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May 20, 2004 /

Spring of my junior year of college, I played Hastings in our school production of Richard III, a fun role in which I got to chew scenery, wear an enormous bathrobe and get my head cut off. The guy who was supposed to take the mold of my real head for that last one bungled it pretty badly; he bought this fancy molding compound, let it harden before applying it, and ended up having to mold my head with really cheap plaster.

Regardless, it was my severed head, and I really wanted it after the play was over. The drama department denied me this, of course–they already had a longstanding tradition of crushing my dreams by then.

When we went to see Lisa’s show last Friday, I got to see Flora, who showed me his senior-presentation scrapbook. It was really nice work, and he was kind enough to give me a piece of it, something I will now treasure as if it were the real thing:

David and Brendan with Brendan's head.

Yeah, I told you it was a pretty bad mold. There’s a reason they kept it in a bag most of the time.

May 19, 2004 /

I’ve done a lot of work today, but I’ve also spent hours geeking out over my camera that I don’t actually own yet and can’t afford. This is silly, because I have no serious photography equipment or experience, and even if I did I’ll already be putting myself into debt this fall to buy or build a new computer.

Regardless, I’ve been looking at it for a year with absolutely undiminished hunger (so long the price dropped). There are two things I can think of on which I’ve geeked out this long and this hard:

  • The trip to Comic Con this summer.
  • A good camera with which to take pictures on that trip.

The former is rapidly becoming a reality, as I paid for the train tickets a couple of days ago. I hope the latter can too.

Once, the thought of a new computer would have filled me with butterflies. Now it’s more a hassle than anything–I can’t afford one, but I have to get one, because my current box is no longer capable of doing the work I need to do in grad school. The Digital Rebel has taken its place, I think. It’s a specialized technical hobby; it’s highly modular; the value of my investment drops very quickly; and it’s going to take me years to get any good at it, by which time I’ll cringe at the things I inflict on you when I’m starting out. Man, I can’t wait.

This is how boy geeks think

May 19, 2004 /

“Halo 2 is a lot like Halo, only it’s Halo on fire, going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone, being chased by helicopters and ninjas,” explained Jason Jones, head of Bungie Studios. “And the ninjas are all on fire, too.”

Makes me kind of feel bad for the people in that hospital, or it would, if Halo 2 wasn’t a myth invented to tease hapless boy geeks in their sleep.

May 18, 2004 /

If anybody knows why TSQL has ten thousand date formats and the ability to guess how much two words sound alike, but no capacity to find and remove one character from a string, please tell me.

May 17, 2004 /

I started back to work full time for the summer today, as if you can’t tell.

May 17, 2004 /

I forgot to mark down a deposit a while back, which means I have about $350 more than I thought I had, and that’s nice. According to my checkbook, though, that’s now about $150 less than I should have, and I haven’t missed another credit or debit in at least seven months. I must have screwed up something big last fall.

The annoying thing is that thanks to the Interweb, I can always see my current balance in relatively real time, but that’s inaccurate because paper-based checks still lumber around like elephants (not that electronic transfers are in any way instant, but there’s no chance of them getting forgotten in somebody’s pocket). The whole point of my check register is that it’s supposed to be more accurate, because I record all transactions as if they took place instantly; since it relies on a human agent (me), though, it’s fallible, because I am fallible and my arithmetic doubly so. I’m tempted to just reset my check register balance to what the bank tells me it is, but then I’m sure some transaction that’s in the register but hasn’t yet posted online would sneak up and blackjack me. And anyway, it’s bad policy to trust the bank blindly.

If I could find the error–either online or in my register–this would all go away, but I’ve tried several times and I can’t. I’d go back all the way to the beginning of my account history, if I could, but the Interweb only lets me go back six statements. I’d use my paper statements, except I immediately rip them all up and throw them away on principle. After all, they don’t tell me anything I don’t know!

This problem would also not exist if I wasn’t a moron.

May 17, 2004 /

Ken, Maria and I rolled down to l’Centre on Saturday to coo over Lisa’s senior show, which was all very massive color-gradient glass pieces, and awesome. I can’t really describe them to you–she has a couple pics up, but seeing them in three dimensions and with more light was much better.

The next day, Maria and I argued over whether or not I am indie–something for which I vaguely hope, but never considered myself cool enough to achieve. She pointed out that in addition to my mild but distinguished collection of obscure t-shirts, I do know two glassblowers, and that’s some solid cred there. I should have known that in the indie world, friends are primarily status symbols and tools to an end. (And for the record, Maria used to date a rock star, so I’m pretty much never going to be indier than she is.)