Today, summer felt autumn breathing down its neck, so it gave us a classic summer day to remind us that it’s still August: hot and sunny, but breezy enough to keep the heat from turning oppressive. The cicadas called loud and desperately to each other. If you like summer, this would have been your day.

I spent much of the workday fighting small fires; apps that suddenly didn’t work quite right, people to call, etc. Nothing exciting or noteworthy, but that’s good too. Exciting emergencies are great sources of worry, stresss, and strain.

I went to the grocery store and bought no groceries. While standing in line on previous trips, I’d noticed a digital photo processing kiosk at one end of the store, and wanted to try it. I’ve been taking pictures of my garden every month, to put in my garden journal for reference, so last week I burned a CD of the pictures and dropped it in my laptop bag.

So there I was, standing in front of the Kodak Picture CD Kiosk. I cringed inwardly; I’ve used enough of these horribly designed public kiosks that I steeled myself to navigate through a brightly-colored maze of options. To my delighted surprise, it was well-designed and intuitive, though I did get confused about how to get multiple prints, and ended up with a single print, plus an order for the other 19.

So I made my order using the ”Ready In Minutes!” option. However, I discovered that this means that each picture prints in about one minute, so I had to stand there for twenty minutes while each photo dropped in a little tray in the front. Booooring, but I got my photos for $.40 each. Not bad, but I think next time I’ll choose one-hour processing for $.25 each and shop in the interim. Though I’m so efficient at grocery shopping that I’m usually done in half an hour. Hmmmmm.

Anyvay, I got my pictures, and this got me in the mood to garden. I came home and straightaway used the rest of my mulch in the front yard, mowed both the front and back yards, and trimmed back a bush that was overhanging a neighbor’s yard. As I did so, a boy who just moved in next door peeked his head over the fence and said, “Nice backyard!’ “Thanks,” I called back, and he grinned and ran back inside. That just about made my evening.

Came back inside, nuked some frozen lasagna, and went upstairs to work on Otherspace. Saalon chose tonight to assemble shots for the first time, so I talked him through my process. Unfortunately, the shots just weren’t ready yet, so he couldn’t get very far. I agreed to take them back to the animators, while he did some experimenting and looked into local anime conventions that we can attend.

And that’s a wonderful situation: Saalon’s making our convention arrangements, which is a load off my mind. He can keep up with such things better than I.

Then I paid a few bills (which is another story, but a boring one that I’ll not detail here), browsed a few online comics, and climbed into bed. And here I am, and now I’m going to try to get some sleep.

Summer’s here, but autumn is near.

Ahhhh, I love Mondays.

I really do. I’m usually rested thanks to the weekend, and I charge headlong through the workday, getting all sorts of things done, to come home tired but fulfilled.

So I did. I spent a fair chunk of the morning reviewing my projects and tasks and laying out a Next Actions list. Then I spent the rest of the day powering through it. Incredibly satisfying. Odd that I don’t do it more often.

Then I spent the evening on a variety of more or less fun projects: Uploading photos from the Otherspace beach trip, writing and tweaking a new interface for the Otherspace site, and installing Syllable 0.5.7.

And that was my day, in brief.

A good, quiet couple of days. Though it’s interesting I should say that; I’m sure others would describe a ”quiet couple of days” as hell.

Such things are on my mind because I’ve been looking for romance on eHarmony. Funny how this process of looking for someone else makes you think more about yourself. Well, I want to make a good impression on any girl I’d meet.

I have little love for the eHarmony process, mostly because it’s all online. The bandwidth for human connection on the internet is very limited; there’s only so much that one can get across in a few paragraphs about oneself. I wish I could just meet a couple dozen girls for a few minutes at a time, talk briefly with each one, and have a short list of potential girlfriends within an hour or two. Someone phone Hollywood! This would make a great reality show. Not that I’ve ever seen a good reality show, much less a great one.

Anyvay. My weekend was tolerably quiet; I spent Saturday afternoon at a productive Otherspace meeting, then Saturday evening at my parents’ watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which they enjoyed. Always good spending time with them; we fit each other like gloves.

Then spent today on a variety of chores: spreading mulch out front, doing backups, uploading Otherspace content (there’s a new episode of the manga), working on the Syllable website (a new version of the OS was released today), cleaning, making sweet-and-sour pork for dinner, watching the first episode of Super Radical Gag Family and the second episode of Quiet Country Cafe, and generally chatting with folks.

So, yeah, pretty quiet and uneventful….

Achingly beautiful day. Warm, breezy; the Earth herself is in a chipper mood, smiling brightly.

A day so beautiful I couldn’t quite bear to stay at work all day. So, after truthfully completing all the work assigned to me, I cut out a little early and headed over to the local landfill to get a load of mulch. This is to stave off the lady who couldn’t remember what mulch is called. I got there at 4:30, just as the gates were closing. Drove home in a funk, hopped online, and discovered the landfill closes at 4:00 p.m. every day. Well, that’s sure convenient to nobody.

But on a day like today, I couldn’t feel bad for long. After nuking a single-serving pizza, I dove into my pile of chores. By 8:50, I’d finished all of them, including a check of Tripwire logs, a review of Syllable.org (to look for dead links or otherwise buggy code), a quick clean of the bathrooms and kitchen, and processing all the cosplay photographs from Otakon so I can post them to the Otherspace website. Phew.

So, as a bit of a reward, I sat back and watched my new DVD of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension. I’d forgotten how much I loved this film, and I still do. It holds up. A great adventure with an immense sense of fun.

It’s sad, really, how little of our so-called entertainment is really fun. So many action/adventure films take themselves so seriously, when they could just be a rollicking good roller coaster ride. Make fun of yourself. Toss in a few self-referential gags. Lighten up!

Sorry for that aside; the movie has made me fill that giddy. I want to shout to the world, “Life can be such FUN!” But the goths are buried too deep in their angst, the Gen X’ers too deep in their mortgages, and the boomers too deep in their need to die with the most toys.

Lighten up.

Oh: New bit of the VR story. Not particularly exciting, I know, but that’s all I’ve had in me for that story. I’m building up to the end, but I’ve taken a vacation that’s killed my desire to write. Ah well; I’ll get back to it. And I will; I took a vacation because I didn’t have the time to finish all my projects. Now I’m clearing the decks, so I’ll have time to write without that time eating into other chores and responsibilities.

Another late night and short entry.

Excellent day at work. Busy all day, but pleasanatly so—I had a bunch of things to do, each of which I accomplished in under an hour. So it was all stuff I could just do, and check off my list.

I left work, stopped by a local McDonald’s for a chicken strips meal (which tasted like well-salted crispy leather strips), then drove straight to a friend’s house for a night of role-playing. I really enjoyed that, too; we pushed forward with a campaign set in a world of Greek Mythology. Lots of stuff is hapenning, and the players are pushing a lot of that along.

But I didn’t get home until 11:30 at night. So I skimmed through my e-mails and cleaned up a few forum spams on Syllable.org. Then I got annoyed with the forum spam so much that I logged in to the MySQL server and dug out all the remaining spam using some SQL scripting. That felt good.

Now, I’m tired, and I want to get a good night’s sleep so I can get to work at a reasonable time tomorrow, so I can get home and finish up all the chores that I have still remaining left over from Otakon.

So, good night.

I’ve had one of those weird days where I came home ready to finish catching up from the weekend, but didn’t get to any of it.

Instead, I took out the pork I’d bought to make sweet and sour pork, chopped up the green pepper and onion, put my knife through the pork…and discovered that this pork was still on the bone. Well, couldn’t very well dice this, so instead I just pan-fried it and the vegetables, and microwaved some rice, and sat down with a VHS tape that had just arrived.

The VHS tape in question was The Halloween Tree, an animation of the book by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury wrote the script and narrated it, the main character was played by Leonard Nimoy, the rest of the cast is well-acted, and the direction is solid. Unfortunately, it’s animated by Hanna-Barbera. Not poorly, but it shows. Eh, it’ll be a good addition to my yearly October Ritual.

And now, it’s late, and while I’d like to prattle on about my day, I’m getting tired. So a quick, odd link: COLOURlovers, a site about color. Or, colour. You can see the submitted colo(u)rs, rate them, and comment on them. Strangely hypnotic.

Wow. I’m beat, but I’m tickled pink by this weekend.

Where to begin? Thursday was a day of getting ready for the weekend; cleaning up the yard, doing laundry, etc. Got it pretty much all done before heading out to role-play with some friends that evening. We’re playing an SF mafia campaign in which they just managed to defend Mafia HQ against a massive invasion force made up of hovercraft and walking tanks. I had fun, at least, and I think they did, too. Got home, went to bed, and slept well despite worrying about the weekend.

Woke up the next morning to an odd sound outside. A rushing, shushing sound. Pulled the curtains to one side and saw rain pouring down on the street outside. Wonderful. This was not merely an inconvenience; I was taking two passengers to the convention, so all our bags and merchandise to sell was going to have to go in the bed of the truck. Which was now thoroughly wet.

So I got everything together, hauled a tarp into the back of the truck, put the boxes of t-shirts and posters into that, then folded the tarp over and clamped it down with bungee cords. It would have to do, I said to myself as I climbed, rather thoroughly wet, into the truck.

I found my passengers easily, then we were off to Otakon. And we stopped: The beltway was full of stop-and-go traffic, at 10:30 in the morning on a Friday. Arg. That added to our trip, but we got to Baltimore soon enough to find our hotel. I tried to park myself in the parking garage, but a thorough search of all seven levels revealed no parking spaces whatsoever, so when I found that valet parking was an extra $4 a day, I figured that I could manage that.

So we checked in, checked our bags, and hauled our boxes of merchandise to the convention (note to self: next time, bring a hand cart). In the rain. But we got there, got our badges, huffed and puffed our way to Artist’s Alley…and stood in another line, as Artist’s Alley had a huge number of artists checking in. Oh well; my companions set up our table while I got ourselves registered, then we sat down and began selling.

It was odd. People would walk by, glance at our table, and keep on walking. Which was normal, of course, but how do you break through that? We quickly realized that we needed a hook, so we started announcing to people, “We’re making our own anime.” (Not quite accurate, since anime is Japanese by definition, but “We’re making an anime-style American animation” doesn’t catch people’s attention.) Then people would do a double-take and murmur, “Cool.” And then they’d really look at the laptop on which our storyboard was playing. Then we’d point to the beautiful full-color glossy posters and explain that this was our current project.

By the end of the weekend, we had a full-scale routine. “We’re making our own anime.” A head would turn. We’d gesture at the poster, say, “This is our current project, Summer Storm,” we’d gesture at the laptop, “and this is the storyboard behind it.” We’d pause a moment as they stared at the screen, then we’d say, “Would you like to support our efforts? Design sheets are only a dollar; two dollars gets you all three. Posters are only five dollars, and t-shirts are merely ten.”

And then they’d take a business card and keep walking.

Actually, “we” didn’t say much of that; Christina (one of our artists) did almost all the talking. She switched on as soon as we started doing this; once someone was within talking distance, she’d start her speech. It was amazing; the rest of us wouldn’t even start talking that soon. She, quite simply, rocked.

And she’s the main reason we sold over $130 worth of merchandise, for an animation nobody’s even seen yet (including us). I didn’t expect to sell anything, so I’m floored that we did so well. We actually managed to pay for both the table and the cost of power, plus a little extra to cover the cost of the merchandise. Eeeexcellent.

Friday evening, I had a thoroughly pleasant surprise: my parents called me and told me that they were there, at the convention. They’d driven all the way up and paid for registrations just to watch the premiere of Matrix Experiments Lain with me. So they did. It aired at midnight, and everyone in the room was exhausted, so nobody reacted, but they didn’t react to the animation before it or the animation after. I’m content.

In any event, the weekend passed smoothly. I got a little better at engaging people and talking to them about the animation, and we each left our table at various points to see the rest of the con. I finally saw Kakurenbo, which was a fanastic thriller with a disappointing ending, the first episode of Bleach, which was very good, and a bunch of anime music videos. I also bought a couple of cels: a beautiful Kiki, a Porco Rosso, and a lovely Tenchi OVA cel. All in all, a good weekend.

So we checked out and I drove the artists home on Sunday, then immediately turned around and drove to a friend’s house for a going-away party. The guest of honor is leaving for college, so we all got her various presents. She’s a huge fan of R.O.D the TV, so I bought her the boxset, and everyone else chipped in for a Barnes & Noble gift card. And we basically had a great time chatting and eating cake.

So I got home from the convention at about 1:00 a.m. Monday morning. Fell into bed, slept late, and spent the workday doing comparatively little except catch up. Then, grocery store, home, mowed the lawn, watered the pots out back, made dinner, updated the Otherspace website, processed all my mail, and did laundry. I think. It’s a bit of a haze at this point.

I’m still not caught up yet, of course; I won’t be until at least tomorrow. But I’m well on my way.

So, now, to bed.

I love my boss.

Today, he took the CM team (a total of five) out to lunch, on the company’s expense. We mainly griped and discussed work-related frustrations. It was a great team-building exercise (a term I usually use in contempt); I returned to work energized by it. At which point he announced he plans to hold them every quarter.

What a great guy.

Had a good, productive day at work, then came home and watched the second Harry Potter film. I don’t like it quite as much as the first, and having watched the deleted scenes, I can see why: quite a few important plot points were removed. More importantly, they removed several scenes in which Harry asks himself, um, about himself. He begins to analyze himself in this episode, which becomes an important theme throughout the series: Who is Harry Potter? Why does he have these powers? What makes him special? Who decided Harry should be placed here, now, with all these responsibilities and problems? And almost none of that is in the final film. Note that I’m not complaining, per se; the film’s long as it is. But I wish they had cut down on some of the action/adventure scenes (the Whomping Willow, the flight from Eragog’s lair) so they could fit in those more introspective scenes.

I do think I’m going to pick up the third tomorrow and watch it tomorrow night.

And I spent the rest of the night cleaning out my inbox, shredding mail, and processing a few eHarmony matches. Funny thing, eHarmony: Depending on my mood, it scares me, or I feel like it’ll be a lot of fun. Sometimes both at once.

Is it sad that I haven’t really dated anyone until now? I keep telling myself: No. I’ve had my reasons to wait. I’m still wrestling with a few demons that I’d like to vanquish before moving forward, but if I did that, I don’t think I’d ever do anything.

I think I’ll begin soon. Very soon.

Just finished re-watching the first Harry Potter movie. I remember being impressed but a little disappointed with tiny things about the movie—I thought the big Quidditch match was a bit hard to follow, and it seemed they didn’t cover near as much as the book did, and the performances were excellent but not quite everything I’d hoped they’d be. Now, with distance, my complaints have vanished like smoke up a chimney. Sure, it’s not everything I wanted it to be…because I have my own version in my head, the book version, which is slightly different than the director’s version, which is slightly different than the editor’s version, which is slightly different than all the actors’ versions, etc., ad naseum. I don’t see how they could have done it better, given their constraints.

I’m thinking of watching the next one tomorrow night, and possibly nipping out the next day to grab The Prisoner of Azkaban, which I still haven’t seen, and watching it that night. This is to celebrate my completion of The Half-Blood Prince; I’m in a mood for Hogwarts and Harry.

It’s also fun to watch for certain lines and behaviors in characters, now that I know bits of their futures. There were a few lines that appeared to be almost throwaways, that are downright prophetic seen from the vantage point of book six.

Work was—like most Mondays—productive but not as much as I’d like to be. This was the second Monday in a row in which I spent the morning organizing my projects, prioritizing my work. It makes the day feel short and relatively unproductive, but last week I was so much more aware of my priorities and able to schedule my work properly that I think it’s well worth it. It was certainly like that today, which was so chaotic I twice had to completely rewrite my scheduled work for the day. But I got the most important things done anyway, as well as the urgent.

I got home to find an e-mail from an Otherspace employee, with the latest Otherspace online comic, this one introducing Saalon. So I posted that, and took the opportunity to refactor the comics pages so that they’ll display archived comics properly.

Then, just to highlight the issue of Importance versus Urgency, over the course of two hours I received and made half a dozen phone calls from and to various friends. We’re trying to schedule a going-away party for a girl who’s going off to college, and everyone had settled on this Friday night. Well, I couldn’t because of Otakon, and someone else dropped out, so we were trying to reschedule for another night. So I dropped what I was doing and made the appropriate phone calls and did some research, and we got that resolved, and I went back to my work. Boom.

I do love being organized.

Now if only I’d done all the things on my to-do list that I ignored so that I could re-watch the first Harry Potter movie….

Welll, that was fun.

After a morning spent tearing through various chores in preparation for the day, I hopped in my truck and took a different route to GMU. I’d just received a SmartToll transponder, and was eager to try it out. I figured out a likely route, left very early, and got to GMU no sooner than I would have had I not taken the toll road. Well. Disappointing, but I’ll try a few other alternatives and maybe I can shave ten or fifteen minutes off my hour-long commute.

I arrived at GMU, walked in to the Johnson Center, and hung out for a while until the Otherspace crew gathered. We started the meeting, which was extremely busy; I had half a dozen agenda items to discuss. I also had the pleasure of distributing posters and business cards, which everyone was a bit tickled about. Then, two people interviewed with us, to help draw backgrounds. I hired both of them on the spot. One is an excellent graphic artist, the other draws lovely furry artwork. Great stuff.

We finished up at 4:00, at which point I drove up to McLean Bible Church for Redemption. I hauled my stuff in to our room, then tromped up to the information desk to check our room reservation, which keeps changing around…and sure enough, we were in another room, across the hall. Okay. So I hauled all my stuff in there, and waited.

Nobody showed up for awhile, so I tried calling them on my celphone, to discover I couldn’t even send calls. I fiddled with it for awhile before discovering that the phone hangs up every time I try to use the touch screen while on the phone. I managed to make a few phone calls, and confirmed that two RPG friends were coming, at least. They were the only ones who could make it, and then not until 7:30. I had a wait of almost two hours.

So I cracked open my laptop, wrote a bit more VR story, and re-read How To Be Creative. A productive wait, at least. Then the guys showed up, and we did some impromptu role-playing, first as soldiers during D-Day, the next as space marines on a ship taken over by aliens. Lots of fun.

Then, home, and the rest of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Yep, I finished it, and it’s quite a book. The plot leaps forward near the end, and Rowling is certainly setting up an amazing finale. She has amazing skills at plotting and pacing. I envy her.

But then, she’s written how many thousands of pages of Harry Potter?