Last weekend and I headed down to NJ… I was going to Wired NextFest to give a little support to , who was there representing Ensemble Robot. Corinna planned on heading into Manhattan with me so she could visit the NYPL as well as her college roommate and family. Friday night we drove down after work, me driving the whole way, Corinna watching 5 episodes of BSG as part of her massive catch-up effort. I made her watch the 4 hour miniseries the previous weekend, and in 8 days she made it through all of Season 1 and 2. We are going to have some people over this Friday to watch the terribly-named Webisodes as well as the Season 3 premiere. She’s an fracking junkie now.
Saturday, we parked in Hoboken and took the PATH up to 33rd. We grabbed a slice of mediocre pizza (Presto) and split up. I headed over to the Javits Center.. To be honest, NextFest was kind of a bummer.. There were some interesting things, but it really didn’t grab me… After seeing Gib’s panel discussion, I headed over to meet up with Corinna over at Sara & Dave’s place. They live down near Battery Park, so I took the opportunity to head over to the World Trade Center for the first time since 2001. It was really tough for me; I bounced back and forth between sadness and anger. I can’t believe it’s still a fucking hole in the ground. WTC7 has been completely rebuilt, but the crater looks like it hasn’t changed in ages.. I moped my way over to Sara & Dave’s, which gave me time to bounce back, and we hung out with those guys all night, eating some Indian food from Baluchi’s and catching up. We made it back to Hopatcong around 11am, and I passed out pretty quickly.
Sunday we hung out a bit for hitting the road.. Corinna plowed through another 5 episodes… She skipped out on the film club, but I headed over to Harvard Square to catch The Science of Sleep. It was enjoyable, but not great… I think Gael Garcia Bernal is overrated, and kind of annoys me, to be honest..
What a great weekend! Hung out with Schaeffer for dinner on Saturday, and afterwards I finally convinced to watch the Battlestar Galactica miniseries. Needless to say, that by this evening we had not only finished the miniseries, but also the first SEVEN episodes of Season 1. I believe the plan is to motor through Seasons 1 and 2 in preparation for the Season 3 opener in a few weeks. This will be complicated, however, by our trip to NJ/NYC this upcoming weekend.
Saw Jackass Number Two tonight, and holy shit was it great. It was everything I expected times 10. I wanted to watch it a second time as soon as I left the theatre.
And really, how can you not root for someone who sees the blinding absurdity in R. Kelly’s serial song poem “Trapped in the Closet”–and raises it by turning it into an 11-minute song about two people going to the drive-thru for some burgers? We can’t wait to see the video for that one.
For the best send-up of “Trapped in the Closet” ever, check the MP3 link at the bottom of that article.
After ten years of popular demand, The State is available again! The
first season of the critically acclaimed 1993-95 MTV Series will be
released on iTunes Music Store, starting Tuesday, September 26th.
Depending on how many people download, MTV will release subsequent
seasons, and then eventually, hopefully, a DVD.
The first season includes introductions of favorite State characters
Doug, Louie, Barry & Levon. From the minds that brought you RENO 911!,
WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER, and STELLA: Kevin Allison, Michael Ian Black,
Ben Garant, Todd Holoubek, Michael Patrick Jann, Kerri Kenney, Thomas
Lennon, Joe Lo Truglio, Ken Marino, Michael Showalter and David Wain.
It’s amazing how much easier it is to drag yourself to work in the morning when you are dreading a 30 mile commute and 8 hours of work you are totally disinterested in. The first week and change of work have been great, and while all “honeymoon period” disclaimers apply, the new environment seems much more conducive to happiness and productivity than my previous situation. Things weren’t horrible at Goodrich, but they weren’t great either, and that commute started each day on a pretty down note.
I walked to and from work the last three days of this week… I drove on Monday and Tuesday, partly because I had packages to pick up from UPS and partly because it’s tough to break out of the car commute mindset. Now that I’ve walked a few times, I’ve found a pretty good route, turning a 3 mile commute according to Google Maps to a 2.25 mile commute. It takes about 40 minutes at my current pace, but that will improve a bit once I get a bit more in shape.
The actual work is great, some of my code is already in customer hands (or at least, will be real soon now). So far they have me cleaning up the sample apps built upon our RasterMaster SDK, all of which were created some time ago and hadn’t been maintained in awhile. So I’ve been giving them some TLC, updating several of them to the Java 1.1 event model as well as letting Eclipse loose on them reformatting them and making them conform to the style of the rest of Snowbound’s Java code. I have a few new sample to write before I really start digging into my “primary” work, the FlexSnap code. I’m starting to finally remember why I got into programming initially, which is a very, very good thing.
I had to exchange my RAZR for the second time this week. The first phone I got shut itself off randomly, and I swapped that one out about a month after receiving it in April. The replacement for that one had this annoying static noise, similar to when you have a cell too close to a computer speaker, but it was ignorable at first, and I figured it was a tower problem. But when I went to Jersey recently, it still kept at it, and seemed to be getting worse, so I called Cingular this week. They overnighted me a replacement for free, and the new phone seems to be good so far. The customer service rep asked me if I wanted to swap it for a different phone, and I considered it, but I am giving the RAZR one more shot. If this one acts up, it is gonna get the boot.
I had a great time in Rochester for the CSH Welcome Back Party, but I think I might be skipping future Welcome Back parties… More and more of my friends are leaving Rochester, and I know fewer and fewer people who live at CSH. I think this realization comes to all alumni, but I guess I finally hit the sweet spot. It seems that each year I spend more time in Rochester catching up with my friends who are visiting from out of town, and less time doing anything with the house. It occured to us that if all we are going to do is hang out with each other, we can pick a place that’s a bit more fun than Rochester… :P This decision doesn’t effect Fucked Up Movie Night, however, so I still plan on being at CSH once or twice a year.. Of course, it’s very possible that next September I will change my mind and end up in Rochester anyway, so this could all be bullshit.
I have had great warranty luck lately… First off, Apple recalled both of the batteries I have for my Powerbook. This worked out fantastically, because I was just getting annoyed by the diminished capacity of the two recalled batteries. Around the same time, I got an email from Sirius saying that due to supply shortages, my warranty exchange on my Starmate Replay (for a scratchy 1/8" audio jack) was being upgraded to a brand new Sportster 4, which is a much nicer radio. I got that in the mail the other day, the only sucky thing is that I have to send back all of the original equipment for the Starmate, so I had to rip out the old antenna and install the new. I had the Antenna wire hid very nicely through the trunk, and under the molding on the passenger side of the car, so I had to reproduce all of that again. Also, the Starmate ran on 12V DC so lopped off the lighter adaptor that came with it and hardwired it into the cars power inside the dash. I can’t exactly return that, and the new radio runs on 5V DC, so I will take some kind of hit on that..
and I have been trying to finish up all of the lingering projects around the house. She started staining the doors the other day, and I masked off the bathroom to finally prime and paint it. After it’s painted, the bathroom needs baseboard and door trim, and all of the old radiators still need to be painted. I want to finish all of the woodwork this weekend so we can finally clean up the apartment fully…