Territan

...that I saw a commercial for a childhood depression study, and I have almost all of the symptoms? Admittedly, the one about missing school may not apply.

Zatarains Dirty Rice mix + Ground Turkey Breast.

Plusses: Most of the flavor, far less of the fat.

Minuses: The whole thing is beige. Unbelievably, unrelentingly, unforgivingly beige. So beige. So, so, so beige. OMG THE BEIGE!!!!11!!!1!one!!!! Can't sleep, beige will eat me (back).

But considering my situation at the moment,

..since I was laid off. (As of Sunday)

My layoff passed the one month mark yesterday.

Through January, February, and March, it looked an awful lot like I would be moving. Thus, I had books packed up in boxes. And the problem with books in boxes, even if the boxes aren't taped shut, is that you can't really read through them unless you (1) find the box the one you're looking for is in, and (2) take it out. And then you're eventually confronted with putting it back in to reduce the clutter.

( It doesn't improve much behind the cut )

Okay, kind of miserable day at work. So I got home and I do what I usually do when I'm feeling down: I buy a big honking software package online and start downloading it. (I do this entirely too often, but I have a lot of interesting software as a result.)

I signed onto the site, placed my order, and got a download link. Up to that point, it's the usual.

Two minutes or so later — I haven't even downloaded the first 100Mb of the package (which is a whopping 1.2Gb) — the phone rings. My father had already called earlier in the day, so this was unexpected. It was a robocall (oh no, not another one of these) from my bank's (they really should know better; do I need to move my money?) fraud division (wait, what?) with the precise amount of the purchase I had just made (really?) and the name of the company on the ticket, which in this case was the web site through which I purchased it (really!!). To approve the purchase, all I had to do was press 1. And I did. And the call was ended.

Totally surprising, totally out of the blue, smooth, streamlined, and frightfully convenient. I could almost get used to this.

"The house closing that was set for January 30th, postponed, moved to March 3rd, postponed and contract cancelled, would have been moved to February 13th if the seller hadn't lined up another contract already. Your real estate agent wants steak."

Remember when I was certain that I would be moving into a thoroughly refurbished house? Yeah, not so much now.

I'm doing this with my father's help, and he absolutely doesn't want to be rushed into a house purchase. Meanwhile, the seller absolutely does want to rush into it.

Something will break between them. Unfortunately, that will most likely be me. Not surprising, really. I hear my dreams are delicious.

...they want their design aesthetic back.

Be sure to check the section on clocks, too; aside from the occasional digital, it looks like that "good taste" gap that followed the 60s is reemerging disguised as "retro chic."

Last week, I had given up. I expected I would be here for another renewal of my lease, and that I would have time to focus on more important things, like getting my life on track and sort out the papers on the dining room table.

( Of course, Something Happened. Behind the cut. )

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

They say that it's a poor craftsman who blames his tools. However, the reverse is not necessarily true—the craftsman that blames himself might not be so hot either.

( Artsy, ranty, or both? Find out ...behind the cut! )

( Bad news, boys -- he put the cut extra early. )

For those to whom this means anything, TIM is back up.

And so are the website and the picture archives.

I found a picture that I took at an event a little over ten years ago. Considering the camera I was taking those pictures with, it turned out quite nice, if a bit small. I look at it now and think, "...nope, I can't make a good HDRI from that."

But what really sent me over the edge this evening was a picture of myself from ten years ago grinning like an idiot because I had no idea then how hard I'd crash over the next ten years. And that means everything, not just weight, attitude, etc.

So yeah, mixed blessing.

I expect kaasirpent will hate me for this one, but only if he can figure it out. I know I'm having trouble with it...

Ever have a pair of tunes stuck in your head? One earworm isn't bad enough, it has to invite a friend. Or draw eyes on its tail and try to look like it's in two places at once. And they're closely related somehow so they almost make sense together, but you're having trouble finding the commonality.

One of them is stuck on the theme from "Love American Style."

The other one is doing the "Time Warp."

And they won't stop tag-teaming each other and jumping into my head. And no, I'm not sure how either. This one I may have to write out, just so I can make sense of it before searching for earworm-poison. But between those two, do I dare search for a commonality?

So while digging through old files to try practicing loading into InDesign, I stumbled upon an oldie... the "bible" document which I started writing for the eventual weekend-long run of Virtually Nonexistent.

( Caution: Check tags before electing to Read More )

I thought I hated "social media." I may need to think about it...

Hmmm...

Nope, I still hate it.

( Read more... )

For whatever reason, I decided I needed to reclassify some of my bookmarks.

( Read more... )

Should I be concerned that in this economy, I'm wondering how I could manage to buy a new computer, or better yet four or five?

I have just sent my laptop on another of many fools' errands, this time baking the behavior of a certain head of hair as it's affected by wind. This will take hours to simulate. And for what? Figuring out where that head of hair will blow for twenty seconds at thirty seconds per frame, just so I can render from it.

I need a cheaper hobby.

That's not to say the time can't be productive, but there's a better time to be doing stuff like Carrara tutorials. It's called "daytime." Not now.

If you do watch it, note the times when rendering started and stopped, toward the last minute of the video. That's how bad it's gotten, though I admit it's good to have finally finished that first one.