Cake, Ice Cream, Car Chases

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

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

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

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

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.