Laziness
Monday, February 21, 2005
Trying to decide what kind of pizza to order, and how we're going to pay for it, with roommate Megan, who is hung over. It's about 1pm. Still in bed. So is this what it's like to have a weekday off?
The real question appears to be: will I leave the apartment today? And if not, can I rally enough friends to come out to Kensington for a game of Cranium, or perhaps Trivial Pursuit? Only time will tell.
Waaaaayyyyy too much caffeine
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Take a Saturday morning, add not having to work, multiply by Snappy (my coffeemaker), to the power of a Dunkin' Donuts near the laundromat, and divide by not having eaten anything. Now just for fun multiply the whole thing by nine. I'm a wee bit hyper.
What better to do when my hands are shaking so much I can hardly type than go shopping for pants in Manhattan? OK! Done and done! I'm on my way! Sure not in the breakfast nook, you can count on that!
Ah, now I'm making obscure references to my own company's shows. Next come the microprocessor jokes... watch out. There's a whole genre of computer comedy that I'm convinced exists and is only waiting to be tapped. As if Microsoft weren't unintentionally hilarious enough as it is. Ok, more evil than hilarious, but still.
Oh yeah, Operation Gravitas (doh! again!), I mean, Operation Impersonate Lauren in Order to Buy Red Sox Tickets was a complete success. I'm good with the internet ticket sales. Except the time Springsteen was playing at Fenway Park, which I wasn't able to get in on, and would have been pretty much the zenith of my existence, but whatever. Whatever.
This reminds me of a story this guy I knew in college told me about one time that he and his friends got so bored, and were so out of drugs, that they ground up a bunch of Vivarin and snorted it. They ended up in the hospital. Oddly (or perhaps not), this is the same guy with whom I invented colandering beer, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Which is pretty much a beer shower.
New. Springsteen. Album.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!
Is this the only mind-blowing, life-altering, space/time tearing news of the last couple of days? No! I present the following facts for your consideration:
1) The MTV project is done and delivered. Finally! I think. As Lauren put it when the director congratulated us on the job finally coming to an end, "Obviously you're not a Red Sox fan."
B) Speaking of said Sox, an opportunity may arise to see them take on the Yanks on July 16th at Fenway... we'll know on Saturday. This requires some mild impersonation and deception on my part, but as the IRS can surely tell you, this shouldn't be too difficult for me.
III) I get Monday off. !!!!!!!!!. I think.
Meanwhile, I had possibly the smallest portions proportional to cost that I've ever experienced at any restaurant during a lunch meeting today in Times Square. Luckily, it was paid for by someone else. Seriously, the tourists are such suckers. Says Idaho-born, Portland-raised, Phoenix-recently me.
New link on the side... friend from Portland Dal joins me in the world of videotaped puppets...crazy plan to be concocted imminently.
To: Dave From: Dave
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
You can have Valentine's day; I don't want it. The day after, however, is all mine. Some years ago I discovered that if you wait until the 15th, all the giant candy hearts go on sale. So every year I buy one for myself and eat all the chocolates. Hopefully this isn't too Bridget-jonesy.
Anyway, today was, of course, the 15th, so I hit up Duane Reade on the way to work. This is all that remained of the heart at the end of the day, courtesy of chiefly Lauren and I, but also Julien, Kelly, Amy, and many other coworkers who stopped off in our little office at one time or another. I'm still buzzing from the caffeine/sugar high, and am counting on the inevitable crash to put me under in a minute or two.
Tomorrow is ostensibly the end of the maniacal MTV project that resulted in me working upwards of 90 hours last week, so hopefully things will slow down a bit. I will miss the director, Kevin, who's a great guy and is from West Philadelphia, prompting lots of Fresh Prince of Bell Air references among those of us working with him. I will miss little else about this project, however... on to the equally maniacal Taiwanese puppets. Ugh.
Looks like we ate our heart out! Oh! No he didn't!!!
If the cookie says so...
Sunday, February 13, 2005
I got this fortune in a cookie at a restaurant across the street from work on Saturday. Is it true? I'm certainly putting in enough hours. The very fact that the cookie knew that there is financial hardship in my life that an end could come to lends creedence to the theory that it could actually do something about it. Best. Fortune. Ever.
Actually, that very meal ended up getting paid for by my boss, as he happened into the same restaurant as we were about to pay and picked up our check. Good timing by Lauren, Kelly and I. Then again, we had been at work on a Saturday.
Today Lauren and Phaedra and I went to "The Gates" in Central Park, which if you haven't heard (and you probably haven't if you don't live in New York... I imagine this is probably the subway series of large-scale art) is a giant art project involving these gate-like structures all over the park. Apparently it's been in the works for something like 25 years. The simple fact that it could get done at all is cooler than the end product itself, if you ask me, but it was kind of neat and seems to be insanely popular. Even the NY Post is praising it. Here is a picture; judge for yourself.
In spite of the Gates excursion, I actually spent most of the day in Queens, which is a rarity now that I don't live there. Queens... it's like Brooklyn, without as many friends. But they do have the best sandwich shop in the entire country, which I used to live kittycorner from. Scored a roast beef and munster... sweet.
I'm not so much feelin' the blog writin' at the moment... basically just wanted to post a couple of pictures. This week should be slightly less insane at work... perhaps I will have time to post from there.
Come on fortune Come on fortune Come on fortune...
What's the big deal?
Delirium
Monday, February 7, 2005
I never really left the office this weekend. Here's an email I was apparently inspired to send out at around 4 Monday morning, in the midst of a 27 hour shift with only a restless hour long nap at 7 this morning. Kind of speaks for itself:
my friends,
you may be asking yourselves, "why am I recieving an email at 4am on a sunday from dave? furthermore, why is he writing such an email, when he has been awake for approximately 53 of the last 48 hours (a weekend), somewhat drunk, really tired, and at work the entire time? " well, I'm glad you asked.
It is because I feel that at this hour I must tell you this: computers are TOTALLY AWESOME.
they are amazing. they can do so much at once. could I, at this stage, encode two separate versions of the same 20 minute video to mpeg2, prepping it to be burned to DVD? Could I do this while simultaneously printing yet another version of said video to digibeta? Could I condense 12 tracks of audio to 6, and then split those into 4? Would I even want to?
the answer is a resounding no.
furthermore, can I just say.... networking. what the fuck is up with that shit? the computer I'm typing this on is currently playing springsteen tunes that are located on THE SAME COMPUTER that's doing all the crazy stuff above, playing them through the network. All the while I'm online writing this email. Holy shit!
and don't even ge me started on printing labels DIRECTLY ONTO THE DVDs. Good God!
and by the way, by "computer," I mean "macintosh." ok, mostly... I admit some of the preliminary work required by this whole project was done on PCs. but, as everyone knows, in order to make an omelet you have to break a few eggs.
it's getting hard to type... take these words to heart, my friends. do not forget our friends, the computers. I am very, very tired.
-d ave
Everybody's workin' on the weekend
Saturday, February 5, 2004
Hmmm... Saturday... what should I do? Oh, I know. I'll go to work! Awesome!
I'm trying not to complain about all the working weekends and 60 hour weeks, but having just worked an entire week when I probably should have been home in bed, simultaneously juggling two ridiculous, disorganized projects, it's annoying me just a little bit that I not only A) have to go in on a Saturday, but B) have to work Saturday night. Animation Collective kills yet another weekend. Bleh.
Also, still a bit sick. But on the upswing. I think.
So far the coffeemaker has been every bit as awesome as I expected, as has the cell phone, which actually gets reception in my apartment (a nice perk). I'm going to have to remember to buy some coffee filters (it came with a couple, and I've used them up, leaving me coffee-less at the moment).
Before work I have to stop off at this consumer electronics store in lower Manhattan. I just checked a map to make sure I'd walk in the right direction after I get off the subway, and it turns out this place is practically next door to "ground zero." I've never been down there since the attacks, and haven't really had any desire to, but maybe I should stop off while I'm so close. I don't know. All the jackasses in Phoenix were always asking if I'd been there, and wishing they could go, blah, blah blah. So that alone is reason enough to avoid. But we'll see. Maybe I should stop by. But I refuse to take pictures, or "bring back a piece," as someone asked Scott and I to do back in '01 right after it happened.
And I really, really need to get a haircut. Although I've been saying that for quite a while now.
Sickness and electronics
Tuesday, February 1, 2005
I'm sick. Very sick. I have a headache because of all the coughing. Sick enough that this morning, wondering if I had a fever, the thought ran through my head that I should just open up my body's admin tool and check the temperature that way. I think I actually moved the pointer over to the dock before I realized that I don't have my own GUI. Clearly, I've been sitting too close to the RAID.
On the plus side, two lovely new pieces of electronics have found their ways into my life. First of all, I finally got a new cell phone, breaking a streak of three crap-ass Sony Ericssons with a super-nice Nokia. It's got bluetooth, which means it can talk to my laptop and share files and stuff, all wirelessly. So I can not only back up all my phone numbers to my computer (it suddenly struck me the other day that I have precious few phone numbers actually memorized), but use various mp3s for ring tones, etc. If I want to be woken up by the Boss, I'll just set "Darkness on the Edge of Town" as my alarm tone (not that that would be the best way to wake up).
The holy trinity
Secondly, on Sunday I finally realized one of my more humble lifelong dreams - I bought a coffee maker with a timer built into it. This means that every morning I can wake up to a freshly brewed cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee. Even when you're sick, this makes getting up quite a bit easier. I will post pictures of both my cell phone and coffeemaker later on.
Yay technology!
