10/6

In light of Corey teasing people about getting Hackergotchi setup for planet gentoo, I tried in vain for a least an hour to turn either of two photos of me into something even resembeling a respectable hackergotchi.

So I pose this to you, oh syndicated viewing audience (and those few others that read my blog directly): Hack(ergotchi) me!

The two photos I have of myself that are high enough resolution and seem situated properly are here and here. I don’t care which, just make it not suck as much as my attempts.

If nobody submits me anything… well, I’ll know I have no friends (with art skills).

On a related note, I managed to sneak by today/yesterday/the 23rd without a single individual catching me in person to comment on how old i was, how much i smelled a monkey, and how much they want to spank me 23 times and one for good luck (although spankings are appreciated year round). Hurrah for hating b’days!

Two things related to obsession:

1. In cleaning/organizing things here, I finally got around to finishing filing my crossword puzzle collection in a sane, chronological manner. For those that don’t know, I’ve been saving every New York Times crossword puzzle I’ve done for quite a while now. Now I know for sure though: I have nearly 3 years, 8 months worth of puzzles collected. The first one is from 1/1/2002. Obsession.
2. I’ve been slowly working on trying to flesh out a new themed mix. The theme is, of course, obsession, but of a very particular kind; I’m looking for songs devoted to the singer’s/band’s obsession with famous individuals. So far the (far too short) list includes songs like:
   • Atom And His Package - Pumping Iron (Fe) for Enya
   • Ozma - Natalie Portman
   • The Ataris - My So Called Life (which is about Claire Danes)

   I don’t have nearly enough songs to make up a full mix though. Anybody got any ideas?

OBSESSION!

NP: The Chinkees - Big World

so today I’ve been cleaning some, and I brought some boxes home from work to pack up things I need to either get out of the way in preparation for, or actually pack for, moving some stuff I won’t bring with me to SoCal upstate for storage. Actually having boxes here is the strongest “yes, you’re actually moving that far” thing I’ve done so far.

It’s nuts. Giant. Macadamia. Nuts.

WAGONS WEST!

NP: Piebald - Vacuum

For anyone that’s been reading recent posts, you’ve probably seen vague mention of potentially crazy things afoot.

Well, s:potentially::, cause crazy sh*t’s afoot, no doubt about it.

The summary, in travel terms, is here. I’m taking a job at Medsphere, joining Todd Berman and the rest of his funky crew out in orange county, CA, doing C#/gtk# programming.

Needless to say, this will be a slight change from NYC. There’s lots i’m going to miss about new york, but i think this is gonna be a good change. I’ve been in NY for the past 5 years, and it feels like time to shake things up a bit.

Anybody in the tri-state area who wants to see me before i go, get your hits in before the middle of september, cause after that you’re gonna have a hard time doing it.

Wagons west!

PS - You’d not believe how many people actually thought Eric and I flew the helicopter. For the record, neither he nor I have our pilot’s licenses. It was a joke!

I’ve not really got photos yet from the rest of defcon/vegas, so I’m just gonna blog on one small fun piece of it.

My brother and I had planned a short two day trip to the grand canyon after defcon finished, but things changed a bit after we got there. Most of defcon was spent hanging with this fun group of brits we’d met there, who were all there from the same pen test/audit company. They had a different idea for the big GC:

Why not just hire a helicopter to fly us right down into the canyon? Silly us, thinking of driving. We flew out extremely early monday morning, had a bloody brunch right there in the canyon, and then flew back.

Here’s the group perched over the edge inside the canyon; we were on a small mesa down in the canyon:

In reality, we’d actually decided not to bother hiring a pilot, so my brother and I took turns flying:

We saw some pretty cool geological stuff, which my vocabulary is woefully unable to sufficiently describe in detail. The second photo here shows how this huge f*cking plate had been shoved up, such that the various strata of dirt were now tipped on their side. I don’t think i’ve ever really felt the scale of platectonics until seeing this. wow.

All in all, it was a very mind blowing day. I took a picture of the canyon with my sh*tty camera phone and put it as my phone background. There’s something blissfully ironic about trying to capture the massive scale of the grand canyon in the background of a one inch by one inch cellphone screen.

NP: The Gorillaz - November Has Come

More details soon, but I’m back from my week long tour of the southwest. I’ve survived, only one burn mark the worse for wear. Photos, details, etc. will follow when I find time.

Still a stress-ball. Will know soon if I can stop stresssing.

NP: The Magnetic Fields - Take Ecstacy With Me