Brainwaves of Sken

That there is a day in the life of Skennedy – click and zoom to get a glance at one of the video projects I work in. For those who know what they’re looking at, we have a green screen through After Effects, multiple nested sequences and title transitions timed to the frame.

Today’s show could have been more complicated. Some layers have been deeply trimmed after the show was complete because they are largely hidden, and the show can be saved much faster without them. Every so often, after a frantic day of catch-up, I look back on the project and marvel that on a per-finished-minute basis, we usually finish a project in a third of standard time.

This morning, before the project came to being, I also handled a half-dozen emails from either those who had trouble watching the show, or staffers with questions about our transition to a new hosting platform.

I also helped our sister publication set some things up, prepped the studio, transferred files, and moved forward the office politics and procurement issues we have to resolve before our second show goes live in two weeks.

Unrelatedly, I sent out final confirmation emails for the DIY track for Penguicon, created a half-page ad for Construct, and submitted an application for Penguicon to run a Liquid Nitrogen ice cream booth at the Maker Faire in Dearborn this summer after getting approval from the required parties.

I need a chilito and a nap. But, since they only seem to sell them in Ohio these days, a nap will have to do.

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I get to leave work early. On a Friday.

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I was pretty sure I was seeing signs of my not getting enough sleep yesterday when I was repeatedly getting looks of incomprehension from my friends. I’m not saying I don’t throw out weird statements all the time, nor that I don’t ramble (ha!), but I reached new heights.

Sometimes, if no one lets you finish a sentence, it’s because you aren’t making any sense and they’re done waiting around for you to figure it out.

We’ve moved on to the prototypes of the second show at work, which is progressing smoother than you’d think.

I continue to bring some pretty healthy snacks in to work …and continue not to have time to actually whip up a lunch. My snacks are mostly sufficient, though.

Lucy and I are supposed to be checking out houses on Sunday, which has me excited and anxious.

We stopped at the i3Detroit shop on our popcorn sojourn yesterday – they’re almost packed up and ready to move to their huge 8,000 square foot facility. Now that’s a huge hackerspace!

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The other day, I used my powers for good (or is it evil? hmmmm?) by tracking down Lucy’s work address to send her flowers in Atlanta. As it turns out, she might never have gotten them if there hadn’t been a fire alarm, forcing her outside where her cell works …

I’ve been trying some new things for my “diet” (as in the way I eat, not specifically calorie restriction). I’ve been rather enjoying V8’s V-Fusion, which hides vegetables in fruit. That’s for me! Especially the strawberry-banana, though the wildberry was tolerable.

I had that, my multivitamins and a banana on my way to work, today and yesterday. I’ve also brought these really cool cups of fruit with oats you combine, very tasty and a 100-calorie-pack of chocolate dusted almonds. I could care less about the calorie number, but not having to baggie up snacks saves me time in the morning. Finally, I had chicken ramen for lunch yesterday, which is kind of a big deal – I brought in my water heater and actually had lunch instead of skipping or stopping at wendy’s. I also have a mocha Rockstar, but that’s because of another issue.

I seem to be in the worst extended bout of insomnia I’ve had in a long time. It makes me really look forward to living with Lucy because, while I’m not guaranteed to get to sleep, I can at least head to bed at a reasonable hour because she is quite ready to get to bed by midnight. I’d like to not be up at 3 am or later, trying to figure out how I’m going to survive the day, please. I just get a lot less done, especially after work, when I don’t get enough sleep.

The wedding playlist is coming along well! Thanks for your suggestions, m’friends, and keep them coming! PS If you thought my playlist was strangely heavy on weezer, blame YouTube for not making the playlist obvious once you’re in it – it’s on the right side, and if you want to skip through it, click the items or hit “play next”, or wait until the next song starts. So there!

I believe my evening is going to be spent grillin’ some food with a few fine folks and visiting Royal Oak on some sort of Journey For Popcorn. So, I have that going for me.

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I made a playlist of potential wedding songs!

What fun and/or beautiful songs am I missing? “Traditional” wedding songs are for the birds. If my sweetie wants me to do the electric slide, I will, but we will pretend it never happened!

Bonus points (haha) go to, y’know, songs we’ve jammed to on Rock Band, songs from our child/teenhood, and songs about joyful relationships.

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I wasn’t sure how much I had in common with Marshall from How I Met Your Mother until he said he looked like a backstreet boy ’cause he let someone bleach the tips of his hair.

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Reading commentary in a conservative blog about the republicans setting up their own Waterloo in their attempt to set up Obama’s:

“When Republicans stop sounding unhinged and start talking about fiscal conservatism in terms other than the looniest sort of supply side voodoo economics (a Republican originally came up with that phrase), maybe they’ll win more battles.

However, I don’t think they can at this point. Conservatives like Frum used to be comfortable in the party. Heck, he wrote speeches for a Republican President. Now? Now he’s practically in exile for holding positions which are not remotely liberal but have a fairly consistent conservative worldview behind them. I actually feel slightly sorry for him.”

I think it’s interesting, how the final plan is so close to many of the health care plans originally presented by Republicans (the Dole plan and McCain plan, for instance). From a marketing perspective, by presenting this plan as apocalyptically as they did, they left no room to even pretend to have a part in passing this plan, and no room to downplay the win here by the Democrats in office.

In other words, they can’t just say, “This health care bill doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things as far as movement away from the right goes” because they’ve presented it as if Hitler and Stalin colluded to bring it to pass, as if it contained the very heart of socialism. (Of course, it’s not what you’d call fiscally conservative, but neither is the Republican Party or its platform – Reagan brought in “borrow-and-spend” to replace “tax-and-spend”, right?)

When Obama signed the executive order that codified the idea that no federal funds would be spent on abortion – a huge, huge sacrifice to get social conservatives on board – the Republican party should have, for its own sake, seen the way the wind was blowing and jumped on board. This was as far right-leaning as a bill like this was ever going to get, and they could claim they debated in good faith.

Instead, they hung on to hope that the bill would die, and that Obama’s “hope” (and political capital) would die, too.

I agree with other commentators that when I see people talk about how they hope this plan fails, I want to vomit. In this day and age, you can’t take a picture of a public monument without being accused of terrorism, but you can fervently desire the failure of our government and country to thrive and still call yourself patriotic.

Just like reasonable Democrats had to hope they were wrong about Iraq, for the sake of our country, so too do reasonable Republicans have to hope that they’re wrong about this bill, and that we end up better off for it – because the alternative, right now, is too painful to contemplate, regardless of the way you swing.

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I acquired the first season of How I Met Your Mother, and have been enjoying it over the past few days. I realized that at just about every point in my life, I have made relatively close friends with a Barney. I guess I go for charming and arrogant, hm?

Lucy’s survived her first week in Atlanta rather well, despite an ant emergency and a whole lot of rain. Not seeing each other in person has led to a fair amount of WoW – we both now have two top-level characters to play with.

I think about our chatter on Ventrilo, and it is amazing. We go in and out of private conversation all day on our headsets, occasionally bumping into other friends in the same server or hopping servers to chat with other folks together. People we’ve never met (yet), but have known for a year, now. Phones vs Ventrilo: It’s like the difference between using an old-school BBS and a current, threaded, ranked, profile-based forum like LiveJournal.

Work is frantic. We are making a major technology transition (Premiere for Final Cut and PC to mac), a major hosting transition (version 2 to version 4, requiring new players), a major format transition (flash video to mp4), a major hardware transition (a few PCs and a time-shared Mac to a new macbook pro and 3 imacs), and a huge, huge productivity transition (one daily show to two, plus a Sunday show and random extra interviews and projects). All at once. All within the next few weeks. I’m trying to keep my brain from having a meltdown over the incredible complication – significant f’ing logistics.

The DIY track at Penguicon is mega exciting. Seriously, I can not wait. Within the next two weeks we’ll be nailing down the titles, text and panelists for our panels – in mid-week, as my co-head (haha) has major events on each weekend leading up to Penguicon. I am proud of the awesomeness we have organized so far!

My eating decisions are largely entirely terrible, though occasionally a ray of light will shine through. I brought apples and a small bag of tiny cookies in for lunch each day last week, which was good. I also ate pretty huge dinners, which was not. Lucy and I both eagerly await living together, when it’ll be easier for me to do such crazy things as: buy some milk and not watch some of it go bad. Buy a loaf of bread and finish it without making sandwiches for 3 meals a day, every day. Buy salad greens and have more than one bowl before tossing it.

And, our wedding is coming along. I’m a little frantic about decorating, honestly. It’s not Lucy’s interest, and I know more about what I don’t want (hokey, uber-flowery, super-elaborate) than I do (purple and light green, modern, games-related or “us”-related wherever possible as long as it doesn’t look ridiculous).

On tha last part: I need help, both with the ideas and the implementation. If you think that sounds like fun, please offer, my gratitude overflows.

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If you’re so inclined, leave a comment, text, or phone call to moi that you think might do the trick.

I (seriously) appreciate it!

Heading out of work in about 30 minutes.

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Back when I did tech support, there was an audio file that made its way around the office and the (somewhat nascent) internet. A woman was shrieking about having been on hold for over an hour, and she says the phrase, “… you help me now, or it’s war, buddy!”

Can anyone help me hunt this down? It has to be out there somewhere!

Thanks!

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