Month: December 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.