Big Changes

So, as some of you already know, I'm about to make a huge change in my life that I'm not entirely sure I'm ready for. It's something my wife and I have been talking about for a while now, but I was never sure it would really happen. I admit to being torn on the issue. I mean, it's something we both want - we've talked about all the benefits, the highs, the lows, the advantages and the perils. It seems like you're not truly an adult until you have one. But the expense can be considerable, and frankly a little intimidating. Let's face it, it's a serious commitment.

Still, everyone says the advantages far outweigh the sacrifices, and life will never be the same once you have one. So, Courtney and I took a long hard look at our life, and finances, did some soul searching, and decided to go for it.

Now that it's upon us, I don't blame her for being a little dubious - probably more so than myself - about the decision, but I'm confident that in time she'll come to view this as a great move for our family. Some of the benefits I don't think we'll even fully appreciate until it's staring us right in the face.

So there's nothing left to do but wait. A delivery date has been set, and before long that little bundle of joy will be on our doorstep. I can't wait to hold it in my hands for the first time, caress it's face, and call up the AT&T activation number.

Seriously, this is a choice upgrade we're talking about here. I was never really entranced by the first iPhone or the 3G, but there are a lot of great new features that just tipped the scale in favor of buying it. Plus, I've been using the same RAZR since 2006 and I'm getting tired of watching the battery fall out every time I grip the housing too tight. This is gonna be great.





Also, Courtney is pregnant.

31

Still here.

30

Sunday was my birthday. This is a milestone year, particularly if you count in hexadecimal. Saturday was my birthday (observed), and featured friends and cake and board games and swords with meat on them. I got all sorts of nifty gifts, including a cold, which I naturally blame on Marc.

Courtney's birthday is on Friday, but I gave her her present early because we needed extra Wii controllers.

Thank you to everyone who came or sent gifts.

A lot of people seem to think that 30 is some sort of magic turning point, beyond which one is expected to settle firmly into whatever static form one's life is expected to take. Get hitched, buy a house, start seriously investing your excess income, shave or grow a beard depending on whether you plan on going into sales or academia. Well, I've got the marriage thing all planned out, but I think that mostly that sense of post-30 stability is an illusion. At some point you figure you'll be a "grownup", but that never seems to happen. Life is constantly in flux, and we compose mental snapshots of our lives as they are and as we want them to be in order to ease the nagging sensation that we're not doing as well as we could have, or not doing what we were destined for.

I don't feel any different today than I did at 29 (except in the strictest technical sense, what with the sneezing and the coughing), nor would I expect to. However, the one thing I really didn't expect at 30 is having to go job hunting again. It's like that line from Fight Club about furniture:

"You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled."

I feel the same way about careers. Which, now that I think about it, is probably part of the problem.

I am not a number. Oh wait...

Just so you know, my face is now in the book.

I expect government agents and/or marketing drones to arrive on my doorstep any day now. Not that I even have as doorstep, as far as They know.

She Said Yes!

Yay!

I Am Made of Meat

It's that time of year again. A quick update for those of you playing along at home:

I'm 29, in love, and moving to Arlington, MA on July 14th.

So things are going pretty good.

Demo Reel

If you were thinking about hiring me, or knew someone who was thinking about hiring me, or was thinking about finding someone who might think about hiring me, this may be relevant:




UPDATE: Added a few clips and moved to Google Video for better playback.

Driving Sick

Courtney and I spent the long weekend in Boston. She interviewed for two post-docs and I chauffeured. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of driving in Boston, I have only this advice: know someone there with a keen sense of direction, and have your cell phone charged. Like many cities, Boston has a beltway that circles the city, with a series of spokes that extend into the city center like a wheel. Except that in this case, the wheel has been damaged in a fire, or possibly the apocalypse. Major roads do not go in the correct directions, intersections become "rotaries," and signage is plentiful, but incorrect. 2A in particular has a nasty habit of appearing and disappearing at random, materializing along various vectors determined by a set of arcane and ancient Masonic laws.

Marc did what I think in the industry is referred to as a "solid" and stayed on the phone with me for the better part of an hour as I traversed Cambridge in search of Courtney's hotel on Friday. Thanks, Marc. I'll get you back one of these days.

Saturday we spent with Marc, Stephanie, Katie, and Rob, doing our usual thing. Many thanks to your hospitality, gang. We'll be back again before you know it. And we both apologize profusely if any of you come down with a crippling disease in the next few days.

Courtney and I returned each with massive head colds. We spent Monday lounging around her apartment in pajamas and moaning, which is not nearly as exciting as it sounds. Today I'm at work, although I probably shouldn't be. She's about a day ahead and feeling a little better, so maybe we're almost out of the woods. Bleagh.

Update: Apparently the woods have tonsillitis. So does Courtney.

New Games 2007

Well, new to me, anyway. I long ago fell off whatever wagon drives you past the game store on release days. Here's a quick rundown of what I picked up over the holiday season. "Holiday season" being defined as the last 4 months, for convenience's sake.

Company of Heroes

PC: Picked up over the summer, a highly detailed WWII real-time strategy game. Gloriously rendered to the point of murdering my computer. I really don't know when I'll have time to play it. Never even done multiplayer yet, because I like to live.

Dynasty Warriors Vol. 2

PSP: A near perennial favorite from Koei's rich garden of franchise delights, adapted for portability. Graphically, it stands up to the standards of past installments, although lacking the resources to render huge armies on massive battlefields, this new format breaks the terrain down into bite-sized chunks on a larger grid. You clear and claim areas of the map a bite at a time, jumping back to the grid to navigate between strategic goals. Interesting, and an excellent waste of time.

Guitar Hero II

PS2: You've seen it, and if you haven't, get your ass to a Best Buy right fracking now. This one hurts. If your rock-fu is strong, and you think you have mastered Guitar Crane style, play Medium. You will enjoy the marginal challenge of getting 5 stars on every song. However, should you climb the mountain of Hard Mode, the zen master that resides there shall break your will before agreeing to train you in the higher arts. Only ascended beings should attempt Expert. Still... Trogdor.

Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria

PS2: This one slipped under the radar of a lot of die hard RPG fans. Not sure why. Gorgeously rendered, well voiced, detailed in the extreme, excellent story. Unfortunately, it's also a massive time sink. And I still haven't finished VP:Lenneth for the PSP, because... well, because it's HARD.

Dynasty Tactics 2

PS2: Thank God for gift cards and discount bins, or I would have forgotten about this. Basically an update of the last one, with more tactics, more storylines, more hidden content, and you can play as Lu Bu. Also a massive time sink.

MGS3: Snake Eater

PS2: You know, I just don't know. Seemed like a good idea at the time. You eat frogs in this one. No really.

Carcassonne

Big-ass table: In my heart of hearts I really didn't want to do it. Courtney and I, I fear, have taken that first faltering step into the abyss of couples entertainment with the acquisition of this classic tile-building game. I don't want a games closet, I really don't. I'm much happier mooching off the entertainment of my couple-friends, since that's who I play with most of the time anyway. Sure, we dabble in Scrabble, but now where do I find myself? Placing a meeple on a potentially valuable farm and angling to link it up with a vast tract of already claimed territory. And currently in the pipeline from Amazon? The River 2 and Inns and Cathedrals expansions. I fear that the grace of God has failed me, and there, as they say, go I.

I'm also still playing EVE Online (4 significant characters now), and City of Heroes (ungodly number of insignificant characters). What the hell is wrong with me?

Fall Flickr-Bomb

Hi there! Been a while, I know. Nothing complicated to post right now. Just thought I'd toss up some photos from our trip back to the cabin in October.

You can see the change in the leaves from the previous post here. What you can't see clearly is the change in the cabin itself. This shot is about 10 feet to the right of the old one, and the intervening space is an all-new enclosed deck with beatiful full-length double pane windows. Jim did the whole thing over the summer and it look great. It almost doubles the size of the cabin. Quite a homestead up there.

The pond looks pretty, too.

We also went up to Mt. Belleayre, the public ski resort, for a craft festival. Lots of hemp, beer, skis and painted rocks. We took the lift to the top, where I used the mosaic function of my camera for the first time.

More stuff later.

Woodsy

I know this is crazy late, but Courtney and I spent the first two weekends of June up in the Catskills at her family cabin. Very very rustic. I dropped a Flickr-bomb of shots from the first weekend, when we were joined by her sister Meghan and her beau Alvaro.
It was a lot of fun up there. They have running water and a gas supply, but no power. No phone or telephone reception, either. Bears, though. And one country-western station. While the combination of those last two might have negated the negative aspects of both, it was not to be.

We rode ATVs around for a few days, dodging rocks and trees and hanging caterpillars. The Catskills are currently being devoured by three seperate species of moth, at least one of which travels by hanging from the trees at about eye level on silk strands and riding whatever animal comes by. I hate nature.

I also totally kicked my girlfriend's ass at Scrabble. I'm awesome! One day, they will build a statue of me.

Seriously, it is beautiful country up there - an excellent place from which to watch the fall of civilization. Hey, it never hurts to plan ahead.

The next weekend we went to Courtney's class reunion at Yale. It was extremely wet and muddy for most of the time we were there, but I got to see some of the fancier bits of campus and meet many of her friends. She has pictures of that weekend here and some shots of Memorial Day here.

28

*click*

Send booze.

Beautiful Things

Courtney and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is much better than the MOMA, because modern art blows. It had been a long time since I set foot in the Met. Abouth the only thing I remembered was the armor exhibit (go figure). This time I could look at several of the pieces with some actual working knowledge of history, which was a nice change from my usual "blundering" form of museum-going.

Aside from the permanent exhibits, of which I have some pictures, we saw some interesting special features. One was a very cool look at Tibetan arms and armor. Some very difficult to find pieces in there, since we don't really associate Tibet with warfare. It is, of course, a very turbulent area, where sword and musket were actually useful combat implements well into the 20th century.

The other special was Anglo Mania, an examination of English fashion and its influence on the world. The exhibit consists mostly of "traditional" elements - dresses, coats, furniture from high eras of British history - set against "transgressive" pieces - recent modern avant garde crap. Very silly.

The Sackler Gallery, part of the Asian Art Exhibit, was probably my favorite.

Packed my Bags Last Night, Preflight

Early Saturday I will be winging my way out of JFK to the lovely San Francisco for a week of rambling. I'll be meeting with some Internet friends, travelling the Redwood Highway, and ultimately making my way to Seattle. With a hefty new 512MB flash card for my camera, I'll take lots of pictures and hopefully get to blog a good chunk of the trip (They have the Internet in California, right?). Since that will eat up bandwidth on the front page, I'm reducing the number of days displayed.

Keeping in line with my personal history, I started packing about two hours ago. Because, you know, I don't like to be rushed.

Seven hours to wheels up. Wish me luck.

Mythological Creatures

It is the third age of Man. From out of the West come strange beasts atop the scions of Saturn and Mercury. Haunting mortals with their bizarre ways, they prey upon the time of the employed and thus cause their feet to ache and heads to spin. They are the Ogre and Jason.

They come bearing intoxicating ethers that bring forth a cavalcade of light and sound, forming visions of epic battles and incessant wasting of time.

Lo, the Ogre did return to regions west atop his mighty Saturn, and Jason has ventured boldly to the land of Phil-on-the-Delphia for a brief rendevous, but their curse of slack shall remain. I swear I have more fiction in the works, including some stuff about iPods. iPods are still cool, right? I'll get right on that.

Weekend in Connecticut

The Canny Mr. Summerer sums up the weekend quite succinctly, but I would like to add three points to the account.

1. Eric and Stephanie are the nicest, most pleasant people I know, and I take every opportunity to point this out. Why? Because their qualities transcend most casual observation of humanity. It's not that they are "nice" so much as that they are a living mathematical proof of karmic balance. I am always very happy when good things happen to them because it brings a sense of wholeness to the universe.
   
2. Their house is in the woods just north of Lake Waterous and it is huge and scenic and they should have parties there.
3. Connecticut still holds the world's record for most clinically diagnosed morons driving automobiles.
   

Frickin' Lasers

Gimpy McGimpenstein

This post will be disgusting. I had a medical procedure today, so those of you who don't enjoy hearing about that kind of thing may want to skip down to the thrilling steampunk fiction below.

For those of you still here, this is the gist of it: Plantar Warts. Sounds tasty, huh? And I had a lot of them. Fifteen acording to the surgical waiver, but by the time the podiatrist actually got in there, he said there were more than he remembered from the initial exam. There were only two or three a few months ago, which is why I had let them go so long, but recently they just exploded in an orgy of viral reproduction.

Still with me? Ok, so how do you get rid of that many? We've moved beyond the home remedies and topical treatment phase (duct tape is one suggested option). That leaves laser surgery. And we're not talking pansy-ass low-wattage bladeless eye surgery here, we're talking about a giant red laser beam that burns the fucking flesh from your body, old school.

So I go in, get my foot pumped full of three full jars of anasthetic. This causes me to almost faint, which seems to be a chronic problem with me and needles in the last few years. They leave me there to wait for my foot to slide into an alternate dimension. One issue of U.S. News and World Report later and we're good to go. The doctor pulls the laser into the center of the room, and right away I get a Mr. Bond moment. The thing is huge. The actual control unit is about the size of a dentist's drill, but it's attached to a piece of machinery that looks like it would be more at home on the dorsal turret of the Millenium Falcon. To my right is a large vacuum with a big warning sign: DO NOT USE IN THE PRESENCE OF FLAMMABLE ANASTHETICS. The nurse will use this to siphon off the smell of cooked flesh.

Disinfectant, paper shield, ointment, tap tap, feel anything? and here we go.

The whole procedure took about half an hour. Every now and then the doctor would set down the blaster and switch to a good old fashioned scalpel. At one point he had to dig a little hard and a piece of my foot came flying across the room like a stray toenail clipping. Then out came the wire cutters. No kidding - stainless steel head, black rubber handle. I'm sure they were medically sterile wire cutters, but they were definitely just as useful for installing phone lines as conducting surgery.

When it was all over they bandaged me up, gave me care and cleaning instructions and sent me on my way. The doctor actually told me not to be afraid of the foot. Whatever it may look like, it's not actually that bad. It looks like Rocky Balboa, but he won a boxing match looking like that, so I guess I'll be ok. Driving is certainly more interesting now, and I walk like Torgo, which will surely amuse my co-workers.

In three weeks I go back for the other foot. Because I am a man of science, and I live to entertain.

Lemon Fresh

My computer cost more than one of these

The trick to big brand Tech Support is aggressiveness and independent research. After two weeks of fruitless software debugging, I've finally figured out the most likely culprit for the performance problems I've been having with my $3000 gimp-bot. The problem is HEAT! Yes, one of the fundamental aspects of matter and energy.

Most new laptops have rather complicated thermal regulation systems. Sensors track the temperatures of individual components, fan speed and efficiency, battery power, etc. and the system adjusts to compensate for high heat. That means throttling up the fans most of the time, but when one of the core processors really starts cranking above red line, the system actually slows performace to keep the chips from burning out. That means slow access speeds and low fps. That's essentially what's happening here. The clue that tipped me off? When you press Function+Z on a Dell, it resets the thermal sensors and recalculates performance requirements. If I were to do that during a lagging session of City of Heroes, guess what? Zoom! 50 fps! After a few seconds it dips back down to 5, of course, but at least now we know the guilty party.

So how to fix it? First I cleaned the fan exhausts and blew some dust out of the case. (Dell laptops have horrible flow-through by the way.) This helped a little, but the problem kicked up again after about ten minutes of strenuous play. That's unacceptable for a machine of this caliber. So it's back to the phone and an hour with "Peter" (who is not in India, we swear). In Dell's defense, they were very good about listening to my complaint and didn't argue with me about it being a hardware issue. By now I have a fairly large case file encompassing most of their troubleshooting script, so it wasn't hard to convince them. By Thursday my machine should be on its way to a service depot to have the heat sink and motherboard replaced.

Here's what I'm worried about: According to various posts on the Dell forums, this is not an isolated problem. Some have suggested that there may be a serious design flaw in the current XPS Gen 1 loadout. The original models were built with one brand of Intel board, Northwood, and they have since switched to another, Prescott. It is possible that one of them has different thermal requirements and is throwing off the rest of the system, at least in some units. So if the problem is endemic to the hardware and they replace the problem parts with identically flawed parts, anyone with this issue is screwed.

So after off-loading my most secret and personal files to my old machine, I'll be sending this puppy to obedience school for a week or two. Wish her luck.

Lemons

Dell tech support has now devoured about 7 hours of my life. Each call is like another wave of infantry storming a beach already blistered by repeated assaults. Each time we get a little farther toward the target, but we still have pick our way amongst the debris and the fallen on the way there. After explaining the problem to five seperate people and then doing what they robotically spit back, we have finally exhausted all the normal tech support procedures and we're now into "let me research this and I'll get back to you." I have a feeling that this will end in a box heading for the service depot, but we'll see. Even if that has a likely degree of success, I've lost a lot of confidence in what has been, up until this point, an excellent piece of hardware. Spending $3000 for an ultimate gaming machine that stops playing games after 6 months doesn't seem like a sound investment.

Still more buyer's remorse: I found out today that Congressman Steve Rothman, whom I voted for, voted yea on House Joint Resolution 10: "Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States authorizing the Congress to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States." Fuck him.

For those of you keeping score, if this amendment passes the Senate and makes it past the states, Rob Cordry's political satire on the Daily Show would be constitutionally prohibited. Thank God, because in this age of terrorism, war, widening social inequality and environmental degradation, the ONE THING WE CAN'T AFFORD is some jerk shitting on a piece of nylon.

Update: Buyer beware. I ordered a delicious chicken sandwich today and when I got back to the office I found there was no chicken on it.

Where have I been?

It has been a while since I updated. This is largely because I am lazy, but there were other mitigating factors. Car trouble, doctor appointments, work stress, BBQ, money matters, etc. Oh, and two weeks of failed tech support trying to get my computer up to speed again. It is rapidly degenerating into a paperweight with a cooling fan. Typing at a machine showing the early signs of Alzheimer's is an infuriating process, so while I have started a few good fiction posts, nothing is finished. Artwork is out altogether until the Dell people get off their asses and fix the problem.

So, updates will eventually happen, hopefully soon. How else will you learn the fate of our intrepid Technologist? Or the grand scientific enterprise of fictioneering? Or the dark secret of the Ruxpin? Stay tuned.