wildyams

I'm fucking beat, but I guess I should make an entry huh? Big news today for Laker fans everywhere as the rape case against Kobe Bryant was dropped when the woman accusing him decided she didn't want to testify anymore. She's going after his money instead of wanting to see him behind bars, so for me anyway, that says a lot about what this whole thing has been about. Anyway, Kobe may end up being a lot lighter in the wallet from the whole affair, but he won't be serving any jail time, so for a Laker fan like me, that's good news.

Today was another real long day at work, but I got a lot accomplished. They have my phone number at work screwed up, but as soon as they get that straightened out I'll send out an email with my new contact info for all the people that traditionally would get in touch with me while I'm at work.

There's been a few changes at work that are unrelated to our move that I should mention. One is that Cookie was promoted to coordinator and started that position last week, so congratulations to him :grin The other changes are that Jenn and Josh are both leaving the company to pursue better opportunities, so that is good news for them, and for that I am happy; but it is bad news for work, because they are both great people and I know everyone will really miss them around the office. Josh is moving back to England, so I'm not going to see him at all, unfortunately, but at least I did get to go with him to a Dodger game before he leaves :wink Jenn will be working in the area, and if she doesn't drop by at work to say hello to everyone, then at least I know that I'll still see her at our Halo-fests (of which we have another one coming up soon :grin).

Cookie, Jenn and Josh, QC truly isn't gonna be the same without you.

I'm way overdue for an entry, but I've been both busy and lazy lately, so that would explain the dearth of entries here as of late. After my last entry last week, Jenn had a turn of events and decided to stay on with us, much to everyone's happiness at work, although we were all sad that her job opportunity didn't turn out to be as good as she had initially thought. Nonetheless we're all happy she's still with us :grin Tomorrow is Josh's last day, but maybe he'll also have a change of heart or change of plans at the zero hour and stick around :lol Ok, that's probably not gonna happen, but it's a good thought.

Today at work we had our "open house" in which a bunch of clients and mucky-mucks came by to check out the new digs. As a result a lot of stuff today went on to ensure that the dog-and-pony show for the bigwigs went off without a hitch tonight. Anyway, we had a lot of window-dressing at work today to make the place pretty: everything from putting up decals with the company logo on them, to nice little name placards outside our offices, and business cards for the management staff. I thought it all was kind of amusing, personally. Hopefully now that open house is over with, things will relax a bit at work and we can all settle in to "business as usual" at the new place.

So yesterday was another Halo-fest, and this one was the most epic of all so far. First off, we had a lineup change because Matt couldn't make it (and probably won't be able to make any more for a while because all the pre-production stuff on his movie is starting to ramp up), but Miki filled in for him. Miki hadn't ever played before, so apparently she and Paola took some time Friday night playing so she could get a little seasoning before being thrown into the melee with the rest of us.

This time we decided to forgo our usual pre-game feast and instead just grabbed food at various places and quickly ate before launching right into it. We played for a couple hours with my team winning every game before we decided to begin switching up the teams. We started switching people around trying to find a good balance, and at first there was still always one team that was much better than the other. We decided at around 8 to take a dinner break and ended up getting take-out from Domenico's (my favorite pizza place, at least here in LA). Afterwards we split into teams we figured would be pretty even, and played a game that lasted maybe 30 minutes or so and we decided we'd play one more and call it a night. The only problem was that last game took 3 hours to play! At 1 am we shut it down and called it a night.

For me, as I said I was on the winning team for virtually the entire first half of the time we played, but once we started switching it up, I was never again on a team that won. It turned out that the real deciding factor was Michael, who went by "Lorky", because he was never on a losing team. As Matt had observed at the last Halo-fest, Michael is like Qui Gon Jinn or something :lol In the last game, the one that took 3 hours, Michael was mainly playing defense, in which he was almost always hiding in their base, waiting to kill any of us who attempted to enter the base. Because of this we took to calling him "Lurky" :lol Anyway, it was a lot of fun, even if it went much longer than we anticipated it would. I am looking forward to the next time we can get together for a game :grin

Today work was pretty busy, but it was kinda nice in a weird way to be back. I was pretty busy, but it was a good day because I feel like we seem to have finally found the first good place to go for lunch in the area: the Eat n' Park. It's only a few blocks from where I work and the food was tasty and cheap and it came in very large portions. The sign outside claimed that they had the best omlettes in Burbank, and while I can't say if that's true or not (I think that's the only omlette I've had in Burbank :lol), I will say it was the best omlette I've had in a while :grin

After work I went over to Dave and Jen's place so we could go out to dinner. Dave and Jen had their hearts set on Houston's, and who was I to complain? :lol After all, their knife and fork ribs are one of my personal favorites, and are so tasty that they've basically ruined ribs for me anywhere else. So you can imagine my dismay when we got to the restaurant and found out that they no longer had the knife and fork ribs on the menu! Apparently they still offer them, but they don't have as many or something, because when we asked if we could order them, they said yes, but then we were quickly informed that they had just run out :sad Forced to try something new, Jen got a cheeseburger and I went with a rib eye steak while Dave went with his usual seared tuna steak. The steak I got was really delicious, so that helped to ease my pain :lol After dinner we went back to Dave and Jen's and hung out for a while till everyone got tired and I came back here to my Dad's, and I am now going to sleep :grin

Man, I'm really falling behind here on ye olde blog. While I've got a minute, I'll make an entry. I haven't been blogging hardly at all lately for two reasons: #1 it is extremely busy here at work (I'll be here past 10 tonight), and #2, since I'm still at my Dad's place, the last thing I want to do when I get home late is pull out the laptop with the laptop keyboard and type something. So the blog has been suffering, but that's the way it's gotta be till I rotate back to my humble abode in detestable Hollywood on Sunday. I do have a few minor tidbits to report, however.

At work, I'm really liking the way my office is shaping up. Apparently I'm one of the few here who enjoys the new digs, although naturally there are a few drawbacks (we're still having some trouble locating a good group of lunchtime eateries to choose from, but we're making progress). I finally put up my posters that I purchased long ago when we first moved into the last building we were in! Unfortunately Paola (my office-mate) won't let me put up the third poster (which is this wonderful Leonard Pt. 6 poster), so that is still rolled up in the tube; but thankfully I was able to put up my international Starship Troopers poster, and the piece de la resistance, my Cool As Ice poster (although, inexplicably, Paola wouldn't let me prominently display it, so it's in a spot that really only I have a good view of). In addition to the posters, in a kind of throw-back to my days at Faction, I ordered a new lava-lamp, and that is now running on top of one of my monitors on my desk. Along with my mini-fridge (also a throwback to the Faction days), I'm quite pleased with my setup at work. It makes a huge difference :grin

I have some other stuff to write about, but I gotta get back to work, so it'll have to wait. Laettner.

I'm now back at my apartment after spending almost 3 weeks at my Dad's place. It was a fun time over there, as it always is, but I'm a little happy to be back here, if for nothing else than because it's nice to be back to my computer setup. My Dad's place is great, but his computer is an Apple laptop which is about as powerful as my old G3, and on top of that it's got that tiny laptop keyboard. Anyway, that's a pretty minor gripe, of course, considering how cool his place is :lol But I was anxious to get back here because I ordered a new part for my Mac and I wanted to check it out. I ordered myself a PCI card which will allow me to use my Mac like a Tivo (in other words, a DVR). Or so I thought. I accidentally ordered the wrong part, and so I'm gonna have to return what I ordered and get the right one. They offer a version of the card I wanted without the ability to schedule programs to record for $10 cheaper, and apparently that's the one I got. I didn't even know they offered the two versions, and that's where I made my mistake, because I mis-read their website. Anyway, the main reason I wanted something like this was so I could schedule my computer to record Laker games so that I wouldn't have to be here to watch them live if I wanted to see them, so without the ability to schedule recordings, it's pretty useless.

While I was fiddling around with trying to figure that out, I got really annoyed with my router, because my router has the annoying problem of disconnecting the connection with my DSL modem if it is idle for too long, and when this happens it can take approximately 10 minutes of me trying to send signals to the web (by hitting refresh over and over or clicking on links over and over) to "wake it up" so that it will give me a steady connection. Even rebooting the router wouldn't fix it, and unfortunately there was most definitely NOT a setting for disabling the idle timeout. After screwing around with it for a while in the past, I just figured I would get a new router that didn't do this, but I hadn't gotten around to it yet. Well today after coming back from being away for so long, my router basically refused to come back from being idle. I could get it to stay connected for a minute or two, but then it would disconnect again. After messing with that for a while, I realized that I was being a moron, and don't really need a router. I have two IP addresses through my ISP, and since I only have two computers, I don't need a router to separate my signal. Previously I had my VOIP phone connected through one IP, and my computers through the other one, but now I've got my Mac on one and my VOIP and PC on the other one. So voila, a free solution to my internet connectivity issues, and now I can probably give my router to my sister so she can share her roommates' Cable connection. Not bad huh?

Today is my sister Johnetta's birthday, and it is my friend Jen's birthday, and Monday was my good friend Cella's bithday; so I wanted to wish all them happy birthdays. Johnetta is coming out here for a week or so on Saturday, and I am really looking forward to seeing her. For her birthday I got her all the Wes Anderson movies on DVD, since she didn't have them, and because she's a huge Wes Anderson fan, and hopefully she got them before today. I didn't talk to her today because from work we can't call outside of the immediately local area codes, and she lives in Texas, but I did call her when I got home and left her a message. I'm gonna go out here in a bit to go to the movies with Jen for her birthday, and hopefully go see Shawn of the Dead (which I know J. Krue is anxious for me to see :lol), and then I'm off to bed; but since I hadn't made an entry in a while I felt I should say something. I've just been pretty busy at work and haven't felt too much like getting on the computer when I get home (although I did mess around with my new DVR in my Mac, setting that up, and using it to record the presidential debate tonight, which I'll watch when I get a chance). Anyway, I'll blog some more tomorrow or this weekend when I have something interesting to say.