Wednesday, November 1, 2000

I don't think I'm ready for November; I don't think I was even ready for October. This week is no exception, right after the "fall back" to Pacific Standard Time here in sunny California, and I'm suddenly driving home from work in the dark. There are just too many hours in a day and not enough sunlight. Give me more sunlight.

I know the site's still sparse; the day's too short for me to be working on it part-time, let alone full-time. But hey, I still have my fireflies and crayons up. By all means please check them out.

Hmm. I've been getting weird search engine referrals, with "Al Gore", "lost a leg", "Franco Prussian", and "iron-clad lock box" as keywords. Heck, if that's what you're here for, you'll want to see what I posted last month and scroll down.

That's here. >>

Monday, November 6, 2000 at 9:30 AM

I went out and voted yesterday. I normally mail in my absentee ballot, but because I changed post office box addresses twice and somehow failed to turn in a change of address between all of that, I never got my little pamphlet and voting forms in the mail. Someone at the registrar said I could fax in a change of address, but when I tried that and still didn't get my stuff I called in and found out from another person at the registrar that I missed the deadline by two weeks.

Well heck.

So I went -- yes, physically -- into the registrar's office yesterday to vote. It was like going over to the DMV's office -- crowded, chaotic and utterly confusing. Except for those cute and useful little voting form cradles, there is absolutely nothing to recommend voting in person; I especially don't like those tiny red, white and blue voting booths.

What I like least about voting in person is that I don't feel as though I can vote at my leisure. When I get my pamphlet and form in the mail, I can read through the entire booklet once, twice, three times or a hundred. Upon reading a name or a proposition I don't recognize, I can look it up and do further research if I want to -- and sometimes, you just have to.

Take me, for instance. I'm surprised and ashamed at how incredibly ignorant I was of who the candidates were for the local positions; I didn't recognize a single name, and I couldn't even tell you the responsibilities of the offices for which they were running. National and state political candidates? Yeah, sure. No problem; I've got that handled. City council candidates? Um. Sorry, Charlie. There's not a whole lot of media coverage, so I have to rely on their self-written bios to even get a tiny sense of who they are. As for some of the propositions... well. The politicians decide how the summaries are written up, and they always make them sound so good, even if the propositions are bad. They count on ignorance at the voting booths, and I had plenty of it given my lack of preparation.

So I ended up leaving a few blanks here and there. While I vote passionately for the things I believe in, I tend not to vote at all on things I know very little about. Let those who know what's going on do the voting on that one, I say, lest I do more damage than good.

But now that I've voted for the things that matter to me, I have a wonderful peace of mind right now. If you haven't voted yet, hop to it. Tomorrow is the last day.

...

Other news: My submission to Vicki's collaboration project at Comikaze is up. Go visit it; I'm at room 402 in her Motel Vite Project.

If you like what you see there, you can visit my gallery at 3D Commune, too.

I'll post a couple new movie reviews up in a minute as well.

Wednesday, November 8, 2000 at 3:02 AM

So. I'm half listening to Dan Rather as he summarizes the counting of the votes in Florida. It's 1:00 or 1:30 in the morning, and I'm dreaming that the election depends on the outcome of some soccer game, where the rules are unclear and no one knows for which team they're playing. I fell asleep after stuffing myself with take-out pizza, so I'm not surprised.

What does surprise me is that the presidential race can be this close. That anyone -- anyone -- would ever vote for Bush at all is an utter mystery to me, and that nearly half the nation -- repeat, half the nation -- would vote for him baffles me completely. If it weren't for his father having been president, I doubt he would have even made it as far as being governor of Texas.

This has been a weird week so far. I'd clarify that statement further, but I'm still in shock.

Saturday, November 11, 2000 at 9:37 AM

He has all the walkie talkies laid out and recharging, with a couple of them occasionally squawking as he sets the frequencies to nonmilitary channels. He has his video camera packed and his "mission book" prepared, while the only thing I've done so far is make sure that I'd have the day off from work. My thoughts make me smile -- no getting up early in the morning for a commute!

I ask him: "What time are we leaving tomorrow?"

"6:30," he says.

"6:30," I repeat -- then blink. "In the morning?"

Sarcasm. "No. Yesterday morning."

...and so starts my weekend. It isn't so bad. I leave the apartment only half an hour earlier than usual, and since we're running a little late, I don't get any breakfast, nor do I get any cash for lunch. Stellar. The weekend is stellar so far. But the drive is nice and easy (though long), and the clouds are being especially inspiring -- all puffy and poignantly perfect in a contrast of colors. They make me want to go home to my Limited Edition Photoshop and paint nothing but cotton.

The plan is to take as many stills and video footage as possible, but the camera crew is made up of volunteers with their own cameras, all of which are non-compatible with everyone else's equipment of course. They're all supposed to be here on a holiday with the rest of the group, but we sure showed them -- ha! He's good at managing a photo crew, professional or otherwise; he's done it for years and can do it without thought. So they shoot some pictures.

Meanwhile, I get to play mule and carry all the bags.

Stellar. Absolutely stellar.

Seriously, though... I have a good time. I meet a lot of really great people, and I get to walk around some of the piers on the Coronado Naval Amphibious Base. Ahh, and I get fed, too! We take "chow" where the personnel do, and it's set up like a Soup Plantation -- trays, plates, utensils, and containers of food under plastic sneeze guards. Almost like a high-scale school cafeteria, except for the rubber guns and green camouflage caps leaning against the wall.

For those who like men in uniform it's heaven, what with SEALs in crew cuts and freshly cleaned faces walking around the place, but I have about four buses full of 50-year-old potbellied combat veterans around me to keep my feet firmly on the ground. A pretty face and a nicely fitting uniform aren't enough for the long haul; there better be a lot of love of the heart and interest of the mind involved.

Anyway, Saturday should mean more of the same -- a tour and a demonstration, then chow (woohoo!). I love chow.

...

In other news: god love him, but I needed this. Not for the tips, mind you, but for the comedy in the dialogue. I already work on an intranet at my day job, and everything he says about them is true; a company's intranet is far, far bigger and more complicated than a company's public site, and it constantly needs updating. I'm looking forward to redesigning it, though. My bosses are way, way better than his Mr. McFungus.

Friday, November 24, 2000 at 10:29 AM

I have always been out of sync with trends. When I was in junior high school, a year before everyone else started wearing them all over the place, I was wearing canvas shoes. Same went with jeans, bogarts, big hair, flat hair -- you name the trend; I was always either a year early or a year late.

Almost an exact year ago, I was working on the third version of this web site. In the bio section, I placed my answers to some questions I lifted from a show I watched on TV, and now -- now, after almost a year -- I'm seeing the questions all over the place as some sort of meme. Cecily has them; Elisabeth has them; Patti has them; and I'm so out of sync, I feel like a dork with absolutely no fashion sense. Why me?

Thanksgiving Day was interesting. I spent it with friends and -- as much as I love rabbit food -- dinner was mostly raw vegetables and not much outside of the turkey and sweet potatoes. No cranberry. No mashed potatoes and gravy. No pumpkin pie. I liked the dinner; it just didn't feel like a Thanksgiving dinner. The dinner I had at the veterens' reunion banquet two Saturdays ago (right after the dedication and my own little tour of the PCF 104 swift boat -- which was very, very cool) tasted more like a Thanksgiving dinner than this did.

Ah, well. Whatever.

Saturday, November 25, 2000 at 7:18 PM

Once upon a time, I bought an overpriced European magazine for 3D graphic artists. It came with a CD that included Poser 3 -- not the latest version out there but dagnabit, it's free. Less than a month later, I'm already posting work.

Wednesday, November 29, 2000 at 9:08 AM

Statman on the radio morning show says, "It is physically impossible to drink a gallon of chocolate milk in 60 minutes." Statman is never wrong.

I don't know. It seems possible. Then again, I've never tried it. A gallon is about eight glasses, and as much as I like the taste of chocolate milk I've never really thirsted for a full gallon within the span of a week, let alone an hour. I imagine I'd puke if I even tried.

Yet I've heard of people eating a full gallon of ice cream in one sitting. Surely if they can do that quite easily, a gallon of chocolate milk in one hour is a piece of cake, right? But Statman is never wrong. It is physically impossible to drink a gallon of chocolate milk in 60 minutes. They're offering $100 to anyone who can prove them wrong.

I just hope that whoever goes for it isn't lactose intolerant.

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