Category: IT

Hell Month

Posted on by Chewbode

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.

A Little Sore, A Lot Busy

Posted on by Chewbode

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.

Crazy Buffet

Posted on by Chewbode

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.

Fun, Then Not So Fun

Posted on by Chewbode

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.

Easy Listening

Posted on by Chewbode

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

Posted on by Chewbode

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.

Welcome Ryan!

Posted on by Chewbode

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

May Begins

Posted on by Chewbode

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.

As April Winds Down…

Posted on by Chewbode

I heard from the dealership yesterday and my car is currently getting painted. They tell me I should have it back anytime from Monday to Wednesday at the latest. That’s gonna rock.

Last Saturday night I went to Target with Shauna as we needed to pick up a few things from the store. She went to look at girl-things and I headed to the electronics department to window shop. Lo and behold, sitting quietly, all nestled among its brethren, were several Nintendo Wiis. Holy shit. Wiis. A bunch of them. About 30 thoughts raced through my mind instantly: Can I afford one? Will they be here for a few days? Is this something I really want?… I summed it up, sucked in my gut and confidently marched over to the cashier who was this big-boned, six-foot five-inch high school kid that looked like he loved playing games. I told him I wanted a Wii and he immediately grabbed his keys for the case and began saying how much he wanted one too. We talked, he got the console and a copy of Wii Play, which also comes with a Wiimote. I bought them and strode happily back to Shauna to show her my catch like some crazy caveman that just clubbed a saber-toothed tiger for his family. She was marginally impressed.

It dawned on me that I needed a memory card to save the games, etc. I knew the Wii used SD cards, so I figured I’d go get one. Returning to the electronics department, I see the official Wii memory card (SD) for $49.99 for a 1GB card! Yikes! I promptly call Nintendo and ask if I have to use a licensed SD card or if I can get away with using any SD card, and they tell me any card will work. I find a Kodak 1GB card for $27.00 and snatch it.

I got home, hooked up the console and started probing around. I love it. I played Wii Sports and Wii Play until about 3:00am that night. And I was exhausted, but it felt great.

The next morning, my arms were really sore. I got into the shower, squirted a blob of shampoo into my hand, and as I went to flip the lid shut, a huge glob of ‘poo shot straight into my eye. It was, by far, the single most painful thing I’ve ever experienced in my life. I tried my best to rinse it out, but the soap was already lodged between my delicate eyeball and the lid. It took me about 20 minutes before I could even open my eye, and when I did, I saw it was completely red. Like, so red there was no white. Really red. It was so bad that I had to stay home from work Monday because there was nasty gunk in my eye, like mucous, so it was tough to see. I figured I’ve had enough trouble lately keeping cars in one piece with two eyes, so I’d better stay home.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that last Saturday Shauna and I went to the Sarasota film Festival and saw a screening of Ransom Rigg’s Spaceboy. I own the DVD, but let me tell you – the DVD pales in comparison to seeing it on the big screen. It’s not just the epic-ness of it, but the richness of color and the fidelity of the audio. Wow. Jared was there too, unbeknownst to me, and he, Ransom and I talked a bit after the showing.

So, this week I committed to my company’s CEO that I would move up to Tampa by July 1st. That gives us about two months to get things packed and get up there. We’ve already got an apartment and just need to hire the movers. We’re both very excited about the move, as it’ll afford us an opportunity to live in a big city, which we’ve really never done before.

The other night Shauna and I finally watched The Usual Suspects, courtesy of NetFlix. Great movie. Spacey was awesome. Long live Kaiser Soze!

I’m going to be updating the Comics in the Digital Archive tonight too.

Sick Thought of the Day: High up on her inner-thigh, the smell of a recently spent lumberjack wafted freely. The mixture of fat-man sweat and pine needles rose like an afterthought.

Getting Fixed or Totaled?

Posted on by Chewbode

Spring is in the air. Some rain showers have been moving through the area lately, the birds seem to be singing a little louder, and the greenery is coming back.

My life has been — guess! — really, really hectic lately. I went to battle with my auto insurance company and the collision center over my car a couple of weeks ago. I even called Ford who sicced their collision people on them. At that point it had been three weeks and I hadn’t heard anything about the car. Was it going to be totaled? Were they going to fix it? There’s no way it should take three weeks to decide that. So, I got irritated and started making the nasty phone calls. The end result: Two days after I started making a stink, I hear from the insurance company that they’re gonna fix the car. I called the dealership and the collision center tells me “one week to get the parts in, three weeks to rebuild the car.” So, I’m still stuck with the rental car (PT Cruiser) until then, although I’m thinking of taking it back Monday for a smaller, cheaper car now that the rental car is coming out of my own pocket. I should get the Mustang back around the end of the month.

Shauna’s niece, Misti, and her family came down from Atlanta last week and stayed with us for a few days. It was nice to see the kids. They used our apartment as a base of operations and went out every day to Orlando, etc. to have fun.

I got a “creatively acquired” copy of 300 on DVD. Wow. I hope to see Grindhouse this weekend of next.

This is the first day I’ve had off for two weeks. There’s been a massive project at work that has involved me working nearly 80-hour weeks. Thankfully, I hired an assistant and he’s doing the last little bit of work for me this weekend so I can chill out and not resort to bringing in a shotgun to the office Monday.

There’s been very little progress on my behalf on the project, but that will turn around this weekend. This morning I’m going to catch up on paying bills, and then I’m getting together with Jeff for the day to discuss ideas and work on building more sets.

Sick Thought of the Day: Rip the retina.