Schedule Schmedule

Next week I have three days off, woop. But that doesn't mean I don't have to work for the first two days, awwww. I'm not entirely sure about all this, since Monday I could very well work a twelve hour and keep four hours of my holiday float vacation superness. I probably won't, though, because I'm cool like that.

Monday - 11:30 to 20:00
Tuesday - 15:30 to 24:00
Wednesday - OFF
Thursday - OFF
Friday - OFF

Yes, late night on Tuesday, but very late start too. I don't really mind too much, since on Wednesday I'm missing a delightful midnight end with Thursday starting at eight in the morning. No early mornings for me in the coming week, at least not work related.

The Story of Everest

Ah, yes. The apex of the week. Now everything is truly downhill from here.

Tomorrow I go in to work at about 7:30 and won't get out until 20:00, but I have nothing to do between 12:00 and 15:30. I'm aiming for a ten hour day tomorrow to keep my Friday down to four hours, so it won't be too bad. I'll have a nice two hour intermission in the day to grab some lunch and head home to relax for a bit, maybe even take a nap.

Thursdays are the best. Except for Saturday of course. And Friday. And Sunday, too. Goodnight!



"Marvin walked into a helpless land
And wondered lightly am I happy?
Is this happy?"

Curse You, Andy

So Andy's reading Watchmen and it's only making me more excited for, well, this:

It's Arrested Development

So I decided to get yet another urge to watch Arrested Development all over again. I was poking around the internet and found out what Jeffrey Tambor was saying during the Hellboy 2 premiere about the movie being basically confirmed as a go. This comes after Jason Bateman chiefly started rumors about the film being made, sparking interest from both Hurwitz and Universal. I can't wait.

Arrested Development is one of my favorite sitcoms of all time, if you can even call it a sitcom. The show reinvented the "character-driven" comedy by taking full advantage of multithreaded episodes. Unlike most shows which are driven by an overarching plot arch intermingled with several smaller arcs, Arrested Development is essentially only these smaller arcs. Things happen from episode to episode and are so densely packed with character interaction that it's tough to catch everything the first, second, even the fifth time through the series. Whenever I watch the series over again I find something new to laugh at, and remember countless little jokes that were masterfully placed in the background by the writers and designers.

I'm curious as to what Hurwitz and company can come up with storywise for the film. What I'm most worried about is that since it's a movie, they will feel the need to make things "epic" non-satirically; lots of travel or huge events that wouldn't really feel like AD. If they do this satirically, I'm perfectly fine with it. A good example is the episodes in the third season where the creators decided to throw in a bunch of common (and stupid) ratings ploys. This was very reflective of the story, as well, where the Bluths were struggling to stay afloat in the housing business with stupid gimmicks like fundraiser parties with celebrities. Really, at this point, I don't think Hurwitz can really do much wrong. He's got solid and (un)relateable characters, a great story, and anything even remotely like the show will receive an amazing amount of critical backing.

Also, this is pretty interesting, if stretching a bit.

One is the Loneliest Number

So I sauntered into work this morning at about 11:30 for the noon test, and bam! Brian tells me he's got to go to a series of meetings for a solid five hours. Where does that leave me? On my own to set up two shots, of course! It's actually quite nice to essentially not have to follow him around, since I can do everything myself and if I make a mistake, I learn directly from it.

Setting up the first test was fairly easy and went smoothly, so I'm fairly happy with myself and decided to sit around and listen to Boards of Canada for a bit. I'll be working until eight tonight, so the day seems way shorter than yesterday did, which is quite great. Getting accustomed to one or two 10-12 hour days a week is really making it easier to get through what amounts to a puny eight hour shift. I wish I could get some overtime though; more vacation or the extra cash would be more than great. I mean, working an extra five hours would pull in an extra hundred bucks after tax.

Anyway, I made a discovery while shopping at Wegman's the other day. I have been longing for the sweet taste of Sunkist lemonade ever since I left Minnesota; anyone that even remotely knows me knows that it's my favorite pop (or soda, if you're really mean and anal about it, SOMEBODY!). I purchased a twelve pack of Wegman's brand sparkling lemonade, and to my surprise it's very similar to Sunkist - it has a distinctly worse aftertaste, but it's still very reminiscent of the old stuff back home. I am saved from this land lacking the ambrosiac taste of Sunkist Lemonade.

The Storm of Fifty-Nine

Graveyard

So it's 10:30 and I'm still at work - I'm actually glad I'm still here. I only have an hour and a half left to go before I head home, and that means I'll have put in an awesome 12.5 hours today. I love front-loading my weeks so that I'm able to take Friday basically off because of all the hours I've worked, though overtime pay wouldn't be so bad either. At the moment, though, I'll probably be capping at forty in the next two weeks.

I've finally found a pretty good niche at work and I'm getting to know everyone. I now know what I'm talking about when I complain/talk about the systems here at work, and I have enough working knowledge that I know what to do to fix things, or at least try to fix them. I rarely get "stuck" anymore when I'm on my own. I also have been flexing my Excel muscles, as I spent a good two hours today just editting a massive spreadsheet. I enjoy myself, because I'll do anything to keep busy around here. Working for twelve hours and not having nothing to do just drags on so slowly.

Yesterday there was a pretty great storm that rolled through. It didn't last as long as I would have liked (I tend to love all-day storms) but it provided some good cracks of thunder and the lovely pitter-pat of the rain on my deck. I left the deck glass door open just so I could hear all the sounds and whatnot a little more clearly. I think my enjoyment of storms and the time preceding them has something to do with the atmospheric pressures and the higher voltage crackling in the air. Barometric pressures dropping to beneath thirty make me feel great and sleep a lot more easily, it seems. And believe me, lately I've been needing sleep. I don't know why, but it seems I tend to stay up later on weekends and am completely unable to sleep in for whatever reason. Stupid schedules starting to nullify my ability to be lazy!

Oscar Wilde

On the Subject of Ayn Rand

So, I've read Atlas Shrugged and a good part of The Fountainhead, and both are fairly well written. Both have stories that serve as allegories and really nothing more.

The ideology behind it, in my opinion, is distinctly flawed.

Essentially Randian Objectivism speaks to "living for oneself." In essence, it points a finger at those in society who use law to leech off of the "productive" members of society. The climax of the story has the productive, prime movers of society abandoning the rest. Clearly this represents a metaphor for a shift away from so-called "socialized medicine," welfare systems, and "nanny states." It makes assumptions, though, about the way societies work in real life - it assumes that one can simply bootstrap their way up on their own intellect and talent alone.

Really no one gets to where they are alone. In civilization as it stands today, talent can take you very far, but can rarely take you from the dregs of society to its apex. Our society is most certainly not a meritocracy; useless people born into luxury often remain in luxury, and remarkably gifted people born into poverty often remain there. Frequently, those on the high end of the totem pole are not providing for and living for themselves, but taking advantage of the thick pyramidal base of "easy marks" in order to do so. Hard work and talent does not in twentieth or twenty-first century settings equate to wealth.

Another thing that bothers me? Categorical and complete rejection of altruism. Rejection of lending a hand to someone not because it helps you, but because it's the way humans are. Rand rejects morality as unnecessary and an obstruction to the selfish pursuit of one's own happiness. Is it truly impossible to accept that I help a stranger on the street not because of guilt I have for being better off, and not because the laws tell me to, but because I want to, because I feel happy for helping another person? I am happy to pay out my taxes to support public health, public transportation, public happiness.

Reason and emotion are not opposed nor can one exist without the other. As physical form we, as humans, embody both of these concepts. One can employ reason in making a choice in attaining the best possible results, but those "best results" are subjective. There is rarely a discrete value placed upon two options - one will result in seven units of happiness, the other five. Emotion plays a pivotal role in decision-making; what do you feel is the better option? Which makes you feel happier?

To ignore our emotions and our communal kinship is to ignore the essence that makes us what we are - tribal animals. It not only takes a village to raise a child, but it takes a society filled with people to lend a hand on the way up. Some people need a little more than others; that's okay. Civilization did not grow out of our need to separate from one another, but from our need to commune.

I don't really like Objectivism. :\

We All Know...

"While sowing the seeds of utopia
You invoked a convenient amnesia
You forgot how to care
You forgot how to provide
You forgot how to work toward a meaningful life."

Thursday is Preliminary Schedule Day

So today Kevin released the CSEDS schedule a day early, so Brian made up a quick and dirty prelim schedule. Since I have to notify my boss about overtime a week ahead of time, it's nice to see what it's going to look like a little early.

Preliminary schedule for the week:

Monday: 11:30 - 24:00 (12.5 hours)
Tuesday: 11:30 - 20:00 (21 hours)
Wednesday: 7:30 - 13:00 (26.5 hours)
Thursday: 7:30 - 20:00 (35 hours)
Friday: 11:00 - 16:00 (40 hours)

So, maybe no overtime! Hooray for short Wednesday and Friday. It seems I am doomed for early wake up at least two days out of the week, but that's alright - working until eight and waking up at 7:30 isn't so bad, especially when I'm only working 5.5 hours.

Spy Sappin' Mah Sentry

So today I'm pretty bored, and am looking into things I can do to further myself professionally and personally. Specifically, becoming a Professional Engineer and possibly obtaining a Master's Degree.

The first requires that I take and pass an eight hour exam (the FE) which qualifies me as an Engineer In Training. Afterward, I have to work for four years under a Professional Engineer and then take another eight hour exam (the PE) in order to actually become certified. Basically what this means is that I'd be able to sign stuff as a professional and be completely certified to work directly with the public as a full blown engineer. I'd also gain the title, so I'd be Mr. Keith Philo Eng. or something like that. Pretty awesome, huh?

As far as my Master's goes, it's all about finding the time to do it and the school to attend. I'd like to get into online courses - it's a lot easier to deal with most of the time when you don't have to get off of working an eight hour day, driving an hour, spending two hours in a classroom, then driving home. I'm just beginning to do research on the schools that I would like to attend, and I'm not entirely sure what kind of degree I'd be shooting for. The obvious choice would be some kind of M.Eng in Electrical or Computer Engineering disciplines. Engineering Master's degrees generally include a lot of research, but they have plenty of coursework similar to what I'm used to rather than being almost purely reading/researching. Systems Engineering is also fairly appealing, as the majority of jobs out there have to do with this broad area (it's what I do now, generally).

Anyway, yesterday went fairly swimmingly as far as days go. I got off work at about one in the afternoon and headed to get a new tire to replace the doughnut spare on my car. It turned out that when the guy said on Saturday that they had a replacement tire exactly like my others, he was completely and utterly wrong; there's a national backup on orders for that particular tire, apparently. They gave me a cheaper one that would work, which was fine with me, since I only had to drop $80 or so on it. It sadly took them two hours to replace the tire, which resulted in me almost missing my appointment with my car/renter's insurance lady. The shop gave me a ride to the Barnes & Noble I was meeting her at, so I arrived only about three or four minutes late and got all that sorted out. Afterward, she was nice enough to give me a ride back to the dealership, where my car was completely finished. I paid the money and rolled out.

Recently my car and stupidity have cost me a lot. I paid $45 for roadside a week ago, $30 for being let into my apartment after locking my keys inside, and $82 for this. The old tire wasn't really in the condition to be plugged - something big and metal had gotten lodged in it and broke off, so it looked like a big staple was stuck in the tire. No wonder it went flat. Anyway, my car's completely fixed and now I can go on the interstate again! No more sticking to under 50 mph for me.

SWING YOUR ARMS FROM SIDE TO SIDE

The Conch Republic

Though I was aware of its existence, I wasn't aware of the history behind the Conch Republic, also known as Key West, Florida. In 1982 the government set up a bunch of search outposts looking for narcotics for people driving to or from Key West. Well, as a symbolic move, Key West seceded from the United States and declared itself the Conch Republic. It declared war on the US after doing so, then surrendered one minute later. After surrendering, they quickly applied for approximately one billion dollars of foreign aid.

Among other things, yesterday I also learned that there is an official wizard of New Zealand. I guess they took the whole Lord of the Rings thing a little too far.

Dinosaur Comics

I have been reading these like nonstop for two days. God help me.

Montag Ist Ser Gut

Back to work and earth after the busy busy weekend. I managed to nap from four to seven thirty last night and went to bed at a little after midnight, then came in for work at 11:30a. I'll be here until eight tonight, so it's going to be an okay Monday.

In other news, I loved The Dark Knight; it's my favorite movie of the year so far, easily. It most definitely surpassed my expectations and despite its 152 minute length left me wanting a lot more. I hate to sound like I'm echoing the entire rest of the internet in saying that the film was more about Joker than Batman. Ledger did an amazing job in making the character his own and bringing an insanity to Joker that made him a dark and realistic character. While Jack Nicholson's interpretation was most definitely sadistic and evil, Ledger threw away most of the silliness in favor of an anarchic zeal.

The IMAX experience certainly heightened the event, too. The full-IMAX scenes amazed me and were beautifully shot. It's going to be weird going to the film again and not having it completely surrounding me, though it'll at least feel newer than seeing it in regular theatres twice.

The worst part of The Dark Knight? Ledger won't be back for a sequel.

I Roared Aloud

I Burned My Feet

I burned my feet. That hurt.

Friday is Schedule Day

My preliminary schedule day is on Friday after the test schedule is released. I generally plan around the tests and try to even it out to the usual forty hours.

Monday - 11:30 to 20:00 (8.5 hours)
Tuesday - 8:30 to 20:00 (20 hours)
Wednesday - 7:30 to 16:00 (28.5 hours)
Thursday - 7:30 to 20:00 (41 hours)
Friday - 10:00 to 14:00 (45 hours)

The totals above are cumulative; I probably won't be able to get that much overtime, but it looks unavoidable at this point. Oh well.

Another short Friday, hooray. This week Friday kind of sucks - seven hours in addition to flying somewhat solo for the first time. I'll get through it, though; only six and a half hours left to go.

Cah Trubble

Well after a full and pretty exhausting day (which included a Chipotle run no less), I was ready to drive home from Collingswood and Whitney's apartment. On the way over, I saw that the Tire Pressure Monitor light came on, and figured that I just needed to put more air into a couple of my tires since I hadn't in quite awhile. Little did I know the trecherous truth.

When I headed down to my car at about one in the morning, I got in and started to drive only to hear a sound that just wasn't... right. I pulled over and inspected my tires to find that the back left tire was woefully flat. Great. I called the Hyundai road assistance number and got in touch with a guy who called a service company.

It turned out that the only company Hyundai could get in touch with was insisting that they wouldn't take anything but cash. When the guy arrived he gave me a call and we ran down to meet him. He threw my spare onto the car and I was good to go, though he didn't have change for the huge bill so instead I followed him to the nearest Wawa to take out $60 for him.

All told, I got home at about 2:30am and got to sleep shortly thereafter. I woke up around nine this morning and got into work at about ten. Hopefully everything goes well today so I don't catch any grief - though not dead tired, I am sleepy enough to be in a crabby mood.

Arby's #5

So I hauled myself out of bed this morning at about ten after being up until nearly four, though I'm not actually all that sleepy. Plus I get to look forward to a five hour day today, so I'm innervated all the more.

Right now we're trying something new at my job, so they're busy upstairs trying to get things rollin'. Today I at least have Brian to help me out with what we're doing today - tomorrow I have to do the same thing sans him. I'm pretty confident in myself, though, since I've seen similar things done a thousand times - it's always just a little different when you're doing it under fire.

So what's on my mind lately? A lot. How's Leigh feeling? I wonder if Sylvia's still asleep back home. How am I going to do solo tomorrow? When thoughts whir through my head, though, I tend to take a step back and take in a deep breath.

Keith's Favorite Games of the Last Whatever

5) World of Warcraft - I have an MMO history, I'll admit it. I've played all of the following: EverQuest, EverQuest II, Guild Wars, City of Heroes, Lineage II, and the titular WoW. Some I played for like two days, some for as long as three years. At the moment I'm without a game to waste all my time, and have been for a few months. Warcraft, though, became a little different for me once a bunch of my real life college friends delved into the world of Azeroth. Let me count (Willdo, Varixa, Twiddisell, Shivawn, Loriette, Tleilaxu, Arkanic, Senadino, Helgie) the nine people who play who I knew first in real life. I really don't think I would have played for half as long without our "secret channel," inside joke idiocy, and late night Perkins runs where all we talked about was our nerdy game. Thanks guys for making this game fun, for at least a little while.

4) Boom Blox - A Wii game I purchased at the beginning of June, I can't wait to play it multiplayer. Even single player, though, is pretty amazing. You remember when you were a kid and breaking things/knocking things over was such a satisfactory feeling? I see it in my niece when I build a lego tower and she sees its existence as solely an object to knock over. That's what this game's all about, throwing things at other things and watching them fall over. Awesome.

3) Portal - The funniest game I've ever played. Seriously. You know those awful Conker games back in the N64 days that tried so hard to be funny through parody and gross out humor? They pale in comparison to the monotone droning of GLaDOS as she taunts you with very limited emotion and feeling. As you try to avoid falling into radioactive pools while you navigate the facility, her ever word seems to be something a computer would calculate to try and motivate you to do the things she wants you to. In addition, she's experiencing an artificial mental breakdown. That said, though, the gameplay is amazing too, with enough to screw around with to keep you entertained for twice as long as the actual gameplay time.

2) Team Fortress 2 - A mindless shooter with character? I don't believe it. What should be a straight forward, TFC or QWTF port into the future was suddenly released in October. Valve's vision of a straight-up military shooter (it reminded me a lot of the modified class choices and look of the updated Wolfenstein game) gave way to a flock of Incredibles-animated, machinima-worthy characters. A streetwise runner from Boston, a crazy Russian in love with his gun, and a Scottish cyclops obsessed with explosives are included in the cast of a game that makes you laugh pretty much constantly. It's amazing how a little work on the character voices and models can make a game completely different.

1) BioShock - My most anticipated game of last summer and it really didn't disappoint. I don't think any other game could have provided the impetus to purchase a $300 video card just to run it - no PixelShader 3 support on the X800 sadly, so I picked up an 8800. My dire flaw nowadays is the fact that I don't really finish games anymore; it's hard for me to keep the motivation to push through to the end. This game, on the other hand, I marathoned and beat in two days, including a ten hour play day with Tony watching. People complain about the enemies all being similar (they're all people) or the guns being a bit generic. I saw the story, the conflicts of ideals, the dystopia of Rapture, and they all captivated me. Like System Shock and System Shock II before it, the gameplay was in essence basic, and not a lot has changed from Doom to these games. You walk around, you complete objectives. The difference is the atmosphere and the "feeling" of the game. I can't say any game before made me feel quote so sorry about the characters involved, namely the Little Sisters. Games like Quake are about twitch reaction, getting your heart beating, and excitement. BioShock is about feeling something, discovering something, solving a mystery.

And There Will Be

Cafeteria Fascism

So at about 1:30 today I rolled out of my desk to grab a bite to eat while I had some downtime - I don't really have much to do until a little before four. After cruising down and withdrawing money for the cafeteria, I nearly ran into the door when trying to enter? Why? They close at 1:15 and don't open again until 4:30. I tried to soothe the savage beast with something from the vending machine, but it just wasn't the same, and left me beaten and broken by the authoritarian food services department.

I've been putting a lot of thought into it since last night when it was discussed. If there is one truth in this world, it's that Charmander was the best Pokemon to choose off the bat. Certainly, it was a rough call for the first two gyms; fire was quite ineffective against the first rock/ground boss, and was certainly outmatched by the second, water-based boss. The champion of these two battles was definitively Bulbasaur. But he sucks.

I really need to stop mentioning my senior project to people. Whenever I explain it to someone they just look at me in an extremely strange way. Then I say it was sort of like 'art'. The look becomes less extremely strange and just confused. It makes me sad, since I actually kind of gained an affection for those horrible little things.

Doin' the Whirlwind

Well, I have to say last night ended prematurely. This was both a good and a bad thing, since I got off work at 7:30, but this also meant that I only put in 6.5 of the planned 12 hours for yesterday. Instead of having 24 hours already done, I only have 18.5, so I'll have to probably work a full day on Friday. Oh well, though - I didn't have much planned for that evening, anyway, so sticking around work for awhile longer probably won't be much of an issue.

Work seems to be speeding up now, or at least does retroactively, though it always works that way. You look back and realize it's been exactly a month since you started, and it never feels like it's been quite that long. Looking back to Monday it's tough to believe that it was a twelve hour day.

In other boring news, I neglected to shave today. Pretty rugged, right? I was going to do some boring countdown like 'what are the best state quarters' and when googling for images I found that Rifftrax already did it. NELSON!!! Because of this, I have to go to an alternate.

The Top Five Characters on the Hit TGIF Show Step by Step

5) Unnamed nerd child. Okay, his name was Mark (I had to look this up), but he was the token 'geek' character on the show that was into computers and that sort of thing. As a kid who liked computers (read: played horrible DOS children's games and scribbled some MSPaint drawings) it would seem that I should sympathize with this fellow, but everything about him was unlikeable. In keeping with his role on the show, he would frequently be working on science fair projects that were ridiculously complex for a kid and commonly would have to overcome adversity to prove himself.

4) Dana, the annoying perfectionist. She was always feuding with her idiot shadow, JT. She was pretty whiny a lot of the time but tended to have good comebacks to insults. Additionally, I hated JT enough that I felt empathetic toward the hate she had for his character.

3) Al. The tomboy of the family, she went through struggles to make friends in school because of this. She was essentially the most believeable and relatable character, and seemed to realize that stupid plans made by the other characters were never going to work. She had a hard time holding jobs.

2) Frank. Patrick Duffy played him. That's all.

1) Cody. He was the cool guy of the series who spouted catchphrases and did all the obligatory "wacky" things. Noteable for saying "dude" and "dudesey" a lot in the mid-nineties before everyone started saying it. As I recall, he lived in a van in the driveway for quite some time, and was not only scatterbrained and air-headed, but basically the best person ever. He helped Mark beat a pompous bully in karate, foiled a rape of Dana, talked one of his friends out of suicide, and protected a poor family living in a house he's supposed to demolish. Oh, he also carved a pumpkin with dynamite.

( DUUUUUDE. )
\/






*laughtrack*

The Year of the Cat

"On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time
You come strollin' through the crowd like Peter Lorre
Comtemplating a crime

She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
Like a watercolor in the rain
Don't bother asking for explanation
She'll just tell you that she came
In the year of the cat

She doesn't give you time for questions
As she locks up your arm in hers
And you follow 'til your sense of which direction
Completely disappears
By the blue tiled walls near the market stalls
There's a hidden door she leads you to
These days, she says, I feel my life
Just like a river running through
The year of the cat

Well, she looks at you so cooly
And her eyes shine like the moon in the sea
She comes in incense and patchouli
So you take her, to find what's waiting inside
The year of the cat

Well, morning comes and you're still with her
And the bus and the tourists are gone
And you've thrown away the choice and lost your ticket
So you have to stay on
But the drum-beat strains of the night remain
In the rhythm of the new-born day
You know sometime you're bound to leave her
But for now you're going to stay
In the year of the cat"

Less Than Keith

So?

So it's my third post in like five hours; I clearly have nothing better to do. A few months back my company put the brakes on anything having to do with streaming video or audio. This trims my options down to staring at Digg or something equally inane. No YouTube or XM Radio streams to entertain me throughout the day, and plus today I forgot to load my usual podcast lineup into the laptop, so I've been listening to a single Less Than Jake album over and over again. Well, that's a good topic to discuss: my complete obsession with podcasts and which ones I listen to.

1) The obligatory TWiT roundup. This Week in Tech has been part of my listening repertoire for going on three years now. It's a tech podcast where insiders like Leo Laporte (the good) and John C. Dvorak (the bad) discuss random technology news. It provides a pretty good catchup on mergers and products in the tech industry, and runs just over an hour usually. It comes out weekly on Sunday night generally.

2) Brian is in You. I don't know why I like it so much or why it entertains me. It's really just a podcast featuring three random Hollywood folks, two of which are camera operators. It has pretty good production quality as far as amateur podcast recording goes, and usually gives me a few good chuckles. Frequently they introduce new bits (each of which gets a pretty hilarious sound effect as an intro), so it keeps fresh. Common topics include Five Guys Restaurant, trials and tribulations of working in the film industry, reminiscing of days in Florida and Wisconsin, and examining upstart reality show casting calls in the "Super Secret Down-Low Hollywood Radar".

3) SModcast. This one features Kevin Smith and his longtime producer Scott Mosier as they talk about goings on and life. Though they frequently need to fact check on Wikipedia about their musings, it's still quite hilarious to hear about the things they go through every day. One of the best shows was where Kevin related an anecdote about seeing Jason Bateman at a local restaurant. Kevin was pleasantly surprised when Bateman knew his name and his work.

4) Mega64 Podcast. From the same people, obviously, who do the Mega64 videos you might have seen floating around the internet. I've always found humor in the little skits they do, and they seem to have a sense of humor similar to mine. There's just something kind of appealing about the low-budget but well-written episodes they make, and the podcast can seem kind of thrown together, but it makes me laugh so I don't really notice. Highlights include the Christmas video podcast where Rocco attempted (unsuccessfully) to drink a gallon of milk in under an hour and the ad libbing of a theme song to the tune of the Sailor Moon theme.

5) BBC Newspod. The daily (M-F) podcast featuring a bunch of stories from all around BBC Radio. Maybe it's just my obsession with British accents that draws me to this one, but it's also a great source of non-American news. They do a lot of stories about violence in the middle east (Palestine/Israeli) which you'd never hear on MSNBC/Fox/CNN. They also end on a high note with a couple wacky/strange stories.

The only reason that Monday is tolerable is for the fact that a handful of these podcasts come out over the weekend, which I can subsequently listen to to pass the day.

Anyway, I must add something to this post after having dinner: Wawa is pretty amazing. From the outside, it just looks like your basic convenience store without a gas station. Just one of the quick stop, grab-some-milk-on-the-way-home shops. But no! Today at work it was mentioned to me that they have a fairly great sandwich shop in most of them. You enter and go over to the deli counter, where you're presented with a computer screen where you can go through and pick what kind of food you want made. For instance, tonight I chose to get a ham hoagie with plenty of toppings. Once you're done with picking everything, you get a receipt that you take to the counter to make your purchase, and then you head back to the counter and pick up your sandwich. It's brilliant, and the sandwich was great, too, especially for a 10" sub. It was like $3.50. With bacon. Yeah.

EDIT @ 11:00PM EST:
Yep, still at work. And the best part is, breakfast tomorrow at this here place. I should be out of here within the hour, hopefully. Later, skaters.

Work Schedules OR How I Waste My Life This Week

This week will be an interesting one schedule wise. I'm sure only a few people care, but it's for my benefit too, since I like to collect my thoughts by writing them down. This week I've got nine testing periods, none of them before noon, so it looks like I can stay up a bit later than normal. It looks like this week I'll be working something like this (and yes, it's in military time):

Monday: 11:30 - 24:00
Tuesday: 11:30 - 24:00
Wednesday: 12:00 - 20:00
Thursday: 11:30 - 16:00
Friday: 11:30 - 16:00

The nice thing about living over on the East Coast is the fact that most of my friends are in Central Standard Time (and one in Pacific!) so even if I get home at midnight it's still only eleven back home and people are generally still awake for awhile. And yes, the twelve hour days will get tiresome, but I'd much rather front load my weeks and have what feels like a three day weekend.

In other news, I've got tickets for an IMAX showing of Batman in Philadelphia on Saturday. The excitement is compounded by the fact that I've never seen a major motion picture in IMAX before; at the Minnesota zoo I've seen various animal related films, but never anything like Dark Knight. I'll probably end up seeing it half a dozen times, but the IMAX experience will be really cool to see.

EDIT @ 2:09PM EST: Yes, it has come to this; route planning! This is my driving route to the PATCO station in Collingswood, and this is the walking route from the PATCO (train) station to the museum.

Also of note is the list I've been compiling of TV shows I have to get to sometime in the near future. After meeting and talking awhile with a new friend yesterday I thought it would be appropriate to keep a list someplace so that I don't forget about anything.

* Lost - Andrew and Andy have liked this for quite awhile, and I never got into it. I'm sure all it'd take is a few episodes before I'm hopelessly hooked.

* Dexter - I've never gotten Showtime before, but I've heard some rave things about this show.

* Battlestar Galactica - I watched the first movie and a little over half of the first season a couple weeks back after Jason gave them to me. It's pretty entertaining so far with some decent special effects and the same space style as Firefly.

* The Wire - again, recommended to me by friends back home and bolstered by conversations yesterday. It may also motivate me to want to go to/be scared of Baltimore.

* Entourage - John and Andrew are obsessed, so it definitely would have appeal to me.

I'm sure I'm already forgetting some stuff, but oh well. Shows that I want to watch over again at some point include Mr. Show, Venture Brothers, and Upright Citizens Brigade.

Robots in Love

Yesterday I had my second viewing of the movie WALL-E, and I liked it just as much as the first. There are some definite fundamental reasons I enjoyed it so much, and as I have a captive audience (not really), I suppose I can go into them.

There's something to be said about not cramming a children's movie full of dialogue and pretty colors. Simplicity is far underrated. Almost all the previews were, by contrast to WALL-E, incredibly awful and stereotypical talking live action animal/talking CG animated animal films. The chihuahua one in particular was off-the-charts terrible. WALL-E decided to eschew the celebrity-voiced pets and distracting musical numbers in favor of pretty much the most simple plot ever conceived, at least for the first forty-five minutes. There is basically no dialogue for the first third of the movie, but it's the better part in my opinion.

The best part of movies or television shows like this one is the fact that kids can derive laughter and entertainment from just seeing the robots interacting on the screen. The shoddy, outdated look of WALL-E and the sleek, Mac-like EVE provide enough contrast that kids can recognize their differences. Not only this, but context hints as simple as corporate branding can tell you a whole lot about what's going on and what went on when WALL-E started his seven-hundred-year cleanup job. Kids probably missed out on some of these aspects, but it provides a deeper plot than just robots trotting around. And, unlike a lot of older Disney movies and movies by Disney today without PIXAR's involvement, it has humor that pretty much everyone can find funny. I'm not saying that WALL-E with its "robot falls down, robot gets crushed by shopping carts after comically running away" is New Yorker material here, but it made me laugh.

The only thing I could see wrong with it is the fact that it gets a little overtly preachy. Now don't get me wrong, I like the message and enjoy that they're gutsy enough to throw it in there, but the overtness could turn people off. Subtlety holds a lot of value when you're trying to convince someone of something; if you're too direct, you can seem a little too controlling. WALL-E almost makes it under this bar, but not quite. Regardless, the "take care of Earth" message is a good one to teach kids if you don't want their future to be filled with skyscrapers made of rotting garbage.

Woe is Chipotle

So Friday night I had the sudden urge to grab a delicious Chipotle burrito bowl. Now, the Moorestown Mall where Chipotle is located is only three or four miles away, and takes about ten minutes to drive to. Woefully, the burrito fiasco took me over a half hour to complete for a couple of factors.

1) Lack of staff. On a busy Friday night where they had two dozen people in line, there were four workers, three of which were making the food. I think back to my days in Minneapolis where they would have six or seven workers crammed into the food line.

2) The people didn't know what they wanted. Apparently, Chipotle is a fairly new phenomenon to the northeast; most of the people had never eaten there before, and the store itself was opened in April and was one of the first in the area. Now, anyone who's eaten at Chipotle before knows that it has a fairly simple menu - you can get a burrito, tacos, or a bowl. There are four types of meat. You can see all the toppings like you can at a Subway. But still, people stood there for a good thirty seconds once asked what they wanted.

I have little license to complain, though. I got my $7 slice of heaven and got home within an hour, at least.

Back to the Grind

After my trip to Minnesota, everything feels kind of odd again, though I think every time I return here the learning curve will get a little less steep. Thankfully I got to come into work at 11:30am today, so that afforded me a nice three and a half hours of sleep extra. I originally thought I'd be working until midnight, but I'll apparently be done at eight. Tomorrow I'll be working until eight, too, but I may come in at my regular time to get some stuff done in the morning and grab some overtime to boot.

Anyway, my plane rides went off without much of a hitch, despite some nervousness. On Thursday I landed at MSP and was greeted by a good amount of sights for sore eyes. Though it was ridiculously tiring in more ways than one, I got through the weekend really no worse for wear - I'm extremely glad I headed home if even for three days. I eschewed riding the bus on the way back to my apartment. Sadly I had to wake Jason up to even get inside though, since I had no keys. Sorry Jason. :(

"Millions and millions chase
The wild goose tonight
To conquer loneliness
They'll chase it all their lives
And when they find it they
Can just lay down and die
It seems the game is mostly pointless
In the presence of the prize."

...And Then I Woke Up

An eventful weekend, definitely. It was far too short for my liking, but I'm still glad I came. I found out a lot of things about everything, plus I got to see one of the best cities in the world for the last time in several months.

Despite having gotten an average of four hours of sleep in the past three nights, eating next to nothing, and walking/busing everywhere, I'm really not tired. Other forces must be at work other than the physical, I suppose.



*squeeze squeeze*

Homeward Bound

Today's going to be a good day, and I'm gonna make it a good day even if it's not dammit! I have to go into work a half hour early, but I'm leaving approximately 4.5 hours early, so that's a plus. I'm taking off at noon before running to the store and grabbing a super secret object before I pack up and leave.

As far as things are going here, certain things have gotten better and other things worse. To keep a positive note playing, work is getting way better and going far faster - I had the chance to do some stuff in Excel yesterday that made the day go quick thanks to keeping busy. In addition, more of my electronics supplies came yesterday and I tested out what ended up being one of the worst soldering irons ever. The work was way too delicate for the large point, but I improvised and I think the results turned out halfway decent.

Anticipation is really coming to a head today; less than twelve hours until I hop on the plane. I just hope I can live up to the hype I've generated for myself; I'm sure everything will be surreal and I have nothing to worry about.

Thinking about going to Wall-E tonight really seemed to jar my childhood film memories. Does anyone remember the film Milo and Otis? I swear I watched that movie a dozen times when I was a kid, and I barely even remember what it was about besides Milo=cat and Otis=pug. I seem to recall that it had a sort of sad ending, but in thinking I doubt it could. It has to be Homeward Boundesque in that it ends gracefully after hardships are overcome, like most kid's movies.