Where is my Treo?

Damn Cingular keeps pushing back the release of the Treo650. I must have it! argh!

Oh and check out this buffy link. It's like the IMDB/Google of buffy.

In other news I have another person working on my team. I am training her now in our terrain software and the ways of DD. The longer I'm a team lead the more my life feels like office space.

Looks like you've been missing a lot of work lately.
Well, I wouldn't exactly say I've been *missing* it, Bob.

Long hours, little sleep, and even a few moments of Fighting Evil.

Thats life right now. On the plus side I did get paid today, working 68+ hours a week doesn't suck today at least for a little bit.

And lastly today I get to take my MINI habit to a whole new level. I have coming via UPS today my first order of Meguiar's supplies that are from there pro line. These are the ones that are not sold in normal stores or online as they can be 'dangerous' if used improperly. But when used correctly they do a REALLY good job. They just involve buying 1 gallon jugs of chemicals and spray bottles then mixing them just right. Should be fun. :D

Storm Clouds

It's going to be one of those days. Looks like rain tonight with possible lighting early this morning.

Big congratulations to all my friends on the I, Robot vfx team for your Oscar Nomination this morning. I hope you win because I want to have one of those statues around the office.

EAGLES WIN!

Superbowl HERE WE COME!!!!!

HAPPY DAY! Oh HAPPY DAY!!

WOOT!!!!!!!

It's Saturday

So that means I am at work....
At least I get Sunday off. That's Something.

Go Eagles!

In the Immortal words of Dante Hicks:

"I'm not even supposed to be here today!"

ok, I feel a little better now. I should get out of here in time to have dinner with friends.

oh and Buy me something, Google now was wishlists and unlike amazon's you can put anything from the Internet onto it.

Music to work FAST by

I have 2 types of music to work fast by.

1. Late Night
2. Early Morning

When it's late I go for loud bass thumping techno music.

When it's 7am, It's all about the Superhero Themes. Lot's of John Williams. Opening March to Superman (3 versions) Spidey Suite, Doc Ock's Theme, End Theme to Superman, Vindicated.

The only way to rock out in the morning.

Blinn's Law

Blinn's Law:
The time it takes to render computer graphics will remain constant due to increased complexity negating any speed improvement due to upgraded hardware.

The upside to that is things do look better for the same amount of render time, the down side is that it's 11pm and I'm pushing around 11 million polygons in two different 3D packages, a 3D package, some text editors, and a perl script.

5 years ago I was pushing around 650K polys, it was also 11pm, and one of the 3D packages was different. Oh and I sit in a different cube now. My old one is down the stairs, make a right, go down the hall and it's the 4th cube on your left.

Missed the VFX Bakeoff Tonight. I hope that "I, Robot" and DAY come out on top.
Go DD!

Do we run this Town?

If you ask Ben Stein, the answer is Yes.
A very well written article. I recomend it.

Pictures from the D

Yes that's Beck & Will Ferrell

Jack Black

The Ultimate Band

images are from Getty, see them all here:
http://tinyurl.com/4wzs7
photos by Mark Mainz

Old Friends

With the engagement comes informing people.

I made many calls, to friends old and new. Old friends who I talk to regualry and ones who I haven't seen in almost 7 years. It's just odd how someone you spent the better part of 18 years with then don't see for 7 years can be totally the same and totally different at the same time.

This is where google comes in, now as anyone who knows me is aware, tracking down information is something I often do. It's kind of easy when your old friends just register there lastname.net or lastname@gmail.com. Blogs are cool, great way to read up on what someone has been up to.

Maybe someday I will unarchive my posts from my other blog.

For now I go back into that abyss that is deadlines.

Did I mention that I was engaged?

It rocks. YA know what else Rocks? The D!
3:30 min till show time!

Hey I am getting married!

So around 2pm on January 15th, 2005 Karin said she would marry me.
That makes me very happy.

:D

FF

Check out this new picture of the Fantasic Four.

I SO want to see that movie.

We have Data!

W00T!
Huygens worked, data is being received and we should have pictures this afternoon. This is a new distance record for landing a man build object on a distant solar body. Titan is larger than some planets but it's smaller than the planet Saturn that it orbits so that makes it a moon. Hence the 'solar body' comment.

We have signal!

Huygens made it into the atmosphere and the computer turned on. The mission is over but we don't know how it went yet. Cassini has turned back to earth to start sending data. They don't have the data yet as it takes 67 minutes for light and radio waves to travel between Titan and Earth.

Earth Rules!

late nights

wow im tired, good thing I only have to be back in the office at 7am for another 15 hour day.

7:13am

7:13am.
That's the time we should start getting data back from the Huygens probe. 5 hour's before that it will be plumiting through Titans atmosphere. Titan is a moon of Saturn and the most likely place to find any other life in this solar system. This is the first thing we have sent there. Life? yea, Life. Titan looks like it has frozen water, it might just have liquid water under that. We will hopefully find out tomorrow morning around 7:13 am pst.

music of my mind at the moment

Listening to Modest Mouse right now.

Satin in a Coffin is a great song but it's just fucked up if you listen to the words.

I think it's great, like last nights episode of LOST. that was fucked up and great as well.

So we have a big event Saturday at Santa Anita Racepark for the MINI club. Everyone will be there. We should get there about 11:30 or Noon. That means I need to be awake at 7:30am to start work on the MINI. I have some serious washing to do. If I haul as on the cleaning I can get it dry and into the garage for a full waxing by 9am or so.

That's the plan anyway.

3 call limit

I think there should be a limit of 3 calls to my desk phone. Before I am finished with one work call another is coming in, then another. Just takes up so much time.

Oh and those Sound Guys finally unveiled there long awaited suspension system for cars. Check out the quicktimes, it's sweet stuff. It is heavy but it uses Linear Electromagnetic Motors instead of springs and shocks. Find me a geek who won't like that.

And on Mars they found a weird chunk of metal.
yes those are 3 different pictures of it.

Do you Know the D?

It's TENACIOUS D time!

That's right the D have returned and are doing 1 concert here in LA.
It sold out in 5 minuets but I got my ticked. Did you get yours?
It's a charity event for Tsunami Victums. While I am said that it took this kind of horror to make the D do a charity concert. I am totaly amped up that it's happening this monday night.

It's all a part of Music for Relief

It's Tenacious D and friends. Last time the friends turned out to be Spinal Tap. This time we know that Beck, Will Ferrell, Dave Grohl, Josh Homme, Eddie Vedder will be making Appearances. I would bet on there being even more.

The New Hotness

While I am a Win2K user and occasional Nix user at work I do admire apples products.

Check out there New Ipod
And there new Mac MINI
If I where going to put a computer in my MINI, I think a Mac MINI built into the boot like a stereo component would be sweet. I am not doing that; But it would be sweet.

Dante

In the imortal words of Dante Hicks
"I'm not even suposed to be here today"

Work and Saturdays never go together.

Still managed to run some erands with my gf this morning (even stoped to get some nice bling bling), go to work, come home and try to make sausage. We have a plan for a Garlic Yellow Pepper Citrus Pork Sausage, we shall see if it works tomarow.

Tomarow I hope to make the LA auto show, we shall see....
Oh and Along came polly is a funny movie. Saw it tonight.

Got Feed?

Turns out I do have an RSS / ATOM feed. So if you collect your news syndicated style here is the ATOM (0.3) xml feed:

http://yontif.blogspot.com/atom.xml

For the record I use the Sage feed reader for my Firefox Browser.

The distance between 2 points

The distance between 2 points is something I don't often think about. Say the distance between buildings at my office or the distance between my building and the Rose Cafe. This distances come to the forefront of my consciousness when it's pouring rain out. Even with my slick new London Fog Umbrella I still got soaked. Glad I wore pants.

Some days the weather reflects life, today is one of them. Lots of miss communication at the office leading to unrealistic or just wrong schedules. That's life in my industry, it's happened at every company I have worked at. No one person at fault just little things like rain drops that added up to make a river. Kind of like the one in our parking lot.

I just found out my Mom won't be coming to LA. Kinda bums me out but I totally support why she can't and it's cool with me. My little sister also bailed on coming out to LA. That's life, school is more important.

Oh and I got the best software error message ever:

01/06/05 23:00:37 Weird License Error. Report To Your Coder!

New best quote ever:
after seeing an article proclaiming that Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston Separate someone said
"See I knew there would be catastrophes if George Bush was reelected"

Post lunch food coma

It just seams that when I have a heavy lunch I go into this food 'coma' back at my desk. It's like being drunk but not as fun. Makes getting good work done hard, but I manage! The show is shifting into 12 hour days, 6 day weeks. That's 72 hours at the office, 96 at home. Most of it asleep. It also means overtime pay. Instead of the normal 55 1 hours a week comes to it becomes 88 1 hours. This is handy as it will pay for item #2 in todays blog...

In my efforts to save money I am going to have to spend $1,000 on a new furnace. For the last 2 years my house has not had heat. I like the cold so I'm ok with this. My girlfriend however would like the house to be above 52 degrees. I guess that's reasonable. So Monday we will get a 45,000 BTU furnace with 80% efficiency. Hopefully now I wont get a phone call about how the steaks sat out all day and didn't defrost.

I am looking forward to the rain but it was suposed to be here already. I have my new london fog umbrella next to me just waiting. I don't want rain Saturday morning as I have the next meguiar's event then.

These are the problems I deal with. I need a nap. I wouldn't need a nap if I wasn't up till 1am playing CoH most nights but that's life.

Good Yontif

A hearty Good Yontif is required as it is the new year. So to start this year off right I have decided that what I accept is not good enough. By this I mean I am striving to remove a lot of the waste in my life that I normal just accept. I am starting with money. I pay a lot of bills, I think I pay to much. So I started looking for alternatives that meet two criteria.
1. Less Expensive
2. Better that is was before.

This first thing I am testing this with is my phone bill. I am sick and tired of paying $63+ a month for my house line. I have a $55 plan with verizon with voicemail and caller ID, ect.... plus long distance. Screw them I'm going to Vonage. As of yesterday I am a Vonage customer. My phone number is being transfered and I the hardware is on the way.
I will soon revel in VOIP!

Few things to note about Vonage,

1. You can get your voicemails on the web
2. You can get your voicemails on the phone
3. You get get your voicemails e-mailed as a wave file to any address. In my case a gmail account that sends the wave file to my phone as an attachment so I can play it.
4. It has a good web interface
5. It costs $14.99 a month for 500 min to anywhere in the USA or Canada. For $10 you can go unlimited but even with overage charges I would need to use over 700 min a month to make it worth it. I save $46.30 a month, or $555.60
   
6. You get a "temp" phone number while the transfer is going on.

Notice #5 there. You can pick the area code. I went Trendy and Stylish. I have a 909 phone number for 1 month. Hells yea, Anyone who lives in LA can explain the significance of having a 909 phone number. Now I get to have one without moving.
So give me a ring!
1-909-632-1203

I will be giving updates as to how well this whole thing works, but the prospect of an extra $555.60 a year for better service makes me very happy.

Next Installment: Car Insurance (good by AAA, hello AIS)