Your results:
You are Wash (Ship Pilot)

Wash (Ship Pilot) 85% Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command) 85% Malcolm Reynolds (Captain) 70% Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic) 60% Jayne Cobb (Mercenary) 45% River (Stowaway) 40% Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic) 35% Alliance 30% Inara Serra (Companion) 25% Derrial Book (Shepherd) 20% A Reaver (Cannibal) 10%

You are a pilot with a good if not silly sense of humor. You take pride in your collection of toys. You love your significant other.

Click here to take the "Which Serenity character am I?" quiz...


All I need to do is remember to duck after a particularly rough landing, and I should be fine.

Say WHAT one more time!

OMFG.


This was done by a student taking a time-based typography class at SCAD. This was his first assignment.

It's visually very stunning. Very simple camera moves and text twists, but used extremely effectively. I particularly like the "spatter" text used to punctuate the shooting - very dramatic and very well used being cliché.

Back when I was a design student, I did similar projects - using type to express motion, mood, etc. - but admittedly none turned out as well as this guys did.

I need to go see if I can find a workable copy of Flash somewhere to play with...

R.I.P. E.D.

This morning we were told that the Electronic Discovery department - where I work - would be shutting down.

When? They don't know. Is there a severance package? They don't know. Do you have any information? They don't know.

The standard answer appears to be "I don't know," which is and has been the Standard Operating Procedure™ around here ever since I started work four years ago. That's fine when you're asking if you can take next week off, but it's a little disturbing to hear when you're potentially going to be sacked in a couple weeks. Right now the severance pay and timeline are "being looked into," which means "I'll make up some bullshit."

I always knew I'd be leaving the company, but I didn't think it'd be like this.

Testing...testing...

Yesterday I went on one of the strangest "interviews" I've ever had. I say "interview" because it wasn't actually an interview; it was a software test followed by small-talk as they walked me back out of the building.

I arrived on time, looking very sharp in my suit complete with tie (talk to my wife; she'll tell you that this was an amazing feat in and of itself). I met with with the folks from the staffing place. Engaged in small talk until the office manager showed up. Engaged in small talk with him as he walked me upstairs and through the building to a small cubicle. It was here where I was given the aforementioned software test. Basically, I had forty-five minutes to complete a two-page spread to their specs using InDesign (Adobe's page-layout program. Think QuarkXPress, but better).

Some of you are undoubtedly saying, "only 45 minutes? That's not enough time." You'd be right. However, graphic designers are constantly pushed to produce in short amounts of time. Clients usually want something yesterday, and it's up to us to deliver. Sometimes they'll have a good idea and some specs, and it's not that difficult. Most of the time they'll have no idea what they want and you'll go through several proofs before they finally say "THAT'S the one." So, 45 minutes is pushing it, but fast turnaround projects are definitely the norm in the field.

In case you were wondering, no, I didn't get it done. I got most of it done, but didn't get down to touching everything up before time ran out. I attribute some of it to not knowing the specs of their department and some of it to my not having intimate knowledge of the software. I've used it before, but not extensively. Quark XPress has been the program of choice for the vast majority of places I've worked - not because it's better, but it's what their printer uses or what the boss wanted. So, I'm extremely knowledgeable with Quark but not so much with InDesign. I've learned a lot on my own and I feel mostly comfortable with the software, but there's still some things that I want to get better/faster with. This, unfortunately, will take time.

Back to the test. As I was walking with the office manager back to the lobby, he did say something that made me feel a little better:
"You know, only one person has been able to finish that."

Painful decisions...

IT staffing place called back; interview is set for tomorrow morning. I was also able to get some questions answered, but they just gave rise to new questions.

It's more money, but for a short period of time. There's no benefits until I reach a certain length of time with them. They'll start looking for more work for me when there's a month left on the current assignment, but that's no guarantee that there will be work. Probably the hardest part of this decision: it's a graphic design position. Do I leave a job that I hate to work in my field, but give up quite a bit of security? We'll be moving soon, but I need to be gainfully employed to make sure that happens - something I won't have a guarantee of should I go with this contract position.

Aargh. Sometimes adult decision making sucks.

Baaaaa......

I'm sorry, I'm laughing too hard to say anything remotely coherent about this:


Just watch it. You'll understand. And then come by my place; we'll watch Night of the Lepus.

Cross your fingers

Last week I received a call from a local IT staffing company with an offer for an Interactive Development position - contract, of course. Seemed like a good fit. My current place of employment is shakier than Michael J. Fox, and since we're going to be relocating within the next six months a contract position makes the most sense.

As it turns out I didn't get the Interactive Development position and I thought that I'd never hear from the company again, even though they promised to "keep my resume on file" and "let me know if something comes up."

Turns out I was wrong.

Today I got a call from the same company, this time for a Graphic Design position. I called them back, but the contact was out to lunch. I left a polite message, and I'll be houndingcalling them back if I don't hear from them soon. If things pan out, I may be able to flee madly from the Shitty Job™ and move into Non-Shitty Job™.

Wish me luck - I think I just got a call...

What the hell is going on in Detroit?

It's been a couple of days, and I believe my brain has recovered a bit from the shock and/or absolute weirdness of it all.

The NHL trade deadline has passed, and apparently it took some of the sanity of the management behind the Detroit Red Wings. In case you haven't heard, they acquired Todd Bertuzzi.

Todd fuckin' Bertuzzi.

Those of you who follow hockey should immediately recognize that name. If you don't here's some backstory: Bertuzzi's history (via Wikipedia)

His checkered past now takes him to Detroit, and to the Wings. Do they have any guarantee that he won't pull another stunt like the one that got him suspended for seventeen games (and the playoffs)? Do they have any guarantee that in the heat of the moment he won't retaliate and seriously injure someone else? Only time will tell, I guess.

His past is one issue. His current health is another. The man had back surgery in November of last year, and was only recently - December 2006 - released to skate. Babcock hopes to have him in the lineup by the end of the month. Somehow, I'm not seeing all this working out terribly well. Apparently they didn't learn their lesson with Hasek - they took him back after he spent most of a season out with a "groin injury." He's back on the team, but now out with a "sore thigh." Will Bertuzzi be the same? Play a couple of games, and then be out for an extended period with back problems? Again, time will tell but I fear Bertuzzi will end up becoming a financial dead weight around the Wing's necks.

Finally, the trade itself smacks of stupidity. The Wings not only gave up a player, but also trade slots. Depending on how they finish the season, they'll give up either a first, second, or third-round pick to the Florida Panthers this spring. Probably not a good thing, considering the Wings could use those picks to acquire some "younger blood;" something to give them a fresher team. Don't get me wrong, the Wings play amazing for having a team of mostly old-timers (the 45-year-old Chris Chelios, for example), but they could use some younger players to round things out and keep the team going through the playoffs - something they've struggled with in recent years.

Then again, I could just be talking out of my ass.

Sometimes, failure really is funny...

Like here, for instance.

Kinda sums up my day so far. I haven't heard back from the guy who wanted to interview me for a contract position, job is running out of work...sometimes it's just not worth it to gnaw throught the straps to get up in the morning.

In reality, I deal with job, finances, cars, landlords - all of which are major disappointments currently. Nothing incredibly wrong with any one of them, but all lumped together it's rather difficult to deal with sometimes and makes for a long and frustrating day. In my mind, I'm sketching in a pub in Ireland, hoisting a pint of black, and enjoying watching the locals come and go. I rather like my mind's version of reality. Should the two clash, I'll probably have drunken Irishmen bashing on my car with my landlords outside my job, and I'll have to hand over my wallet before they'll stop.

But then I find things like this and the image linked above, and my spirits rise enough for me to continue plodding through the day.

Further proof that my wife should be in academia...

My wife has now been accepted to five of the eight schools she's applied to. For those of you playing at home, that means she's accepted at over half of the schools she applied to:
Accepted:
University of Michigan
University of Cincinatti
University of Miami (Ohio)
Ohio State University
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Denied:
Temple University
University of Indiana

Unknown:
Virginia Commonwealth

It's official. She's a lean, mean, MFA-machine...
...or she will be, come this fall. Now comes the fun part of where to go. Pesonally, I think it'd be fun to have representatives from each school compete gladitorial-style in a cage match for her. Last one standing that waives tuition and offers an assistantship/fellowship is the school she goes to.

But, I don't see that happening. Instead, I see the decision being made on how good the program is, what the financial prospects are, etc. You know, good olde-fashioned adult decision-making. Probably as it should be - less lawsuits that way.

To the person driving the Big-Ass™ truck, redneck edition:

I saw you this morning, at 6:35am. I saw you run two flashing red stoplights at Diamond and Cherry. I saw your truck as you nearly took the front end of off my car as you went through said lights at break-neck speed.

Were you drunk, or just in a hurry to get home? Did you not think that people go through that area at that time of the morning? Or did you just not care? Or, as is most likely the case, were you chatting on your cell phone, too oblivious to everything else around you?

After narrowly missing you (i.e. I could count the flecks of paint on your passenger side rear quarter-panel), I watched as you swerved drunkenly down Diamond. Not a care in the world; not even bothering to stop to check to see if the person you narrowly avoided colliding with was fine. That was probably the best thing you could have done, honestly - had you stopped, I would have been obliged to return your head to where it undoubtedly belongs: straight up your ass.

I can only hope that in the future you will exercise a bit more care. After all, it is winter and the roads are icy. Just because your vehicle has four-wheel drive does not mean that you are freakin' unstoppable; on icy roads it just means that you're spinning four tires instead of two. Just because you sit a couple of feet higher in your vehicle does not make you superior; rather, it makes others wonder what you are compensating for.

Please, for the love of whichever deity you follow, pull your head out. Watch out for others. They put those big shiny flashy colour-coded lights on the roads for a reason, and - no matter where you are - red means stop.

Thank you for your time, and kindly die horribly in a fire with snakes attached to your eyeballs.

*hurk*

There's nothing quite like the sound of a cat getting ready to puke on your bed that will wake you out of a dead sleep at four in the morning. Really. I'm not talking about the slightly-groggy; just coming out of a dream waking up, either. I'm talking about the alert, coiled-spring sort of awake - like someone just injected pure adrenaline into your heart.

By now you can tell where this is going.

Early this morning - ~4:30am - one of our cats starts with the "huck" sounds at the foot of our bed. Within seconds, both my wife and I were awake and scrambling. I rushed out to grab the cat (hoping to hold him over something easily wiped down) while my wife ran into the bathroom to grab the (un)petroleum jelly to dose the cat. It's a simple procedure to treat hairballs, really - give the cat the petroleum jelly; cat will ingest it; jelly lubricates whatever cat is trying to hork up; cat naturally passes it instead of horking it onto your duvet.

Who says cats are boring?