Duality

I went out to dinner with friends twice this past week. After hearing how many of them don’t like their jobs or don’t find their jobs interesting, I feel lucky to have the job that I have. My job is challenging and offers plenty of opportunities to learn new things. There is a clear path for me. As I get better, I will get to tackle more on my own.

I can see where my parents are coming from when they encourage me to go back for grad school. If my job were one which required me to do the same boring things day-in, day-out, of course I’d go back to school. But that’s not the case—at least, for now.

Congratulations to the newly-minted Davis alumni Xero and his roommate, Porf!

I had the honor of being at that ceremony Saturday morning. Some of the highlights: one student hugged and picked up every faculty member on stage (instead of the usual handshake); another student’s name was so difficult to pronounce that the faculty member saying the names into the microphone let the student say it himself.

What challenges will Xero tackle as a new graduate? If his Saturday afternoon nap was any indication, he’ll bravely tackle the advanced field of getting enough sleep. It’s been one year after my own graduation and I haven’t made any progress in that regard. Good luck and again congratulations, my friend!

… for the third time.

This redesign has taken so long because it is hard to make progress when my free time is chopped up into tiny pieces. Every time I sit down to design, there’s a bit of start-up time when I’m getting into the flow of designing but not making progress. If my particular chunk of free time is small—and more often than not, it is—all I end up doing is exercising Command-O, Command-Q. It’s like effin’ brokerage commissions. I might have sold at $0.10 per share higher than I bought, but if I only traded 100 shares and my broker’s commission is $10, I didn’t actually make any money.

The other two times this design left the Photoshop mock-up phase, I forced it out. Both times, I wasn’t entirely happy with the design. The first time, I got all the way to the templating phase (for reference: mock-up ~> test page ~> templating) before realizing there was no way I could make it work. I scrapped it at the end of July / beginning of August and started over. I worked on its replacement into the test page phase, where I got fed up with how certain parts of it looked.

That was a few weeks ago. Since then, I overhauled the page’s layout and shifted the color scheme to the point where I’m eager to show it off. Sadly, no sneak peeks until I’m done though. =)

If this design had a mantra, it would be “Nothing is sacred.” Over the past year+, I’ve revisited parts of the design several times and scrapped the whole design once in search of a look and feel that I would be happy with. That’s not something I would’ve done in the past. Before, once I finished part of the design, I wouldn’t touch it again. I’ve been regularly taking screenshots, so you’ll all get to see my wanderings. It would make an interesting slideshow, actually.

No sneak peeks today, but here’s what I reveal about the new design:

1. It’s blue. (Sorry to all the fans of pink)
2. It’s 1024×768-optimized.
3. It sports a shiny new logo. New = I designed it in August, but none of you (save Xero) have seen it yet.
4. It has a listing of recent comments (all weblogs which have comments enabled should have it), recent reviews, and links to interesting stuff (like The Diamond Invention).
5. It has curves.
6. It doesn’t use JavaScript.
7. It won’t use cookies if everyone’s cool with 2.0 gamma (between Mac-standard and Windows-standard).
8. It’s another space theme.
9. There might be an iPod drawing.

Their customer service responds very fast—at least in response to what I’ve asked them for so far. I asked for SSH access on a Saturday and they replied back in half an hour. I asked for rsync on a Sunday and they replied back in 12 minutes. I think that’s pretty good. Their responses seem to be all canned though, so I guess that’s how they respond so quickly?

Very little is set up for you by default on their servers. If I remember correctly, there’s pico, vi, de/compression tools, and a few others. No emacs, no rsync, no development tools (gcc/make/etc.). They will grant access to development tools if you ask them. For anything else, you’ll have to compile it from source yourself.

Media Temple’s server performance is very good. I haven’t noticed any slowdowns, unlike at Mesopia/Netbunch where the servers got bogged down every so often. That’s not a completely fair comparison since Media Temple charges more than everyone else for the same space/bandwidth, but you are getting something for the extra cost.

So, I’d like to preempt this post with two pieces of information. 1) There may still be some of you who don’t know, but I have a girlfriend and we’ve been going out for almost five months. 2) She insisted that I post this. And without further ado, the post:

So yesterday, as I got off work, I decided to check out a movie that I know Cassie hadn’t seen yet, but that I really wanted to see. I ended up going with Hoodwinked, which on a completely unrelated matter, is a fantastically hilarious movie, and I proceeded to go to her house afterwards. After about 30 minutes or so, we sit down to start watching the movie, and all of a sudden, her roommates and friends come home from the pool. Now I’ve yet to mention the fact that she has 6, yes SIX, roommates (granted it’s a huge four bedroom apartment). And they all take one look at the TV and say “Ah! Hoodwinked!! I’ve wanted to see this forever!” So they all sat down and we watched the movie.

And now for the punchline: So yes, last night I got to watch a movie with 8 girls in their bikinis. Lucky me ;)

This morning before I leave from work, I’ve been looking at random sites, and discovered that just yesterday the trailer from one of my most anticipated movies this fall is out!! “Borat – Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” Yes, I know, long title, but regardless, it’s still Borat! For those of you who don’t know, Borat is a character created by British comedian Sacha Baron. In the US, he’s most often seen on “Da Ali G Show” on HBO. If you’ve never seen it, you’ve been missing out on a lot of great stuff. Anyway, gotta go to work now, but check out the trailer!

In life, having the right friends can make all the difference. In this case, I was able to score free tickets to a press screening of Superman Returns. The rest of you will have to wait until next Wednesday, the 28th, but this morning, I got to see it, and let me be the first to tell you, it is great! I’m really tempted to write a full blown review of the whole movie, but I don’t think I’ll be able to keep myself from spoiling the movie for the rest of you, but I’ll try to say a few words.

Firstly, story wise, I think this was a fantastic movie. It even mentions events that happened in Superman I, and it feels like a part of the Superman… *thinks* … quintilogy, I guess. There is just the right amount of humor and drama to make this a very compelling story. And as far as visual effects go, this movie is top notch. The growing of the….no, wait…I’m not going to spoil anything! Okay well….it looks great! ;) Oh! So okay, the part of the movie in which Superman is saving the airplane (it’s not a spoiler because it’s been in every trailer) is an amazing rush! To see him zoom across the screen trying to catch up with the plane was exhilarating. Actually, all the parts with Superman flying were some of the best parts of the movie. It just looked fantastic! And the musical score was amazing as well. The composer did a great job of mixing in John Williams’ old Superman theme into a brand new score.

I know this isn’t much of a review, but I’m really trying to not spoil anything. I would highly recommend this movie to fans of Superman, comics, or even action movies in general. There’s more than enough content to satisfy everyone. And the ending and discovery of Superman and his _______ (no spoilers remember) leave the movie wide open for a slew of sequels. And personally, I couldn’t be happier if they continued this franchise. Bryan Singer did a fantastic job with one of comics most beloved icons. Go see it next Wednesday!

(Also, it’s supposed to be coming out in IMAX in 3D and from what I saw today, a 3D version of this on IMAX would blow my freaking mind. It’s a must see!)

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it looks good. Having just now completed what should be the last major project (in this case a 12 page psychology term paper) of my college career, aside from finals, I’ve got to say, I’m a bit sad. Oh sure, I’m happy it’s almost over with, but in all honesty, I’ve grown so accustomed to seeing my friends every day and actually enjoying school that with it now being finished, I’m at a bit of a loss. Well, one good thing is that I’ll finally have some free time again and will be posting here. But aside from that, and looking forward to a lot more hours at work, I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself. Unlike a lot of people, I’m not worried about entering “the real world.” I’ve got a job and a happy life that I can easily see myself doing for as long as I wanted/needed to. In all reality it’s the fact that I’ve been going to school for almost three quarters of my life. I don’t really know if I can do anything else. I guess we’ll just have to find out…