Category: IT

Another Blog For You (Finally)

Posted on by Chewbode

One again, it seems like forever since I’ve blogged. The odd thing is that I’ve been thinking about blogging a lot, but every time I go to do it I just seem too tired or busy to execute it. Well, I’ve had a good night’s sleep finally and nothing is going on right now so…

The new job’s been great. It’s long hours and the work can be a little overwhelming, but it’s a lot of fun and the people are great. Yeah, yeah, I know I keep saying all that, but it’s so weird for me to deal with that. Traditionally, I’ve worked with companies that try to really keep this stiff business lip and that kind of environment really drains me. I feel that I’m a very creative person in general and really know my stuff professionally, and the sterile environment of some companies drains me like you wouldn’t believe. Those are the kinds of places where I really don’t care if I’m late or what people think of me there. I mean, I’ll try to be professional and all, but I really have no energy to take initiative. These are usually places that hire someone like me (with 10 years of IT experience) and then never trust what they say because they either look too young to be credible, or they act like they listen to you but really have no interest in what you’re saying because it boils down to money, as most IT things unfortunately do. When I’m in that environment, I feel like “why should I put forth by best effort if they won’t take me seriously or care about what I’m saying?” It’s not like that at the company I’m at now. These people WANT to know what’s going on and RELY on that knowledge. They actually LISTEN to what the hired professionals tell them and earnestly TRY to find ways to make it happen. The effort of the owners and board really shows too. It’s not all smoke and mirrors. That’s such a cool, new thing for me. Exactly how I’d run a company.

On the Suncoast Studios front, the photo contest that we entered into still has not been concluded in that the judges haven’t announced the winners yet. I hope that comes to fruition in the next week or so because, with a little insider information I gleaned, I think that we really have a chance of winning the contest. The new production that’s started is going full-force and we’ve made a lot of headway. We’re still in development, but we’ve started some pre-production things and have actually built a couple of the main pieces we’re going to use in the shoot. Set building is scheduled to begin in the next two weeks and we are going to be writing a script shortly thereafter. I would bet that you’ll be hearing a lot about the shoot on the Suncoast Studios website in about a month or so.

Millard’s in town. He flew in Thursday morning and is doing some work for a local company. Shauna and I have him staying with us. Thursday night, to christen him back to Sarasota, I picked him up from the job he was doing and we went out to the store to grab a bunch of food. That night we made some Mexican food and he and I both wolfed down huge-assed burritos. Last night all three of us went out to Wings N Weenies and ate way too much food.

Speaking of Wings N Weenies, the weirdest fucking thing happened there last night. We get there and sit down at a table and order drinks. We’re talking, joking about things (you know the usual) and the one of the waitresses comes up and says “How’s the movie going?”, I thought I mis-heard her or something and was like “What?”. She repeats the question and I’m still not sure what she’s referring to and it occurs to me at that point that maybe she think’s I’m someone else and that I just saw a movie at the theater next door and yada, yada… So I look at her all funny and say “Which movie?” and she’s like “Aren’t you Matt?” and tells me my address. I’m totally confused and I look over at Millard across the table and he’s looking at me like I’m crazy, which is exactly how I felt right then. I look back at her with an apparently blank look and she says “You guys were making a movie a while back.” Ding, ding, ding! Fucking duh! “Oh, it’s done shooting and we’re now editing.” is what I tell her. I think at that point she said something else and walked away, satisfied with the answer I gave her. So, at that point I’m weirded out by how the fuck she knew that and I verbalize my thoughts about it to Shauna and Millard, and Millard reminded me that that same girl delivered food to my place one night while we were set up and shooting in my living room. Ah, it all flooded back to me then and I remembered the entire incident, and the waitress’s comments all made sense. Then I thought about it and realized that it was like eight months ago or so that we did that shoot and the girl remembered it, my NAME and my ADDRESS. It must have made some impression on her (hello, my ego), or she just has a really good memory (most likely the case). That stunned me for like half an hour last night. It was weird for me to be instantly recognized for something (and she hasn’t actually seen the movie, just knew we were shooting it). Sure, in the inner-circle of my friends and family, they all know what Suncoast Studios is and what we’re doing, but to have someone else actually come up to me like that was odd. It was odd in a good way though. After I got over the initial shock of it, I really felt good about it because I realized that I went from someone who is behind the scenes to and actual filmmaking. It was a sudden jump in (and I use this phrase SPARINGLY) “celebrity-status”. I got a taste of what it must be like for other, important people in the industry. I loved it.

So, after that we went back to my place and watched the new Mike Judge movie, Idiocracy, which was pretty funny. Today, with the help of Brad Fries, we’re gonna go clean out the storage unit where we’ve been keeping all the MutantMall merchandise and Suncoast Studios equipment. Later on we’re gonna hang out with Devin.

Sick Thought of the Day: Bring the beef to the lips, make the sausage sing.

Bye, Bye Miss January

Posted on by Chewbode

This is a long overdue entry. I’ve been extremely busy getting acclimated with my new job. I get up at 6:00am, hit the road by 7:00am, and get to work sometime between 8:00am and 8:15am. I work until 5:00pm (sometimes 6:00pm) and get home around 6:00pm or 7:00pm. The drive is crazy. I have to drive 65 miles each way back and forth to Tampa. I’m very comfortable with the job now, and even when I leave work I’ve got tons of energy. However, by the time I get home that energy is gone and I’m exhausted from the drive. I need to learn how to relax on that somehow. I guess it’ll come in time. So, I usually go to bed around 10:00pm so that really only leaves me with about 3 good hours each night. And, if there’s a Lightning game on, I get home, change into shorts and a tee, and watch the game, then off to bed with me. I’ve been doing that a lot.

However, I’ve found some time to be creative. Suncoast Studios has entered into a photo contest sponsored by Informa, my prior employer. Jeff and I worked for about 20 hours or so planning, shooting, and editing the photos. They were submitted this week and we’ll know if we win in the coming week or so.

I’ve also begun pre-production on a new project which has blossomed into a very promising endeavor. I’m very excited about it. I don’t want to say too much about it right now, but, suffice it to say, it’s going to be huge and could very well be the breakthrough project for Suncoast Studios. Jeff and I are co-creators and will both be equally involved in the production. Keep your eye on the website in the coming weeks for more.

This past Saturday marked the completion of my 33rd year of existence. Luckily, there were no friends visiting my bedsheets. Instead my mom, Glen and Amy all came over for the day and we ate pizza, watched movies (Clerks II, Click) and got really sleepy from all the carbs. We celebrated my birthday and Shauna’s, whose is this coming Monday. She got me Superman Returns and Iron Man on DVD, and I got her a new necklace.

I’ve been getting to a point lately where I really have been inspired to loose weight. I’ve been an off-and-on exerciser for a couple of years, but I’m really getting serious about it finally. I figure I need to loose the pot-belly and get a little healthier. My goal is to loose 50 (!) pounds, which sounds like a lot, but it’s not really. That’ll bring me down to my ideal weight. Those of you who frequent my blog know I really don’t talk about this kind of thing unless I’m decidedly serious on doing it. So there. I’m gonna do it. I have my handy diet and exercise software on my iPaq and am ready to go! Maybe this will counter the 2 months of sitting around eating while I was laid off.

Sick Thought of the Day: Smashing fingertips with the lead pipe, making nails pop off and blood leak.

Cha-Ching

Posted on by Chewbode

Well smack my ass and call me Captain-cheesemo-who-eats-the-black-mamba-when-he-gets-into-the-tub-and-has-three-burritos-for-lunch-and-then-farts-so-hard-he-feels-it-in-his-toes-and-hates-the-smell-of-his-own-sulfur-urine-bath-water-guy.

Uh… What was I saying… Oh yeah, I got the job and accepted their offer tonight! Yay for me. The company is OneTouch Direct (stop chuckling Jeff). The company does customer service call volume overflow for clients such as Verizon wireless, Columbia House, and BlueMountain.com. The people there are really nice and the atmosphere is VERY laid back, with most people wearing jeans and shorts in the office. Even the President, who I interviewed with yesterday, was telling me that he hoped it was the last time he’d see me in a jacket and tie and that even he was dressed up in jeans, as he normally wore shorts. Crazy. I’ll be working from 8:00am to 5:00 to 5:30pm Monday thru Friday. The only downside of the job is that it’s one hour away from my place. Shauna and I may relocate to Tampa if it gets tedious. We’ll decide in the next few months.

I just saw the iPhone from Apple today. Well, not in person or anything like that, but I saw it on their site. Man. How fucking cool is that? I’m getting one when I get some cash saved up. I command everyone on the planet to go out and buy one so that the price will drop and make it easier for me to get one… I command it!

Shauna tried one of those BBQ Southwestern Double-Cheeseburger sandwich things from Checkers tonight and said it was awesome.

I washed a load of underwear today.

Everyone owes me a beer now. I owe Jeff something…wet.

Posted on by Chewbode

As promised (albeit a little late), I’ve posted the pictures from Thanksgiving this past Thursday into the Picture Gallery. The day was great. We started out early, around 8:00am or so. I got the turkey cleaned and Shauna and I both buttered and seasoned it. We had prepped the rutabagas, stuffing, and green bean casserole the night before so the only “work we had to do was to cook the turkey and do the mashed potatoes. Food was done around noon, and we kept it warm until everyone arrived around 1:00pm. Glenn had to go to work really early on Friday, so everyone hung out until about 6:00pm and then left. In attendance were me, Shauna, my mom, my sister, Glenn, and my grandmother. Nobody choked on turkey this year, although there was about three metric tons of food in our bellies the whole day.

A while back, I picked up Burnout Legends and New Super Mario Bros. for the DS. I have updated the video game listing in the Archive.

I’ve been hard at work on rendering some short clips for a demo reel / portfolio that’s going up on the Suncoast Studios sight. I hope to use this to get a job or two out in L.A., working from home. The renders should be done in the next day or two (I’m behind since I had to re-build an entire scene because LightWave had a weird glitch).

The first few discs of BSG Season 2.5 will be arriving today. I may watch some before the Lightning game comes on later tonight.

I may be interviewing for a new IT job in Tampa in the next couple of days. More on that as I know more.

I think I’ll actually start getting the Christmas decorations up tomorrow.

Sick Thought of the Day: Canary in the bum.

Hell Week, Better Weekend

Posted on by Chewbode

Oh, there is so much to blog about today…

First off, I got laid off from work this past week. My last day was Friday. I’ve been thinking about how I wanted to write about this major event in my life, and, for a while, I was bitter about it all. I even was opting at one point to write this nasty entry about it all. After giving myself a couple days to reflect on it all, I’ve decided to just state some simple facts about it. I was laid off Friday because my job was phased out. The software and most of the systems I’ve worked on over the past seven years have been going away this year, and the last big software package I supported is being shut down on December 1st. I was officially let go around 10:30am on Friday, and they gave me the option of staying the rest of the day. I immediately packed up my stuff. What was the use of staying there for seven and a half more hours? Plus, I really didn’t want to go through the entire emotional ordeal that surrounds someone leaving – people stopping by, asking about the details, hugging, crying, etc. I guess I’m too much of a pussy for that stuff.

So, I told the guys what had happened and Jeff told me to get my stuff together and we’d go to lunch. I said goodbye to my boss, John, and to Chad, both of whom I’ve worked with in the department for the past 2 years or so. Me, Jeff, Schafer, David, Kelly, Paul and Peter all got into our cars around noon or so and headed downtown to Two Senoritas for lunch. I had my usual, the marinated chicken burritos. We sat there, laughed about things, talked about the future and, in general, had a lot of fun. These guys are a fun bunch and I’ll miss hanging out with them everyday, playing Tap-It, and talking about disgusting things. Thanks for the fun guys!

As for me, the company gave me a seven-week severance package and paid out my vacation time. I don’t have and precise plans yet, but I have my recruiter looking into things and should be on the warpath for a new job after Thanksgiving (I’m told next week is dead for recruiting).

Well, what else is going on?… Well, after telling Schunk about everything that happened at work, he and I went out to the Sarasota Ale House for drinks Friday night. We talked about stuff, and one of the topics that came up was that we hadn’t been to see and R/C air shows in a while. Well, it just so happens that there was a show going on this weekend, so we headed out this morning to go see it. Me, Jon, his daughter and his dad all met at Jon’s house around 10:00am this morning and then proceeded to head over to the airfield. I snapped a bunch of photos and uploaded them to the Picture Gallery. Anyway, I had a couple of big hot dogs (of course) and a Diet Coke, and we sat and watched the pilots qualify. The field was hosting the 2006 Corvin Miller Memorial Contest U.S. Scale Masters Qualifier. We watched several exquisite aircraft fly. At one point a custom-built jet took off and I stood there and just took in the awesome smell of the kerosene. Mmm. We stayed until about 11:30 and then headed back to Schunk’s, where I soon departed for home.

I’ve also caught up on my comic book listing, and that’s now current in the Digital Archive.

Yesterday I picked up a copy of Cars on DVD and Shauna and I watched it last night. Great movie. I was amazed at the complexity of some of the scenes. The textures were amazing. Top-notch, Pixar. Top-notch.

I’ve also started reading Stephen King’s new book, On Writing.  I’ve made it all the way through the third introduction.

Sick Thought of the Day: Heat the iron, stick the tip into the sphincter, make the room smell like burnt dog hair.

11000000000001000100110

Posted on by Chewbode

Another week (more!) has gone by and another update is due…

This past week has been pretty rough on me. I’ve been more tired than usual. I think that I need to sit down and really regiment my working out (it’s been slipping a lot lately) and the whole “eating habits” thing. I wolfed down shitloads of Taco Bell last night. Not good. I mean, it was GOOD, but it’s not good for me. On top of all this I’ve been sleeping lightly (read: poorly). I think some of my problem is that I’m starting to get more involved with projects I normally wouldn’t. I’m in the process of developing a web portal with some people I know, I’ve got the feature to work on with Millard and then there’s the little side projects like updating chewbode.com and such. I think I need to re-organize my free time to allow for the personal things that I need to do (working out, eating right) and then prioritize my projects. Well, after I go see Superman Returns tonight, I’m gonna do all that. Get my shit in order.

What’s been happening this week? Well, I put together my new PC and it runs pretty awesomely. I still have this intermittent problem with the system just outright crashing (not even a BSOD – it just shuts off). As soon as I figure that out, I’m golden. Anyway, I tested the system by playing some Half-Life 2 and a few other games, and it’s smooth as silk. The new video card just does the work it needs to do – no questions asked.

I think I need to spend some time tonight getting ready for the D&D campaign tomorrow. I need to get all the stuff set up for the miniatures and need to get re-acquainted with the story a bit.

Well, time to head home (at the office now)…

Sick Thought of the Day: Naked men standing at attention; milk flowing heavily from the nads.

Week In Review

Posted on by Chewbode

Man, am I ever a lazy mutha. I haven’t posted up here in over a week. A week! Sick. Well, this post should make up for it…

The last time I posted I mentioned that the editing began on the feature Millard and I am working on. Well, the first rough cut of it is now done. I toiled away at the keyboard for quite some time (about 35 hours or so – it’s like another full-time job!) and produced a 65GB AVI file. All day today I’ve spent converting it to a 500MB MOV file and am currently uploading it for Millard so he can see it. I imaging he’ll look it over for the next couple of days and send me his thoughts on the edits. There’s still a lot to do: hire the voice talent, create the commercial bumpers, and create the teaser. Of course the final feature stills needs to be edited down and the music and stills, etc. will need to be added as well. In due time, I suppose.

Wednesday Shauna and I went down and picked up Melissa and she stayed with us for several days.

Friday was our first full D&D session. In attendance was Brad, Diana, Millard, Shauna and myself. Shauna cooked up some Mexican food and I introduced the players to the story (Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics #1 – Idylls of the Rat King) and the party actually made it into the dungeon and is now just beginning the quest. We finished up pretty late – around midnight or so. I think that we may go ahead an decide to cap the night around 11:00pm or so, as by the time we ended the session, everyone was pretty glassy-eyed. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. The only downside was that the miniatures we ordered on Monday hadn’t arrived yet. So, I improvised and grabbed a bag of the little green plastic army men. We got four out, grabbed a Sharpie, and put the first letter of each character’s name on the helmet of the soldiers. I then took a handful of army men and that same marker and colored their helmets totally black – these were to be our monsters. I then designed 1” x 1” grid paper in Photoshop and printed out several sheets. Using a green highlighter pen, I drew out the landscape each time the party encountered some creeps. All in all, it went well.

Saturday was a beautiful day. A couple days prior, I had reserved four seats on the LeBarge dolphin sightseeing cruise. The LeBarge is this big old party boat the docks at Marina Jack’s in Sarasota Bay. People can rent a seat on the boat for a few hours and go out on the water and have fun. We chose the dolphin trip since Melissa’s a huge dolphin fan. Millard, Shauna, Melissa and I went out and, of course, I had to be Mr. Director and try to get some good footage on the camera. And I think I succeeded to a degree. Melissa took some footage on her camera as well and we also got some stills (I’ll post shortly). We saw several dolphins that day. I’ll eventually edit the footage and burn a DVD for Melissa before she leaves to go back home to Scotland.

Sunday we went down to John’s and then I came home and began testing different output methods for the feature. I also decided to upgrade my PC and bought a dual layer DVD burner, some blank discs, an AMD x64 Dual-Core 4200 processor and accompanying mobo, 2 gigs of RAM and an nVidia 7900GT SLI graphics card. This sunofabitch will scream! All that shit will be in this week and, time permitting, I’ll assemble the new machine Saturday.

So, that’s what I’ve been fucking around with. I think I’m going to go play some GameTap now. Peace out, beotches.

Sick Thought of the Day: Penis pimple bursting blood.

Server Done; Tribeca Short

Posted on by Chewbode

The new server is fully operational… Just like the second Death Star. I was able to finish up tonight, which is great since that will free up half my day tomorrow. All services are now functioning again, including FTP. Yay for me. The only thing left is to resurrect the old e-mail and migrate it into the new server (although the new server sends and receives e-mail fine).

I’m sitting here, the clock has just pushed past midnight, and I ponder the next video project (besides the movie with Millard) while listening to Mozart. I’ve decided to film a short and submit it to the Tribeca Film Festival. Maybe I can get some recognition, or even win me some cash. It’s going to have to be quick, since the festival’s submission deadline is next Wednesday night. I’ll be shooting the short all day Monday (I took the day off).

Sick Thought of the Day: Bloody gonad muscle.

Server Serves No More

Posted on by Chewbode

My server took a big, brown, stinking shit last night. Drive C: failed finally (the server’s only 6 years old for God’s sake). Luckily, all my data is stored on a D: and E: drive in the machine, so all I lost was the installed software and basic server configuration. I went to restore the data from my backup to find… the backup was corrupt. I suspect that the server failed in the middle of the backup. No biggie. I had a new server in house already, but was procrastinating the migration of the data over to it (I was going to retire the dead server soon anyway). So, last night I just accelerated my plans and started installing and configuring everything on the new box. E-mail is back up and running and some basic things like antivirus and such. I’ll be tweaking it more this weekend. The goal will be to be fully back online by Sunday night, which I think is very do-able. I’m glad I no longer host chewbode.com on my home server. 🙂

So, this whole server thing will be pushing back the timeline a few days for me jumping into the scripting of the movie.

Millard has created MutantMall Radio. Head on over, take a listen and buy some stuff.

I’ve decided to stop wearing my shoes while I’m sitting at my desk at the office. I think its improving circulation to my brain, as I’m more productive today. Or maybe it’s because I’m one of those people who hate having their feet hot – I prefer them to be ice cold. I even sleep with them poking out of the sheets. It’s a weird body-heat-comfort regulation thing I got going on. Some people need their hands cool, or can’t wear hats. Me, it’s my feet.

Sick Thought of the Day: Little china man has raw egg fooyung.

Sore

Posted on by Chewbode

I’m fucking beat. I spent thirteen hours at the office yesterday tearing our entire server room apart and rebuilding it. All so that the servers would be more organized, the power, network, and KVM cables could be cleaned up, and we could plug them into our new Liebert power conditioner and battery backup unit. My feet hurt. My back hurts. My shoulders hurt. My throat hurts because the air was so incredibly dry and there was so much dust kicked up. I’m a big fucking baby, I know. Regardless, we completed all the work necessary by about 8:30pm last night, which was utterly amazing as we anticipated it taking all day today too.

So, anyway… I’m sitting here relaxing, watching TV, and decided to pop Stan Lee’s Mutants, Monsters & Marvels in the ol’ Digital Video Disc player. Great stuff in there. I hadn’t seen it before even though I’ve owned the DVD for a year or two. I was really inspired by the creative group at Marvel with Stan, Kirby, Ditko, etc. These guys were just a bunch of kids with some ideas – they got together by happenstance and began one of the most enduring entertainment phenomena of the 20th century. At the time, they thought nothing of what they were doing. They just had fun – they loved what they were doing (imagine that!). And they worked hard at it so much so that sometimes they had trouble completing all the work because there was too much. Mind you, this was not “too much work” in that the boss needed a ton of stuff done and piled it on their shoulders to complete – this was “too much work” because their creative minds were just hemorrhaging with amazing stories and art to a point where they had a lot of trouble executing their ideas! Amazing.

Tomorrow night I’m going back into the editing room to continue working on the demo Millard I and I started last week.

Sick Thought of the Day: Squealing pork snot out of the anus.