day.

There are still hassles and frustrations and overtime, and the bonus of working from home has the concession of having no solid structure, no benefits, and no social network. This is about as close to a “perfect” job as I’m ever going to get, and it’s still not perfect because there’s no such thing. But it’s a billion times better, because there’s none of the debilitating stress episodes. Where you’re sitting in the dark at four in the morning and the walls are caving in and you’re wondering what it all means. Or, as the HR department liked to call it, “work/life balance.”

I haven’t really hit on any big epiphany yet, other than I really think it’s possible to have a job that’s rewarding and doesn’t totally consume your life. If I knew what it was, exactly, then I’d be able to write self-help books and leave this weblog bullshit to the amateurs.

Whenever I get in the middle of one of my removed-from-the-human-world phases (my friend Dan called it “Chuck Standard Time”), I have trouble remembering what day of the week it is.

When I went outside this “morning,” I had trouble remembering what month it is. February in San Francisco and it’s just shy of 70 degrees outside. It’s San Diego weather. I’ve never been to San Diego, but I’ve always heard it’s like this all the time there.

And yeah, I’ll find a way to complain about good weather. If the weather’s good, then that just means I’ve got less of an excuse to be a shut-in. When it’s cold and foggy outside, then I don’t feel so bad if I spend the afternoon browsing websites and then stay up until five AM working on Java code and then can’t get up the next morning until just before noon.

But if the damn atmosphere is going to be pulling this kind of shit on me, then that means I’m going to have to be getting up in the morning and “enjoying the day” or some such. Pah! If anyone needs me, I’ll be hunched over my IDE*.

* Integrated Development Environment — your ever-lovin’ editor!

I never signed up for the local FasTrak™ thing, even though it seems like it’d be right up my toll lane — it’s futuristic high technology of the future, using lasers and high-frequency cosmic rays to automatically detect your car; it’s tailored to absent-minded types; and it’d be another bill to pay. But I never drove over toll bridges enough to warrant it, and there’s something inexplicable that I just like about doing it the old-fashioned way: you stop, say hello, give a person some money, and there’s a 1% chance they’ll say hello back. Closest I get to Lake Woebegon Days and a simpler time.

When I worked in Berkeley and lived in Marin, I forgot my toll on the Richmond bridge a few times. They’d make me stop and fill out a little form, with all the cars behind me honking and giving me the finger and trying to get around me into another toll lane. (In my defense, there were a couple of times that I paid the toll for somebody behind me, after they asked me to). Still, no FasTrak™ for me.

By this time, it’s become kind of a philosophical issue. I don’t want it because I never had it. And when people try to sell me on it now (it’s easier, and it actually saves you money!) it just sounds to me like body snatchers or pod people.

And growing up in a household that flirted with fundamentalist Christianity off and on, I saw a lot of televangelists with a lot of wacky theories; one of the wackiest being that ATM cards and/or the UPC code were the Mark of the Beast prophesied in Revelations. Maybe some of that stuck with me, because while I’m fine with ATMs and actually think bar code scanners are neat, I’m still subconsciously averse to being part of a big government conspiracy in league with Satan.

So a couple of weeks ago, I was driving back to the city from Marin and got to the bridge before I realized I didn’t have money for the toll. It was late, so I wasn’t backing up traffic, and I just told the guy that I didn’t have any cash on me. Instead of making me fill out a form, he just said, “Okay, we’ll send you a bill.” I asked if I needed to do anything else, and he said that that was it.

I remember thinking at the time, well that’s progress. No hassle for people, and I just get a bill with a little fee tacked on, and the world returns to normal.

Today I got a “NOTICE OF TOLL EVASION” from the FasTrak™ customer service center. It had a photo of my offending vehicle and a reminder that “penalties or fees may be charged if the proper toll is not paid.” Fair enough, I thought, and I’ll just write a check for the five dollar bridge toll and the… twenty-five dollar toll evasion penalty!

That’s right, the penalty isn’t the 5-10 dollars it’s been in the past, but five times the bridge toll itself. The fast and courteous service of your Bay Area toll takers doesn’t come for free, apparently.

But wait! There’s still hope, thanks to the friendly folks at FasTrak™. If you’re a first-time violator, you can have your penalty waived, simply by opening a FasTrak™ account! Once lost as nothing but a mere deadbeat, I can find redemption for the mere cost of a $30 transponder that I affix to my dashboard and take with me wherever I go.

Hail Satan!

Continuing my fixation on things Japanesey, here’s a video from YouTube about sushi etiquette.

Big laughs with two Fs. (Okay, it’s more wry than big laughs, but it’s worth the wait.)

Also on YouTube is that SNL sketch where Chris Farley’s character goes on a Japanese game show.

Update: I removed the video because the publishers don’t like it distributed on the internets. Which is understandable; it’s clearly more professional than a fan-made movie. It’d be cooler if the company made it clear how to get a legit copy, but until then it’s better to deal with region issues and let people get proper credit & money for their work. (And I’m leaving the YouTube links because I’m a hypocrite who’s noble about copyright law only to the point where I can say “not my problem.”)

The Wondercon is next weekend! How exciting is that?!?

Come on! We can see clips from the new Superman movie! And Frank Miller! And Kevin Smith! And there’s going to be “exclusive Star Wars programming,” which as far as I can make out from the website means that Lucas Licensing is going to be recruiting.

I’m going — getting the three-day pass, even — but I’m troubled by my own lack of enthusiasm. This is the kind of thing that would get me visibly excited in the past. Now I’m still every bit the nerd that I was when I wrote gushing fan letters about Sandman to Neil Gaiman with my GEnie account, but I’m having trouble seeing the Wondercon as anything more than something inevitable that I’m going to go to and is going to be crowded and filled with people dressed up as stormtroopers and anime characters and my feet are going to hurt.

I’m old, but I’m not that old. It’s way too early for me to be getting jaded. I do want to see if I can get Mike Mignola to sign one of my copies of Hellboy or The Amazing Screw-On Head. So maybe I can work up some excitement by digging through my protective plastic bags to find just the right comic for him to sign.