Gecko Bloggle

Lots and lots of things are different since the last time I updated, back in November. I’ve left my old job at The Startup and started at a new one. Without going into any detail, there just wasn’t room there for what I wanted to be doing, and not a lot of hope given that there ever would be any room.

So here I am at Gold Tooth Creative, which is funny for two reasons:

1) It’s one block from where The Startup first landed in Vancouver.
2) The position I took over opened because the current admin left to go… to… The Startup.

Small small world, lemme just say.  Maybe a little TOO small in certain corners, which is why I’m surprised when I see people literally TRYING to make it even smaller.

At first I felt like I’d been brought into some sub-wing of the mafia (with “this is a friend of mine/ours” and “this is my associate”) but it turned out it was more Napoleonic than that, sadly.  Maybe even Nero-esque.

Just so you don’t think I’ve been ignoring all y’all, I read most of your blogs, and follow you on Twitter, or Facebook. Kids are well, house is fine (I’ll tell you the story of my wife and I totally destroying fixing the toilet with only one call to my dad and a shower of sparks from a dremel tool to show for it.)

Work at the new place ramps up and down, so that’s good.  There’s firefighting, and then there can be downtime.  Some of that can even happen a few times over the course of a day.  Good flow to get into.  You can’t work in panic/freakout/blamestorming mode all the time every day, or you’ll end up with an eyetic like mine.  Wonder if me almost losing my fingernail had/has anything to do with it?  Hm… Ponderables.  More Windows, scarier Mac stuff, minimalist renderfarm stuff (getting to know Rush vs. my days of working with Deadline at PrimeFocus.)  The usual kinds of work.  This studio is three years old, and going from where Conversion Works WAS when I left at the 9 month mark with 50 staff and everything’s still cowboy-mode to where these folks ARE with their plans and ideas and sneaky tricks.  Nice to see they’ve matured here, and it won’t be cult of personality stuff.

Been wanting to write some escapist fiction lately.  Like, literal escapism stuff.  Running.  If you see something show up with the category “NoNotReally” or similar, that’ll be what that is.

So, then that happened.

I’ve shaved it off now, but that mustache just wasn’t a pretty thing.  If you’d like to donate money to help find a cure for cancer (and quite a few of you already have, and thanks very very much for that), please do so at this page.

My dad’s coming back from Mexico in a few days, but I won’t be able to meet him at the airport ’cause I’ll be doing the big move at work.  Studio of almost 40 people, and we’re going to move it in a day.  Wish me luck.

Been listening to the latest William Gibson book “Zero History,” and I’m almost at the end “Chapter 82” I think, and it’s hitting that point I’ve reached with Pattern Recognition and Spook Country, when I find myself getting sad that it’s going to be over soon.  When things like that, I should just re-read them, but I don’t read quickly enough to re-read anything.  I get through maybe 5 or 10 pages in a night before falling asleep.

Looking forward to whatever it is that NASA’s gonna tell us on Thursday.  Maybe WikiLeaks will get there first.

Speaking of WikiLeaks, I was wondering where this stuff comes from.  Did someone get ahold of a discarded/stolen laptop somewhere?  Some ticked-off IT person kept a copy of something they weren’t supposed to?  In one of my previous jobs, I was asked to make backups of some key workstations for a Government Body of Note, using some Interesting Software, and then “take them offsite, and don’t tell anyone you have them.”  I wonder if someone offered money to whoever it is that turned in the stuff to Wikileaks, or if it was just someone walking the walk of “information wants to be free.”

AND.. now I’m tired.  Good night.

Lazy Sunday. Hung around. Played with some DJ software with Ripley (couple of nice little mashups, actually.)
Watching Hitchcock’s “The Birds” now, and enjoying it quite a bit. I think thatold guy knew a thing or two about filming, y’know?
You can see birds (crows) like that every day in the evenings. They commute here in Vancouver, heading East as the sun goes down. Seen starlings do their swarming thing when I lived in Chilliwack. Wonder if zombie movies are the new Birds movies. Animal invasion force movies. I also wonder what we’ll think of the zombie pop culture stuff that’s been happening over the last five years when we look back ten years from now.

Had some friends over tonight for Deb’s going away party.  Was nice to see some folks that I hadn’t seen in a long time.  Got to see some excellent bellydancing, complete with TWO swords on her head.  In our living room.  That’s right.  Swords.  Living room.  Zills, too.  Shing-chicka-sheeng.

More sugar that I can safely shake a stick at, too.  Emma made these crazy pirate cupcakes.  I had a grass (island?) one.

Everyone’s gone home now, and we’re sitting on the couch with our laptops, watching Will & Grace.  Karen Wheeler makes me swoon.

Was driving around and listening to some music, and it was reminding me of the a conversation I was having earlier about music, and that someone was feeling they don’t have any music that they’ve found for themselves in a while.  I suggested finding a decent streaming radio station (like RadioParadise,) and working it out from there.  She was saying that she was really into Eastern music due to the belly dancing, and hasn’t found music she listens to just for fun.

I know that feeling, of not having any good new music source.  I think that’s how Jonny Vancouver/Hutong and I got started doing the podcast(s) a few years back.  Just generally talking about music and what stuff we liked, and it the rest is 36 episodes of musical history.

I hope she finds some new music, and I look forward to what it might be.

Three days left of Movember, cant wait to shave this thing off.

Employee Of the Month was not the movie we were thinking of, nor was it a comedy, but it was… uh… entertaining.  We were thinking of the 2006 version http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424993/ but what we watched was released in 2004 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362590/)

Much darker.  Oddly and suddenly.  Found ourselves going “pff what?” quite a bit.  Couldn’t tell if some of it was improv of just jammed out.  Good, but wobbly.  Had timing issues, I would say.

Funny thing happened tonight when the phone rang:

Me: Hello?

…

Me: Hello?

…

Phone rang again.

Me: Hello?

She: Oh man, that’s hilarious.  I was calling for the sushi place, but figured I had a wrong number, but right before I hung up, I heard a voice, and it didn’t sound like the sushi guys, so I had to call back.

Me: I uh, hah, yeah, I guess you’d-

She: That’s so funny.  My phone’s all screwed up, and so I have to just guess at this stuff, and thought I had it right.  Funny.  I guess I’m drunk and not even drinking.  Well, I’ll talk to you soon, almost home now, and just wanted to grab some sushi, so I’ll call them now and see you soon.

Me: Wait, wait – who *is* this?

She: It’s {firstname}

Me: {firstname}… {friend of mine, mostly online, see eachother about once a year, maybe}!

She: Yeah, hi.  This is {someone I’ve never heard of}, right?

Me: No, it’s {me}

She: Oh, haha… I guess now you’ll have something to write on your blog about, which I’ve been reading, but can’t comment on, ’cause your blog hates me.

…and so I did.

Our good friend Deb’s going away party is tomorrow.  I keep thinking that we could cancel the party, and then it won’t count, and then she won’t go.  It’s selfish, but I do not have a lot of friends, and Deb’s one of the good ones.  She comes over every two weeks or so, and we drink, and talk about our lives, and riff off each other, and just… BE… y’know?

Nuff ’bout that.  Don’t talk about it – it’s not happening.  Simple as that.

Seems a lot of folks are leaving town.  We did.  I mean, moved from the core of downtown Vancouver to almost Richmond.  Arwen and I lived in the core before we met, and we’ve been together for 15 years (or maybe 16?) and I’d been downtown for a year or two before that, I think.

My fingernail is coming back.  I think the two layers are fused together again, which is good, ’cause this exposed underbelly stuff is getting old fast, lemme just say.

What else?

Oh sweet, the guy who did the awesome “Accigone Accent-Removal Spray” video is doing standup on the John Oliver show.  Glad to see him doing his thing.  Go, that guy.  Pete Holmes.  Here’s his site. Go there.

Had lunch today with my boss from when I first started at EA back in 2003.  He’s a good guy.  Nice to see him again.  Been a while.  Like, more than a year or so.  Appreciates folks who’re fast with the funny.  Was nice to talk to him a little about the whole idea of being and IT manager of some description.  I’m not used to it yet, but I think I’m slowly getting the hang of the IDEA that I’d be in charge of something other than the stuff on my own computer, or a small cluster of machines.

Arwen’s making seal noises at me, and then whispering things like “Are you writing about me in your blog? Yes you’re writing about in your blog.”

She’s threatening to not let me come to Disneyland with her.

I’d better go then.  G’nite y’all.

Once again, got nothing to say, but just bumbling along into Friday.  Been fighting something all week.  Took last Friday off to fend it off, but didn’t work, or at least, it didn’t work completely.

Yep.  Nope.  Got nothing.

When I sneeze really hard, sometimes I smell honey.  Does this mean I have bees in my skull?

Tonight I spent a lot of time on the I Can Has Cheezeburger Network, including a point in which I laughed so hard I actually could not breathe.  Like, to the point of wheezing and unable to inhale.  Like, maybe I was gonna pass out.  The thing in question wasn’t even really that THAT funny.

Felt good though.  Felt like maybe it’d been a long damned time since that happened.

So yeah, go find something that makes you laugh, a LOT, and report back here.

This one’s quick, ’cause I just got home from rebooting everything after a scheduled power outage. Today was weird. I had an old button pushed by something today, and I had to walk it off.
Arwen’s watching weird movies on NetFlix (like, awesome from-the-other-room “what the hell are you watching?” movies).
Supposed to rain tomorrow, but there’s leetle teeny snowflakes outside right now. I want to ride. Need that 1/2-hour each way of cycling/exercise.
Julia Stiles has a big head. This is not news, but it’s big enough that it deserves mentioning whenever she’s on the screen.
Tomorrow’s another day.
Gonna go put my big head on my huge pillow.

Still stupid cold out there.  The back yard is frozen solid.  This is not normal at all for here.  Kinda freaky, actually.  So not used to it.  The grass was shattering as I walked on it to take out the garbage.  I’m pretty sure it’s my fault for buying a bike.  Sorta like washing your car makes it rain?  Yeah, sorry about that.

Our 5yo is sick, which meant he was all logey (loagey?) and crying a lot, which is totally not his thing.  He’s usually pretty chipper, for lack of a better term.  The kids missed movie night because of it, but I think he’ll get to make up for lost NetFlix time tomorrow, assuming he stays home.

Hungry.  Be right back.

(one big handful of crunchy cheezies and big cup of some sorta orange pineapple juice thing later)

Y’know, Futurama is/was  a pretty good show.  Just saying.

Went on a bit of a music tear tonight, and found a couple of tracks that my Uncle Bill introduced me to, and hearing them again?  They hold up.  Most of them stand the test of the last 25 years WAY better than most of the top-40 80s stuff has so far.  Will have to play some of it in the next podcast.

Oh, did I mention?  Figured it out.  Rather, Arwen did.  There as someone who was streaming an MP3 I had on the site EVERY DAY OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN.  I’m guessing maybe they were using it as their music-on-hold or something.  Seems there’s gotta be an easier way to do it than to download a GIG of music a DAY.

Crazytalk.

Epic Mickey looks pretty good.  Wonder if maybe I need to pick that up for Xmas for the kids (‘ dad). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Mickey

Okay, I’m tired, and it’s like, 1:15  Should be sleeping.

Sorry for the domain bombing out for a bit there last night.  We were getting HAMMERED by someone in China at a rate of about 2GB a day.  Not entirely sure what’s going on there, but we think Arwen’s figured it out after digging through the logs.

Snowed like CRAZAY last night.  Two inches of snow on top of the electrical cables outside.  The kids woke up to a whole new world out there.  Made a snowman while they could, inviting the girl from downstairs to come out and play too, even though is was only a few degrees above zero.  Nice to see these little Vancouverites get to play with the snow while it’s here.

Did a kabillion loads of laundry today while trying to figure out why the network card in my “office” machine died suddenly (it’s “there,” but the link never thinks it’s connected – even under Ubuntu).  Last thing I did before it died was upgrade the VMWare Player installation to the newest version, but I think it’s just that the motherboard is EXACTLY 12 months old since manufacture.

Garg.

Played D&D tonight, which was a fun evening of hack & slash to end the day.  I play the tank (a dragonesque biped) except that I enjoy the comedy of the failed rolls way more than the “booya” moment of a highroll in battle.

The cold I was fighting off last night seems to be mostly gone, which is great.  Wasn’t feeling great yesterday, but am able to get moving and stuff today, which was good.  Hate that draggy feeling of an impending cold.

SNL is on now.

Today’s a better day.  The fog of Tuesday’s event is lifting.  Work’s more focused for me now.  Less hectic.  I figured out something.  I was feeling like I was on shaky ground, and I think it’s that I was on shaky legs.  Trying to do too much at once, and thinking that the people who were taking things off my plate were taking things AWAY from me.

Which would fine, except that I was becoming increasingly freaked out that the things taken away would end up BACK on my plate without warning, with a rapidly-approaching deadline, and with a whole bunch of stress and ugliness attached to it.

This Call of Duty ad just made me laugh, even though it was muted when I saw it.

Just watched the whole thing again, and it’s a minute-long commercial, and I gotta say that it’s simultaneously great and sad that the first thing I thought was “finally, women in a commercial for a first-person-shooter.”  That was the first 20 seconds.  Imagine that – a full 20 seconds of women portrayed in a video game setting who are NOT bursting out of their bikinis or leather S&M gear (wow, I bet my google hits are gonna skyrocket tonight).

The last 20 seconds are epic (and ridiculous.)  I’m not one to glorify war, but that sort of insane collection of Hollysplosionery is just plain fun.

And that’s what FPS should be about.  Like they were saying about SugarRush when Klei was working on that at Nexon: “Even when you’re losing, it should still be fun.”

Of course, the Call of Duty game won’t contain any of that, but I kinda wish it did, y’know?

annnnnd on another channel, Jamie from Naked Chef has a new show, and he’s out drinking light beer and skinning gators.  Whuck?  Wonder if he ever just thinks “Maybe I’ll just have some crackers and peanut butter instead,” and then ends up sitting on the couch eating crackers and forgetting about the rest of it.

Moustache is coming along, but I’m never going to be someone who can grow one of those epic “Magnum P.I.” things under my nose.  I’m just not a very hairy guy (despite having had hair halfway down my back for a dozen years.)

Tomorrow’s Friday, and I’m looking forward to it, I gotta say.