Laziness Ensues… Again

Well, I didn’t hear anything back from my recruiter today. Bit of a bummer. But, I still think there’s a very good chance I’ll be getting the job. Fingers are crossed. I was really, really lazy again today. I’ve been slipping more and more into a bit of a depression. I really need to get out of it.

I played WarCraft a bit more today and got a gob of gold.

I watched this crazy movie called Confessions of a Superhero on NetFlix (streamed it to my laptop). The skinny: it’s a documentary about the street performers on Hollywood Blvd. that dress up like superheroes and make a living off getting tips from people who want to get their picture taken with them. Very interesting to watch, highly recommend it.

I’ve been listening to Pandora on my iPhone 3G a lot lately. I’ve added my Stations to the sidebar on the homepage here. It’s small, but good stuff.

I e-mailed and faxed off the final documentation to close the sale for Shauna’s dad’s house he left us after he died. It’s officially over. Whew.

So Begins The Fitness

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 WatersThe 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.

Send In The Renders

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.

Games and Music

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

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.

Back on the Map

Wow. It’s been forever since I’ve posted. Since I’m stuck at the office today, waiting for a database to upgrade, I figured I’d say something. Finally.

So, what’s been happening lately? Hmm. Well, for starters, I’ve still been playing a decent amount of CoH. I’m getting to a point now where I’m balancing my gaming with the rest of my life, and not devoting six hours a day to it. This is a good thing. I’m emerging back into the real world. Millard is doing the same thing and is feeling good too.

Speaking of Millard, Thursday night he, Brad Fries, Shauna and I all went to Orlando to the Sleepytime Gorilla Museum concert. We got up there around 9:30pm or so, and waited for the terrible opening bands to scream themselves raw. When SGM came on, I had trouble with “hearing” them (the audio in that place had some issues), but eventually I started really liking it. Millard told me later that the band really stripped a lot of the performance art out of the show this time, and that hurt the overall presentation. I thought it was really cool regardless. Anyway, we didn’t get home until like 4:00am, but it was worth it. We had a lot of fun meeting up with Jared, et al.

Last night Millard came over for the usual Friday night deflate. We ate shitloads of Taco Bell (we made 2 trips!) and rented Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. There were several funny parts of the movie, but over all it was underwhelming.

What else has been going on?… Hmm. Well, my iPaq crapped out on me, and I got a replacement from T-Mobile yesterday. I’m not sure if that’s newsworthy or not…

I’ve also decided to start writing a short science-fiction story. Mil came up with this great idea to publish a book of short stories, with a few of us contributing to the overall content and cost. So, I’ve begun noodling with that idea. More to come on that later…

So, anyway, I think I’ll be out of here in the next hour or two. After which, I’m planning on just going home to relax for the rest of the weekend…

Sick Thought of the Day: Drinking from the Bukkake Fountain