Chuck

Back to School

My first day on the new project is over, and it went pretty well as far as I can tell. I’m really excited about the project itself (which I can’t say anything about because of all the NDA’s and such), although that excitement is probably causing me to show off more of my Disney fandom than I’d like to. Hey, my career strategy so far has been “try to get a job at a company you’re a fan of and then work the hell out of it until you’re burnt out,” and that’s worked out okay so far.

The environment seems to strike a good balance between professional and super-talented, and laid-back. I’m still wary of getting too excited about any job after working for LucasArts, but so far all signs point to yes.

There’s going to be more travel down here to LA than I’d expected, but that’s probably an advantage. The bad side is my anti-LA bias that I’ve already made apparent; the good side is that it’s nice to actually see the people you’re working with. Plus, it should help structure my time better than “wake up, pour Coke, smoke cigarette, turn on computer, begin working.” And of course all that time spent on BART and at airports is life-affirming, in much the same way that people waking up from year-long comas resolve to live more fulfilling lives.

So now I’ve just got to figure out what to do with any down time in LA I might have. I’ve gotten some suggestions so far that I’ll try to check out. I’m not much of a club guy anyway, and going to nightclubs alone in a foreign city seems… well, I’ll probably end up doing it, but not until I’ve exhausted my theme park opportunities. The LaBrea Tar Pits are out because I hate redundancy; I would only go there to use a nearby ATM machine and type in my PIN number. And Santa Monica and the coast are out because I don’t like beaches (so I guess you could say I’m a playa hater)*.

*If you’re here from a link on the SDMB: yes, that’s the second time I’ve used that lame pun. Get your own blog if you think you can do better!

I’m Moderately Displeased with LA

Turns out my hotel is a short hike from Universal Studios. I can do without the theme park — I’m assuming it’s pretty much the same as Orlando’s version — but having the City Walk relatively close to the hotel is a nice bonus.

Last time I went to the City Walk was over an E3 weekend, and I ended up seeing Battlefield Earth with some coworkers. So my memories of the place are traumatic at best. But tonight, my flight was delayed two hours, so I didn’t get in until after 10 PM. The place is a lot more subdued at 10 PM on a Tuesday; no crowds to speak of, and the loud, giant TV screen was playing Alison Krauss videos instead of that loud hippity-hop music all the kids like. Plus, getting in late meant none of the arriving-in-LA-after-a-six-hour-drive-to-find-sinus-clogging-heat syndrome. Just a short flight into an airport named after Bob Hope, which was playing “Dead Man’s Party” (interesting choice for an airport) and other 80’s songs on the PA system, and a reasonably easy suburban drive to a theme park hotel, all in clear 70-degree weather.

You could even say it’s “pleasant.”

But internet access from the hotel is ten bucks a night. Garrr! Fucking LA!

Some Alone Time with Mickey

You’ve just quit your job, spent a month unemployed, and turned old! What are you going to do now?

I’m going to Disneyland on Thursday, which proves that even something as awful as having to go to Los Angeles can have a silver lining. They’ve had a big 50th Anniversary celebration, and I’ve been curious to see what all is going on, but afraid to go because of the crowds. Hopefully on a weekday, it’ll be less insane. (Walt Disney World over the week after Memorial Day was nuts).

Used to be that the idea of going to a Disney park by myself would just seem miserable, but now I’m actually kind of looking forward to it. I hope that’s a sign that I’m just getting more mature, not that I’m getting more creepy anti-social.

Thirty-Four

One more year down without my dying, but I sure gave it the old college try last night. I hung out with a bunch of friends at the Crow Bar for a repeat of last year’s birthday. I’d said last year I wasn’t going to do that again — said it on the internets, as a matter of fact — but last Monday around 2 AM I decided I’d better do something to celebrate it.

Early reports say I had a good time last night, but I’m not the one to ask. I do remember what seemed like dozens of people asking me repeatedly if I needed another drink, and considering how much it hurts to type right now, I must’ve answered “yes” every time. Based on the contents of my pockets, I went to a restaurant that serves sugar — I have vague memories of lasagna (at least, I hope that was lasagna) and I hope that I paid for it or that someone paid for it on my behalf.

As much as I’m enjoying the Memento-like intrigue of this morning, standard apologies for anything inappropriate you believe I said or did and can convince me that I really did say or do it. And if for some reason you’re reading this and are just now hearing about it, because I was putting the invite together around 2 AM from an address book that hasn’t been synched up in 6 months and I neglected to invite you, then apologies go double.

Everyone who showed up: thanks loads for coming out! I had a blast, it was a great way to celebrate the birthday, and I really appreciate your coming. Everyone who didn’t show up or I forgot to invite: don’t worry, you didn’t miss anything.

Now I’m going to lie down and see how long it takes Advil to start working.

Cards v0.1

A while ago, Rain was saying that she didn’t have a version of solitaire for the Macintosh I made her buy. So I offered to write one. There are plenty of versions already out there, but I have my reasons. I’ll list them, in fact:

I’ve never seen a freeware one that’s as lightweight and simple as the versions that come free with Windows.
I need practice with Java and still need to learn Mac OS X programming.
I can mess around with the images.
I believe that all game programmers are required by law to have written a version of solitaire or Tetris at one point.
Just felt like it, okay?

So here it is. (That’s a direct link to the zip file). It only runs on Mac OS X, and it’s very simple but still kinda large and slow what with the images and with its being written in Java and all. I think it works; I tested it until I got sick of playing Klondike. One thing: double-clicking on a card or stack of cards will immediately move it to the first location where it fits.

Plans for future improvement, if I ever get around to it:

Add FreeCell.
Animate the cards moving into place instead of just popping them there.
Save the state of the game when you shut down the app.
Add Blackjack and maybe Poker.

Also note that the card back images of Vincent D’onofrio and Mark Ruffalo (no, I can’t tell them apart, either) were at the request of my patron.

007something

Five discs down on “Alias,” and they lost me somewhere. Maybe it was because I had to rush the thing back to the video store, so I fast-forwarded through the clip-show episode and any bit where acoustic guitar started playing and people started talking about their feelings. But I wasn’t intrigued by the Saga of the “Snowman.”

Before the show came out, I read a preview in Entertainment Weekly or something, where they interviewed J.J. Abrams. He said the concept of the show was “what if Felicity were a super-spy?” That’s what sold the show for ABC and most viewers, apparently, but it’s what turned me off and made me not want to watch it. (Plus, the descriptions of torture scenes.)

I’ve watched a lot of WB series since then, and I had prepared myself for lots of montages of our-heroine-in-emotional-turmoil while pop hits play in the background. But it seems to be getting less of the “Felicity” influence and more of the Ken Olin influence. I mean, good for the guy for producing and directing, and throwing a bone to his “thirtysomething” cast-mates by giving them (and himself) cameos, but I personally don’t want that in my action series. Therapy sessions and sepia-toned conversations while drinking wine and sitting on throw pillows? No thanks. Riding motorbikes towards Hummers full of gun-toting former-Soviets only to launch an ejection balloon at the last second and get picked up by a passing DC-10, leaving the motorbike to ram the bad guys in a huge fireball? Bring it.

Now that I’m going to be getting them in the mail, hopefully there’ll be less pressure to watch them like blipverts, and I won’t get “Alias” overload. If nothing else, it should keep every blog entry from being about that damn TV show.

Internet Movie Fun Special Friendship Society

I signed up for Netflix again, because I needed another monthly expense and a source of meaningless consumerist stress and deadlines. They were very happy to see me back, and they had my queue and my friends list waiting for me and everything.

And that’s the thing. I’ve got one Netflix friend and that’s fine, but it’s just… I want more. Partly because my friends list looks skimpy and sad, and partly because all his movies are, how do I say it?, kinda Frenchy. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I just gotta wonder why you hate America so much.) And mostly because I’m just curious to see what other people have in their queues.

So if you know my e-mail address, and you’ve got a Netflix account, see if you can add me to your friends list. If you’re on Netflix but don’t know my e-mail or don’t know what I’m talking about, then send me your address and I’ll get you on my list. And if you’re on Netflix and know my e-mail but don’t want to be on my list, then fine. Screw you.

Onslaught of Boredom

I’ve been okay with the being unemployed so far; in fact, I’ve been taking advantage of it to catch up on my slacking off. Even to the point where I felt like there wasn’t enough time in a day to get all my slacking off done.

But man, today has been stone cold weird dull. “Alias” has been keeping me going, but after staying up until five this morning watching it, I need to take a break. Last night’s cliffhanger had the CIA discovering the secret of the lost Rambaldi manuscript page to reveal a centuries-old portrait of Hilary Swank, the significance of which escapes me. But the breathtaking resolution will have to wait, because I’m starting to get paranoid about which of my neighbors are double-agents. (I’m sure the guy two buildings down who always wears shorts in any weather and is frequently hosing down his garage at 3 AM is either a speed freak or K-Directorate.)

I went up to the Haight to get that Sigur Ros album at Amoeba, and ended up getting a couple of Woody Allen movies (Love and Death and Annie Hall) not because I wanted them as much as because I needed to fill up the bill to justify using a credit card. There was nothing else I wanted; iTunes and amazon have spoiled used record stores for me.

While I was there, I considered getting a mid-life-crisis earring. I had one in college for about a week because I wanted to look like a pirate, but I took it out because I didn’t want to look gay. Now I don’t really want one because I don’t want to look like Ed Bradley. Actually, I took a look in all the jewelry and piercing and clothing and gift stores along Haight, and it all just looked cheap, boring, pointless, or painful. I just can’t get all that excited about jewelry, even with the pirates and 60 Minutes connotations.

Maybe I’ll just start growing a beard again. Does that count as a hobby?

Great Moments in Typography

In lieu of actual work on making the website more solid, I found this cool plug-in for WordPress that generates headline images on the fly.

I’m not sure how long I’ll keep it running, because it’s gimmicky, slows site access down, and makes everything a little bit more fragile (mostly because my headlines can be as long-winded as my posts). But for now, it’s neat. This is the kind of thing that keeps me interested in having a website in the first place; all the gadgets and cross-links and standards and plug-ins and web-apps you can play around with.

I mean, it’s not as if it’s about the content.

Moron Alias

Okay, I’m 11 episodes in, and I’ve got the next two DVDs sitting there waiting for me so I can’t write too long. But I’ve had cases where friends have gotten into series on DVD long after I’d lost interest in them, and it was always neat hearing their take on the show. It was like being able to watch the show again, from the start, without having to do something as exhausting as sit and watch television.

So here’s my take on the show so far, divided up into the bad like the evil SD-6, and the good like Sydney’s ever-loyal friend Francie:

Bad: The wormy, nerdy “Q” guy, Marshall. Yeah, it’s a spy show, so you’ve got to explain the gadgets. But the whole schtick doesn’t work on any level, as comic relief or otherwise. It’s annoying, not endearing.
Good: Victor Garber as the dad. He’s got the toughest part to play, I think, and on a show this over-the-top, he could’ve come across as really lame, either two-dimensional bad guy, or over-sympathetic killer-with-a-heart-of-gold. He just sells it.

Bad: The surfeit of twists and subplots. I get that the show’s supposed to be fantastic, escapist, action television, but it’s veering around so much that it never gets to linger on anything of significance. Maybe that’s an aspect of watching it all at once instead of having to wait a week between episodes, though.
Good: Stuff really happens, in every episode. I’m used to series that introduce subplots that never get resolved until the end of the season if that soon; it’s cool to see a show that isn’t afraid it’s going to run out of ideas. If someone makes a threat, they’re going to do something about it within the next two hours. If you get hint of a deep dark secret, you’re not going to have to wait long to find out what it is. There are at least two cliffhangers per episode!

Bad: The annoying reporter friend. He’s just a tool, and he deserves to die.
Good: Jennifer Garner really is pretty hot.

All right, back to it. I’m in the middle of a meeting at CIA headquarters in which we just learned the identity of the assassin who killed Agent Vaughn’s father!

I wonder if it remembers me

The neat thing about amazon.com’s comments sections, apart from the obvious entertainment value, is that people on the internet are so eager to jump on top of each other to show how hip they are that you can often learn something useful.

Case in point: the soundtrack for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou does not have the music that plays when Zissou & the rest of the Belafonte crew finally make contact with the jaguar shark. Thanks to a bajillion amazon readers, though, you can discover that it’s called Staralfur by Sigur Rós and it’s available for free from this site.

Of course, I can’t listen to it, because ten seconds into it I remember the scene from the movie and start blubbering, but maybe one of my many weblog fans will be able to take advantage of free post-rock Icelandic music!