April 28, 2005
MEL command of the day
I am in a wierd mood today.
smoothstep
This command is identical to linstep except that the correlation between the third argument and the return value is not linearly interpolated when the third argument is between the first and second arguments. Instead, the interpolation is a cubic polynomial between the return value and the distance between the first and second arguments. This gives the return value a zero slope when the third argument is equal to either the first or second argument. In other words, the return value creates a smooth starting and ending transition when the third argument ranges between the first and second arguments. smoothstep uses a hermite interpolation.
Infected Wound
I noticed a sliver in my hand this morning. No telling how long it was there for. I picked it out and a bunch of puss followed. Now it fucking hurts. Lets see if becky reads this and freaks.
yuppie-cone
omg this is amazing. my friend sent it to me. make sure you read the bottom two "cone" comments.
http://www.thephatphree.com/features.asp?StoryID=239&SectionID=11
and an addition...a rebuttle of sorts to yuppie-cone:
http://www.factualmaterial.com/douchebag.htm
the letter
right, so here's the letter to the ex-boss.......too inappropriate? oh well, too late.
Hey [chicklets],
I just wanted to thank you for taking me into your office yesterday to at least thank me for supporting you and your department for a long year and a half. Oh, but you didn’t. Since I don’t plan on walking the halls of [big, important company name] for a long time, I thought I’d at least send you this little bit of final correspondence.
Thank you for giving me my first job in Hollywood and the interesting experience that it was. I knew the second that email was brainlessly sent earlier this week, that I’d messed up. It was completely innocent and not malicious in the least. I have no desire to bring down the agency or any of it’s clients or employees. I thought you’d understand that.
Even after my benign initial meeting with [HR and Security], I knew what the result would be. They attempted to calm my nerves, but I prepared myself (“the example”) for the outcome which finally presented itself and I’m sure you knew as well. I thought maybe, for once you’d pull through and show your loyalty to me or some kind of concern, but never once, did that happen. even after a year and a half.
And the fact that you couldn’t even look me in the eye yesterday when you passed by me says a lot. So thank you [chicklets]. Thank you for the opportunity to work with the great employees whom make up your staff. You really should appreciate their hard work more, because they are what make that department worth working for.
Without their technological expertise and dedication, your department would be nothing. You, [your boss and his boss] should finally recognize that and actually prove it to them. Good luck in the future, I can only imagine you wish the same for me.
[your former assistant]
and no, i never heard anything back from him. *surprise surprise*
April 26, 2005
Day One
okay so clearly it's been way more than one day since i left my job, however i haven't made time to blog. tisk tisk, clearly i'm not the only one guilty of this. don't worry, i managed to jot down a few observations to share with you all at a more convenient time...like now.
things i didn't mention on the last blog...perhaps how i wrote my boss a "thank you" e-note at 1 AM. it was neither truly grateful nor legally offensive (i.e. incriminating). just a slight dig pointing out my lack of respect for him in the situation and basically that i'd rather be sucked dry by leeches than seek a recommendation from him. then passed out around 3 AM.
woke up with Bob Dole Syndrome. i suppose i fell asleep on my left arm, and spent the first half hour of my day trying unsuccessfully to hold pencils and soda cans in my fist. caught the last hilarious 15 minutes of Kevin & Bean on KROQ. boy i'll missing waking up early to listen to them. applied for two more jobs (applied for two the night before as well). refreshed my email accounts atleast 35 times a minute. IMed. my biggest accomplishment was confirming my lunch plans from earlier in the week. i feel like a success!
for lunch i checked out a new cupcake place in beverly hills with cara and threw back some food at a park nearby...spent the time lamenting on my situation and coworker reactions. no one really knew what happened and i could tell i'd have to work on the whole "i got sacked" excuse, b/c i didn't actually get fired. i resigned and they honored it...about two weeks early.
some of the geeks i had worked with were acting weird. two managers emailed me with kind words and hope for the future where as cara confirmed that one usually mouthy coworker was particularly quiet and evasive. i suppose i was deemed as having the office plague and people were disassociating from me. hey thanks for nothing guys. i guess that's LA.
for the afternoon, i worked out extensively...and by "work out" i mean, took a nap. for three hours. woke up to my phone ringing off the hook. it was the ladies..time to plot dinner and distraction. aaah i love having friends.
checked email. a 2nd job interview was confirmed for monday morning. atleast i'm not a complete loser. the weekend will be spent finishing up bridal stuff. i'm flying to chicago on the 21st for a college friend's bridal shower and bachelorette party. (which was this past weekend) will fill everyone in on that next round.
April 22, 2005
my marine tank!
HEy guys,
Just finishing up with exams and i just thought i would show you my plans for my salt water aquarium this summer. Hopefully it will be done by the time you get here Jer! The diagram includes a sump that provides auto top of (for daily evaporation), biofiltration media as well as a place to keep the heater and other unsightly stuff. I think this rocks... haha im such a fish nerd!
April 19, 2005
More good shows.
Kurt and I are doing well in our resolution to see more shows this year. We have two more to add to the list: Friday we went to Athens to see some home-grown music with Elf Power and Olivia Tremor Control. A great show - and a the 40 Watt which is an Athens institution and a relatively intimate venue. After a brief intermission the band re-entered from the front and made their way (playing music) back to the stage.
We went out last night to see Out Hud (a band with members of !!!). An interesting surprise was the other band opening called Hella. I have never seen anyone drum like that in my life. A very intense show. About halfway through I kept wondering if they were just testing the limits of human endurance as the drummer punished himself and his drums.
Out Hud was also great - it was like your own live dance party - also at an intimate venue. The extra bonus is that one of the guys in the band is Jer-like and gave me the extra fun of watching Jer-like antics! You RULE Jer!
April 15, 2005
Madame Talbot Extravaganza
Holy AWESOME... loren just pointed me to this...
She even makes snowboards.
i got sacked!
a wise man once told me, "you'll be fired atleast 3 or 4 times in this industry before you're anything."
okay well i don't really know if he was alll that wise. but for this purpose we shall pretend his was. i'm drunk and writin g this blog. buckle your seatbelts folks, this story is a doozie. don't worry i'll summarize as best i can for your A.D.D. folks.
some of you are familiar with the company that i work(ed) for. it's a talent agency in beverly hills that is rapidly losing clients and agents, need i say more? like seriously, rats on the titanic had a better chance of surviving thatn some of these people.
for a year and a half, ,i worked in the technology department. among many tedious things, it was my job to send out many emails and scan/survey them for security purposes etc. i was good at my job. it wasn't want i wanted to do nor was it rocket science, but i did it, with minimal complaints and with a boss that repeatedly disappointed me. seriously, he sucked. for the purpos e of anonymonty we'll call him "chicklets".
Anyway, before christmas last year, he presented me with my standard joke of a bonus and raise for 2005. he asked me what i thought about it, so instead of graciously accepting, i told him the truth... that i can't survive on the insult of a salary they were paying me and i'd be looking for a new job in the new year. i couldn't take it. i graduated college with honors, and the job pays merely slightly above minimum wage. i was making more money at age 22 than age 25. it's just a toxic, unpleasant environment to work in.
everyone is an insecure egomaniac or they're hoping to be your "friend" only to benefit their existence. you have to search far and wide for someone with some decency. not to mention your fellow assistants rip you new assholes if their boss is ripping them new assholes. the technology department is equivalent to "the help". so you're nothing to anyone with "status" and a car allowance.
in february, they found an internal replacement for me. i revamped my resume with the help of frineds and started sending it out. with minimal results i lost hope and started training my replacement. she's quite decent. not nearly as fun as me...but very competent, nice and interested in learning a lot about the tech side of life. a good replacement.
sidenote: i work with some great guys (chicklets is exempt from that statement)... they are nice, normal guys who genuinely have atleast a slight interest in the welfare of each other. they made my days bearable at this company. they atleast had the decency to say, "hey missy, we'll be sad to see you go." or "you brighten my day" or something along those lines. b/c i am. sometimes i'm just a fucking ray of sunshine.
anyway, my point is...chicklets gave off the vibe that he couldn't WAIT for me to leave. i was like a boil on his face that he coudln't bear to look at or aknowledge. yet when he had to address me, he'd stutter and say, "yeah yeah i'd like to see you succeed and move on." then he'd usher me out and only talk at me when he was forced to. *self esteem shooting through the roof*.
did i mention i've been drinking? right, so....
about that same time, the IT trainer quit, which opened up an opportunity for me to stay on and help with the overflow at the helpdesk. so basically after a tug of war of promises and renigging, chicklets finagled a compromise, so i moved over to the help desk...a demotion of sort, but i didn't care b/c i was with fun coworkers and helping as best i could while job seeking.
so back to the company. it's common knowledge and widely publicized how this company isn't functioning at it's peak. *this is not a news flash*. high profile employees are leaving on a regular basis as well as their high profile clients. so the higher ups have been getting supremely paranoid about information transfers and any sort of info leaks. which is completely understandable. i'd heard of some employees getting the axe for such idiotic mistakes or intentions.
long story short, one guy sends out a really funny email about how he's retiring. i don't know the guy, i've merely forwarded out his large emails every once in a while.....apparently he's gay, a big whig and a funny writer with many clients. two friends who used to work for this company, but have since moved on, chime in via email and phone, asking about this email. i haven't even received the email yet, however all of h'wood is already printing it and it's on every listserve and blog. they are all chatty chatty about it, so absent mindedly, i copy it's contents to them b/c they're getting the text wrong. afterall it's a harmless, funny email (to anyone and everyone OUTSIDE of hollywood's sensitive boundaries).
two days later. missy is called in to the principal's office. i felt like i was fighting for my spot on The Apprentice. after 15 minutes, okay fine, *slap on the wrist*. apparently they caught a handful of people sending this email out... however, i'm an intelligent person. so i know there's more to this. they say one thing, but i see another in their eyes. someone will be made an example, and i'm the one who works in I.T.. i quietly panic while everyone else brushes it off. nightmares ensue, no sleep for the weary.
then today i had an interview. something in my gut felt wrong (and no it wasn't cramps or something i ate the night before)... i went to the interview, it was fine, then off to work. i arrive to news that the head honchos decided to clamp down on all internet access for everyone, things were tense. i put on a good face and went on with biz as usual, only two or three people knew of my indescretion. the day drags on and i'm mid project...when suddenly my new pseudo boss says the principal wants to see us again. *btw - chicklets pretty much pretends i'm dead by this point. there has been zero correspondence to or from him in two weeks.*
ah, so this is it. this is the moment of truth. i play it off like nothing's wrong, knowing full well what i'm about to endure. 20 minutes of HR's schpiel on covering their ass and convincing me not to sue, all while informing me that they "accept my resignation". #1. i can't afford to sue. #2. are you fucking kidding me? don't torture me, just say the magic words and let me get the hell out.
there's more nitty gritty to that part, like how i was deemed a "high security threat"...like i'm a fucking terrorist. i'm considering printing up business cards for a new company, "Hollywood Al Qaida." but it's not necessary for the story. basically HR was great (*surprise*), and gave me all that they could b/c generally i'm liked at that company and they know (or claim to know) that i'm not a malicious or vindictive person. i've put in a solid year and a half there, working for a difficult man and not putting up much of a fight. so they let me go peacefully and quietly, with nothing negative on my record. i resigned.
of course it was a resignation without a happy hour or even a chance to say goodbye to my friends and coworkers. after the principal sincerely asked if i was okay, i was able to shed a tear in the ladies bathroom then go pack up my stuff and walk out. formal escort not necessary.
luckily, i have amazing friends here who are super supportive and boosted my confidence by degrading and tearing down the image of my now former employer...not to mention they took me out for mexican food and stroooooong margaritas...but this has taken two hours to write, so i'm fairly sober now. favorite quote of the night..."missy i can't believe it, but i mean atleast you have a GREAT story from it."
anyway, my main point is BECKY DON'T TELL MOM OR DAD OR ESPECIALLY TAMMY. she'll blow my story faster than Woodward and Bernstein could. i'm now on the fasttrack to getting a new job and i'm convinced i will get one soon so that they don't have to know or be ashamed of their seemingly careless third child. oh and now you can add "unemployed" to that description as well.
so yeah...that's it. no fun links or vital news flashes...just another day in the life of the most long-winded and trivial girl you know. Missy.
fuck...i just had to RAID the scariest f-in spider crawling next to my computer. swell. just fuckin swell. drunk, unemployed girl wielding can of toxic poison. seems like a headline for "The Onion." 2 AM, damn i'm tired.... ...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
oh right and don't you worry, my red mug is sitting happily on my kitchen counter. that was the first thing to go in my standard "i got sacked" filing box. welcome home mug!
April 14, 2005
No more 16 Horsepower.
There is a band that reminds me of two good friends, Shyam Yadav and Danny Dimian. It is called 16 Horsepower. Isn't it great how a band can remind you of a time and a place so exactly?
In case you don't know who they are, 16 horsepower is a band from Denver that is a strangely dark version of country wierdness that reminded me that music could be creative and genreless. They described themselves as a type of "brimstone rock", mixing religous imagery, early americana and rock into some strange soup that for me made my imagination just stir.
In 2000 I went to a club in Los Angeles to see them play with Danny and Shyam and Becky... I could not believe how amazing they were live. It was my first experience of a "non rock crunching guitar" show and the complexity of sounds that these guys could pull live was astonishing. It sounded better by orders of magnitude than their mastered stuff. Not to mention the Lead had a freaking skull and crossbones on his "squeezebox".
They recently released a 2 DVD box. On one disc was all of their videos. Ironically, most of their strange americana was more popular in Europe, which is where they aired. While their videos don't have the amazing craftsmanship of their music, on stands out - clogger - that was directed by the Quay Brothers. If you can imagine the look of the quay brothers set to a type of rock music from denver, that would be what 16 horsepower sounds like.
If you haven't heard of them before, go over to itunes and check em out... I have been waiting eagerly for them to stop touring europe and come back to the states, but it looks like that isn't going to happen. Here are some particularly good songs:
From "Sackcloth n' Ashes"
American Wheeze
Black Soul Choir
I Seen What I Saw
From "Hoarse - live"
Bad Moon Risin
From "Secret South"
Clogger
Go check out some clips on itunes.
April 13, 2005
Five things I like.
1) Waking up in the sun, finally it isn't raining anymore
2) Listening to music at work.
3) Eating burritos from Chipotle with Brett. Particularly the carnitas kind.
4) Learning Guitar. I suck, but it is fun
5) Driving home when it is still light out and seeing the Kitesurfers on the water.
April 12, 2005
The Most Useful Link in Years
This guy combined google maps and craigslist. It makes it so easy to find a place...
April 11, 2005
CDs Nuts
This last week I decided I was sick of CDs altogether. The problem is, I didn't want to get rid of all of them. I went over to office depot, bought a bunch of boxes and started packing them up and clearing out my stupid cd racks. I want that shit out of my apartment.
Then I started looking at all that old music and it made me nostalgic.
So I couldn't just pack it all away, that would be wrong. I wouldn't ever be able to listen to Ned's Atomic Dustbin, or Slint again.. which would be a damn shame right? Not everything can fit on the ipod.
So I made a trip out to best buy and bought a couple of case logics. I started putting the discs from the CDs in them, and boxing up the cases. 5 fucking case logics later, I am finally done. I had no idea it could possibly fill up so many of those bitches, but now I have no way of actually FINDING the discs in the cases. I naively thought it would only fill up a couple of them and didn't sort them before putting them in their little sleeves.
Oh well... back to the original point that I hate the cds and don't want them anymore anyway. Now I have to find room for the boxes. There is too much crap you accumulate as you get older.
Weekend in PA
Kurt and I went up to Philly this weekend to visit his family and I think it managed to be one of the best weekends ever. In addition to seeing everyone, which was great, the weather was absolutely perfect - sunny, clear, around 70 degrees. In the grand rental car saga, we really lucked out. This time we got a chrysler seabring convertible! It has made us seriously consider getting a convertible of some sort for our next car. If the thing had some pep, we would have really been in trouble. We also went to the Barnes Foundation and saw all of the great art before they move it (A huge controversy in Philly - it is a private collection that is housed in the suburbs that is not supposed to move or travel - the courts have ruled to have it moved into the city, blah, blah.).
April 6, 2005
April 4, 2005
A buddy's birthday.
This is an email a friend of mine sent out to a bunch of dudes at his work today... awesome, I just had to post it because it is how we all feel sometimes. Though I ain't old enough yet, but I know I eventually will feel that way, names are omitted so no one gets in hell:
Subj: My BDay Yank the Fucker
So a cold sweat hit the back of my neck like
the rush of sweet heroin as I realized how OLD
I am today. Horrible realities began to dawn on me:
was 10 years old when I was animating the Raisins.
was 6 when I was Animating the Noid. I've been
animating since I was 13....That's 29 years of keyframes.
Today I'm looking at
somebody will come by and pull my fucking feeding tube.
I'm going to leave early today to drink some Vodka,
smoke,and find a whore. Not that different than any other
day.....I usually drink whiskey. Euhh..you like that.....yeah.
Euhh.... .....euhhhh......you like that.
At least I can still control my bowels;...
my dick still works;..
head of hair..good;....
Track marks going away;....
The bitch didn't get parole;....
Off the coke;....
life is good.