Gecko Bloggle

Only have a half hour to drop this in, so I’ll just get in there.

Ten Days - It's there, it's just fleshtoned.

I finally dug into trying to clean up the podcast we did in October (I think it was) and see if I could do anything about a microphone blowout I was creating.  Turned out “okay,” but that’s about it, sadly.  I mean, Skype worked for recording and stuff, and we did pretty well at ignoring that we weren’t in the same room for the first time in 35 shows, but the recording of our TalkyBits were pretty rough.

And now, because Arwen’s out, I’m watching Walking Dead.  Pretty darned good.

Rode my bike to/from work today.  S’cold out there, lemme just say.  Good ride though.  Bad music picked.  Gotta be more conscious about the music I have with me to ride.  Bad music (or at least low-tempo music) is totally counter-productive to fast hill climbing.

Well, I’m sure this show’s going to get much much grosser in the near future, but I’m also enjoying the Stand-like vibe of “everyone’s gone.”  For now, this is pretty good.

Ooh, actually, I need to go watch this.

Had a brainfart this evening, and went to FoxBird instead of Firefox.  http://www.foxbird.com/ is what would probably happen if I tried to write html on my own in notepad.  Not my forte, is what I’m saying.

(and spoiler alert, PAGE FIVE is not nearly as exciting as you might have hoped)

Had lunch with a Film School Makeup Artist/prof today, and we stopped in a LondonDrugs on the way back to her work, and there was this dismissive guy in the IT department (he was very busy doing something, probably checking Facebook) and when we walked out of the department, FSMA said

• “He had the most beautiful eyelashes,”
• “Really?  I hadn’t noticed.”
• “Yes, it makes me want to put makeup on him.”
• “Heh, oh yeah?”
• “Yes, often, when I stare at guys, it’s usually ’cause I want to put makeup on them and dress them up as women.  Either that, or vampires and werewolves.”

and with that, she won the conversation.  I know some weird people, in the best way possible.

Might have been a minor earthquake tonight.  A bump, if you will.  Something rattled in the kitchen, and when we walked in there to see what it was, there were weird little lights flickering occasionally around the kitchen.  Dunno.  The FBI must’ve been signaling Arwen to pick up her latest mission briefing.

I’ve talked about mirrors before somewhere on this blog, so we both stood there for a bit and looked around, trying to figure out what the reflection this was.  No candidates.  Not even the kid across the street playing with his laser pointer off our above-the-mantlepiece mirror (again).

But then I had the heebie jeebies for a while (is that something-ist, that term? I’ll have to go look it up), and I kept playing with it by going and standing in the heart of the downstairs axis (bottom of the stairs, between bathroom, office, bedroom, and dining room) and turning slowly, trying to catch whatever the red light source could be.  Checking the angles, you know?

Standing in the dark in your own house, looking for the source of something you’re not seeing any more is a great way to get a little adrenaline rush, lemme just say.  You can hear the blood rushing in your ears, it kicks in so high.

There’s a term for being hyper aware of where your body is in a given space, which doesn’t mean you’re a ninja or anything, but does mean you can reach behind you and grab that thing that was on the table behind you that you saw when you walked into the room (without doing that grasping “rawr I’m an octopus” thing with your hand.)  I forget the word for it, but I’m glad people think about this stuff.

What’s the word for remembering that there’s a field of study, but almost NEVER remember any other details about the study?  I do know it almost always makes me feel like people I’m talking to must think I’m just making shit up on the spot.

Too cold to ride my bike today (sideways rain plus less than 10 degrees = no riding new bike).  Maybe tomorrow.  Want to get out there and ride.

On the way home from school today, our youngest asked Arwen if maybe I was hurt.  Not like bloody finger hurt, but “like growing pains” hurt.  That kid’s got the shinnin’ I tell ya.  Just hooks a line to people like a phone call.  (He was wrong about the pains, but I am stiff today, which is not something he would have known – it’s not like I was limping around the house).

Okay, I’m sorta cheating by posting this tonight, but I’m hitting publish and calling it a day anyway…

Well, day one on the new bike, and I didn’t die.  Been too long (like, maybe a month?) and it’s DARK out there during the ride home.  Only gonna get worse from here on in.  I have about a bajillion lights all over my rig, and when I came up behind someone on a dark street, all I could see was the reflective pants cuff thing.  And of course, no helmet.  Right.  Good.  Of course, he probably thought I was an idiot for having two lights on my helmet, (wait: THREE!) two on my handlebars, one on the back of my rack, AND little orange lights in my wheels.

Aside from being seizure inducing, I was also pretty fast, if I do say so myself.

I’m writing tonight’s post after doing some work, which is “okay,” ’cause it was stuff needed for tomorrow, and I didn’t get to all of it during the day.  Had lunch with Nilo at the Curry Express across the street.  Weird to be back here again.  After being at Blackbox with him all those years ago, it’s like revisiting your high school or something.  So what do you do after lunch with one of the creative folks that made Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi (and a million other crazy-famous things you’ve seen)?  You go shoe shopping, of course.

My. Head. Hurts.  I think I need more water, but parts of me are certainly saying “no more water – enough already.”  Maybe I need to eat something salty to soak up the water?  That’s how it works, right?  Pretzels?  Cheezies?  No?  Darn.

Check out the Mo’10 link at the top of this blog, and if you’ve got the financial means, please donate to help with cancer research.  Mmkay?  Kaythanks.

And now, I’m going to let my netbook reboot, ’cause I’m tired of typing on it anyway.

This week: Writing (maybe), Cycling (for sure), Vague Work News, and of course, Photos of the ‘Stache.  OH, and I have to edit our first Skyped podcast, which is going to be painful, ’cause I think I managed to make myself INSANELY LOUD in the recording of the show.  Whooooooops.

After the movie and stuff last night we had a snack and suddenly the world seemed a much nicer place to be.

Slept in a little this morning, got up and made pancakes for the kids (spent almost ten minutes trying to figure out where the waffle iron went, as I forgot it died about two months ago).  The kids were wiggy and kinda cabin-fevery, I think.  Went driving, wandered around a WalMart for twenty painful minutes (I think it actually does psychic damage to be around that many people – staff and customer alike – who are so unhappy with what they’re doing at the moment).

Maybe that’s just me.  Class clash.  Grossness used to hit me when I went into a thrift shop, too.  It hurts.  I feel like I’ll never get out, or something.  Grew up without much money, so maybe I’ve got issues there, just maybay…  leetle beet.

Got home from the drive.  We had pre-emptively bailed on going for a hike as the sun would be going down earlier, and the kids were just being too whacky, and we hadn’t packed any food, and little tummies don’t know about the whole clock being set back thing.

While Arwen made this super yummy butter-chicken thing (I’m pretty sure this is why humans keep breeding chickens – they’re hoping the butter sauce will somehow become part OF the chicken), I transferred some of my stuff from my old bike to my new one.  We’re trying to come up with a name for this thing, as it seems like it’s enough of a piece of art that it deserves a name.  Arwen’s suggesting “Thrace” as in Cara (Starbuck from BattleStar Galactica).  I’m not sold on it, but that’s pretty darned good.

Suggestions?

What d'ya hear?

So I’m riding in tomorrow.  Gonna be rough, ’cause it’s been over a month since I’ve made the trip, and there’s no shower at the new second temporary space.  Can’t wait until we’re moved into the “real” space, and there’s bike storage and everything.  Hopefully, I’ll be so happy about new wheels under me, I won’t notice that I’m wheezing on my way to/from work tomorrow.

Wish me luck for tomorrow.

Oh, and here’s my 7day moustache for Movember.  I’ll get the link up tomorrow for all y’all to pitch in some bucks for research for “Men’s Cancers,” or we’ll start selling M&Ms with little ‘staches, and nobody wants that.

Would you trust this man to run your... anything?

Bought my new bike today.  Got a good deal on bike that’s “last year’s” model (’cause the  new ones come out in a few weeks in Canada.)  It’s black, and it weighs almost nothing, and it’s got disc brakes (with hydraulic fluid in the “cable:” I was not aware it worked like that.)  It has those clicky shifters (one for up and one for down.)  It’s fancy.  I also got new fenders for it, and said I’d install them myself.

I was wrong.

I tried, believe you me.  Put them on a number of different ways, Googled some stuff, tried some other things, but I really should have had the guy install them for me.  Whenever I try to get them on, it would look almost right, but the wheel would rub.  An inauspicious start, at best.  I’ll ride with the big idiot stripe up my back for a week, and then drop it off for one of my free as-long-as-you-own-the-bike tuneups, and have them put the fenders on, ’cause I’m either doing something wrong, or have the wrong thing.

Man, I hate that feeling.  I’m good at solving puzzles, but there’s certain things I just can’t do, ’cause I’m afraid I’m gonna break something (like my new $800 bike,) and can’t help but think it’s me, y’know?  Part of learning to be a manager is, for me, learning to leave things in the hands of other who’re more capable.  Others whose job it is to get something done that I can’t figure out.  Get something done cause it’s their job, even though I think I *can* figure it out.  Not worth my time, or the stress, or the half-doneness we might end up with if I don’t give it to an expert.

On an entirely unrelated note, the movie “The Breakup” with Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Anniston, and I hated Vaghn’s character so much I *actually* had a stomach ache by the end of the movie.  Like, was causing myself stress.  What’s up with that?

I think I’m tired today.  No real reason, but it seems that almost every weekend, there’s at least one day in which I feel kinda low.

Or maybe it’s just writer’s block.

Today was also a long day, but it ended on a happy note.  After many many hours of backing up data just in case the Isilon cluster decided to asplode when we upgraded the operating system, I finally shooed everyone out of the office and “pulled the trigger” on the upgrade process.

1. Uploaded the upgrade to the cluster.
2. Initiated the upgrade process.
3. Selected the file from where it was on the cluster.
4. Clicked Start.
5. Watched as it started doing its thing.
6. Watched while it started rebooting.
7. Stared at the “The login screen will appear when the upgrade is complete.” screen.
8. For
9. Six
10. Minutes
11. (That’s a very very long time when you’re waiting to find out whether or not your entire weekend is going to be completely toast and you have to spend all your time on the phone with some cheerily determined technical support folks from Seattle, just so you can *barely* scrape your way into Monday morning in time for people to show up and start work again).
12. You know the Public Enemy song Fight the Power?  Of course you do.  Same length of time.  Same amount of “Come on, come ON, YES!” energy was expired in that six minutes waiting for it to come back online.

So that was good.  Copied a few files to/from it just to make sure all was well, and then packed up to go home.

Time to get back to some of the topics I promised on Monday:

Screaming at the Children

So, I’m a dad of two, eight and five, and I think

(Wait: if you’re a Firefox user, and are running a version that does Personas, go put this on.  Very nice.)

and I think I’ve mostly got things figured out when it comes to parenting.  I make mistakes, and I overreact some times when my eldest does something that I find particularly evil, but it’s because I want to show him quickly and surely that there’s bad things that happen when you use your crafty powers for evil.  The other day was a pretty good example of this, and here’s why –

Tape gets used a LOT in this house.  Both the kids love to do artsy things, and scotch tape becomes a part of just about anything.  On Monday night though, youngest (5) comes downstairs and says to me in all seriousness

“Dad, don’t close my door upstairs, ’cause I-”

“You won’t be able to see ’cause it’ll be dark?  There’s your Ikea swirly blue ligh-”

“…won’t be able to get out of my room, ’cause Eldest taped the door.”

I take youngest back upstairs, and put him back to bed, and then look, and sure enough, the door has about four layers of tape around the doorknob, rendering it damn near impossible to turn (for me, and I’ve got some pretty good pickle-jar-openers if I do say so m’self), and so I rip it off the door, and walk into Eldest’s room, and flip on the light.

“Eld, what’s this?”

(Eyes wide) “I just wanted to see if-”

“If what?  If you could trap your brother in his room and cause him to be so scared he’s in there screaming and crying and banging on a door he can’t get open?  What if there’s a fire?  What if he needs to pee?  What if he thinks there’s a monster in his closet, and he CAN’T GET OUT and I CAN’T GET IN and he’s stuck in there?  HUH?”

(Tears in his eyes) “I didn’t think it wou-”

“WHAT IF IT’S 2 AM AND HE’S WAKING FROM A NIGHTMARE AND TERRIFIED OUT OF HIS MIND, AND THEN HE CAN’T EVEN SEE THE LIGHT FROM THE STAIRWELL?  DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT KINDA DAMAGE THAT CAN DO TO YOUR HEAD WHEN YOU’RE ONLY FIVE, AND YOU THINK YOU’VE SEEN A GHOST YOU CAN’T GET AWAY FROM?”

(Crying) “You’re scaring me…”

“YOU’RE GODDAMN *RIGHT* I’M SCARING YO-…”

(Whimpering) “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Younger, I didn’t think it would be-…”

“Next time you do something like this, I’m making you eat the tape.  Now good night.”

I walked back downstairs, and sat on the couch for a bit, and a felt bad.  Also thought about a study I heard about once in which they concluded that people under high stress will often place themselves in a position of more stress so they can get to a point where they explode, and yell and gnash their teeth because there’s a spot in your brain that finds that endorphin/adrenaline rush to be FUN.  Freaking the fuck out like that is ENJOYABLE, like going on a ride at the fair.  Like “WHEEEE…”

And even while I was yelling at Eldest, I knew exactly what he meant.  I’m that kid, too.  I worked at a video store for about two hours before I took the time to figure out how to get tapes past the security gates.  He was just going “Oh hey look, you can make the door not work by doing this.”  My best friend when I was a kid and I used almost exactly the same trick to get ourselves into a empty/condemned/closed office building after hours back in Chilliwack.  I remember we found a beer bottle that had something disgusting in it.  I remember thinking it was a mouse, or something organic and dead.  It was probably a paper towel from someone’s dinner.

But I look back at me then with my now-fatherly eyes and think “That wasn’t safe.  That was stupid.  That was dangerous.  You were in there on the weekend. There could have been others in there.  Others with drug habits, and make-shift weapons, and mental health issues.  You could have been hurt, either/both of you, and nobody would have known where to even start looking for you.”

So.

So when I lost it, I became the monster I felt my child should fear before messing with doors.  With locks.  With security.

Like we learn from monster/alien films: When creating the barrier, and locking the bad guys out, make sure you’re on the other side of the barrier from the aggressor.  Make sure you lock the bad guys out, instead of locking them in with you.

‘Cause sometimes you think you’ve got it all under control, and you realize the monster is you.

Stache pics tomorrow, I think.  Maybe after I go bike shopping.

After making pancakes for the kids, and letting Elder pour his own batter, even though the stove is hot.

Been a long day.  9am meeting, 11am meeting, calls about licensing, emails about stuff, out to get some mice (note to Apple: 3D artists who use Maya want full-length keyboards with a number pad, and a mouse with three buttons, so that’s an extra $100 we need to add to the iMacs we’re buying, or “order special” which means delays in getting much-needed gear).

Also, today was finally “day of crazed backup of the Isilon cluster.”  That’s right: 15.9TB of data being backed up to another device so we can do something terrifying (namely upgrade the OS, which should be fine, but has a slight chance of all hell braking loose and the data not being there after the 7min reboot).  It won’t if the backup is perfect, but if it’s not, bad things are bound to happen.  Mayonnaise goes clear, the tides go out waaaaaaaaay to far, potato chips lose their ruffles, you know… That kinda thing.

Dick Van Dyke (who still has the funny, and just now randomly played a harmonica for the first time, and was actually quite good) just compared himself to Betty White.  Tom Waits will be up next, and he’s going to talk time travel via French coffee press made of hammered copper extracted from 1953 Canadian pennies.

(no, not really, pfff… like the fifty-THREE pennies could be used to… I mean, the molybdenum alone would be…)

So I left the office today at 8:15 or so, after making sure the copy/backup process at least seemed to THINK it was going to be okay.  Sorta like leaving the house-sitter with that final “You’re okay? Got everything?” moment, I left the office thinking I should have said “And No Parties.”

Note to the Insider TV show host: Don’t interlock your fingers and then put them on the highly reflective desktop in front of you, or you’ll look like you’re playing finger-Jenga with all 16 of your non-thumb digits.

annnnnnnnnd I just caught my nail on the couch.  Ow.  Technically, I guess that was my QUICK I just caught on the couch.  That’s just wrong.

And now, I have to transfer some stuff to Arwen’s iPod.

Oh yeah, and i didn’t get the to the bike store yet.  Thinking the weekend (unless, of course, the backup didn’t finish, and I end up being at work for THAT instead of having any fun).

Picks of the moustache start tomorrow, I think.  Lots of nice silver happening around the chin.

Freaky gorgeous sunrise this morning.

Listened to William Gibson’s Zero History on the way in.  As always, some truly excellent writing.  The moustache isn’t really worth posting pictures of yet, but it’s getting there.  By the weekend, I’ll have something approaching photo-worthy.

Didn’t go bicycle shopping today ’cause the place closes at six, and I couldn’t get out the door today until 5:45.

Is it wrong to somewhat enjoy that there’s now three people trying to get what I was trying to get done, and very VERY little of it has actually happened so far?  I mean, that’s kinda messed up, right?  I should be fretting, or at least stressed.

Well, to be fair, there is that right-eye tic I’ve had since… uh… August-ish?  Gotta see a Doctor about that.  And my finger.  And get my eyes checked, ’cause maybe it’s that causing my eye tic, right?  Could just be that.

Let’s talk about dead hardware for a bit here, shall we?  I’m the sort of person who likes to takes things apart, and then put them back together again.  I like to see what’s in there, y’know?  I know what the CCD on a digital camera looks like.  I’ve also pulled a number of small audio recorders look like.  I know what the inside of a number of game consoles look like, and I also, for a guy with what I tend to think of as meat mitts, I actually have some pretty excellent fine-motor control.  Arwen and I once made one of these

This is a special message from my wife, who’s lying on the floor next to me stretch her back:

brfde4fefg6hyujiollfvsjc4 c8hybp.pk;,][‘.76r.7/rc/dcsxs (and then she manaed to hit the power button and make my laptop snooze).

Go-go gadget pattern recognition!

• Birthday (obviously)
• fefg (6567 which spells Jilo)
• 6hyujio (which is actually how one pronounces “Jilo”)
• Llfvsjc4 has been playing the finest in Icelandic StroopWaffle-Bass Down Tempo
• Yeah, no, I’m done.

Hey, can I do this at work some time?

Kids In the Hall: I Speak No English

Oh, hey, wanna hear something slightly gross?  (might wanna skip this last paragraph if you don’t)  My middle finger on my left hand was slammed in a doorjam (doorjamb? why do I think there should be a “b” in there? Am I thinking “jambon?”) about a month ago, and while I didn’t break it, it’s like I “popped” my nail.  Never heard of that happening before.  I know someone who slammed their thumb in a bottle-capping machine, someone else who caught their finger in an escalator (as a kid), and while the first made their fingernail turn black, and the second has this permanently cool “racing stripe” in it, neither ended up with a two-layered nail like mine.  It was so weird, and now it’s kinda… bumpy.  I just finally attacked it the other night with some clippers to reset things and am hoping that it’ll grow out normally in… a few months…

November is a dark and dreary month here in Raincouver on Canada’s Wet Coast, and the first two days have certainly been, uh… wobbly.  Yesterday was dim and dark, but today was only foggy (like, Londonesque) and then suddenly freakishly nice out.  It’s waffling.  Nice breezes.  Good sweater weather.  Not weather that’s good for sweaters, but weather that calls for good sweaters.  Even the old Heathcliff Huxtable from crazy Aunt Flarmboza in Rangoon would be nice on days like today.  I’ve got a sweater drawer (that’s technically under the bed, but it’s a drawer-worth of stuff), and then I have this huge schwack of tee shirts, some of them are older than both my kids combined (okay, maybe not combined – both my kids in parallel concurrent streams of timespace).

Uh, what?

Yeah, work was just work today.  Not crack-under-the-pressure, screamin’-an’-peein’ work, just a day.  A day in which things that were supposed to happen didn’t, and some that weren’t supposed to happen, did, and generally nobody freaked out.  Just a day of slugging through to the other side of the clock, y’know?  Things was did, and stuff got doed.

The Movember moustache is already silvering up nicely.  Looks like I’ve been making out with a pixie.  Not saying I have or haven’t, just saying it’s what I look like.  Also old, and tired, and yellow.  Arm’s length camera with flash is alarmingly bright and shiny, without flash is jaundiced and eye-baggedy.  Moving on.

Okay, here’s something hip and new that’s media-based that all the cool kids are talking about: fonts

(ooh, I’m getting into design and now this is going to become a design blog, and have guest bloggers from Iceland who enjoy skydiving while screaming every seventeenth word from Brian Eno’s journal “A Year With Swollen Appendices,” while playing minimalist covers from the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album in Swahili.)

Fonts are used for

(no, really, that actually sounds like fun, now that I think of it.  Maybe the Icelandic band “Mum” could get on that, and do a remix/relaunch of the Beach Boys vs. J Dilla “Pet Sounds: In the Key of Dee” album)

Fonts are…

(what?)

…you done?

(yeah, oh no, yeah, I’m good, go on, this is fascinacipaction going on over here, honestly)

FONTS. ARE…

(…)

used in ads all the time to convey stuff.  Fancy fonts (we’re rich, or you are), interesting (we’re hipsters, or you are), comic sans (Latin for “Funny – NOT!” from the late 80s, and should have been banned around the same time)

There’s a font that’s been bugging me lately though.  Reaching out and grabbing me right in the oculars, y’know?  Forcing me to take notice.  Y’know why?  ‘Cause there’s “Notice” right there in the poster.  That’s not entirely why though.  It’s the fact that the poster appears to say something other than the hip/hot/dangerous thing they’re trying to convey.

I’m talking about, of course, the new Spies on the Run (on the Sly?) show “Bum Notice.”  You don’t retire, you get bumed.

No wait.  “Burn Notice”  BuRn.  Burn.  Burn.  See what’s happening there?

Look:

Notice the Bum

So, I’m no fontophile (textualistico?) but this is what happens to my brain when I’m supposed to be busily not noticing things.  In transit, on transit, transiting, transmutating, whatever, and then stuff like this pops up and I wanna go “Hey, lookit THAT Elmer, that thar them there postar says ‘bum’ onnit!”

Sad.

So to avoid noticing bums, (and getting mine back in shape in the process) I’m getting a new bike.  Mine’s old and kinda falling apart.  Actually, that’s not true.  *I* am old and worried I’m falling apart, so I’m going to blame the $500 I spent six years ago, and run away to the circus with a new $800 instead.  I shall refer to this new bike as my midlife crisis mobile and get a private license plate for it that reads “Burn Notice” and people will think I’m insane.  My mom’s kicking in the bucks to make this happen, as a payback from the UN for putting her in harm’s way (it’s a long story, and it’s fascinating, and it’s freakin TRUE)

So yeah, new bike.  Getting a Kona Asphalt something.  Dew… thingie.  I have to go to the store and actually LOOK AT AND SIT ON one of them, but after that, I’m going to ask if I’m big enough that I’m going to run the risk of actually shattering the frame and landing on what is essentially a Burmese Tiger Pit before getting run over by a car or five.  Haha (hi mom!)

No seriously, I’m going to ask that, without laughing.  No space age polymers in my lower torso, thanks, I plan on using that later (maybe as a place to balance a bowl of popcorn, but still – needs it for laters).

Tomorrow’s another day.  Hope yours is, too.

Was listening to William Gibson’s latest in audio book format, which reminds me of how I accidentally listened to what amounted to a shuffled version of the latest Neal Stephenson tome.  Like, Track 1 from each disc in order, and then track 2 of each disc, but there were (I think) three parts to the book, and there were aliens and futuristic (and some very not-at-all SciFi bits, and they dealt with people who were exposed to the outside world every 10, 100, or 1,000 years.  With time jumping provided by my iPod being on crack.  Imagine 12 Monkeys meets Memento by way of Steven Wright read by Walter Cronkite on cold medicine.

No wonder I notice stuff while in transit.  Look at the soundtrack I choose.

[Long rambling whatsit going on here, either spin on, or grab a snack for the ride].

Hey, so here we aaaaaaaaaare.

Been a long damned time, and there’s a whole bunch of stuff to cover, so I’ma just jump right on in.

I have a new job since the last time I blogged, which is kinda pathetic (the blogging is, not the job – the job’s good).  In late July, I finally moved to a group that’d been forming like a storm cloud for a while.  Lots of lightning and thunder, and that crazy warm wind that runs parallel to the ground, and makes you feel like you could make conduct the storm if you thought about it too hard.  That fantastic moment when you’ve seen the lightning hit, but haven’t heard the Earth-shattering (tree-shattering, more like) ka-freakin’ BOOM as the air closes in around that flash.

That lightning strike was a new organization starting up.  Couldn’t talk about it for a long darn time.  Still can’t talk about much of it, which is the nature of the game, I’m afraid.  I’ll give you as much detail as I think I can safely get away with (without boring you to death, or having to fear for my job).

• I work for an organization.  Aside from the three founders, I was (as far as I know) the first employee.
• Which bought a number of stocks in a small 2D-to-3D film conversion company in May of this year.
  • Which had been lying dormant for almost a year.  Which was about three months before Avatar came out, and everyone freaked out about 3D movies. Which had done ten years of research into the process of doing really excellent 3D conversion.  On previously-existing, finalized DVD footage. In a lab environment. Without access to any of Hollywood.
• Who see this company as the first of many.

We turned the lights back on and fired up some gear to see what was (or wasn’t) still operational.  Lots of the gear was broken, lots of it had been erased, and lots of it was just. plain. gone.  People hadn’t received last paycheques, hurt feelings, ten years blood sweat tears, blame-storming, etc…  You get the idea.  I know what that can be like, I’ve been on that end of the stick.  Some of those folks came back to help reboot.  Some of them are in the wings, helping out, and some of them are off trying to use the same technology under the same company name even though they don’t ow-…  let’s not get into that.

So we did a test for “Studio” of a bunch of shots.  A bake-off.  Seems our output was good, ’cause our front doors were suddenly rattling with work for a different film that will be in theatres in a month or so (which is good, ’cause that means we did something people will see soon, instead of waiting for the bake-off film to hit theatres in almost a year).  We finished our work on Friday/Monday for First Paid Gig, and have the smallest amount of time to re-rig things before the next “twice as large as the last one” job begins.  We’ve got a lot of work to do this week, so I’m hoping I’m at least somewhat coherent while getting this stuff done.

When I was working at previous company, people would ask me what I thought of the “new job,” and I’d say “It’s uh… it’s okay….” and make noises about how I was still trying to figure out where exactly I fit in, how they were planning on using me, etc.  I think my main problem there was that I didn’t actually know why they’d hired me, other than I had a lot of experience getting Windows XP machines to do what I told them in a large-scale due to my days at EA working with/under/around the Mighty Mighty Jan Chojnacki (Dr. Device to those of you on B3ta).  Mostly, I was someone who would say, over and over and over “That’s not scalable” whenever someone started talking about a way to throw people at a technical problem.  Scheduled 10hr work days?  Weekends scheduled?  On call 24/7?  Some of the users didn’t know the first freakin’ THING about using computers for business?  Friends of the family being promoted instead of let go, even though they were proven again and again to be ineffective in their jobs?

All I can think about is this when I hear that particular solution to technical issues

Mario Savio \”Machine Speech\”

(embedding does evil stuff to my formatting, I guess.  Like even more evil than my currently selected theme on any given day).

So, while it’s true there was New Company courting me from afar, there’s no way I would have Old Job when I did (and how I did) unless things were getting progressively worse, with no light at the end of the tunnel.

New Job is better though.  Much better.

Scary though, ’cause I’m the IT Manager, and thereby de-facto IT Director one day, assuming I can get my act together enough to have an IT Manager work under me.  I’ve had some great managers (and some truly unfunny wanna-be managers) over the years, and I can honestly say I’m looking forward to whatever I’ve gotten myself into.

Now I need to go and help fold laundry instead of rambling into the hintertubes, ’cause it’s literally piled up high enough to block the TV, and that’s just not okay.

Upcoming: Movember, New Bicycle, Screaming At the Children, Road Warriors, Office2010, Waffle Omlettes, and of course, Reanimating “Dead” Digital Cameras.

PS: Everyone say a silent prayer for my old IRC buddy Nemo, who’s working behind the scenes at NBC on the day of the Election.  Speaking of throwing people into machines.