Back from a very long, roundabout walk to Waterloo Records with Jess; I bought a whole slew of new music for my birthday (thanks jess :) ) ..

It's a beautiful day here; I wish I didn't feel so crappy. A few days to sit around and maybe I can knock this cold/flu/whatever back on its ass.

txSmallbear: by the way, happy passover
txSmallbear: haha
texass punkyboy: fuck that
txSmallbear: you love it
texass punkyboy god doesn't take days off
txSmallbear: hahahaha
txSmallbear: everytime you swear, you make god cry.
texass punkyboy good
texass punkyboy i'm glad jesus died for my sins...
txSmallbear: why?
txSmallbear: i bet jesus would be a dirty phish fan if he was still alive.
txSmallbear: what with the hair and all.
texass punkyboy: yeah, and a black man to boot. who would have thunk it. he'd be the only black phish fan ever. now that's holy.
txSmallbear: holy shit.
txSmallbear: yeah.

Here are some pictures of Savannah & SCAD ..

Phew, I'm home. What a long day. The last flight was bizzare; I was in the first row of coach, and sitting two rows behind me was an israeli looking man, unshaven, kind of short. He kept going "fuck, fuck shit, this fucking sucks, fuck it" the entire flight, and sighing. I thought the guy next to me was going to tackle him and beat him senseless.

Strange, strange.

Why on earth do people bring infants on planes? It's absolutely horrid; I can't imagine a worse fate that traveling a long distance with a small child. Helpless; they wander around, spit up, drop things, and they fucking cry; the cryyyy so loud.

I don't really understand what is is people gain by having kids. Is it pride? Whenever I have this discussion with someone older, they say things like "Just wait; you'll understand someday". I think that's a load of shit, and I don't think people can really quantify what it is that they gain from having a screaming, smelly thing sitting on their laps. Maybe it's usually a mistake; what a big mistake.

I absolutely despise people who fly with children.

In fact, there is one on the seat behind me as I wait for the next flight. He kicks my chair, and his father giggles; he kicks it again, and his mother says "Whose the little one? You are the little one!" and cackles like a moron.

What's the point?

I'm so tired; traveling should be instantaneous. I'm twenty four tomorrow. I feel like I'm sixty.

Went to a little bar near the hotel; met some interesting characters, including a few painting fools from SCAD. Had a meatball sub and a pitcher of PBR. Then I went back to the hotel; talked to Jess, and watched Survivor. And then I'm going to bed.

The presentation was horrific. I presented, and I did a damn good job; I wasn't nervous, not until the end, and I felt confident about what it was I was presenting. But the audience just didn't give a fuck; they stared at me, yawned, and didn't ask even a question of consequence. It was as if I was presenting a foreign subject - and, in a way, I was. I was presenting Interaction Design principles, to a group of architects. And they just didn't want to hear about it.

I left the presentation feeling awful; I felt as if I had let down myself, the group, the professors, and had essentially canceled out everything that had led up to this event. I left, and expected to go back to the hotel; the day's schedule was finished, and I was done. I felt awful, and was ready to go back to the hotel. But Huy had a different idea; he mentioned that he had set up another interview, this time in the school of design (rather than the school of building arts).

I was driven over to the school of design - the product design department - and got to meet with two fellows. Victor, a fellow industrial designer, originally from Venezuela, was a lot of fun; Robert was an absolute trip and a half, a man I would have loved to have as a professor or a friend. My faith was re-established; I felt good about SCAD. These guys had a mission and a passion for the same things I enjoyed; it wasn't about three dimensional rendering; I didn't feel outdated, out numbered, and out skilled; - it was about user centered product design. I felt at home.

I started off nervous, during my interviews. I wasn't prepared for the casual setting; I was expecting more of a hardcore, formal presentation style. It was five of them - very nice people - and me, in a circle. I screwed up a few questions; they asked how I would teach interaction design to architecture students and design students in the same class. I didn't answer well; not a big deal. Overall, the interview went well; I felt I illustrated my skills well and they all appreciated the things I had to say. I voiced a fear of being too young; they mentioned they had younger students as teachers - masters students - and it was fine; as long as the passion is there, it works well.

I had a tour, and throughout it, I felt very overwhelmed; I felt as if there wasn't anything I had to contribute - as if there wasn't anything I could teach these kids. They seemed so much more advanced then I would have expected; more than CMU, and more than me. It also concerned me that the Electronic Design department may not be right for me; it may not be the right fit. It seems to have a bigger focus on building, on 3D design; I felt as if I was very close, but searching the whole time for a specific area of SCAD that I fit directly into. I didn't feel like I found that area.

Lunch was good, and speaking with Huy and Tom helped alleviate a bit of the above fear a bit, although I am still concerned about how my skills fit with those of the program. I'm more than a little apprehensive about presenting; what if they are all bored silly by the things I present?

The guided tour of Savannah was useless, but Savannah itself is absolutely gorgeous. The city is alive with young art students - freaks of all varieties, a true mix - and the architecture is fantastic. Old, Victorian, and British mixed with a display of blues and pinks as the flowers start to bloom; the roads are cobblestone, and the people drive with a lazy indifference.

I almost wish I went here for school; there's a thought - when I get rejected from the teaching position, I can go be a grad student in jewelry making or something.

Had dinner in a cute pub, and then practiced my presentation a few times; I'm very apprehensive that it will be too short, too long, too boring, too corporate .. too anything, and not just right. Slow is the key; if I speed up, all concepts will become mush. Think about piglet and his red balloon; _slow down_.

Now to watch some drivel on television and forget about responsibility for a few hours. Up at six tomorrow morning. Good night.

The morning passes quickly, although waking up at four in the morning really does confuse my body. The pre-board was quick and painless, although I wasn't surprised to see the "random searches" targeted a black guy; he put up with it as if he expected it.

A very quick flight to Atlanta; a family with three kids sat immediately across the aisle, and the kids beat up on each other for quite a while. The flight was smooth, and there were no screaming kids, and I managed to sleep a bit. I'm excited for tomorrow, although filled with a huge amount of apprehension; I'm nervous of the entire day - that people won't take me seriously because of my age - that my presentations will be a mess - that no one will listen, or that I won't be coherent.

An older couple, around 75 - the woman with white hair and a pink shirt - sit next to me and wait for their plane; probably on the way to savannah as well, probably older money. But very sweet to each other; they converse about their luggage, they read their papers, they are comfortable in their silence.

Burger King's coffee tastes very much like water with a brown crayon dipped in.

So here I go tomorrow, off to SCAD; even if they hate my work, I'll have a chance to see Chablis :)

No internet access, so no updates.
Poo.

My feet are developing blisters in places I didn't know existed; working in a restaurant is much more physically exhausting than anything I've ever encountered.

A bit of drama last night; one of the waiters lost a customer's credit card. Oops. Interesting to see who helps look, who doesn't get involved, who gets yelled at .. The place is very much like a soap opera - people dating other people, vendettas, gossip, etc; it's quite amusing.

Off to the symphony this afternoon; a bit of a relaxing drive and then some nice music should ease the pain of tired feet.

This is my new toy :) His name is wilbur. He is very nice, and fast.

It's starting to smell like spring here; the cat smells like clean air and his fur is getting on everything.

I like spring; it is one of the most peaceful times.

I'm getting into a routine .. I'm starting to understand more about the restaurant, and I'm much less intimidated by everything. I made my first tips today :)

I'm actually for real, on my own, no training on Friday .. that's kinda scary.

I've also been working on my presentation for my trip to SCAD .. I'm kind of flying blind, because they won't tell me what class I'm presenting to until much closer than I would prefer. Arg.

Whatever; it's going to go fine. At the very least, I'll eat a Georgia Peach.

Yeah.

So as of yesterday, when you hit smallbear.org on a mac, you get a little popup saying something to the effect of, "I don't have a mac; please show me what this looks like on your mac; thanks for having a mac". Or whatever. So some people responded with some screenshots.

On a mac:

on a pc, in netscape, ie & mozilla:

so clearly, it looks like garbage on a mac. :( the problem is, the pages validate (or, in one case, almost validate - my spam-away-o-matic document.write() doesn't seem to make the w3c too happy). what to do, what to do.

i got this in my mailbox this morning:

* smallbear Webcrap feedback *

email address: ap-75\a,pitampura,new delhi-88
remote IP: 203.94.222.44
name: jyoti sachdeva
message: i want to join

yeah. i too would like to join.

Went to emos to see some live shows with Petro today .. It's about the entire extent to my participation in SXSW. So many absurd people flooding around this town; it's kind of amusing, as long as they don't get in your way.

I'm grilling tilapia tonight, and I'm going to get good and drunk. Being unemployed is hard work, and it's starting to wear me out.

The new toy is starting to come together; at the very least, it has a logo and a good high level design .. Maybe it will make me some money so I can retire and sit on my porch all day :)

I'm reading this book that my parents sent me, in preparation for my trip to Savannah. If the town is anything like the book makes it out to be, I'm on my way to see some of the most eccentric, outlandish and bizzare cast of characters I've ever heard of.

This is kind of skittish and all over the place; go here instead, scroll down to the second question, and then cry quietly; he really believes it.

The quickpoll vote on cnn is currently "Should gay couples be allowed to adopt children?" .. I assume its even a question because of another article on the front of cnn, O'Donnell speaks out for gay parents. But whatever, the poll is there.

I shouldn't be surprised with people anymore, considering we just went to war on brown people and I just got shitcanned because of equity, but the responses to that poll, Should gay couples be allowed to adopt children, were:

Yes: 64042 votes - 45%
No: 78630 votes - 55%

What. The. Fuck.

I start training at The Clay Pit tonight :P

I just finished making this small overview of what the heck I did at contextual .. check it out, but forewarned: i only tested it in IE6.0 & Netscape 6.01 ..

:)

I'll tell you, being unemployed is rough.

I woke up late; slept in, lazed about. I went to the gym, came back, ate a big fat sammich made of beef, and then played on the computer for about 3 hours. Went outside, planted the new tomatoes, read some book, came inside.

I mean, texas is payin' me $7 an hour to .. uhm.

To bask.

:)

I think I've been stood up.

The manager from Clay Pit was supposed to call me yesterday to clue me in on a training schedule; she didn't call. I just called and they said she was out till Wednesday.

*sigh*

I guess it's not that big a deal - either I got jacked, or it can wait till next week .. shes probabily just busy with sxsw. Yeah. That's it.

Anyways, being home at 10:00am is weird and quite relaxing. The cat is being exceptionally cute, playing ball and meowing in my ear as I work on some layouts.

Back from The Mall. I bought black shoes, black pants and a black shirt, so I can be a mime.

Or a waiter.

At The Clay Pit.

:)

"He would walk to the end of the block and then walk back; he liked to look at the different shops.

There were several shops in a row, at the end of the block, and they sold different types of clothing. The different colors of the fabrics made him smile, but his mouth didn’t move like a smile, so many people didn’t know he was happy when he looked in their windows. Sometimes they chased him away – stop begging, stop scaring our customers, stop looking at our fabrics with different colors in the window. Sometimes they offered him things, a job, some food, a place to stay. He nodded, and looked at them, and sometimes he saw them, but mostly he just saw the pretty colors. His mind saw textures, his head worked puzzles out of colors. He sat, facing the window, and people walked around him, and said things to him and about him and about the state of the city, but he didn’t hear, because hearing wasn’t his favorite. He could hear the words buzz, but listened instead to the fabrics, and to his heart, and to his legs. He was tired, so he sat; he was patient, so he thought."

I just got myself a job at The Clay Pit :)

Yay me!

I woke up; made coffee, fed the loud orange animal, and wandered around upstairs. It's beautiful and sunny, and the wind is blowing a smell of spring around; I moved the tomato plants into the sunshine. Jess made breakfast of eggs, sausage and bagels, and we ate at the table.

And the whole time, I felt at ease, perfectly tranquil, not worrying about anything - anything at all.

Perhaps getting laid off was simply a wonderful surprise.

Today was fun; dropped off resumes at restaurants, bars, and tattoo shops. Also filled for unemployment; interesting side note: When filing for unemployment, you have to register with the Texas Online Job Search thing (which fucking sucks and needs to be redesigned .. duh, maybe by me?), where they automatically match you with new jobs. So when you enter your information, you have to enter your salary at your previous positions. And the salary input box only goes up to 99999.99 :)

Ho hum.

I got an interview tomorrow at The Clay Pit :)

"We base your weekly benefit amount on the highest quarter earnings in your base period. We divide that high quarter total earnings by 25 to get your weekly benefit amount. We may have to change this amount to be inside the allowed range of benefit amounts in Texas. Your maximum, or total, benefit amount is the smaller of 26 times the weekly amount, or 27% of all your wages in the base period. Your weekly benefit amount will be between $51 and $319 depending upon the wages you earned."

yeah.

So, yeah, today was the end of Contextual .. The bank demanded their money back, we didn't have it, the investors pulled out, and all at once the walls came a-tumblin' down.

A big deal for Brian, Eli & the gang .. not that horrid for me, as I was rather bored and sitting idle far too much. And? Now I get to say I really was part of the "dot com rise and fall". Yeah.

Ught.

Two weeks severance and a lot less stress.
Now, to get a job in a restaurant.

:)

pittures :)

Absolutely wonderful dinner; me, jess, a patio with a fountain, and a huge wait staff of Italian, no-English speaking waiters :)

Jess got serenaded by the accordion player, and I got to eat veal. mmmmmm. delicious veal.

Probably the best restaurant in austin. I'm stuffed, and rather drunk.

happy birthday jess :) i love you forever!

So frustrated. I'm trying to print a site map (an app map, really, but that sounds a bit trite) .. it's about 30" x 45", originally made in photoshop. All I really want to do is print the silly thing onto many pages and tape them together, crude variety of large format.

I know photoshop doesn't print tiling; no big deal. Pop over to illustrator.

Illustrator takes a year and day to open the 55 meg photoshop file, and when it finally does - yay!, tiling. Aha, so we thought. Tiling with a full bleed. My printer can't print a bleed, so I end up losing about 1" per page of data instead of white space.

Obnoxious.

So about two hours have gone by, and maybe Acrobat is the key. Into distiller and inbto Acrobat, and yay! Acrobat allows full tiling. Or so one would think.

(*%&(*&@($*&!(!!!!

And the kicker is? I asked a friend of mine I know at Adobe to figure out what the fuck was wrong with Acrobat.

His answer?

"Well, the tiling option isn't greyed out on my machine.. "

:)

I talked to one of my ex-Trilogy friends last night for a bit. We were discussing jobs, and happiness; he's fairly content, albeit a bit bored, at his job as well.

He said to me, "Jon, face it; in a field like this, are you ever really going to be happy? No matter how fast you can mockup screens, it's always going to take developers longer to impliment shit. So unless you can iterate forever, theres a good chance that you are destined to web surfing".

Erm.

Iterate forever.

Sounds like a fucking party.

Go look here.

happy birthday blue :)

(blue is four. for his birthday, he got some extra delicious ocean fish cat food. gross.)

its hard work to wake up and not do anything all day long and then start drinking again.

stuff.

this and this and this are things i'm looking at. for fun. or something.

its dark in here.

last night was a lot of fun.

zack came over, and we drank some bud lights and sat outside and it kind of smelled like pittsburgh after it rains.

we took a cab downtown, and the driver looked large and ignored us, and that was nice. often, the drivers attempt to talk to me, and say bizzarly inappropriate things like "man, you should have seen the tits on her", turning all the way around in their seat to smile at you with no teeth, and almost driving into the median on barton springs.

we started at buffalo billiards, and sat and talked to the waitress who looks very much like abby smalt from school but isn't. then, jess and i went to emos and bummed around. there were many spikey kids, looking like colorful hedgehogs, and lots of leather and pink and loud.

the first band we saw, The Casualties, was quite good; i had only heard a few of their songs before, and never seen them. very spikey.

the second band sucked, and jess and i stood in the back and talked to a guy from ft. worth who operates a forklift for a living, picking things up and placing them back down.

agnostic front went on around midnight. i was right in front, and jess stayed in the back; she likes to watch from afar. .. lots of bouncing and diving and sweaty punk kids. vinnie stigma is still one ugly motherfucker :)

got home around 2:30, and my whole body is in pain. and now it's tomorrow, and i'm drinking coffee, and zack just picked up his jeep, and jess is making sausage and bagels.

hahaha, this is a great quote:

"Usability is not everything. If usability engineers designed a nightclub, it would be clean, quiet, brightly lit, with lots of places to sit down, plenty of bartenders, menus written in 18-point sans-serif, and easy-to-find bathrooms. But nobody would be there. They would all be down the street at Coyote Ugly pouring beer on each other."

One problem with this new movable type blogging software is, I feel compelled to post every stupid thought that pops into my head. It's so easy. It's a blogging tool and a floorwax.

every single time i buy beer, i feel like a criminal.

what the fuck.

you know, in reading over some of the crap that i've written in the past, i really do sound like the generic "blogger"; it's quite obnoxious of me.

i wonder how the blurb-like, what's-on-your-mind-this-second nature of web logs is going to affect literature to come. combine that with the instantaneous, emotionless quality of instant messaging and you get .. well .. an even faster, more flighty and less structured generation of apathy.

thrilling.

yay! agnostic front is tonight :) i need to get some agression out.