Year: 2008

I was trying to explain CDO’s to someone last week, and I wish I had this graph. If you don’t understand it, scope the source.

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Source:
Riding the Crest
The Crash: What Went Wrong?
Washington Post, October 15, 2008
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2008/10/15/GR2008101501040.html

so, lorem ipsum is the de-facto “fill content” standard. in an old project i had to code, i made a “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” generator.

i used it as placeholder for a project i have in beta at work right now.

i was just in a meeting promoing a COMPLETELY seperate part of the application, when i got dive-bombed by the president, who wanted to talk to someone else in the meeting. when he saw what we had up, he asked if he could see the section on fundraising (which was COMPLETELY not the section we were meeting about).

guess which section i used that filler on?

i may not come back from vacation.

This hour marks my thirtieth in the office since Sunday.

Last night was the soft re-opening of Alice Tully Hall. There were fifty dinners across the city, hosted by board members, benefactors, and big donors across the city. At the end of all those dinners, folks got tickets to the soft-open, where there was a gala, performances, speeches, and lots of flashy stuff.

I was on call all weekend, as the fundraisers made frantic changes to all thier lists and labels, tickets and seating charts.

Sunday, I got a call from my boss regarding some signifigant issues we were having regarding a centerpiece of the evening’s speech by the President of LC, a scrolling list of donors to the Capitol Campaign, divided by donation amount.

Holy fucking clusterfuck, Batman.

The press office, deciding they knew better than anyone, didn’t use our in-house, multiple emmy-award-winning media group, and instead hired some hack consultant group, who essentially provided equipment and a warm body. The equipment, mind you, was a pretty standard A/V rack, which couldn’t be programmed into the board (hence the warm body, to press buttons) and ONLY had VGA/RGB in, and two three hundred pound giant projectors, which, I shit you not, they had sitting on a fold-out table. The projectors had to keep getting re-adjusted for focus, because the table was bowing under thier weight.

Nobody had the software, skills, or expertiese needed to make this work right – 30 hours later (and fucking seven, yes SEVEN) last-minute changes to the video, and we got something the president, and all the other chefs around the soup-pot were happy with. We started in Powerpoint, then Finalccut (which was even less help) and I finally threw something together in Flash, which seemed to scale well.

I’m pretty sure I am coming down with something – my throat is sore, and I am coughing a little – in no small part, that is because of the stress and schedule I’ve kept in the last 48 hours.

The point is, I’m fucking tired.

succubus are daughters of lillith released from pandora’s box – there are a limited number of them, which can absorb the flesh of others, which kills them (messily). they live in the sea, usually (mermaids, sirens) due to the fact that no matter what form they take on land, they always wear red shoes. one takes over small new england town, and a man becomes its thrall, taking victims to her in exchange for sex (in the form of dead girlfriend). pink-shirted santera know how to stop them… rapp three times on forehead and forcibly turn head to crak (not break) neck traps them in thier bodies, so long as there is a chain of which-priestesses who can move her (one must always be in contact. then they can be burned.

Who:Whoever is reading this
What?: 75th Anniversary of the Repeal of the Prohibition / MTA Death Plans
Where? Rogue NYC (map): Happy Hour 5-8 with 10$ beer buckets and 5$ flavored martinis.
When? after work tonight

I will be getting there as soon after 5 as I can, in an attempt to hold down some real estate. This place is convenient to the R,W,1,6,F and V. It is kinda a schlep for the above-96’ers, but nobody has to walk that far from an Eside/Wsire line that runs N/S. They have a grill and a pretty good menu too, so there will be no “Three Martini Deaths”.  FEEL FREE TO INVITE OTHERS!

Please hit me back up if you think you might attend, so I have an idea on how much space I am fighting for.

So I come in today, and someone who was in over the weekend printed out, and left at the workstation/area adjascent to mine, a detailed printout walkthrough of the paladin epic quest from eq.

What amazes me about this is really, that people still play EQ. It took the years from my life I allotted it, though reading this did make me think of Crushbone Orcs for like 10 minutes.

In other news, I completely failed at Nano this year. I made it about halfway. It wasn’t a lack of dedication or discipline, so much as it was a case of me re-writing huge chuncks of my story several times. I have an interesting kernel though. I’ll do something with it in the future, I hope.

Turkey time was nice, day after involved lots of future-inlaw stuff, followed by the traditional run-down at chez , followed by a 5something am train back into the city Saturday A.M. The sun beat me home – there were no trains to where I live, and I had to get home via Brooklyn over the JMZ (probably my least favorite train line ever).

I don’t know if it is possible to be dumber than Plaxico Burress, unless, maybe, you are Shaq.

Hope everyone has a good Tuesday.

I got taken out to dinner by some reps last night, in thanks for shouldering a burden for them on Wednesday. It was also a chance to debrief on some product developments. Last time they were in town, I dragged them to my favorite sake bar, which was a disaster, since there is more of a “meat and potato” feel to this group. This time, we opted for BBQ.

I’ve read good things about Daisy May’s, and was not dissapointed. Thier sweet tea was totally awesome, and I think the best thing about them is that they are across the street from Landmark Tavern one of my preferred scotch locations in the city, After getting our food, who was inside the seating area watching ESPN? Oliver Platt. He was there with a kid – probably in his early teens? Maybe a son? Maybe a g/f’s kid? I dunno. He was dressed all in white, and got immidiately nervous when we came in (there was nobody else there). I made eye contact, and he kinda gave this look like “please don’t ruin my dinner”.

I didn’t. The two people I was having dinner with woulda been total gawkers, maybe even asked for autographs. I didn’t mention Platt to them until he was on his way out the door. IMDB tells me he has done lots of stuff, but I will always remember him as “that guy” from Flatliners, my favorite Porthios, and his role in Bicentennial Man.

It was kinda a New York thing – it made me smile on the inside. After some fantastic dry-rub pork ribs (BTW, , the beef ribs here there are insane), I walked the reps across the street, and had them buy me scotch. I was good about it though, I coulda really broken the bank, and instead I opted for smooth, but not bank-breaking (especially since we had spent 30 minutes talking about economics, bleh).

i just found out that the person who i managed out of a firing situation at my last job has been in a coma for a week, with an unknown coronary cause! she has never regained consciousness since she collapsed, and is still in ICU, since they don’t know cause.

she may be a vegetable.

that sure throws a screwball into your day.

This is the first morning i’ve had to breathe in a long time, mostly because I’m keeping my out-of-office on from the ffing 6 hours of meetings i had yesterday.
More tonight, but i don’t really want to talk about work.

I’ve had some real boilers of potential posts out there in the past few weeks – the election, the economy, side projects… Big sweeping ideas for posts that I have in the subway, or that I am mulling over as I drift off to sleep.

What I lack is time to make them concrete.

Nano has been killing me. I’m trying, I really am, to keep my work going. I’m not even looking at wordcounts, partially because I know it will depress me, partially because I don’t want to try and rush the story. It has rekindled a project in me that i didn’t even know still had banked embers. It has also led me to procrastinate, but even doing that has been productive – I’ve done gobs of work on my RPG, and, as I said, come up with a dozen new ideas. My brain works differently when i spend more energy creatively. I wish i could do it all the time.

I’m filled with fear at where we have gotten – as a nation, and as a species. we are living in unprescidented times. As someone i was talking to last night said “I don’t think anyone ever has had it as good as Americans have had it in the last century.” I can’t argue with that, and yet it is still so broken – it could be so much better, not just for Americans. We are right on the edge between a layer of creation which could signifigantly change our species, yet it is so far from being done in a way in which it really will. I’m far more concerned with a new wave of bio-techno-feudalism than I am hopeful that change will come to us all in good, affordable ways.

Too much Philosophy, too much Theology, too much fucking theory. My head is busting with the stuff, and everything I talk about, everything I do, is echoing all that heavy thinking others have done before me. I’m beset by this constant sillibant soundtrack that comes and goes dependong on if I am actively thinking about what I am doing, or just going through the motions, as we are trained to do from a fairly early age.

I yearn for a lifeline, a brain-anchor, something absolute to cling to in the midst of all this, and sadly, I’ve not had that for a really long time. Reflecting like this doesn’t make me want to find one, it just makes me more jaded – my only dependable absolute is Murphy’s Law.

some days, the bear hits you with an 18-wheeler, backs over you a few times to tenderize you, then takes you to martha stewarts house, where she makes a show about how to prepeare you.

i’ve been at this too long. i need a break. fucking day 3 of nano and i’m already behind, with little reprieve in sight.

daylight savings sucks.

i got the pre-prep email today, and made my donation.
the thought of doing nano this year kinda makes me nauseous. despite that, i feel it is something i have to do.

november will bring tears and blood. december is a long way away.

i don’t have cable, so i’ve been spared most of the political shit… i love that they got all the guys to make this happen though:

In other news, I really want one of these:

But I need to get a new phone first.

I’m on day 4 of 7am-2am this week. Sunday night seems a really long way away.

-Montauk was great. Vacation was great. I had a great getaway, and returned to an utter shitstorm at work. I’ll post pictures whenever I get the damn time.
–City of Ember was actually pretty cool, but it could have been 45 minutes longer, and a really good movie. I will definitely read the books.
-I am slogging away on my RPG, and scared as hell at taking on Nanowrimo next month.
-Lewis Black was fucking awesome. He was under the weather, so his act was like 45 minutes late starting. His opener, John Bowman, was one of the best opening acts I’ve ever seen.
-I may have to work through the debates tonight.
-I just got the following email from a co-worker (female) who I have been trying to help since she was hired two months ago with some serious organizational issues:
“Thanks very much, again, for your gracious help. Don’t know what I would do with you!”
Followed a moment or two later by:
“I meant without you, of course. Oh boy.”

Ain’t that cute?

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