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Writing Right

My apologies for the scattershot nature of this entry, and the lack of an update yesterday, and a late update today. I’ve been working ten- and twelve-hour days to support a computer that can only be used after business hours. This is my last day of it, though, except for one more day next week. And it’s affected my sleep patterns in very odd ways. I got home last night and went straight to bed. Tonight, though, […]

Monday, November 28, 2005

Ha! I never described how Thanksgiving went. In a word: Perfect. All the food was delicious, nobody stressed out, we all chatted pleasantly, we went on a brisk walk around the neighborhood, and we watched two Jackie Chan films (Dragon Lord and The Medallion). We ate succulent turkey, flavorful stuffing, plump sweet potatoes, corny corn muffinsh, and thick slices of apple pie with vanilla ice cream. Couldn’t […]

Gifts for Others and Myself

Spent the afternoon Christmas shopping, it being Black Friday and all. I surprised myself: I have presents (or know exactly what I’ll be ordering online) for everyone on my list. I usually suck at Christmas presents, but this year, for some reason, I’m on the ball, and early. Now if I can just get all these presents shipped in time, which is one disadvantage of having so many online friends. While I was […]

Dare You Explore Castle Doune?

Because I increasingly believe that knowledge workers can’t afford to let their skills atrophy, I’ve been learning the Python language lately. To learn it, I started a simple project: writing a text adventure (like Zork, only much less ambitious). I just finished it and uploaded it, so now you can explore Castle Doune yousrelf. (Castle Doune is the name of the first castle seen in the movie Monty Python […]

Wow! Work

I’ve been in a sysadmin mood lately. I want our server to be a model of efficiency and automation. I want us to be able to recover instantly in case of disaster. I want to describe our setup to other people and hear them reply, “Wow.” Partly, this is because I’ve been re-reading Tom Peters’ Brand You 50 at work, a few chapters at a time. Here’s one of his suggestions (paraphrased): List all your projects […]

Return

Sorry for the long down-time. Our server died almost exactly a week ago, and we’ve had some trouble with our provider in getting it back up and running. Suffice to say that we appear to be back to normal. It’s been a nice day, really, dependig on your definition of “nice.” It’s been cold and drizzly all day, but that’s felt cozy to me. Perhaps it’s because this feels […]

Rushing, Rushing

Don’t have time to write much. Just got back from a performance of Chinese acrobatics, incorporating a lot of the maneuvers of the Peking Opera with the concepts of Circus acts (juggling, unicycles, etc.). No clowns, thankfully. It was a good day, if short. Unfortunate that I had to spend so much of today catching up; Sundays should be days of rest. Next Sunday will undoubtedly by the same, what with Anime […]

Me And My Contacts

Just returned from a wedding, in which the groom is a friend that grew up next door to me. We played practically every day, then drifted apart. A story as common as grass. And now he’s married. That was a bit of an emotional roller coaster ride. I’m a bit jealous, honestly; his bride looks terrific, in all the best ways: fun, vivacious, smart, pretty, thoughtful. I have nothing. I’ve never […]

Assault of the Inner Critic

Well. In my previous entry, I wrote that I’m thinking of pitching some animation ideas to Cartoon Network. That was Wednesday. I’ve spent the past two days under an almost unceasing assault from my Inner Critic, insisting that I not do that. That I’d be better off abandoning all my creative projects, in fact. That I’d enjoy myself far more if I spent every evening watching MST3K […]

I will not wait

I just got off the phone with Saalon, with whom I talked for, um, three and a half hours. We talked about anime and the nature of work for about half an hour, then I dropped a bit of a bombshell: I think I’m going to go to Atlanta and pitch some animation ideas to Cartoon Network. I have a startup animation company. They take pitches from people with a lot less than that. I gather that producing […]

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