Category: Uncategorized

So, lets see here, what all has happened in the months and months since I’ve really ‘posted’ on this thing?

Well, I’ll list things in reverse chronological order, starting with tomorrow – So you get past *and* future all in one convenient post!

Tomorrow I turn 30 … 8. 38 is an awful big number.

In honor of this particular trip around the day-star I think I’ll go to work just like any other day…

Lyon, a good friend of mine, has been layed up at home after having some serious surgury. So in an effort to attenuate the boredom a bit I set him up with a new video card and a copy of “World of Warcraft”… And now I’m responsible for yet another addict. 🙂

So Wolf, his wife, has been watching and listening to us blather on about the game, and she also wants in on it. So this weekend I’ll pick up another video card and another copy of WoW and get her ‘hooked up’.

So it’s possible I’ve created two addicts without even really trying… I figure I’ll try pushing cocaine next and see how well I do with that. (chuckle)

Prior to all of this I went to the National Western Stockshow, camera in hand, and shot about a gig of the 6-horse hitch international finals. The only problem I had was the fact that I only had the kit lense for the new Nikon D40, and with its ‘spectacular’ f/5.6 I was having to hand-hold 1/60 shots at 1600 ISO to get anything resembling horses into the camera.

Most of the good pictures came from the paddock area where I could widen the lense a bit and things were moving slower. That there, for those who don’t know, is a grey Percheron and is one of the horses from the winning hitch.

At one point during the show they had 12 6-horse hitches in the arena at the same time, talk about horsepower…

And before this was Christmas and New Years, which was right after I moved into the condo here. For Christmas I bought myself the ultimate gaming laptop, which has been working wonderfully and has probably been the best computer purchase I’ve made in a long time.

So far condo-life hasn’t been “bad”, but it has certainly been lacking in the “good” department… There is no parking really, though I do have a 1 car garage – if your car is the size of a motorcycle it’s pretty spacious, otherwise it’s about 6 inches on all sides bigger than my PT Cruiser. 😛

My down-stairs ‘neighbors’ are also a real piece of work as there are no adults there.

I’m serious…

See, the mom drives a 2007 BMW 735il, wears lots of fur and gold, and the dad drives a 2006 lincoln towncar and hasn’t been seen in anything less than Armani. They appear to be separated as mom had the kids for a week and dad had them for the next week during Christmas, but otherwise the boy and girl live alone down there.

It seems mom and dad bought them a condo to be both close to the highschool down the road and to get them out of the house… The problem is there are about a dozen blue-bandana flying gangers down there 24/7 and the stereo gets loud and bass enough that I had to move my Whiskey collection for fear of broken bottles.

And that’s about it really. My home life in the last few days has taken a turn for the better and I should be getting a bit more ‘me’ time from now on. This means things like posting, music, and art should be a bit easier to come by… For example, right now I’m listening to old Styx on my stereo as Zeze is out and the TV is off. This is something I haven’t been able to do in six months or more.

And that makes me happy.

See, I refuse to interupt or otherwise foist myself on other people. So when the TV is on, I don’t run anything that makes noise as I don’t want to cause a conflict. The same goes for when Zeze’s friends are over nearly every weekend – which precludes me doing anything really so I’ve been evicting myself from my own house or sequestering myself in my room nearly every weekend for the last year.

Well, Zeze and I came to an agreement over the weekend and things should bode a bit better for me now as I’ll get a score of hours every weekend where I can turn off the TV, turn on the stereo, and try to create something.

And that too makes me happy, and a happy me is a creative me… hense the posting, the sketching, and the other happy aspects of me coming to the surface. 🙂

But for now I have to go, so until next time, stay safe out there!

Well, I almost deleted this here thing due to the promise I made myself when I started it:

“If the journal ever becomes a soap-opera or causes *any* drama – it’s gone.”

Well, it did.

But, I’ve invested quite a few years in this thing, and several people I know have journals I can’t read if I’m not a ‘friend’, so I have to keep it up I suppose.

Now, it’s been mentioned that anything that I want to post here, that might bend someone out of shape, can always be hidden behind the wall of a ‘private’ posting… To this I answer: (A) why should I have to censor myself for the feelings of people who could just as easily *not* read my journal, and (B) if I have something to say that I don’t want the world to see, I’m sure as hell not posting it on the Internet.

So, rest assured there will continue to be exactly one (1) post on this journal that you cannot see, and I believe there are two (2) that are limited to friends only.

In addition, this is *not* a public forum – it’s my journal, and if I have something to say that I feel like saying here, and it pisses you off, tough. I have the right to speak my mind and you have the right to not listen… Free will and all that jazz.

So, with that out of the way, let us continue onward…

Five days off… I’m not sure what to do with all the time.

Wednesday was a half day due to weather, work was closed Thursday due to the same weather related issues, Friday I worked a bit from the house as the car was buried, then there is Saturday and Sunday, and Monday is a holiday…

I simply cannot imagine what it would be like to be unemployed – I’d go berserk in very short order… I mean, I’m remotely connected to the servers at work right now *looking* for something to do.

I would like to vacuum the house as the last few days of rock salt and water – even though I tell people to take off their shoes at the entry, which never happens – have managed to make the carpet in the living room “extra textured”… But Zeze is still asleep from a late night with the Jalen and Flyn (as was I, unfortunately) and I don’t want to wake anyone up.

Zeze, yesterday afternoon, was able to get the car out, go bowling with Jalen and Flyn, and return with groceries, so the roads must be better now.

Yep, still snowing.

Work is closed for the day, and there is no way I can get the car out of the parking lot even if they were open, so here I am enjoying a cup of Earl Grey and watching the snow fall.

I’m not sure of the actual depth of the snow, but it’s up the the door handle on the garage now…

At this rate I don’t expect to be going to work tomorrow either.

Here’s another update… it’s still snowing. Now there is a bus stuck in front of the entry to the complex.

Winter is here again! 🙂

It started snowing at about 4am this morning and is still going strong. I estimate about two feet of the fluffy white stuff right now… And it’s still snowing.

Most of Colorado is under a Blizzard Warning till tomorrow afternoon.

Work let out at 10am today and, having just attempted to get to the grocery store on completely unplowed roads, I don’t forsee going to work tomorrow.

So, I guess it’s a few days stuck in the new house. That’s ok, I need to unpack anyways. 🙂

Have a good night out there and stay warm!

All done.

I still have to go and clean up the old house tomorrow, but for the most part – I’m moved. It took four trips today…

I guess I still have too much crap.

I also have the internet feed set back up, so Zeze and I won’t suffer from any withdrawal symptoms this weekend.

Went and saw “Eragon” this morning between loads of boxes – was a pretty good movie actually, though I liked the book better.

Jalen and Flyn are helping Zeze move right now and I expect their last loads here soon. Jalen is using his truck and Zeze is loading the other PT Cruiser, so between them they’ve made four loads.

Zeze has too much crap as well.

Well, I guess I’m going to go unpack a bit, make my bed, take a long hot shower, and probably take a nap.

Till next post…

The first post from the new house… Using ‘borrowed’ wireless. 😉

More later.

I should be finishing the move this weekend. The cable/internet connection was installed yesterday and the power will be transferred on the 20th.

I can tell I’m close to done because I have my Whisky collection moved, and that’s usually moved towards the end for safety.

Really all that is left is my desk, bed, a few random things like speakers, and the kitchen… Though Zeze will move most of the kitchen I think.

Let’s see… Oh, I bought myself an xmess present – I finally got tired of messing about, dipped into my savings, and bought myself a real desktop replacement laptop. It’s the top-of-the-line HP dv9000 – a 2.4 Ghz core 2 duo machine with an 256M Nvidia 7600 video card, 17.4 inch screen, etc, etc.

The nicest thing about it is that it has a real keyboard, including the 10-key pad.

I’ll be upgrading the HD in it, from 80G to 100G and adding 1.5G of ram to it, but otherwise it’s a perfect gaming laptop.

So now I can park my carcass anywhere I want and work on internetty stuff, writing, low-level art, etc. Plus, it runs my games quite well.

So, with that, I should get back to moving.

Have a nice day everyone.

Well I’ve officially started moving across town.

I hate moving… It’s a massive waste of effort translocating crap you don’t need from one containment facility to another.

So I tend to be what I call a “slash and burn” mover, which means that if it’s not essential to my current life, it’s disposed of.

This morning was mostly taking all of the boxes of accumulated crap I’ve built up over the last few years and running a purge-process on them: Nothing that I have not used in the last year made it into the car… There is a bit of sentimental stuff I tend to hang on to from move to move – all of my pen/ink originals, manuscripts, sheet music, and other proof that I really can be creative – but for the most part I was able to dispose of it all.

Ultimately I was able to move about 70% of my stuff today in a single trip – which is down from 100% in a single trip.

-I must be getting soft.

In addition I have furniture to move this time which is unheard of. I usually dispose of the cheap-o furniture I accumulate between moves and replace it at the new residence.

This time I went and bought nice enough stuff that I don’t want to replace it.

-Yeah, I’m getting soft.

The new place is very nice – though I don’t like how the paint came out…

I have the master bedroom because it’s furthest from the living room where Zeze will have a full entertainment system (60-something inch TV, AV gear, speakers, etc.)… I’m very much the ‘asleep for the movie, awake for the dawn’ type, and Zeze isn’t, so I need the distance for my sanity.

There are also Zeze’s friends who are over most weekends and who were born without ‘inside voices’… Currently my room is below the living room, and when I go to turn in at around 10pm I wind up staring at the ceiling for a few additional hours till they leave. See, they like to run a continual commentary on whatever is on the TV, and without inside voices this happens at about 102dB.

So that’s a double headache for me as ‘loud’ bugs me and I cannot stand it when people talk through the show, movie, whatever… Really, I’m happy that you were able to second-guess the plot of a TV show which was designed to be transparent to a ten year old, but keep it to yourself till after the show.

They’re nice folk; I just wish they came with a volume knob.

So, yeah, I’m at the far end of the townhouse.

The other small issue with the townhouse is parking… Like all apartment/townhouse complexes, parking is a premium as buildings generate money, not parking lots. So we have a one car garage right outside the door to the house and another parking spot located roughly 2 light-years from the house – which is about 14 light-years closer than the guest parking.

But that’s ok. My car, which will be getting a lot of work done on it this summer will probably live in the garage and ZeZe’s car will live under a really nice car cover.

The new place is about 3-4 blocks north of Iliff on Sable, across the street from a school.

For now though I need to go and do mundane things like laundry. Take care out there.

Thanksgiving is over…

We had quite a spread here last night, which is a first… Thanksgiving is normally a day like any other, though admittedly one without having to go to work.

A friend of ZeZe’s, Flyn, was also without family this holiday so we invited them over and collectively we went and saw “The Fountain” before dinner.

“The Fountain” is another French ‘anime’ or ‘art’ movie where by the time it’s over, you’re unsure what just happened… Kind of early-Kubrick in that it was beautiful, but was certainly more for your visual enjoyment more than anything else.

My interest was piqued the most by the interesting interplay of christian, hindu, and mayan religious imagery.

We returned from the movie and I slaved in a hot kitchen for nearly a half an hour getting dinner done. (chuckle)

There was a HoneyBaked turkey breast, mashed potatoes, turkey gravy, corn on the cob, a fancy German green bean casserole which I’m always looking for an excuse to make, garlic bread, macaroni and cheese, and peanut butter cookies for desert. There was eggnog for ZeZe and Flyn, while I had a glass of 16-year Lagavulin.

The only casualty was my microwave, which had its duty cycle exceeded by quite a bit.

Once everyone was stuffed (literally) cleanup took about ten minutes… Hooray for aluminum foil, which lined everything the came out of the oven and made cleaning baking pans and cookie sheets as easy as removing the foil and tossing the cooking implement into the dishwasher.

Zeze and I will be eating turkey, exclusively, for a week at least.

Today I have to go to work for a few hours, which is a bummer as most of the company gets today off as well. I was kind of looking forward to a 4-day weekend, but you know how it goes.

Other than all of that, ZeZe and I are inventorying everything here in the house, disposing of anything that isn’t of immediate use, and packing the rest for our move across town. The new townhouse should be done this coming week and as I’ll be paying rent here through December, we’ll have a nice, relaxed, 30 days to move.

And, with that, I should get moving to get to work. Have a great day everyone!

Just got back from seeing “Happy Feet” and it was a really fun movie: Great art, great music, and great CG actors too.

But, it’s also one of the growing crop of “activist” movies.

Ultimately though it was a good movie and one I can recommend folks go see, but its message is kinda wonky.

Just got back from Avon… Went to Paddy O’Days (the best burgers in Colorado) with Zeze, Jalen, and Flyn. The weather on the way up was a bit wintry, but it was fine on the way back down.

I discovered this week that my family moved from Colorado to Ohio back in July. I’ve been contemplating sending my mother a letter and discovering if Chris (my adopted father) has become any better to deal with in the last ten years. I’d like to open a dialog with her again, if only to find out how my sister is doing (haven’t spoke to her since ’86). There are a few photos on Chris’ web site that lead me to believe that my sister has two children and no mention of a father, which is a real shocker when the only memory I have of her was when she was nine. Chris has always been a stickler for ‘family line’ and as I’ve not produced grandchildren, I’m sure my sister has born the brunt of his desires as my ex and I did.

See, I joined the Navy when I was sixteen and my sister is seven years my younger – and I’ve not seen her since… It’s a long story, but my family and I don’t agree on much and Chris was always an example of everything I didn’t want to grow up to be; self-centered, childish, selfish… The last time I visited my mother he had a post it on the stereo which said “we do not touch things that are not ours” because I guess mom might touch it or something. Then, because I was there and taking the spotlight off of him, he took off in a huff and called my mother from a local bar stating for her to call him when I was gone…

Yeah, great guy.

I told my mother right there that she’d probably never hear from me again as I didn’t want to cause any issues – she said he’d get over it, but I don’t think he ever will.

Over the years I’ve surmised that there was a bit of a complication between my mother, the fellow she was married to when I was born, and Chris. I bear a remarkable resemblance to Chris and look nothing like the fellow who was on my birth cirtificate… Which kinda explains the divorce, remarry, and adoption.

But I’ve not really put any effort into ferreting this out.

Anywho, that’s the update for today. Have a good weekend and I’ll talk to you all next time…

I have been actively working on the beta for “The Burning Crusade”, the expansion for World of Warcraft due out in January. So far it is most excellent and will be worth every penny of the $30 it will cost when it comes out.

I have also been playing “Eve Online”, which is hard to explain to folks: It is an economy simulator teamed up with an asset management system, wrapped in a space combat simulator, and coated in a rich, creamy persistent MMO universe.

Basically it is a game designed to allow someone like Raeshlavik to be a sleazy weapons mogul who secretly funds a pirate/mercenary organization who instigates the battles people buy the weapons for (this is actually what I am doing in the game, and have become stupidly wealthy doing it). The trick, of course, is not letting either side know you are involved, so there are several layers of corporation in the works to cover my tracks with and two dissimilar organizations that I run – one for the acquisition, research, and development of ships and weapons, and the other which controls a rather blood-thirsty gang of hardened criminal space-pirates.

Ahh, the intriguing world of hostile takeovers, gun running, smuggling, and putting on that three-piece and making nice with the dignitaries of two quadrants of space. 😉

All in all, a really well made game. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants a ‘thinking’ MMO with more than monster bashing.

And with that I will head off into the electronic sunset. Till next time, take care out there.

Just a quick post between the project I’m on this weekend and sleep…

There will be a new movie coming out this December, which you can read about here: http://www.panslabyrinth.com

Take a look at the trailer – I think you’ll agree this is one worth seeing.

Aaaand I’m back…

What a trip. Jae and I left at 7am Friday morning and I dropped him off at his new H.Q. at about 11pm. I was back here by 10pm last night (Saturday)…

Zoom…

We stopped at the Turntable Restaurant in Minturn at about 9am for a couple of Boo’s Breakfast Burritos covered in some of the best green chili in Colorado. Our next stop was at 3pm at the Beaver Inn in Beaver Utah – they serve some astounding food and are just past the I-70/I-15 interchange – we stop there every time one of us makes the Denver/L.A. drive…

The trip out was highly uneventful up to the last bit of I-15 in California, where they decided to close an entire stretch of road and create a 14-mile parking lot on the highway… With a phone call to Jae’s troops there in California we got the low-down on some side roads and were on our way. It still added an hour or so to the trip, but there are probably still folks in that traffic jam today.

We unloaded Jae’s worldly possessions and no goodbyes were said as it wasn’t – Jae and I will talk in WoW on a nightly basis as we started the guild we and about a hundred other folks are in… Basically Jae’s room just moved across the country. 🙂

I was on my way back at about midnight and got a hotel room in L.A. I was on the road at 7am and that’s where the fun began…

Coming into California there was a really impressive electrical storm going on, which usually heralds bad weather and the reason I stopped so it could ‘blow over’.

It didn’t…

Saturday morning I left the hotel and turned the windshield wipers on – I didn’t turn them off till I hit C-470 just down the road from the house here…

As I left California the rain became torrential and I-15 became an official waterway with visibility as far as the taillights on the car in front of you.

For those of you who have driven the I-15 between L.A. and Vegas, you’re familiar with the ‘big ass hill’ one has to traverse to get from one state to the other… Now imagine that as a 12-mile long waterfall…

Vegas has once again been visited by the Venture Capital fairy and South Vegas extends to about 10 minutes from the Nevada border with at least ten new casinos being built right now. With all of this expansion they have decided that I-15 needs to be wider, so most of the drive from the Nevada border is now done via service road…

Once I got to Vegas the storm had really wreaked havoc on the place… The huge monitors the casinos have along the highway were either dark or exhibiting some really odd behaviors as they had all been struck by lightning. There were places along the highway where the water was at least a foot deep and the majority of the town seemed to be dark – very post-holocaust…

By carefully avoiding the wrecked cars everywhere on the highway I was able to make it to the north end of Vegas and buy gas, then pressed on.

The entire way to the Arizona border was fraught with peril: Golf ball sized hail, lighting blasting the high tension towers along the road, sections of the highway under water… That whole area is a desert and it was interesting, in the short pauses of storm, that the desert had become an inland sea with islands of sagebrush.

The strip of Arizona one goes through on I-15 winds through the Virgin River Canyon, which while I was there was having a serious wind issue. There were overturned semis to thread around and the associated traffic problems from having blinking lights on the road.

Once out of the canyon and into Utah it was more of the same, but with the wind, the rain, and the fact that it was Utah the highway became a mudflow and the rain was brownish red.

In Utah I was starting to fade – four hours of sleep in the last 24+ hours isn’t safe for driving – so I picked up a ‘Rockstar’ energy drink and some crackers during a fill up… I have to say the drink works well – once the shakes pass, and I’m really surprised they are allowed to sell that stuff to minors. No wonder there is such rampant ADD these days if they’re all drinking that stuff!

It tasted like the south end of a northbound skunk with a hint of nasty cough syrup – but I was awake till midnight last night.

Anyways…

Once I got into Colorado the mud abated and reverted back to heavy rain. The drive through Glenwood canyon was an adventure as the water was fender deep in places. I knew I was in for it as the outside temperature in Glenwood was 43 degrees… Over the passes it would be below freezing.

The torrential rains continued up to about the halfway point on Vail Pass where it turned into blizzard conditions.

In the distant past C-DoT would have the passes sanded if it even ‘looked’ like it was going to snow – yesterday I led the sand truck up the pass at 20MPH and there were no lanes, jut a field of white between a concrete wall and a cliff.

Going down was even more entertaining: no sand, no mag-chloride… just 28 degrees and a lot of snow and ice. So I turned on my flashers, put the Cruiser into 2nd gear, and did a controlled slide down to Copper Mountain.

As always there were the Alpha-Apes in their big four wheelers who would come up behind me at completely unsafe speeds, go around me, and end up in the ditches on either side of the road – one hit the wall on the final bridge heading into Copper pretty hard, but there was no way for me to stop and expect to get going again…

We were on ‘mountain rules’ last night – expect that they’ll get help and just worry about getting yourself off the mountain.

The next pass, Loveland Pass, wasn’t much better though the jack knifed semi in the middle of the highway that blocked off all but one lane clued in the Apes that it wasn’t safe… Of course this clue only lasted till the got to the other side of the Eisenhower where they once again took off and ended up lining the highway.

I once again ran the flashers and commenced a controlled slide down to Georgetown.

See, I grew up and learned to drive in those mountains so while it’s a pain in the arse, if they haven’t closed the road I’m good.

Too bad most other folks aren’t.

The blizzard returned to downpour all the way to Floyd hill where once I had gotten onto C-470 the rain ceased as if someone had turned off a valve…

Ten minutes later I was in my garage and very happy to be home.

And that is my weekend adventure…

And once again I managed to maintain a one to one ratio of takeoffs to landings…

I’m home, and very happy to be here too!

Today my trip to the scenic underbelly of humanity comes to an end. I’m leaving L.A. today at 2:50 pm to arrive back in Denver at a few minutes after 6pm (darn time zones – it’s really a 2 hour flight).

All I really got to see while I was here was that the average person in California lives in half the space with twice the costs of people elsewhere. The parking is a nightmare, the highways are in ‘rush hour’ conditions almost 18 hours a day, the air smells like a racetrack 24/7 – it’s a very bad place to live.

I went to L.A. proper once while I was here, and all I saw was skid row. I drank the water and had intestinal troubles most of the trip. Nearly everyone I had to communicate with while I was here only spoke broken English. If you stop any where for more than about 30 seconds, someone will ask you for money – this trip was very much like visiting a third-world country, but without the culture.

I did get to drive around Sony Studios while looking for breakfast one morning, they filmed something for three days at the mall across the street, and I saw “Open Season” last night in really astounding 3D at an IMAX theater where I was –not- accosted by a bum looking for a handout, which was odd enough I noticed it.

My client is very happy with me and not so happy with the developer, and there will be repeat business from these folks *and* the developer (who is also happy with me, but not their programmers). As always I was offered a job while I was here – I’ve not run a test for a customer where I wasn’t offered a job… Too bad living here would probably cause me to slash my wrists in about a month.

All in all, this trip has put me off from ever wanting to come back here, even for a few days. South of here things are better. The Anaheim area is really nice, but that’s probably because it’s all owned by Disney and several large corporations.

But I’m *never* coming back to Los Angeles.

It’s now Tuesday morning here in L.A.

So far, I’m unimpressed. L.A. seems to be comprised primarily of slum districts separated by run down stretches of freeway that connect small pockets of wealthy folks… Essentially, if you never get off the freeways you could easily be convinced that the L.A. basin is nothing but millionaires and the places they shop. But if you get off on the wrong exit, it’s a real learning experience.

Shaun and I went to L.A. proper Saturday, but took side streets to make the trip – the poverty in this town is shocking. Most of our trip took us through the middle of Inglewood which is evenly divided into Hispanic and Korean ‘sectors’ along Western Blvd. Then, once we made it into L.A., it was 7pm and the tent cities of homeless had sprung up along the streets. Thousands of tents, boxes, and shopping carts laden with worldly possessions lined the streets – it was surreal.

For the most part my adventures in L.A. have centered on finding some place to eat. While this sounds funny, it’s completely true – the L.A. area is so ‘ownership centric’ that only 1 out of several hundred stores is a restaurant, the rest are clothing stores, shoe stores, furniture stores, car dealerships… anything you can imagine that provides something you can ‘own’. There is also the added challenge of there not being a single straight road –anywhere-, and getting to a specific location is a study in creative navigation which usually results in at least two u-turns, several mad dashes across 5 lanes of traffic, and at least one trip down an alley.

There is one small glimmer of happiness in the fact that restaurants that have died everywhere else in the world still live on here – if you can find them. We’ve seen everything from that Shakey’s Pizza to a CoCo’s and a real Wienerschnitzel.

All in all this trip has shown me that any thought of moving to California, at least the L.A. area, is a bad thought.

Well, here I am in Culver City California!

For those who don’t know, Culver City is pretty much a back lot for MGM studios, which is about a half mile from here.

The project is a tough one, but I think I can pull it off.

More importantly, I had dinner at a real life Shakey’s Pizza! Many of you may not remember or even know about the legend that is Shakey’s…

When I was a kid a trip to the pizza parlor in Longmont Colorado was a real treat, but by the time I was a teenager and able to drive, it was gone and all of them in Colorado had shut down.

Well, it turns out there is at least one left here in California and I took Shaun, my second from work, there for dinner.

The 50 year old pizza establishment still has it – lots of stained glass and brass, and really good pizza, but the big glass Coke fountain glasses are a piece of history and are no more.

Anyways, I might have the weekend off so I’m pondering a trip over to DisneyLand – which should only cost about a hundred bucks or so…

But, right now I’m off to bed. Today started at 5am and it’s now a bit after 10pm, and I’m exhausted…

G’nite all.