I need to remind myself. IF, if at all possible do two things this weekend:
1) Plan and come up with a design for my online portfolio - wireframes, interaction design, and just general planning. NO CODING.
2) Create a remote control widget so Dylan quits bitching about what music is blaring on my iTunes.
As Cyrus would say, “I’ll do that with my copious amount of time”(insert laugh here).
My left eye now twitches for some damn reason, Scott says it’s due to stress. It started last week. It’s annoying as hell especially when I’m in a meeting. “I can feel it - can they see?” Crying out loud, I have enough voices in my head to quell. Freakin eye.
It’s decided. It or she rather will be called - ALICE. I’ve retired Alice (the iMac) at work and will be transferring that honor to the MacBook Pro. Long live Alice. I’m going to have a beer and celebrate.
I love our dev machines at work. Mine is called “Alice” as in Alice in Wonderland. Five out of Seven devs have a 20″ Intel Duo iMacs; these things kicks ass. I’m usually a little weary of all in one solutions for the desk other than a laptop. I like my seperate box and 21″ crt monitor especially for graphics work. However the iMac experience has been truly exhilarating.
The set came with a keyboard and mouse but not just any ordinary mouse - it was the Mighty Mouse. I was skeptical at first. It’s light. It felt weird. I was use to the clear one-click mouse from my previous purchased system (Mac mini). It took a little bit of getting use to; so many freaking features. Changing the default mouse behavior was key for me. I like using the keyboard for shortcut functions so the only functionalities I need from Mr. Ms. Mighty is the scroll wheel and expose all on that cute little ball.
Cons? When I get home to my loyal mini, I find myself grotesquely fondling her mouse.
Hooman was right about Marc. It is something to experience “Jammin” with such a figure in the internet community. He’s approachable. He’s open to suggestions. He’ll give it to you straight, and he knows when you’re bullshiting. And maybe to some degree he is the epitome of intimidation. Or maybe it’s b/c he swears as much as our team does.
Wow, it feels surreal being around this man. But I do feel like an ant. But why? I’m not sure really b/c inherently I admire him, no, seemingly workship him. He co-founded MacroMind which eventually became Macromedia. I love Macromedia not necessarily the company but for it’s tools, and Flash. But why feel small? Well maybe b/c he’s the poo and everyone needs to take a big wiff.
I’ve been at the office for 2 nights and 3 days, and now I’m finally home writing this entry at 12:45 in the morn. But I’m not sleepy or tired(explain in a bit), but when I finally hit my threshold at 3:30-4:00 my bed will be a most welcomed sight. It’s nuts at the office but when is it not. Hooman and I pulled an all nighter Monday - Austin stayed until 4:00, then he pulled an all nighter with me yesterday(um, yesterday yesterday - uh today? - feels like it hasn’t transitioned). Damn I’m still not tired. Even though I’m kinda bitchin about it I don’t really mind. I just wanted to convey a sense of concern(danger, danger Will Robinson) for my well being not frustation.
How to sum up the past two nay three weeks? Hmmm, let’s see
Great Christmas, I finally got a digital camera - 6.1 megapixels (thanks sweetie and the fam). Kodak point and shoot - it’s pretty sweeet but by far will never replace my Canon A1 w/MA motordrive (my fav), AE1 w/motordrive, Rebel, Canon A2E, and my Kiev 6 x 6. I’m not even going to go into the accesories. My mom got me a kick ass photo printer, and not even knowing I was getting a digital camera. And, you know what, I had a great Christmass let’s just leave it at that.
New Year’s sucked. Cleveland was our destination with friends from college. It was to be a grand night of drinking and drinking games, eating, hanging out, and finally seeing that damn ball drop. It was all ruined because of the weather. It was the saddest night of my life,
Me: “Hey Ryan, we won’t be able to make it tonight”
Ryan: “Why?”
Me: “The weather is pretty bad down here”
Ryan (silence):
Ryan: “Well, that sucks”
Me: “Yeah”
Ryan: “X says he doesn’t care. He wants you to get your fucking ass over here”.
You get the drift. It was a legitimate reason, but damn it if I sounded like a fool with the lamest excuse. Damn did that suck. Sorry guys. Anyway, I haven’t had the time to ponder of New Year’s resolutions. Like we tend to keep them, fools. However in the spirit of streaming thoughts and impromptu what the hell. Here goes,
Reread:
Plato’s Republic
Aritotle’s The Politics
Heidegger’s On Time and Being
Machiavelli’s The Prince (in progress)
Read:
The Chronicles of Narnia (all books) In Progress
V for Vendetta (in progress) COMPLETE. AWESOME!
Precious Little Life COMPLETE
Fables (in progress) COMPLETE!
Learn:
Python
Finish:
AI website (Continuing)
Fix:
ADD (completed - got Straterra! Thanks Doc)
EONYRF
And what else? I miss my fiancee - it is weird coming home to an empty apartment, but then I’m relieved that I don’t have to put you through that again for another year and half.
Excerpt from Austin Fath, CTO.
We didn’t end up leaving the office until after my motivation for the gym had dwindled (2am) so I just got home and slept. Good old sammy tried to wake me up at 8:00, but my subconscious and conscious brains came to a rare accord that any waking wouldn’t occur before 9. As is the norm now, Hooman was aware of the struggle but feigned ignorance and continued to sleep until after I had showered dressed and kicked in his door. He skipped the showering part so I had to skip the breakfast part of the morning to try to get to work on time. Needless to say, all I could think about on our scenic drive in was how good it would be to finish off the cookies (the gooey cinnamon raison ones) for breakfast. But as I started to stuff my face with cookies and read the morning RSS feeds, I had a startling revelation. There could be donuts left in the hostess box, hiding ever so stealthily under the red hostess stripe, invisible to the larger doniverous predators that roams the office. i finished my current cookie, careful to catch all the crumbs in my left hand so I could suck them up after the cookie, and went with steve to investigate the hostess container (steve had just arrived as he too had slept in). Was it fate karma, divine intervention? Had I been lucky or cunningly lazy?
Well at this point in my life I didn’t ponder long. There were 2 donuts nestled in the side of the box carefully concealed in white powdered camouflage. They looked so calm, and so peaceful, that I had to have a bite immediately. Everything was falling into place, the day was obviously blessed. It was then that I realized that these peaceful creatures were not all that they seemed, that perhaps I had been too complacent. Yes the donut was real. Yes it was covered in blessed sugary fur. But these donuts were more then that, they were survivors. They survived by hiding and adapting to the harsh overnight office environment when the space heaters are off. They were in fact extremely dry. I was nearly desiccated with a single bite. But no, I wasn’t to be denied, their powdered protection wouldn’t keep me away. I took the donut to the microwave with a folded brawny towel to protect it from the mosaic of previous creature remains at the bottom of the microwave. I will clean that … sometime later. Donut was loaded and the quick 30 second button pushed. I then noticed a distinctly not donut smell from somewhere in the kitchen. voicing my concern to steve, he decided to take out the garbage. The trap was sprung. Lurking deep in the bowls of the garbage bag was some new form of life based on stag chili, tuna, and clam chowder remains of unknown freshness dates. I fought the beast only long enough to open a window and dive out of the room while steve tied and exited the bag. Brave man, I hope I see him again. I gave the room 20 seconds to clear before going back for the donut. I was amazed. The room smelled not only safe, but really wholesome. Like something was cooking, or in this case on fire. The dial on the microwave has been broken for sometime so someone must have already hit the quick cook button and left more time on the clock to cook the donut. All the sugar had melted and pooled under the donut where it then charred and smoked.
I left for quiznos. The other donut remains safe in the hostess box.
A morning in the life of CTO,
- Austin
One of my friends from college unleased his coding talent to create SUPERFISH.org. Basically think of Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, and Gallery 2, but created by a genius. Who the hell goes into Psychology then becomes famous for programming facebook? LOSER! I think I’ve previously expressed my beliefs in social networking. It’s a phenomena spreading like the herpes virus at an e party. You don’t want it but now you have it might as well go with the flow. Basically, it’s not my thing, but hey whatever floats your boat. But corresponding to Facebook or MySpace or anything like that, I think it’s an excuse for people with low self of esteem to increase their visibility to so called “friends” especially myspace - oh look at my friends, oh look! She’s a girl and her friends listing consist of 50 guys so called “friends”. Guest what they’re thinking, idiot. Or vice versa. Yes, yes - call me a bias s.o.b because I am bias. I am an asshole. Whatever happened to going out and trying to physically say hello and meeting a new friend. Get a life and go out. Absorbed some sun.
Yeah, it’s one sided. But just to show solidarityblahblahblah - here is legitimacy. Okay, okay…….the implementation of the social networks through facebook (and myspace - you know what i’ll take that back - myspace is useless) do have a some legitimate uses. Quite frankly, it is interesting to those who care who is connected to who (i don’t care) and students can find real friends at other colleges to keep in touch. To me that’s it. Oh, by the way, I’m using “Social Networking” in a loose loose LOOSE way. Do you even know the complexities of a “Social Network”. I’m not going to explain - open a book and learn something.
Anyway, I went off on a tangent. SUPERFISH is the topic. Matt Novak from SVC created the site. I volunteered to design the front page and graphical components. The goin is slow unfortunately due to the load on another project from work. Sorry Matt. Superfish concept is cool but don’t take my word for it sign up and try it out. More functionalities will be added on an iterative basis. Matt doesn’t stay up all night like he use to - wuss. Development of one of the headers is below:
