Art & Writing

• Yesterday, but clearer 1 day ago Top of the Mountains
  Yesterday’s post was a bit on the obscure side, as we found out the hard way when not even our family members knew what we were talking about (and they already knew!). Here, then, is the translation: We’re pregnant, due March 17. :)
• A new kind of creativity 2 days ago Top of the Mountains
  
• Black box: the magic of the theater 2 days ago Top of the Mountains
  I love going to the theater, both film and stage. There’s something magical about walking into that black box, large or small, and sitting down to watch a story play out. Theaters brim with atmosphere that you just don’t get at home. So now I’m wondering what it is that makes the theater magical. The [...]
• My iPhone 4 home screen 4 days ago Top of the Mountains
  Back in February, I posted about my iPhone home screen. It’s a lot more beautiful now (click for detail): The changes Fourth row. It’s empty on each screen. And it’ll stay that way. I love having the extra breathing room. Camera. Now that double-clicking the home button pulls up the multitasking tray, I had to [...]
• Don Quijote ePub (Spanish) 6 days ago Top of the Mountains
  Today’s book release: Don Quijote en español. It’s available in both ePub and Kindle formats. Formatting poetry for ebook readers is an exercise in frustration. Each reader ignores its own selection of CSS styles, which makes cross-platform formatting much harder than it needs to be. A word about Stanza: it nails the user experience of [...]
• What?s in my Simplenote? 1 week ago Top of the Mountains
  Minimal Mac is asking what’s in your Simplenote. Here’s what’s in mine: Project scratchpads (notes, URLs, process lists, todo lists, etc.). Kind words people say about me (for when I’m feeling down). A list of book/design project ideas. A list of books I want to read. A list of fonts I want to get someday [...]
• Mormon Artist Issue 11 2 weeks ago Top of the Mountains
  Issue 11 of Mormon Artist is up, with some rebranding and redesigning:
• The First Week Back to Work 2 weeks ago Patron Saint of Sunflowers
  New Job Report
  I survived the first week at the new job! It's going very well. My hours are 9 to 5, can you believe that? I think when I worked at Harvard years ago, which is about the cushiest workplace I ever heard of in my life, I worked 9 to 5. Otherwise, my hours have been getting progressively longer and starting earlier with every job. In Austin, maybe it's a timezone thing, nobody starts business any later than 8:00, and I'd have hated that.
  
  My commute is easy, and takes only about 30 minutes door-to-door -- although the University of Colorado (in Boulder) starts up again on Monday, and I'm sure that will impact at least my morning commute negatively. We'll see how that goes.
  
  People are nice! I've already made one friend. Coincidentally, her name is also Tracy, although I won't fault her for spelling her name "incorrectly." We work in different departments, but through the same process. The contracts database I'm building will impact her directly, so we met to discuss her preferences. First, I had an extremely positive introduction to her on a business level. Before the meeting, I sent her a list of specific questions about a process. She met with her own team, got their feedback, and sent me a spreadsheet with all the info I needed 1 hour before the meeting. That never happens, ever! I had the opportunity to review what she sent, discuss it with my group, and our meeting thereafter was totally awesomely productive as a result. Great start to things!
  
  This is the first office where I've worked where they allow employees to bring their dogs to work! I expected that to be weird, but I have to admit that I haven't noticed any difficulties so far whatsoever. All the dogs were quiet, mostly slept, they were well-behaved. Tracy brought her Westie, Milo with her to our meeting (with my advance permission). That was really kind of fun, and certainly a nice ice breaker. Anyway, we eventually got to talking about knitting. We have a date next week for lunchtime Knitting Club, and I'm going to teach her to make one of those pirate hats of which I'm so fond. In return, Tracy wants to host Craft Day at her house on some fall weekend, and she'll teach me how to quilt. My girlfriend Kristen is interested in that process as well, so perhaps we'll make a whole Crafting Club out of it!
  
  The job did inspire one or two panic moments. "Can I do this job? Am I in over my head?" Such questions aren't like me, so I don't have well-rehearsed responses to them when they pop up. I established that the attorneys who hired me are really just way to busy to even think about the contracts database process. That's what I was really hired to do: think about it. They don't care too very much about the details so long as I come up with a system that works. They want me to really own the whole thing and just get the trains running on time. BRILLIANT! That's my favorite thing to do in the workplace, so I felt better once I learned that. I also learned that the technological solution I really want is part of SharePoint 2010, which we won't even install until next month. Nobody knows it yet, so I'm not behind the curve -- I'm ahead of it for knowing what lies ahead. The basics which I already know are the most important parts now. I'll be fine.
  
  And some other stuff...
  You can imagine that going back to work after 14 months was the dominating theme of my past week. There is life outside of the Sid Vicious conference room, however!
  
  Ian's job is improving. He hauled ass on the last project of his training, and that's now complete. He was given a shortened period of time in which to do a pretty massive project. By luck, his supervisor was delayed in reviewing it from Friday to Tuesday -- or was it ultimately Wednesday? Ian decided that since he'd somehow managed to get just to the brink of delivering something really cool in an impossible situation, why not go for it? So he worked all through last Sunday, and a few nights past midnight kicking ass on this thing. His hard work paid off, and Ian got his first (or at least "best?") praise so far from the big boss. That praise, and the graduation from training to actual work were big stress relievers for him -- that, and no longer being the sole breadwinner, at least for a little while (since my job is contract work until further notice).
  
  We've purchased our airline tickets for DragonCon! We'll be in Atlanta from Thursday to Tuesday. Looking forward to catching up with friends then. My phone number has not changed from the old 404 if you had that, and if not, drop me a PM and I'll send it to you.
  
  Our second visit to the local NERO chapter is next weekend, and I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, we had a GREAT time on our first weekend event! The people were super nice, we made friends which was our chief goal, and it was just plain fun. We're bringing our friend Tony with us next weekend. He is a longtime table-top roleplayer, and he's done Vampire LARP, and one of those crazy European LARPs just once, but he's never done this style of Friday night to Sunday afternoon, immersive play. He seems excited, and we've had fun teaching him how to fight*, playing dress-up in our costumes -- and curse him! He wants to play an archer. That means that today or tomorrow, we're all getting together at Jose & Kristen's to use their outdoor grill to heat and bend the PVC pipe to make the core for a bow, surely the single-most irritating boffer weapon type to make. Argh! It's for a good cause of a friend's fun, however, and that's a very good reason. We anticipate our own cabin next weekend, and a full crew: the four of us, plus two adventurers we met at NERO who seem like just awesome people. All that should be super geeky fun all in itself!
  
  Potentially raining on my parade, however, is the typical backstage bullshit which plagues all LARPs. There was a dust up last event which resulted in the Head of Plot and one other Plot team member resigning. The situation itself didn't affect us in the least bit, but the repercussions may. I'm disappointed in behavior from the chapter owner that I perceive as selling his staff down the river. Maybe he's doing that intentionally or unintentionally, probably most of it is just unthinking verbiage and a poor social play, I'm guessing. Still, it's the sort of bummer that makes me wonder if I want to give my support to a chapter owner whose actions don't meet my approval so far. Largely I'm chalking this up to having nothing else to fret over for a change since life is altogether amazing lately, and I am going to make a conscious choice to avoid dwelling on it as much as I can (or "as little as I can" -- you work out for yourself which phrase makes more sense there).
  
  Knitting: Making Pirate Hat #84,001 (black with red skulls), and running an experiment to see if I can get 30 gold coins for it at NERO. Some players run a little shop where they sell knickknacks for gold, and players seem eager to have something on which to spend their hard-earned loot. Should be fun to see how it goes!
  
  Otherwise, next big knitting project involves the need for graph paper. I'm going to make another Norwegian snowflake type sweater, this time all in skulls. I can't wait! Perhaps I'll plan that out this weekend?
  
  Cats are good.
  
  Mom is good -- she also got a dream job, and starts next week.
  
  Have friends.
  
  House relatively clean, about as unpacked as we'll get for awhile, although still filled with empty boxes and box lids here and there. Unfortunately, I've stopped "seeing" these items. Uh-oh.
  
  Colorado is completely awesome. Wish you were here.
  
  Love & Kisses,
  T$
• Vim 7.3 2 weeks ago Top of the Mountains
  Vim 7.3 came out a few days ago, which is something akin to a mini Christmas for a geek like me. It’s a minor release, but the two exciting things are persistent undo (after you reopen a file, you can still undo changes you made before you closed it) and relative line numbers (which I [...]
• Journal of Discourses vols. 2, 3, 4 2 weeks ago Top of the Mountains
  Just a quick note to say that volumes 2, 3, and 4 of the Journal of Discourses are now available for download. Enjoy.