Friday, August 20, 2004
Reviewed the townhouse again last night. There’s a lot to be done. For those unfamiliar with the process, here’s a quick overview of the steps required in buying a home: Look for homes that are being sold. You can do this through an agent, or not. The standard trade-off applies: If you use an agent, you have have to pay him/her fees when you “close” (more on that later), but the agent does […]
Thursday, August 19, 2004
Well, that’s it. I closed on a townhouse this morning. I now own a home, as much as anyone actually owns one. Amazingly, I’m not a complete basket case. I’m pretty calm about it. This was a decision I came to slowly and deliberately. This feels right. More VR story coming later today.
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
I read Donald Norman’s The Design of Everday Things last week. I expected a set of case studies in product design. Perhaps each chapter would be devoted to a particular modern appliance or tool — the teapot, the toaster, the microwave oven — and illuminate its faults and successes. The book does study various everyday things, but it’s much more of a manifesto than a set of case studies. It’s a call for reasonable design. It pleads […]
Monday, August 16, 2004
This past week has been a complete blur of work. The customer came in to audit our documents. This translated to half a dozen folks sitting in front of computers in a conference room, electronically reviewing documents and writing up “Formal Action Items” if they found anything wrong. A Form Action Item is essentially a description of a problem that needs to be resolved before the customer will accept the documents. Unfortunately, the customer was […]
Friday, August 13, 2004
It’s been a looooong week. But at least I have my weekend free. Saturday afternoon will be spent working on Otherspace Productions animations. In fact, I assembled a rough version of one shot last night. It’s an odd emotional experience, assembling animation. I envisioned this thing months ago, and I saw it clearly in my mind, but that’s all that existed. Thoughts. But last night, I clicked “Render” in Premiere, and lain walked […]
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
I seem to be recovering, according to my normal schedule (fine on Monday, dive on Tuesday, plateau on Wednesday). My mortgage continues its rocky road; I now may need more money than I expected. I can’t really think about it enough to write about it, though. For now, here’s more VR story: Kino blinked at Karl, then looked back at the three old men. The silence was so heavy Kino had difficulty […]
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
I am exhausted. It’s day two of the customer audit at work. Half a dozen people are here, reviewing my documents. It’s hell, not because of their personalities (they’re great), but because I’m getting up at 7:00 a.m. every morning to get in here on time. On Monday, I had to get up at 5:00 a.m. to print off my materials, after discovering over the weekend that the print servers were down. And that’s all […]
August 6, 2004
In other news, The Register has an excellent article on the recent webloggers attending the Democratic National Convention. I’ll quote a bit of a thought-provoking post by Seth Finkelstein quoted in that article, which neatly sums up the problems of attending a conference of 15,000 journalists while thinking that you’re there to reinvent journalism: The blunt question of readers is always “Why should I read you”? They’re asking, what power and influence do you have, […]
Wednesday, August 4, 2004
More VR story. Too tired to write more about my own life. Extremely busy week. “We’re dead, aren’t we Kino?” said Karl. The two thugs stood before a pair of massive red doors, each door fifteen feet high and five feet wide. On either side stood guards, dressed in business suits just like the thugs were. The guards held Uzis. Casually. Karl nodded miserably and gulped. […]
August 3, 2004
In other news, DDR is tough. I’m at work at the moment, trying to finish a document and completely overwhelmed by it. I’d hoped to be able to finish it today, but it’s too big and I’m too tired. ANN‘s right. This is is the greatest online poll ever. If you’re not familiar with Tenchi Muyo!, you won’t get it.