Chew On This

Turning The Page...

chewbode@chewbode.com — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:42:00 GMT

Ugh. It’s been a shitty week already. I was let go from my day-job yesterday. Part of me is sad that I won’t be able to see the people every day, part of me is very relieved that I won’t be working day and night with no recognition and little pay. I’m still friends with a lot of these people and will still hang out from time to time. My phone was blowing up all day with people calling me, trying to get the inside scoop. Some were sad, most were mad at the circumstances. Me? Well, I’m ok with everything. I’m not angry. This is a natural evolution, and I plan on taking full advantage of it.

Shauna also worked for my company, and they let her go yesterday too. So, we’re both looking for work now. Luckily, I’ve already got some great possibilities from my recruiter and am meeting with a company today to do some consulting work. I have some time to think about what I want to do, and I’ll keep everyone up to date here.

Because of the aforementioned ordeal, I began doing a lot of SCS work yesterday and am currently putting together sample graphics for website work. I hope to be able to sell these packages through Millard, as he has a ton of sites he’s working on and is willing to sub-contract me. There may be more SCS-related contract work soon too.

On a lighter note, here’s a picture Millard sent me way back on September 14th. I’m just now getting around to posting it up here (bad Chewbode!).

Sick Thought of the Day: Interviews.

Life Goes On

chewbode@chewbode.com — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 03:16:00 GMT

I’ve just added a section for my PlayStation 3 games in the Digital Archive. The section isn’t fully functional yet as all of the detail pages are empty, however I’ll be filling them all in over the next few weeks. I also removed the old PlayStation 2 and X-Box games sections as I’ve gotten rid of those consoles and titles. I’ll also have to find time to update all of the PC games.

I’ve recently been spending time getting Suncoast Studios up to snuff. Millard has been getting a lot of web design work and he mentioned that he wanted to sub-contract me to do 3D design for clients, if they request it. So, I came up with several different packages and corresponding pricing. There’s so much untapped potential in doing these designs that I really think it’ll be worth my time. Also, I will begin designing stock models and graphics and will put them up on the SCS website for sale.

I’ve been spending some time with Ninel over the past couple of months, and she’s doing great. It’s amazing the things you learn (but wish you didn’t have to) when one of your friends is sick. I wish I didn’t know so much about cancer cell growth, mastectomy surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation treatments. This is the first time that a close friend of mine has ever gone through something so serious. That, coupled with the fact she’s staying at home and raising her two sons while her husband works 1,000 miles away 4 days out of the week leads me to feel good about myself that I’m able to hang out with her and help her out with everything I can.

I’ve decided to start taking care of myself too. Tomorrow I start a new workout regimen. I’ve been careful with what I’m eating. I’m losing a bunch of weight casually, but it’s now time to get serious.

Sick Thought of the Day: Needles in the eardrum.

Projects

chewbode@chewbode.com — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 15:21:00 GMT

The next few weeks I plan on spending a lot of time developing a new project – the secret project – that I’ve been wanting to work on for so long. The design process will be tedious, and there’ll be things that I have to tackle I’ve never dealt with before. I’m really looking forward to figuring out the budget for the project. With the video game work coming up at the end of the year, I suspect that I’ll be able to actually open the studio next summer, and I want this project I’m working on finished before that happens.

I’m having a problem with Cubase. It seems that the license key is corrupt and I need to contact Steinberg to fix it. I’ll try to do that Monday, as I need to start really moving forward on that project too. It needs to be completed before December.

Speaking of projects, I just realized I need to sit and schedule these things out and come up with timelines. There are several things in the pipeline that need varying degrees of attention.

Today I need to run some errands (am at the office currently doing work). Then later tonight I’ll be able to start on SCS work.

Sick Thought of the Day: Gargling raw fish guts.

Momentum

chewbode@chewbode.com — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:38:00 GMT

Lost interest in this blog? Think I’m dead, lying in a ditch somewhere? Wondering why I can’t find the time to write a few simple entries? Well, too bad. I’m not going to explain myself to you.

I’ve begun working with a company based out of Dallas, TX on some video games. I’m doing the graphics which will all be rendered in LightWave. I’ll be posting more on these projects on the Suncoast Studios site as time goes on.

One of my best friends, Ninel, was diagnosed with breast cancer a couple of months ago and I’ve been spending time with her, helping out with the kids and generally trying to be a good friend. If you have the time and can spare some money, please donate to the Susan G. Komen For The Cure foundation.

I recently rebuilt the studio, from the ground up. Here are a few pictures to look at.

Creatively, I’m doing a lot lately. I recently wrote my first song, have been working on video game graphics, and continue to do some side work for friends and colleagues. I’ve also been writing more on a novel, and am prepping to start shooting a teaser trailer (one I’ve been wanting to do for years).

Several people at work are now playing World of Warcraft, so I’ve downloaded it again (am installing it now) and will be playing from time to time. I have to be careful so that it doesn’t completely consume my free time.

I bought an iPhone (16GB) a few weeks ago. I love it.

I ate a lot of Russian food Sunday night. I loved it.

I bought a new Alesis MultiMix 12 FireWire mixing board recently. I love it.

Sick Thought of the Day: Cut the eye with the razor. Milk oozes out.

Creativity vs. Work

chewbode@chewbode.com — Tue, 20 May 2008 05:30:00 GMT

Lately it seems that I can’t keep my head out of my day job/office work. As usual, there’s an enormous amount of work on my plate every day, and I end up spending huge amounts of time sitting at my desk, on conference calls, or even working from home. My mind has veered off into the tumbleweed-laden, snake-infested cool desert night. Nothing around but survival with very little hope for something more than what I’m currently engaged in. I think this is stemming from multiple things in my life currently, but I’m letting it take control, and that’s just unacceptable.

Most of my creative energy lies in the foundation of free, open thinking, in that, I need to be around creativity, to pull it into my own thoughts, digest it, and remanufacture it into my own flavor. I believe that, just as success breeds success, creativity breeds creativity. In my own experience, it is very difficult to just sit in a dark room with no stimulus and create something amazing. Creativity is the culmination of thoughts and experiences, which are driven by the fabric of your life. Hence, the more you interact and the more you learn, the more creativity is at your disposal.

It’s time to leave that desert and set sail for the lush, green, vibrant rain forest that’s full of life and adventure. To do this though will require some effort. I need to buy back more free time from my day job and wrangle up as much quality time as possible.

I’ve heavily considered moving to L.A. lately for many reasons, but have realized that I have no discipline to do so right now. My main reasons to move there would be to hang out with friends, and absorb some of their energy to produce something for myself which might not be too hard as the "industry" is a stone's-throw from that entire area. While this is a great concept, I can’t mentally afford to do that yet. I feel that the building-blocks of my creativity are not up to snuff yet. I’d like to get out there with an arsenal – my own trademark or dog-eared book full of projects that I am developing. I’m not there yet.

To pave the way to creativity, I must do some clear-cutting. The main thing I need to take an axe to is my day job’s workload. Since I’m a control freak and work-a-holic, I very rarely allow others to manage my projects. This has to change and now that I have enough staff to accomplish this, it will happen.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll begin offloading projects to my staff and getting them up to speed. They’re still a bit green, but they’ll learn quickly enough, just as I did. I will gently steer them in the right directions. My hope is that, in the next few weeks, I’ll be able to relax a bit more and move forward on my own projects, including the newly-started SCS017. SCS017 is my internal project code and I will continue to reference the project via this code from now on until the true title is revealed.

Sick Thought of the Day: Blowing masturbated milk bubbles.

Ah...

chewbode@chewbode.com — Mon, 05 May 2008 01:56:00 GMT

I got to a point this evening where I was ready to work out and realized that my T-Mobile Wing Windows device not only didn’t have a standard headphone jack for my ear buds, but it wasn’t playing my MP3s for some odd reason. So, I jumped in the car and went to Wal-Mart and purchased an iPod Shuffle (1GB). I absolutely need music to work out by, so this was a necessity. I’m not the kind of person that needs to carry video around with me, so 250 songs on the Shuffle was perfect. I got back home, got dressed and went and worked out, walking a total of 20 minutes, running almost 10 minutes, and doing upper-body strength training for about 20 minutes. I’m using a suite of applications from VidaOne to keep track of my workouts and kcals on my Wing. I have to say that I feel great now. Effort has been applied, and I kinda like it.

I also listened to about half of the Waters album I mentioned earlier and I have to say that it's fantastic. Another fine concept album, Roger!

So Begins The Fitness

chewbode@chewbode.com — Sun, 04 May 2008 20:34:00 GMT

I’m going through a phase of my life right now where there’s a lot of crappy, negative energy all around me. I need to right the boat and get myself back into a cohesive mental state. Energy is being spent all over the place and I have no order to things. The correction is two-fold: make a better mind and make a better body. I’ve gone down this road in the past and know how to do it, and I must start doing it again. To balance my mental state and gain clarity of thought, I have decided to begin studying Tantra again. I was a practitioner for years earlier in my life, and it brought me to a place where I could enjoy life and see things for what they were without losing my place in reality. I don’t practice from a religious perspective, but I use the philosophical and mental disciplines to my advantage, mostly through meditation. I believe inner peace can come from this, and that through such balance my creativity, thought processes, and most importantly, love of life will begin anew.

My second task is much harder for me, but I will conquer it; that of physically correcting myself. I have many things that will help me obtain health. One is that I must begin to eat properly. This I’ve started several days ago with the help of a good friend during the day, and continue to do so during evenings and weekend time. I am beginning to work out again as well, and am about to head into the gym as I type this. Lastly, I need more than running and strength training to satisfy my urge to be physical, so, as of this coming Wednesday, I’ll be playing hockey again at least once per week.

Part of this website is for you, part is for me. So, I plan to journal these things up here as much as I can, even if it’s just private blog posts that you’ll never read. One thing that will keep me going is an old idea I used to abide by: Effort=Results=Satisfaction. The real trick is to put enough Effort into things to make Results occur. However it is equally important to analyze the Results so that it may produce Satisfaction which, ultimately, fuels more Effort. Hence an endless upward trend.

I went out and picked up a helmet, stick, and a few rolls of both black and white friction tape yesterday in preparation for the practice on Wednesday. I’m sure I’ll be sufficiently sore on Thursday, but I’m going to try to minimize that with the workouts over the next few days.

While out yesterday I stopped in at the theater. There’s no better way to start the summer then strapping in and letting some blockbuster movies take a hold of your senses and send you into imagination land. Yesterday I saw Iron Man at the theater down the road. And man, I gotta tell you it was really good. Smart, funny, and full of action. Robert Downey Jr. played the best role I’ve ever seen him in. Go see it. Tell your friends to see it. Next on the list is Indiana Jones.

I also picked up a copy of Roger Waters’ The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking album on CD, which I’ve heard is really good. I’m ripping the CD now. Also been watching a lot of old Battlestar Galactica lately, trying to get Shauna caught up to season 4.

Time to go stretch out and hit the gym.

Sick Thought of the Day: Pliers on the spine. Squeeze; the tearing of membrane, the oozing of puss. The body goes limp.

Vicky

chewbode@chewbode.com — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:52:00 GMT

I called and talked to Vicky today and made her say some stuff to me in Russian. I remember back when we worked in the same office together; from time to time I’d hear her talking to her mom or someone on the phone and she’d dive right into the Russian (with some English words thrown in once in a while for good measure). At first I didn’t pay that much attention to it, but when you work with someone closely for years, you begin to either hate these kinds of things, or love them. It quickly grew on me to the point where I really loved listening to it. I don’t know if I ever really told her at the time, but listening to her I realized that Russian is a sexy, rhythmic language with a beautiful cadence to it and I’ve found it soothing to drink in the sound. I didn’t understand what was being said, but it really doesn’t matter. It’s like complex symphony.

We talked for a while and shared some stories about what’s been going on in our lives; how everyone is doing. She sent me some pictures of the kids, who are of course growing up fast. We talked about the past too. We were both happy to be talking on the phone again. We IM each other from time to time, but hearing a good friend’s voice is a totally different thing. You hear the compassion, joy, and sometimes anger in their words which are powerful eloquents lost to the digital age. She needed to go help her daughter with her homework, so we ended our call and I promised to call a lot more often. And I will.

On another note, my friend Will has been doing some cool work for G4TV lately, shooting short comedy sketches. He’s done a faux commercial, was a new user in X-Box Live orientation, and just appeared last night as Dr. Will, analyzing the symptoms of those who purchase Grand Theft Auto. It’s really great to see him on the little screen, as I feel badly I didn’t get a chance to get to a screening of The Air I Breathe, which was showing in Orlando recently.

So, that’s pretty much it. I’m really wiped out tonight. I’ve been brain-dead all day as I’ve been up to the wee hours of the morning the last few nights doing work for the office. I think I’ll be able to get back on track tonight tho. I really need to get my life straightened out again and get feeling well.

Sick Thought of the Day: Pinch, wipe, slip. Brown finger.

Projects, FourthChair

chewbode@chewbode.com — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 00:45:00 GMT

I’ve been busy all day today getting Suncoast Studios projects in order. Millard and I have been talking about resurrecting the documentary we started back in 2005, so I decided to move the entire Production Portal from chewbode.com to its permanent home at Suncoast Studios. I had to recreate all of the blog entries and upload all of the data, properly building the Portal as I went. While doing this, I realized there were several other things up here that needed to move including the Transformers models I build for the TFMod Team’s Battlefield 1942 mod, the Pleaseeasaur video edit I did for MutantMall.com, and the final submitted edit of My First Job. So, all that’s done now and it’s properly organized up under the SCS site and the old references up here have been removed.

I also spent some time here fixing the look and feel of the blog, which was disrupted when I upgraded it a few weeks ago. It’s almost where I want it; I spent too much time on it this evening and am going to let it go until it bothers me again.

I recently dug up this old picture for Naser and Jeff and e-mailed it to them. It was taken outside the Pastry Art café on Main Street in downtown Sarasota (our office was located on Ringling and Orange up until March 2004) and depicts (from left to right) Naser, me, Jeff, and Grant. The four of us were good friends and frequented the café often. We began to form FourthChair Software while working together and almost had it launched until Grant had to move his family back to New Zealand, where they’re from. Jeff and I carried the torch for a short while, all the while starting (and stopping) several projects while they were still in their infancy. The last project we did was myLongBox 2004, a comic book database engine that was nearly completed. We lost interest in it and eventually abandoned it. I still have all the sourcecode and graphics (and even compiled, working EXEs) that I may post up here some day for a hoot.

I started working on a project for work today that Suncoast Studios is producing. I anticipate I’ll spend a lot of time on it tomorrow. Now, I’m going to eat some food and watch some old Battlestar Galactica.

Sick Thought of the Day: Stripes of chromium dioxide under the sack; nut tunes.

Edit (2008.04.27 11:26a): I sent the link to this entry to another good friend of mine, Vicky, who we all worked with for many years. I had a sneaking suspicion that either she or Grant's wife took the picture, as I recall it was a woman there with us. Last night Vicky IMed me and told me it was, indeed, her that took it.

The funny thing about this little piece of information is that I have been waxing nostalgic lately, looking over old photos, reading old e-mails, and so on, and it's so incredibly gratifying to know that this one photo above is a recorded moment in time where all five of us were in the same place, doing the same thing, enjoying each other as friends. My only regret is that Vik couldn't be in the picture as well.

New Blog Look

chewbode@chewbode.com — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 18:33:00 GMT

I wanted to also mention that I upgraded the Blog on my site, and a lot of things defaulted back to the original ugliness. I'll be whipping it back into shape in the next couple of days.

High Definition Reappearance

chewbode@chewbode.com — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 18:27:00 GMT

I recently made the jump to an HDTV. My old TV, which was a Philips-Magnavox 60” rear projection, was really starting to show its age, and with devices like my AppleTV and the HDTV cable box, I was starting to feel that I was getting behind the times. So, I picked up a Mitsubishi WD-65734 65” DLP monster. I’ve had it for about a week now, and I’m thoroughly impressed. Very vivid colors, tons of inputs, and great 1080p performance.

Of course, I had to go into the settings of my first generation X-Box and set it for 1080 and continued the trend with the AppleTV, cable box, and Wii (well, the Wii I was able to just set to widescreen because it only supports 720). I then decided to get a PlayStation 3 from my local Rent-A-Center to see what it was like and Oh. My. God. I’ll have it for two weeks on a trial and if I like it, I may just go ahead and purchase one. I’ve downloaded several demos of games, which look amazing, and played Sonic The Hedgehog, which looks great too, but honestly, I’ve never liked that series of games.

I picked up I Am Legend on DVD yesterday and Shauna and I watched it last night. Over all, I thought it was pretty good. I’ve never read the book by Richard Matheson, nor have I seen The Last Man on Earth or The Omega Man, which are also based off of this book. Because I’ve not enjoyed these other renditions, or the original itself, may be the reason why I don’t loathe the new movie like so many out there do. It was fun, and a nice way to spend a Saturday night.

I also picked up a couple of new Wii games, Game Party (because it was only $20) and Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga (because… well, duh… it’s Star Wars). I played some Lego Star Wars yesterday and was thoroughly satisfied for a bit. I got Game Party because I thought it would be a good thing Shauna and I could play, especially the ski-ball game (she loves ski-ball). We’ll most likely play it later today.

Things at my day job are finally slowed down to where I can focus on Suncoast Studios work. I plan on putting together a schedule tomorrow night to give equal and appropriate time to each of the projects I’m working on. I will then be able to touch base with my collaborators and get their expectations in line with what I can provide them. I need to get several of these things done, because I have a very exciting new project that I want to start which will really stretch my abilities. This is a very top-secret project I won’t be talking about until there’s something to show, but involves HD and possibly film work. I’ve only mentioned a one-sentence description to Shauna, but haven’t gone into any details on what I’m doing.

Well, I’ve been cleaning the apartment all day so I need to go take a shower now and head out to get some hotdogs for the grill tonight.

Sick Thought of the Day: Red hole, jagged fingernail.

Ab Initio

chewbode@chewbode.com — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 02:42:39 GMT

Today is the first day of a great work. Victoria aut mors.

Hell Month

chewbode@chewbode.com — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 07:55:27 GMT

There have been a shitload of things going on lately. I think the fact that I haven't logged in and posted a blog entry is testament to that. So, here's the skinny:

At work, we moved into our new building back on February 7th. Well, actually, it was the weekend of the 5th and 6th, but we officially opened the doors on the 7th. So, we've been there for almost a month now. Since the first day, we've encountered numerous problems that have resulted in me needing to be at the office a lot. Last week alone (Monday thru Sunday), I spent about 115 hours at the office. That means that over 68% of the ENTIRE week was spent there; the rest of the time was sleeping and, on Saturday, getting my haircut and running a few errands. This week looks to be very similar, as it's currently 2:24am and I'm sitting in the office, waiting on something to finish so I can do more work. I expect I'll get out of here around 4:00am, and I'll be back in at 8:30am. The scary part of all this is that I'm not getting tired anymore. I'm pretty sure that that's not healthy. But I'm nearing the event horizon with this exhaustive workload. I will either crash and sleep for two days straight or have a psychotic episode.

Suncoast Studios work is at all but a stand-still. There are currently two projects on my plate: the rendering for Eman, and a new project (not sure if I've mentioned it before now) that involves me rendering 3D characters and scenery for a video game. As for the latter project, let's just say the I've been reunited with an old friend and we hit it off famously all over again. More info to come soon. I've no time in my schedule anymore for these things, but as soon as this shit is cleared up at the office (I pray to the gods that it's this week), then I'll be back on track and pumping out work left and right.

There is a possibly (albeit small right now) that I might be seeing Millard in the next couple of weeks and finally meeting Melanie in person. They are trying to come back to Florida for a few days, but I don't know if Millard can get the time off from work.

Sick Thought of the Day: Rancid feces in the laundry basket.

Cake, Ice Cream, Car Chases

chewbode@chewbode.com — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:11:39 GMT

Shauna made me a lemon birthday cake yesterday, and I devoured two large (8” l. x 2” w. x 3” h.) pieces and had two large scoops of ice cream. I was seriously jonesing for some cake, and that completely hit the spot. She also cooked me a great dinner with baked whole chicken breasts, pan-fried scalloped potatoes, and broccoli with cheese. Mmm.

We sat and watched the Bourne Ultimatum on DVD and after the movie was over, we dove into the extra bonus material on the disc. That’s such a great trilogy of movies. I’ve always been a fan of Matt Damon’s, and my respect for him took off like crazy when he started to do these flicks.

Well, off to work. Crazy, insane, busy day ahead of me.

Sick Thought of the Day: Yellow poop.

Banal

chewbode@chewbode.com — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 14:52:59 GMT

Well, it’s been a little while since I’ve posted, so here I am again. Things have been busy lately, as usual. Most of my time has been spent working on IT stuff for my day job. We’re still in the process of moving into our new building, but there’s the potential of a new client coming on board that’s thrown a wrench into the process. Regardless, I’ve been busy getting last-minute things finished up in the server room. The only things left now are the fire-suppression system and the cleanup, and I hope that’s all done this week. We have a large IT audit going on right now and that’ll take up the rest of my week. I have to implement some new stuff and test some old stuff. I need to focus on getting that done today.

Because of all the crazy hours, I’ve fallen off the wagon and have not been eating right. I’m getting back on track today and will have a bowl of elbow macaroni with tomato sauce when I get home tonight. I made a one-pound loaf of cinnamon raisin walnut bread last night, and will be munching on that from time to time. Fresh, homemade bread is the best.

I spent my idle time this past week(end) watching movies. I saw The Simpsons Movie, which was pretty funny. I also watched SuperBad. I think I’m getting burned out on Judd Apatow movies because I just don’t think that it was really funny. Sure there were a couple of cool moments where I laughed but, over all, it was mediocre. Speaking of movies, Shauna and I went and saw Cloverfield last weekend and, I have to say, I loved it. This movie seems to be one of those where you either completely hate it or completely love it, and there’s very little opinion in between. I mentioned it to Millard and he told me he saw it and he thought it was awful. Sure, one can argue that it was an “artsy” film. For me though, I saw it as a great fake documentary. I’ve always liked stories that are told from the lay person’s point of view and this movie does just that. Even though the camera-work had the potential of making me nauseous, I definitely felt like I was in the action, going through the same trials the characters were. It brought me back to the Marvels limited series by, well, Marvel Comics. The entire story was told from the perspective of the person on the street (was it Ben Urich?). At one point, you followed the character into an office building and saw the day-to-day life, and all of the sudden there’s a noise and everyone turns around and they see Spidey scurrying across the window outside. And the characters are all like “Whoa. Did I just see that?” Cloverfield gave me the same feeling.

I have been suffering from not wanting to do a lot of Suncoast Studios work. There are only really three projects on my plate right now: Eman’s project, promoting Jeff’s book, and (possibly) getting another author’s book published. I think the problem has been that I’ve not been eating right and there’s been no exercise in my day. This had lead to the collapse of my enthusiasm and creativity. Also, my work environment in the studio is a joke. My desk is a complete mess right now and is not conducive to being productive. I’m going to go home tonight and change all of that as well. I need to dedicate as much time as possible for these things. I have people counting on me to do this stuff, and I don’t want to let them down. Last weekend I went out and bought a new chair for my desk, so there’s obviously some sort of subliminal part of my mind wanting me to do this.

Well, that’s all for now…

Sick Thought of the Day: Using a guitar string to sever a toe.

A Little Sore, A Lot Busy

chewbode@chewbode.com — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 16:33:25 GMT

Things have been crazy at the office this past week, preventing me (out of sheer exhaustion) from posting any entries up here. We’re still on target to begin our office move next week, but I’m starting to doubt whether it’ll really happen. There are a few factors outside of our control influencing the move, and those deadlines seem to be slipping. In any case, it seems that my body isn’t used to standing all day anymore and the lifting and bending I’m doing is beginning to take its toll on my lower back. I’m sure it’ll just be a matter of time before my muscles remember how to do all this.

This weekend is going to be full of Suncoast Studios work. I plan to spend tons of time working on Eman’s project. I feel bad that I haven’t been able to spend more time on it, as I know he’s waiting for something solid. The only real challenge is coming up with a friendly, easy way to make the animation of some text work. The more I delve into it, the more difficult it seems, but I think that I’m just starting to peer too deeply. I need to resurface on that line of thought and maybe a simple way will present itself to me.

Speaking of Suncoast Studios, I finished the basic layout of the Suncoast Studios Publishing division this past week. This part of the company was used to develop Jeff’s book, and now that I’ve got another author interested, I need to make it a bit more formal. Feel free to visit the new site. Over the coming weeks it’ll grow and morph into a business-entity.

Last night I rented Shrek The Third on pay-per-view. I thought it was a great bookend to the trilogy. Pretty funny in some spots.

I finished erasing all the hard drives. I found out that the 10 GB drive was dead, and one of the 40 GB drives actually turned out to only be a 4 GB drive. I need to start reading all the letters and numbers. Anyway, the 4 GB drive was also dead, so I donated the two 40 GB and 80 GB drives to work and have the 200 GB and 160 GB drives here for other projects.

Looks like NetFlix shipped more Lost discs. I can’t wait.

I’m going to go get a haircut and wash the car, then I’ll be back to begin the day’s work.

Sick Thought of the Day: Worms in the poop.

Disks and Discs

chewbode@chewbode.com — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 00:49:45 GMT

Well, it looks like tomorrow night I’ll be finished with erasing these spare hard drives. I’ve decided that I’m going to donate the 10 GB, the three 40 GB, and the 80 GB drives to work. We have plenty of computers that are constantly dying on us, usually because of hard drive failures, so these will be nice to have around.

I’m burning a DVD for Millard right now, and after that I’ll start installing LightWave. I need to jump back in the job for Eman. I want to knock it out of the ballpark. In the meantime, I’ll work on the Suncoast Studios Publishing site.

Shauna and I watched Lost (Season 3, Disc 3) last night. I sent all the NetFlix discs back today, so we may have more episodes to watch this weekend. Assuming I’m not working, which will likely be the case.

It’s gotten cold here in Tampa, with the current temperature around 40 degrees. I started a fire in the fireplace and we’ve almost burned through all the wood we have. I think I may run out and buy more tomorrow.

Sick Thought of the Day: She’s a he. You didn’t find out until the next morning.

Oraganizing and Updating

chewbode@chewbode.com — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 21:58:41 GMT

I’ve been busy at work here in the studio. I’m not really doing any SCS work, per se, but I’m getting things organized, cleaned, fixed, etc. I’ve been shredding a bunch of old paperwork that means nothing to anyone anymore. That, along with organizing the paperwork on my desk, should put me in a much better mood today. I hate clutter, especially in my work area.

I reorganized the closet in the studio and got all of the 1K lights back in there that I leant to work while our new office was being built. Other than being a bit dusty and having a little paint on them, they’re all still in great order. I’ll find time at some point to clean them up; most likely by the time I have a new production about to be shot.

After years of using the application, I finally purchased DVD Profiler today. I got the unlimited registration for $29.95. I’ve updated the database with all of the DVDs I own and published it to their online service for everyone to see. The most recent DVDs added are from Christmas: Spider-Man 3 (with Bonus Disc), The Last Unicorn 25th Anniversary Edition, and Doctor Strange.

In about an hour I’m going to make some jambalaya with sausage and listen to the Lightning game on WDAE’s streaming internet radio.

Action Figures

chewbode@chewbode.com — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 19:48:16 GMT

I just added a new, re-tooled Action Figures section up in the Digital Archive and added in the first two figures: a Storm Trooper and Lando Calrissian figure that I got for Christmas from my brother.

I have a large box full of figures in the closet of the studio here, and I expect I can get them all put in the archive in the next two weeks if I do one per night. It would only take me about one hour per figure, and I don't have that many.

I'm also in the process of wiping the spare hard drives I have laying about. I'm gurrently doing the 200 GB drive I pulled from my workstation yesterday. I still have a 160 GB, an 80 GB, three 40 GBs, and one 10 GB. Right now, it's taking about 12 hours to wipe just the 200 GB, which is an average of 3.6 mintes / GB.

Happy New Year 2008!

chewbode@chewbode.com — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 15:27:29 GMT

Happy New Year to everyone connected to me via the Internet! Today is a great day to start anew, forget the mistakes of the pass, and begin to build a better life. For the first time ever, I’m going to post a list of things I want to achieve this year. Hopefully, when December 31st, 2008 rolls around and I look back I’ll say I hit these milestones (and then some)! Here we go:

Get fit. I’m going to pool the resources around me to eat, feel, and think healthy. Millard has a brilliant way of looking at food:

“Do not consume more energy than you can produce. The more you overeat, the more fat your body will store. The fat, itself, then becomes hungry. It requires extra food to feed the fat and keep it alive. It is inefficient to carry around a hungry blob attached to your skeletal and muscular structure. It serves no functional purpose. It is a disease with exponential consequences. When you feel full, throw the rest away. It is better to waste food outside of your body than inside your body.”
Make Suncoast Studios profitable. This is a bit of a misnomer, as Suncoast Studios really doesn’t lose money right now, but it surely isn’t supplementing my income much. At this point I feel that I have a decent body of work behind me where I can build a little demo reel and get it out there. I’m going to focus on doing whatever I can to get my name out there and complete as many projects as possible (whether in-house or outsourced).
Become more financially stable. 2007 was a tough year for me and Shauna, as I took a pay cut to work at my current company and she was out of work for a few months. This year I’m going to get on top of all the bills, figure out ways to pay them, and ultimately feel less bogged-down by them on a day-to-day basis.
Keep in touch with people. ‘Nuff said.

And that’s pretty much it. I’ll keep the list simple… Well, at least I’ll keep the list short… Nothing on there is simple.

I bought Valve’s Portal the other day as they were having a sale (10%-50% off everything) through their online distribution unit called Steam. I played the game a bunch last night and finally finished it. The concept is that you’re a test subject in a facility and you need to run around and use these portals to accomplish certain tasks. For example, there may be a large floor-switch that opens a door and you may have to use a portal on the ceiling over the button and one on the floor under a crate to make it fall on the button to open the door. Overall it was a great game. The new style of game play (jumping through portals) is a refreshing new twist on first-person gaming.

The rebuilding of my workstation is going well. The only things I really want to install now are Quicken and LightWave. Everything else I have can wait until it’s needed. I installed Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection yesterday, which is awesome.

Well, time to go grab a little breakfast and then get going on 2008. Have a great year, everyone!

Sick Thought of the Day: Shattering teeth with the hammer, making splinters cut the gums.

Machine Rebuilding Underway

chewbode@chewbode.com — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 13:31:26 GMT

Well, I spent most of yesterday rebuilding my workstation here. I decided to move some hard drives around in my machine since I needed to reformat it anyway. My old config was:

C: 400 GB (OS, Games, Software)
D: 360 GB (200 GB drive spanned with a 160 GB drive) (Video Editing)

I’ve ended up replacing the two hard drives that made up the D: drive with one 400 GB disk. The old drives were SATA I and the new 400 GB is a SATA II drive, so it’ll be twice as fast and I’ve freed up some space in the computer.

I’ve gotten a lot of software reinstalled already and I installed some games to test to see if my quirky Open GL problems went away. They did. That’s a huge relief that the video card is fine. So, I’ve now got to install all the editing software, etc. Millard mentioned that he was going to be upgrading to the Adobe CS3 Master Collection soon, so I’ve decided to follow suit. That way we’ll be on the exact same platform for when we collaborate.

I’m going to spend tonight installing software and cleaning my desk in the studio here. That is, until about 10:00pm when I’ll migrate into the living room to watch some TV, crack open some bubbly, and see the ball drop in Times Square. I was thinking of going out tonight, but I’m sure I’ll be too wiped out for that.

One of my Christmas presents this year was the Doctor Strange animated movie on DVD. Shauna and I watched it last night. I thought it was a pretty good movie in general, and retold Strange’s origin in the Ultimate universe fashion.

We picked up a six-pack of some pretty decent beer yesterday too. Leinenkugel’s Berry Weiss is a simple beer brewed with honey and berries (mostly blackberries, though). It reminded me of drinking grape soda. We bought it on impulse at Publix. Pick up some if you want to try an interesting beer.

Well, off to work. I think my jeans are dry now.

Sick Thought of the Day: Slurping vomit chowder from The Bowl.

Crazy Buffet

chewbode@chewbode.com — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 01:55:47 GMT

Shauna and I went out today and made our way over to Crazy Buffet, which is a really great oriental buffet not far from our place. I ate a ton of food, as did Shauna, and she’s declared that that place is the best buffet she’s ever been to. I think I’ll have to agree. I had some seaweed along with other oriental buffet stapes pepper steak, steamed vegetables, and teriyaki chicken.

Since CompUSA is going out of business in the next couple of days, we headed over there and I picked up a Netgear FS116 16-port network switch. This is mainly in preparation for building the render farm. I still have three more ports open on my Netgear FVS318 firewall, so I won’t use this switch immediately, but I want to start building the farm anyway. I’m in the process of hunting down old PCs and either taking them in working order or getting them as-is to see if I can spend minimal money of fixing them. Of course the faster the CPU on these machines, the better, but for now more processors is better, regardless of performance.

I’ve been having some really strange 3D graphics problems on my PC recently. I think it stems from recent video drivers I’ve installed, but I can’t rule out yet that my nVidia 7950 GT card is going bad. I’m getting multi-colored banding errors in textures in games and from time to time the 3D polygons in games go haywire and have large points streaking off them into infinity. Unfortunately, the cheap way of fixing this is to re-format my PC, which I hate to do, but it’ll give me a chance to install a new hard drive I recently bought too. I think I’ll definitely re-format tonight, which means I may not be back online for a couple of days. Hopefully, I can get the majority of the software reinstalled by January 1. That’d be a great way to start 2008.

Sick Thought of the Day: Gargling afterbirth with toenail clippings.

Year In Review

chewbode@chewbode.com — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 03:28:52 GMT

As 2007 comes to an end, I have to say that I’m both happy and disappointed with my progress in life. Good things have happened to me and my family. Not many “bad” things happened, but ultimately my frustration comes from my lack of making good headway both personally and for Suncoast Studios.

I started the year by getting a new job, one in which my professional limits could stretch and be utilized properly in an environment that needed them. I’ve worked pretty damned hard this year, putting in a ton of hours, but I can say that there’s been a lot of great benefit from it. I’ve put together a great staff and overcome some difficult tribulations. I think I’ve offered a very good service overall. Of this, I’m proud.

On the home front I think things could have gone better – it’s been tough. Financially, Shauna and I have had some troubles and are now just getting on an even footing. Things are looking like they’ll return to normal in 2008 and I hope we’ll be able to honestly start getting ahead on some credit card debt.

I can say that I’m most disappointed in my progress (or lack thereof) with Suncoast Studios this past year. Some sporadic work resulted in getting Jeff’s book finished in late November. This was after a lot of work, but there was also a lot of inefficient time spent on this project. I should have just spend whatever time I could, night after night, to get it done, but instead let it slide in favor of doing day job work. I need to find a better balance on these projects. The only other thing that I really accomplished this year was rendering the 35mm 4K animation for Tangible Entertainment. This was supposed to only take three weeks, and ended up taking about eight. Most of that was completely under estimating the time-frame to get it done, but I also realized I had no real work flow for rendering things like this. No work flow = almost no efficiency, which I hate. I need to get back to setting goals, creating task lists, and sticking to a strict calendar agenda. Planning is everything. I am failing to plan, which is a plan to fail. Procrastination needs to be kicked to the curb too. This is sounding more and more like a New Year’s resolution.

Well, I think I have all that out of my system.

Sick Thought of the Day: Masturbate the corn-cheese out.

Sick and Weak Week

chewbode@chewbode.com — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 02:36:50 GMT

I’ve been battling a cold for the past week. It hit me the night before Thanksgiving, and got progressively worst through Monday night. Even though I took the day off from work Monday, Tuesday I felt well enough to head back into the office. Unfortunately, the aching, soar throat and congestion caught back up with me today.

So, in general, Thanksgiving went off well. I went and picked my mom, sister and brother-in-law up and they stayed up at our place for the entire day. I dropped them back off later that night. We had the usual turkey, stuffing, pashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole and rutabagas. There was delicious pumpkin and apple pies for dessert.

On Black Friday, I took the day off, partly because I needed a break from work, partly because I was sick (I still did work from home most of the day). I ventured out to GameStop and decided to buy Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Wow. What a great game. At some point I’ll update the DA up here with that game and Mario Party 8 (the other game I recently bought for the Wii). I ended up playing a lot of the game Friday, but was just too darned sick to play since. I’m definitely hooked, tho.

Jeff’s book is finished. As a matter of fact, it’s already been printed and I have a copy of it. If you’re interested in getting a copy for a loved one (or even a pure enemy), you can buy it at Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble’s website. It’s a lot of fun!

The Suncoast Studios site is under renovation. Over the next couple of days, you’ll see it offline. When it comes back up, it’ll be prepped and ready for Jeff’s book.

In other SCS news, the Tangible logo is nearly done. I have some Photoshop work to do tomorrow night and then I’ll just burn the files to DVDs and get them off to Brendan. Next up after that is the work for Eman, and finally Millard. I need to organize all the projects on my plate and make sure I understand the priorities…

Sick Thought of the Day: Tissue of (thorat) mucous.

Abstract Thought

chewbode@chewbode.com — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 10:55:04 GMT

Sickly sweet Pepsi. Acrid black coffee. Almost empty water bottle. Belly hunger gone for now, cashews helping.

Upgrading suncoaststudios.com. Backing up data. Will upload DNN package. FTP. Book done. Render almost done. Increase farm.

Moved websites. SQL Server started. Need to run cabling. Who buys the fax machine? Hank helping later today. Network switches are loud. Got spare mouse. Yelled at end-user. Tested video cards. Ordered power supply. Waiting on hard drives. Move coming soon. Need desks. Condition battery. Keys in the top drawer. DLL today. New voicemail! Stacking cables. Where’s VoIP? Tired.

Sick Thought of the Day: Undigested mucous plug in the base of the throat. Gargle phlegm.

Inspired By Robots

chewbode@chewbode.com — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 22:18:35 GMT

I went out yesterday to run some errands and ended up buying Transformers on DVD. I haven’t watched the movie yet (I saw it in the theater), but I watched the behind-the-scenes bonus disc. I have to say that it was very inspiring to see all that. They went over the rendering process and how the shots were blocked for the special effects which, in my opinion, are the most fun of all – to see how a director or visual effects supervisor figures out all that stuff. So, now I feel like shooting a movie. But, I’ve got so many things going on that I don’t have the time. I really need to look at all my projects today and figure out some sense of order and start banging them out.

Here’s what I need to do today:

Clean and organize my desk. I’ve let it turn into a pigsty, which I completely hate.
Pay some bills
Organize all the Suncoast Studios projects

I’m sure that the third bullet point will unfold into a decent sized list.

Sick Thought of the Day: Pieces of rectum on the broken Coke bottle.

Send In The Renders

chewbode@chewbode.com — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 14:38:31 GMT

Ah, the weekend. I am ever so glad it's here. It's a time to wash away the stresses of the week and turn your energies inward, hopefully accomplishing some housework, finishing some projects, or just being entertained. I'm about to lay out my master plan for the next two days... Here we go...

I'm currently outputting the final 35mm render for Tangible Entertainment. Some interesting specs on the project:

467 frames of animation
24 frames per second
19.45 seconds of footage
Final output resolution: 4,096 x 1,968 pixels
1.85:1 aspect ratio (Flat/Academy Aperture)
Current total render time (approximated): 6 days

I've been contacted by another filmmaker out in L.A., who wants me to do a title animation for him as well. I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag yet, but he's pretty well-known in certain internet circles, and I'm sure people in Hollywood know him. We're going to touch base in the next few days over the phone and discuss what he needs. I'll dive right into the project as soon as the Tangible render is done.

On another note, we're very, VERY close to getting Jeff's book done. I spend about 18 hours with him last Saturday finishing all of the illustrations. We proofread the entire book this past week, and the only real thing left is to read through the requirements from the publisher and see if the cover art needs to be tweaked at all. I may have to redesign the book's spine, but that should be very simple. I think everything will be done this weekend.

Last Sunday Shauna and I went to a co-worker's house for the day for a Halloween party. There was a ton of great food, and a bunch of people from the office showed up. Doretha and Ninel were there (Ninel brought the kids; I hadn't met her older son until then, and haven't seen the baby since the hospital). We all sat and talked, had fun watching the kids make their own cookies and carve pumpkins, and ultimately just relaxed.

Millard has a new weekly audio podcast, Spam Musubi, where he sits and eats dinner with Will Maier and Eman Laerton each week and they just talk about what they're up to and their views on things. I find it quite fun to listen to them.

I'm going to pay some bills today, clean the apartment, get a haircut, and wash the car. At some point I'll also watch some DVDs (Planet Terror, The Ant Bully, and Hostel: Part II came in from my good friends at NetFlix).

I'm in the process of writing my very first song. When it's done, I'm not going to release it to the public, but I'll most likely use it in a short or feature I'll produce. I was surprised when I stumbled across it several days ago on my guitar and had to start working on it. I'm not trained and can't transcribe it, so I have to rely on memory. At some point I'll record it in the studio here and bring it into Audition. It's a very weird thing for me to hear this song (sans lyrics so far) in my head. It's even weirder that I'm able to slowly find it in the guitar and play it. I'm such a fucking virtuoso.

Oh, I need to go to the store today too.

Sick Thought of the Day: Blood blister under the sack; weeping with puss.

Fun, Then Not So Fun

chewbode@chewbode.com — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 16:29:12 GMT

Late Thursday afternoon I was invited to go to the Lightning hockey game. The owner of my company had an extra ticket, and a bunch of the executives and administrative people were going too. They had tickets to the AFS club, which is this nice area of the Forum where you get in, sit in comfy leather chairs (think along the lines of airline first class) and have unlimited food and beer at your disposal – no shit. So, I went home and changed clothes, got ready, and jumped in the car to meet everyone at one of the executive vice-president’s house. I got there a few minutes after 6:00pm.

People started to slowly show up there for the next 45 minutes, and when all were accounted for, we jumped into a couple of vehicles (we only had two parking passes, so we had to cram in), and headed off towards downtown Tampa.

We get there, get in, and make our way to the AFS club area. As we’re walking through, we’re flanked by these chrome-plated serving trays with roll-top-type covers, all filled with food. I end up grabbing a plate of rice and broccoli chicken stir-fry. We end up camping around a couple of tables for the next couple of hours, laughing, having some beer, and eating some food. At one point I stopped watching the hockey game on the big-screen TV they had in there and walked the 30 feet to the seats to watch it in person.

The free beer was coming in waves, as our waitress, Jill, was trying to keep all the execs happy – well, I guess she was trying to keep everyone happy. She was dropping off trays of 16oz. cups of beer. I have no idea what kind of beer, but I’m sure it was mostly Bud, Bud Light, Miller, etc.

Here’s where this mundane story gets interesting. At one point during the evening, I realized that I lost track of how many beers I’d drank. After 16 cups, I just drank. I was eating some food here and there (aforementioned stir-fry, some turkey, and some baked ziti), and I’ve never gotten drunk before. Those of you that know me most likely know the stories I’ve told on how I drank a ton of vodka, etc. and only got a buzz going. So, I’m thinking to myself, “Self… This is just gonna be another one of those nights where the buzz will wear off in a couple of hours and I’ll be fine.”

So, back to the Forum. Drinks are going into me like there’s no tomorrow. The game finished (Lightning won), and one of the ladies that does the sales for XO Communications (who had met us earlier on in the night), escorts us all down to the XO Club, which is this really exclusive VIP club at ice-level. We get in there and we all start watching the Virginia Tech game and the Sox/Colorado world series game on the big screens. Laughing, hilarity, fun and, yes, more beer ensues.

At the end of the Virginia game, the manager of the XO comes out and says that they’re closing and that we have to leave. We do, and we all decide to head to a bar somewhere downtown. Since I wasn’t driving and don’t know the area really well (and am normally not a bar-hopper), I don’t remember where it was or what it was called. I think it started with an “M”.

We leave the parking garage, the owner ahead of us in his Mercedes, and we notice that there’s a parking cone jammed up under his car. We all start laughing and one of the guys hangs out the window of the truck we’re in and starts calling the owner “Conan” (as in “Cone-an”). Yeah. We were drunk at that point.

We get to the bar and I end up having a couple of vodka and tonics and I finished the evening off with a Guinness (yuk – I hate that beer).

We all leave and go back to the VP’s house. I get in my car, a little buzzed from the drinks, and head home, which is really only about a five minute drive. About half-way there, I get this insane pain in my gut – like the kind you get when you have a really bad shit brewing inside and you need to dump it immediately. I think to myself, “Ugh… Here’s that burger from this afternoon and all the stir-fry coming out.”

I park the car, run upstairs, plant my ass on the toilet, and erupt like a South American mudslide. The pain eases, and as I sit there with my head in my hands (it was freaking painful), I contemplate how long it’ll be before I can get up. I was spurting in waves, stomach feeling bad the whole time.

I lifted my head up at one point and realized that I was dizzy. The word “drunk”, for the first time in my life, entered my personal vocabulary. My head was spinning so much that I leaned forward and hurled burger-stirfry-turkey-ziti-beer-vodka sludge into the sink in front of me (while still sitting). Then I did it again. And again.

I finish my business on the toilet and decide that it’s just nice to sit on the floor. So I prop myself up against the cupboards and sit there, watching the tub tilt and yaw in every direction. I puke in the toilet. At this point, I decide that sitting on the floor is just good sense, as I’ll probably break bones or valuables if I try to stand up (I’m too proud to crawl) to make my way five feet to the bed. When I came home, Shauna was awake but in bed, so I’m sure she was listening to the entire disgusting ordeal from the next room. All I needed to do was to crawl into the bed at that point, smelling as I did (just imagine), and inflict that sort of nasty on her.

I fall asleep on the floor of the bathroom. I’m not sure how long I slept, but it felt like 30 or 60 minutes. I woke up, realized where I was (and had one of my legs asleep), brushed my teeth, gargled, washed my hands and face and went to bed. A short while later (maybe 15 minutes?), I ran back into the bathroom and threw up again (the bed was spinning, you know). Repeated wash cycle, crawled back into bed where I stayed until the next morning.

I woke up with a headache (hangover! YAY!) on the right side of my head near the back. I stood up, and realized I was still dizzy. I think I got home at 1:00am and eventually fell asleep around 2:30am or so. When I woke up it was about 8:00am. I used the restroom, shaved, and got in the shower to get ready to go to work. For some reason, half-way through the shower, I decided that I needed to take a bath. So, I sat down and drew one. Then after about five minutes of soaking, I realized “Shit, I forgot I need to go to work.” So, I stood up, emptied the tub and continued with the shower. After all that, and realizing I was still dizzy (read: drunk), I decided it wasn’t a wise idea to get behind the wheel of my car, so I ended up staying home Friday although I was online via my laptop and did a bunch of work remotely. It wasn’t until about noon that my headache went away, I stopped feeling dizzy and I started to nibble on some food.

So, that was the craziness of Thursday night. I will never do that again. I now know my limit is somewhere north of 20 cups of beer. As Shauna said, “that will be the sickest you’ll ever be in your life.” I think she’s right.

Sick Thought of the Day: Cleaning the bathroom sink.

Lights. Camera. Action?

chewbode@chewbode.com — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 22:29:01 GMT

I went to a lighting shop in town today and got four new 250 Watt, 3200K tungsten floods for Suncoast Studios. I also picked up another aluminum case and tear-apart cube packing and have built out the carrying case for all of the bulbs I have. I also tested them all to make sure that they're working fine. These bulbs are great lights, but only last 20 hours each and the color temperature starts to change after only three hours.

I'm currently sitting in the studio sipping a Diet Coke blogging, taking a break from working on the Tangible Entertainment project. I think I'll have a 95% correct version by the end of the night. After I ship the low res animatic off to them and get approval, I'll render it out at full 2K film resolution.

I may be doing a shoot all next week. I'm not 100% sure if it's still happening, but I may be hired to shoot a bunch of training seminars and master them down to DVD. I think the project is a go, but I'm not sure when it's supposed to start, so I have to test all my equipment and make sure it's ready for whenever.

I ordered a new director's chair today. In two weeks, I'll get it embroidered with my name or the word "Director". I'm not sure which yet. I'm such a fucking egomaniac. I need to buy some more DV tapes.

I'm also going to make some nachos tonight and watch the Lightning game.

Sick Thought of the Day: Grab the base, tug the neck, pull out the worm.

Games and Music

chewbode@chewbode.com — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 22:02:42 GMT

I went out today and picked up a copy of Resident Evil 4:Wii Edition for the Wii (duh) and Animal Crossings: Wild World for the DS. Both games were quite cheap, so I figured what the heck.

Resident Evil 4 is basically the same game that Capcom released for the GameCube (which I've never owned nor played) except it's adapted to utilize the Wii Remote and Nunchuck and it has some new content. I got Animal Crossing just because I heard it was a good, mindless game and I wanted to have a persistant game on the DS that used the Wi-Fi.

I also wrote a Nugget for Super Paper Mario for the Wii today.

On the music front, I picked up a copy of Fergie's The Dutchess. I also grabbed the soundtrack to Tarantino's Death Proof (makes me smile just thinking of it). Both albums have been ripped to MP3 already and have been added into the new iTunes library I'm building (I'm half-way through the ripping process now, and hope to have a really nice, clean library before Thanksgiving).

After talking with Millard recently, I also decided to start using Last.fm again. I added a widget to the "What I'm Up To" section of the site on the left side of the homepage. Now you can see what I'm listening to in iTunes anytime.

Time to go clean the apartment and get ready for the hockey game and Shauna coming home from work.

Sick Thought of the Day: Internal paper cut on the nad.

Easy Listening

chewbode@chewbode.com — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:16:34 GMT

I’ve been listening to some music lately. Over a month ago I vowed to stop listening to music because it was completely consuming my creative spark. I didn’t want to just be the recipient of others’ creative endeavors, but wanted to build on my own. Everywhere music was on and I’d hear songs in my head all day long, so I went on a sabbatical and stopped listening to it completely. This whole notion helped a lot I think and over the past couple of days, I’ve started listening to some music, mostly .977, a streaming internet radio station through iTunes. I’m going to do this in extreme moderation, as there are several projects on my plate right now the really need 110% of my attention.

I came home last night after working for 36 hours straight and watched the Lightning game. I then watched a little TV and then crashed.

Picked up a 1GB MicroSD card today at Wal-Mart for $27.00. I put it in my T-Mobile Wing and installed all my fitness and diet software on it. I need to start working out again and watching what I eat. It’s time to get that part of my life under control again.

Sick Thought of the Day: Split tendon, grinding on bone.

Long Night

chewbode@chewbode.com — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 08:44:38 GMT

Well, it’s another one of those nights where I get (read: must) stay late at the office; an all-nighter. It all started with an update to the routing of one of our client’s VPNs. That started at 11:00pm tonight and finished up around 1:30am. I could have gone home then, but I needed to stay and work out a problem with our new Windows 2003 domain. Evidently, the two domain controllers (one in Tampa and one in Canada) decided to go out of sync. Well, their AD schema did at least. So, that means that there are going to be e-mail problems soon. I have to fix it, but it appears that the hotfix I need has to be requested from Microsoft (which I’ve done). Just lovely. So, I’m keeping busy updating the DCs with Windows Updates now.

I got up around 7:00am yesterday (21 hours ago) and won’t go to bed until at least 10:00pm tonight, which means I’ll be awake for at least 39 hours straight, of which I’ll have been in the office at work for 36 of those hours. Man, I wish I was hourly. I’d be so rich that I’d just buy you. And your mom. And your first-born.

I made some more progress on the Tangible Entertainment work the last couple of days. I installed LightWave on my work laptop in the hopes that I’d get a chance to work on the logo tonight, but there’s too much going on (I really shouldn’t even be blogging now).

Shauna’s been really sick with the flu since Friday. She’s taking today off of work since she has to work on Saturday. I hope she’ll be able to get well with the downtime today.

Ninel sent some photos of her now 1-month-old, Ryan, today. What a cutie. I’m not going to share with you. He’s too cute for public consumption.

I decided to start up with the SETI@home team again and installed the BOINC client on my workstation at home. It’s processing now, and results should be posted soon. I’ll install the client on my work machine too and only process while idle (like my home machine does).

I ordered the free Wii Remote Jackets yesterday. I got two.

Sick Thought of the Day: Mangled rabbits in the combine.

A Few More Tweaks

chewbode@chewbode.com — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 04:25:40 GMT

Well, I’ve finished my changes to the site for now. One of the first things you’ll notice is that I removed that fucking calendar. That thing was such a pain. Granted, it looked good, but was not very functional. Instead, I’ve moved the Blog Search module up there and re-oriented the controls to a vertical placement so it fits nicely into that navigation pane.

The next thing you’ll notice is that the Blog Archive has had a little makeover. I’ve removed the “CommandButton” look to the hyperlinks, and just made them simple links. The number next to the month/year represents the number of blog entries for that month. This isn’t an inherent feature of the Blog module, so I wrote a SQL query and added code to the module to display it. I think it adds a nice touch and more than makes up for the loss of the calendar.

Site Upgrade

chewbode@chewbode.com — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 02:30:12 GMT

I’ve just completed an upgrade to the site to the latest and greatest version of DotNetNuke (version 04.06.02). The only thing left to fix now is the frigging blog archive on the left side of the screen. For some odd reasons, it wants to push wider than the menu, and that’s making things ugly. I’m sure there’s some sort of CSS or VB setting somewhere to fix this. I’ll find it eventually.

Some of the new features include a better blog module (although you wouldn’t notice with the damned Archive being “fat”), the ability to search the Web in the upper-right (I had to re-design the skin graphic up there to fit in the new radio buttons), store font, improved HTML editing, and many other things.

I just sewed up my work pants. I need to go put them in the washer.

What Is Up, Dawg?

chewbode@chewbode.com — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 21:34:44 GMT

I’ve just finished up adding all my old Blogger blogs into this blog. You can see the birth of my blogging, starting back in August 2004, going all the way through March 2005. There were 54 entries in all. I’ve painstakingly imported them, bringing in all hyperlinks and images. I apologize if any links are bad, but I wanted to keep the blog entries intact, and some websites just don’t exist anymore (these were 3 years ago for god’s sake).

I need to find out what happened to the Zev Freelock blog, By Baltar’s Balls!, and put it up in the Digital Archive. That would be a great compliment to Chew On This. I’d actually go back and fix the hyperlinks in the old entries to point directly to Chewbode.com.

Suncoast Studios has begun work for Tangible Entertainment; a Los Angles based production company. I’m currently designing the intro logo animation for them. I’ve already storyboarded the sequence, and have taken the original logo that Millard created for them and am building the models in LightWave. I should have a rough animatic done by tomorrow night.

I am also in need of finishing up Jeff’s illustrations as well as all the graphics for the Dr. Zoltan podcasts. I need to sit down with Google Calendars and get all this work scheduled.

Since my cell phone broke (ok, I threw it against the floor in the server room at work), I got the company to get me a new one with company-paid service. I got the new T-Mobile Wing, which is a pretty badass device. My iPaq was Windows Mobile 2003 (v4.0), and this one’s got Windows Mobile 6 – what a huge difference. I think Microsoft is finally banging out the bugs with the OS and is adding some great features.

I spent some time yesterday installing a slew of video games on my PC. I played a couple for a few minutes each.

I need to do some laundry today and sew up my work Dockers. I found that there was a huge hole (whole) in the crotch Thursday. I think it’s been there a while. Thank god my mom always taught me to wear clean underwear. I’ll fix that and the belt loop that popped off. Oh, and the hole (whole) in the pocket.

I need to find time to get a haircut; it’s been over a month. Ugh.

Watched Cast Away and The Queen recently. Great flicks.

Sick Thought of the Day: Intestinal turbulence, chum on the buns.

The 8th... No... the 10th Month

chewbode@chewbode.com — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 02:59:00 GMT

Where to start? Well, things at work have been pretty insane. I’m working 75-100 hours per week lately. Mostly this is because we’re prepping to move out office by December 1st , into a new office, and yours truly is in charge of it. That means, with my normal work, I’m spending huge amounts of time also making sure things like networking, power, and cubicle placement get done. Let alone all the cabling, HVAC, etc. Well, I think that things will quiet down now, as I’ve started shifting responsibilities around on my team and I think everyone’s starting to breathe easier.

I saw Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof this weekend on DVD. What an amazing flick. I’ve always loved his movies, but I have to say that Death Proof is up at the top. I think that most of it was the spectacular car chase at the end of the movie. Zoe Bell is an amazing stuntwoman. Nuff said! I’ve also finally found a movie I like with Kurt Russell. I’ve never really cared for him as an actor, but he was great. I highly recommend seeing it.

Last night I finally finished Super Paper Mario on the Wii. Great game. I highly recommend that too. I’ll be writing up a review in the Digital Archive tonight or tomorrow. I’m starting to play The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess now. Looks great, and the controls are really smooth. Can’t wait to finish it as well.

I’ve been working on a few minor things for Millard lately. Not much, just an hour here, and hour there when I can squeeze it in. He’s rolled out a new video podcast. As soon as it hits iTunes, I’ll post a link here. It’s the inaugural launch of his new internet persona, Dr. Zoltan.

Been watching Heroes and a new show that comes on just after called Journeyman. I like it. Maybe I’m biased, but any show where the star drives a Mustang is all right in my book.

Shauna started work at my company today. She’s doing operations work on the sales floor. She’s overwhelmed, but will do just fine.

Sick Thought of the Day: The chortle muscle, spewing out the chum.

Welcome Ryan!

chewbode@chewbode.com — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 21:22:00 GMT

Early this morning my good friend, Ninel, delivered her baby boy, Ryan Matthew (excellent name) at 7 lbs. 14 oz. I’m so incredibly excited for her and her husband Alex. I talked to her around 9:00am and she and Ryan are doing fine. I’m going to go see them all tomorrow at the hospital, as I wasn’t able to get away from the office today.

In a recent fit of rage, I destroyed my iPaq 6315 phone. I hope to be able to get an iPhone in the next couple of months, but right now I’m using an older BlackBerry 7290. The good part of this is that I’ll free up a USB connector on both my home PC and my laptop at the office as I won’t need the cradles anymore.

My editing workstation in the studio decided to start reporting bad clusters on the hard drive last night. I’ve ordered a new 400GB SATA II drive and will be installing it tomorrow. An entire re-format of the machine will then be done. Fun stuff. For the most part, I’ll be completely offline for the next several nights.

In lieu of the above, I have a few items on the Suncoast Studios blotter tonight, all having to do with Jeff’s book. I’ll be working on illustrations, including finishing up the cover, just as soon as I eat dinner. Mmm. Spaghetti.

Sick Thought of the Day: Afterbirth

Keepin' Busy

chewbode@chewbode.com — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 19:05:00 GMT

I just finished playing Tomb Raider: Anniversary. I recently decided to re-activate my GameTap account and I was surprised to see this game in there. GameTap has begun to add several great games to the service. I started playing Tomb Raider a couple of weeks ago, and decided to just go until it was done.

I’ve been doing a lot of work at the office lately, as we’re in the process of getting ready to move. A lot of my time will be devoted to that. Right now I’m working on the electrical needs of the server room. I hope to have that finished today.

In Suncoast Studios news, I’ve been keeping busy with Jeff’s book and have also been trying to help out Millard from time to time. I’m almost done the cover design for the book, then I have to move on to the interior illustrations. For Millard, I’ve done a little audio work and some rendering for the Dr. Zoltan podcast.

I’m going to spend the rest of the day organizing the studio.

Sick Thought of the Day: Blowing his white cruddle all over the back of her head.

SCS Update

chewbode@chewbode.com — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 20:45:00 GMT

Our transition to Tampa is now pretty much behind us. We now have about 75% of the boxes unpacked and the furniture set up for the most part. I can now begin focusing more and more on Suncoast Studios work, which has begun to pile up over the past few months.

We’ve got a ton of projects going on. Currently, I’m finishing up a wedding video edit for a co-worker. I’ll be delivering that tomorrow on DVD. I then need to move on to finishing the graphics for Jeff’s book, then I can finally move back into the new television project and the rendered graphics for Millard.

There’s going to be a lot of structuring/restructuring for the studio. I have to get a new business address in Tampa and as soon as that’s done, incorporate. With the documentary for Millard just about ready to get back in to action, I have this feeling that we’re going to be hitting the festival circuit soon and I have to make sure that the company is in tip-top condition to handle that. The new subsidiary of SCS is also starting to form and will be taking some of my time in the next couple of months as well. I’ve realized that it’s starting to be a very exciting and successful time for this little production company. I feel that we’re on the cusp of something really big.

I’ve also decided to begin working on The Yellow Emerald again. I’m going to have to go through and get some bearing as I haven’t been writing for quite some time now. I think that it’s time to completely revamp what’s been done, and bring it all the way to fruition by getting a publisher (or self-publishing). The Yellow Emerald has been in the works now for more than a decade, and I need to get it out of my system. I’ll begin a writing warm-up cycle by contributing to some of Millard’s works in the near future.

I also happened to pick up some really great lighting stands this weekend. The stands are seven feet high and have a coiled electrical cable running down them. These will be perfect for simple lighting fixtures or even to hold set pieces, scrims, cookies, or even backdrops.

Back to editing…

Sick Thought of the Day: Man mayo in the mustache.

The Middle of Everywhere

chewbode@chewbode.com — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 23:03:00 GMT

Wow. I haven’t blogged in about a month and a half. That’s not good. I think the reason I haven’t been writing much in the past six months is largely due to the fact that I had to drive an hour and fifteen minutes to work every morning, then an hour and fifteen minutes back in the evening. You couple that with long hours (60-70 hour weeks), you get one tired Chewbode; one who wants nothing to do with the computer when he gets home. That’s not good either.

Well, all that is about to change. This past week Shauna and I finally moved to Tampa. The apartment we got into is really nice and we’ve got a lot more room. So much more in fact, that I’ve decided that I’m re-building the studio to be more suited for a production company. I’m looking into getting a new desk that will allow more freedom when I edit, etc.

Being in Tampa now means I’m 5 minutes from work. Closer to work = less driving. Less driving = Chewbode with energy. Chewbode with energy = Suncoast Studios can finally start getting work done.

I have several projects that I’m working on: The project with Jeff, some graphic design for Jeff, some rendering for Millard, the movie is about to come out of moth-balls finally, I’m about to start shooting a commercial for a real estate company, and I will also be creating an animated corporate logo for another production company that’s releasing a film. I’m going to have to fire up my Google Calendars to organize all this.

Oh yeah, I’m also starting up a new company too. Whew.

I recently saw Transformers with Schunk and his dad. Not a terrible movie. The special effects and nostalgic ambiance saved it for me, even though the robots didn’t look like the ones in the cartoon. Michael Bay movies really have some terrible plots, but at least this one had some comedy, etc.

Well, I’m gonna get busy. Will be posting a lot more frequently now.

Sick Thought of the Day: Asshole; spilling onto the chest.

New Section

chewbode@chewbode.com — Mon, 28 May 2007 15:42:00 GMT

I’ve added a new section to the Digital Archive called Movies. This is the new framework that will house both my DVD collection (pending) and film reviews, which I have decided to start doing as of yesterday. Currently, there are three movies up there that I’ve seen lately: Man of the Year, Jackass Two, and The Pursuit of Happyness. The only one I’ve actually reviewed though is Man of the Year.

The reason I decided to start writing movie reviews was, firstly, so that I could remember the films I’ve seen. There’s nothing more annoying to me as buying or renting a movie that I’ve already seen a long time ago and hated. I also began reviewing for those of you who want to see what a movie is about and what my thoughts are on it (not that I’m a film critic, per se, but sometimes I might have a good idea or observation).

Once I finish reviewing the remaining two films up there, I’m going to start building the DVD collection, which will be similar in fashion to the Video Game archive.

Sick Thought of the Day: Baratuba.

Inside My Microcosms

chewbode@chewbode.com — Sun, 27 May 2007 23:04:00 GMT

I’m a very visual person. Anyone who knows me well can tell you that I describe things (sometimes ad nausium) in a lot of detail. I relish the thought that I can interact with microcosms. By that I mean that I like small sub-sets of reality; self-contained little environments that I can get in and manipulate and spend my time perfecting.

What began it for me were Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars. When I was just a kid and lived back in Michigan, I can remember dozens of times where I would load my cars into a cheap plastic tray that rested on top of another cheap plastic tray in a thin, vinyl, lunchbox-sized case and go downstairs into the front yard of the old apartment building we lived in. Settling down, usually in an area where the grass and sand/dirt met (usually adjacent to a sidewalk or driveway), I’d take some of my favorite cars out. I was able to look at the small tufts of grass and rocks and be able to instantly build a mental picture of where the “house” my little imaginary drivers was. I’d take the cars and gently ride them across the sandy areas and make little two-track dirt roads. This was my little microcosm that I could shape, mold, and grow with my own hands. The people getting in and out of the cars, the actual houses, stores, and streetsigns were all imagined, but I could almost see them as if they were real. And, as the streetlights flickered on each night and I headed in, I could walk away knowing that I could easily build an entirely new little civilization the next night, even if it was in a new location (usually due to a fresh pile of dog crap, a new mound of ants, or a destructive lawnmower making the existing location undesirable).

Time went on and my Star Wars and G.I. Joe action figures replaced the diecast cars, and I would do pretty much the same with them, albeit on a larger scale. The addition of the people into my imaginary worlds helped a lot, and they could even get in and out of the vehicles that filled my toy closet.

As I got older (late junior high and early high school,) I moved on to scale-model airplanes, cars, and mostly Star Trek spaceships. Building these, detailing them and then (geekily enough) play with the models a bit, carefully of course, was an even more intriguing creative pastime. Granted, there was the loss of the people, but I could spend time building out the meticulous details of the spaceships, paint them with a lot of detail, and then try to cram rigged Christmas lights into excavated window opening. I found that I had a lot of pride in the building of the models. I thought that I would be the next brilliant builder at Industrial Light and Magic… Someday.

Eventually software took over my life and I was captivated by 3D rendered video, especially that from Pixar. I fell in love with the concept of animation from the technical side. So, I thought “what the heck, I’ll try this whole animation thing” and got a hold of LightWave 3D and quickly realized that this was a great vehicle for creating microcosms. It was amazing to be not only be able to create my spaceships from scratch (like the scale-models), but I could make star fields, planets, and COULD make the aliens and people once again. Oh, amazing joy to me and mine.

You see, to me there are three types of visual stimuli that exist around me: static, semi-interactive, and fully interactive. To explain:

Everyone likes a nicely done-up fish tank. We all enjoy the tranquil sound of the water trickling, the effortless gliding of the fish through the water, the little diver-man standing next to the incessantly opening, bubbling treasure chest. Other interesting things in that tank may be the old, sunken pirate shop, the swaying seagrass and the colorful rocks adorning the floor of the scape. This entire environment is dynamic but static from my view point. I can’t really reach in and move the fish around to where I want him, or add extra detail to the plants, etc. The job has been done for me for the most part and all I do is sit back and watch. I see movies and television the same way. It’s all entertaining, but I can’t do much to change it.

A semi-interactive experience for me is a comic book. I see the panels and can very easily move from one to another, adding sound effects and music as well as hearing the voices from the word balloons all in my head. Hell, I might even verbalize it to myself, quietly, so my wife doesn’t think I’m insane. I can extrapolate the movement of a character from one panel to the next with ease and love the challenge of figuring out how that character spun to that position, etc. I can be challenged creatively, but only to a certain level.

Then there’s the fully interactive experience. When I played with the Matchbox cars, I was BUILDING the world, not just watching it happen or making a couple of things change from time to time. This is, by far, the most enjoyable thing. To see something come from nothing, to create that which did not exist before, then to spin it off into it’s own little universe and build story, character, sound effects, and general entertainment. That’s what it’s all about. And as much as I enjoy watching a film, this is the fundamental reason why I enjoy making them.

So, the real reason that I bring all this up is because I’ve been bumping elbows with some rather creative minds over the past month or so. Creative in artistic, musical, and film senses. I see people getting excited around me and I start to get excited and that generated ideas in my head to dive back into the microcosm of making a movie or show.

There’s a great project that I’ve been working on for Suncoast Studios now for several months. I’m extremely proud of the project, but I’ve realized that it’s been slowly eroding my enthusiasm and momentum with film. The idea for it is really cool, and I think it will turn some heads when it’s released, but I feel that we’re about 2 months behind schedule. This is mostly because we’re building sets, props, and developing story only two or three days a month. This is mostly due to the fact that we’re building everything at Jeff’s place and I don’t have the energy to go to his house every single night of the week to work on this for an hour or so because of my very busy work schedule.

The odd thing about all of that is that this project was birthed from the idea that I needed to do something small in scale, but a lot of bang for the buck that I could do by myself, for only 15 minutes at a time if that’s all the time I had. I needed it simple, fun, and accessible. So far it’s been the first two, but the latter has been a real challenge. So, I need to spend some time rethinking the complexity of the project. The first set is beautiful, and I’m very proud of the work we put in, but the reality is it will take us an entire year to build sets, lighting rigs, and props at this rate.

My creativity into my microcosm is waning too much and that’s got to change.

Now that all of that is out of my system, I can talk about my car, which I got back a couple of weeks ago. She’s beautiful and running fine. Other than replacing the battery, there’ve been no problems. My fingers are crossed.

I’m not sure I’ve mentioned up here before and I’m too lazy to go look, but Shauna and I will be moving to Tampa beginning of July. We’ve secured an apartment and have got in motion the task of getting the power and cable TV and internet turned on. I’ll have a decision on the movers done in the next few days and that will be behind us to. The next thing to work on is packing, which we will start next week. That’s going to be great. It’ll be like a very extensive spring-cleaning; sending old clothes to Goodwill and throwing out shit we haven’t used in years. I love that part. I just hate doing the manual labor associated with it.

I’ve also decided to re-rip our entire audio library. A few years ago I used RealPlayer to rip all the audio to 192K MP3s. The problem with it was that I used a very anal-retentive method of naming the files, etc. This analness is not contusive to iTunes, which has become our primary music player in the house due to Shauna’s iPod Mini and my upcoming iPhone. Another issue was that I used Variable Bit Rate, which I’m starting to loath as certain MP3 players don’t decode the length of the song properly. So, I’m re-ripping the music to an external hard drive in CBR 192K MP3s. This will result in a slightly larger file, but I feel the fidelity will be a lot higher as I’m ripping them at 44.1kHz instead of the 32kHz of days gone by.

I’ve also added a Wii video game section up on the Digital Archive and will be updating the comic book list soon.

Sick Thought of the Day: The smell of poop from two large egg sandwiches where the eggs went bad on April 23rd. My gut hurts.

May Begins

chewbode@chewbode.com — Wed, 02 May 2007 01:16:00 GMT

I picked up the weekly comics this past weekend and was pleasantly surprised to find that World War III was in the stack. For the uninformed, WW3 is a DC book that chronicles the crazy shit Black Adam is doing to the planet while he’s on his insane killing spree thanks to the events in 52. It was a four-issue mini-series and I enjoyed it immensely. I think this is also the very last week of 52, and I’m going to be very happy to jump into Countdown after.

I also got the latest issue of Fantastic Four. All I can say is I’m so happy to see the Surfer back in action. I know Marvel is really bringing him to the forefront because of the FF movie this summer, and I’m as happy as a pig in shit. The fact that Michael Turner did the cover this month helps tremendously.

So, I’ve been playing the Wii on and off lately and this weekend I picked up a used copy of FarCry: Vengance. I’m playing it and am enjoying the unique control scheme. I’ll probably finish the game within a week or two and will write a review for it when I put it in the Digital Archive. Speaking of the DA, I haven’t started a Wii section yet, but that will be forthcoming. So, since FarCry was so cheap ($17 at EB Games), I also bought The Legend of Zelda, Twilight Princess and got the strategy guide for it as well. I haven’t opened the game yet, as I’ve promised myself I will not start playing a new Wii game until I’ve finished the prior one. Zelda will have to wait.

I’ve been doing a lot of digital testing on the new SCS project. I’m very happy with the results so far and I should have something to show for the work this week by Saturday.

I called my car insurance company today to ask where my insurance check was. On Friday the dealership said the car would be ready by Wednesday, so I was hoping I wouldn’t have to foot the entire $10,000 repair bill and then get reimbursed. I’ve never had to deal with this kind of stuff before, so what do I know? Anyway, the guy handling my claim said he was never informed of the fact that the car was NOT being totaled and that the dealership was fixing it. I said to him “consider this your notice”. He called the dealership and told them that I would pay my $1,000 deductible when I picked up the car and the insurance company would then send the remainder of the money directly to them. He did all this while I was on hold for about five minutes, so that was nice to get it taken care of so quickly, considering all the shit I’ve had to put up with on this car. So, I got off the phone with him and called the dealership to find out exactly when the car’s gonna be done and they’ve pushed it back to Friday, which actually works out better because I won’t have the money in the bank to pay them until Thursday anyway.

I will be working some crazy hours at the office over the next couple of days, so please forgive me if I don’t communicate much. I will be hitting the hay tonight to get up at 4:00am so I can be at work by 6:00am (one hour drive, remember?). I need to upgrade some phone equipment. Then, Thursday night I may be at the office all night, well into the wee hours of the morning assisting in a software upgrade on the same phone equipment.

I think I’m going to log off now and watch A Clockwork Orange, as I’ve never seen it all the way through and I’ve had it sitting here in my living room since January (damn, I love NetFlix).

Sick Thought of the Day: Festering ass-boils make the urine smell bitter and acidic, like rotten apple pie.