Umbral Echoes Blog

From a series called “You Suck at Photoshop.” There are 4 in this series currently, and here’s #2. The guy reminds me a lot of Dane Cook.

I’m watching the State of the Union address, and as usual there are a lot of “duh” moments in it. Yeah, we’re trying to get our troops home. We need an economic stimulus package to get pushed through soon. Et cetera.

As I watch this though, I’m drawn less to what’s being said, and more to what both sides of the auditorium (Republican and Democrat) applaud on — as opposed to which points only the Republicans applaud on. And also, which comments get standing ovations from just one side, or both. It’s like a gauge of what is going to happen, and what might or might not.

As a quick example, the first thing I saw both sides applaud on was a measure to make congress vote on all earmarks — if it’s important for tax dollars to be spent on, then it should be discussed and voted on publicly.

And dear lord, man. “Nuclear,” not, “nukular.”

As an aside, David Elsewhere is my hero of the day.

When people are sad, sometimes they play sad music to reflect their mood.  Sometimes they play upbeat music, to try and lighten their mood.  Generally I fall into the latter category — I watch a comedy, or listen to some happy music.  But I find that when I’m in  a particularly sour/depressed/bad mood, it doesn’t really work.  In those times, I try to do something to take my mind off whatever it is that’s got me stressed or upset.

What are your experiences?  How do you generally deal with “bad” moods?

Having decided that driving a stick shift makes talking on a cell phone a bit unwieldy, I decided to get a Bluetooth headset.  I had one before, but… well, I lost it within about a week of getting it.  This time I went for the BlueAnt Z9.  It’s not the sexiest thing in the world, but it received some good reviews, and seemed to have good noise cancellation technology — something that might come in handy in convention season.

So far, it’s worked beautifully.  The people (well, person) I’ve talked to said that my voice was actually clearer with the BlueAnt than it was using the phone itself.  Hooking up to my phone, the Samsung Sync, was painless.  They even release semi-regular firmware updates, that fix issues and make other improvements.  It’s pretty easy to operate, light, and comfortable.  I’m not the sort of person to wear it all day long (I just wear it when I’m in the car), but if I were, I don’t think it would get uncomfortable to do so.  I haven’t tried the ultra-noise-cancellation mode, but I have high hopes — the website has a demonstration of the technology, that seems to put it on the level of the Jawbone.

In other news, those of you who use several online services, such as Facebook, Yahoo profiles, Twitter,  Gmail, LinkedIn, YouTube, Wordpress, Delicious, Microsoft Network (MSN), etc. will be interested in the DataPortability workgroup.  Below is a video that explains it, but the basic idea is you have your data, and when you want to make a profile on X site, you say, “Here’s my stuff — profile info, media, friends, et cetera.”  And the site keeps sync’d with that central repository of data.  Make a blog post?  It’s posted to all your sites that support that.  Upload a picture?  Ditto.  The names/sites mentioned above have all gotten in (Microsoft just recently), so there’s a pretty big push in this direction.

DataPortability - Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut Media on Vimeo.

The past few weeks have been a time of endings, and new beginnings for me.  In both my personal, and my professional life.  But as they say, that which does not move, dies.

After having talked to some of you, and doing some soul-searching over the weekend, I’ve decided to accept the workshop candidate position at White Wolf.  The programming test shook my self-confidence — I didn’t know that my lower-level programming skills had gotten that rusty.  Had I taken that test 6 years ago, I’d have mopped the floor with it.  And I’ll get to that point again.  I’ve sent an email accepting the position at White Wolf, as well as one to the owners of my current company, OneBookShelf.  It will probably be another 6 months at least before I can make the transition, but that will give me time to hone my skills.

Well, apparently my initial impression was correct.  I am damn rusty.  Too rusty, in fact, for the White Wolf programming team in my current state.  I have been given the option to move into what is essentially a paid internship program, or possibly web work.  The internship thing doesn’t pay great, and with other goings-on, the pay rate will make the budget exceedingly tight.  Going into webwork isn’t exactly what I want to do, though there will be mentoring opportunity there as well, and learning of new technologies.

So, I have some things to consider over the weekend.

Today I did the in-person interview with White Wolf, which consisted of several more technical/coding questions, which I had to answer on the spot.  I honestly didn’t do as good as I think I’m capable of, but I didn’t bomb it, either.  One of the questions I later figured out how to answer, with a leading question from Cary.  One which was apparently supposed to have been given to me, but wasn’t (maybe because they’re trying to shorten the interview process).  I’m mad at myself for not seeing the solution earlier, but ah well.

Tomorrow I should have the final yay or nay result, but I’ve got high hopes after having talked things over with Cary and getting some feedback on my answers.  Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Hope everyone’s holiday season went well.  I was only in Louisville for a few days this year, so I didn’t get to catch up with friends as I usually do.  But at the same time, that let me just worry about attending family events (of which there are always an abundance).  Got some good gifts, but mostly gift cards.  I’m sort of tired of Christmas in general — it’s so damn commercialized, and we’ve been trained to think that if someone is important to us, then we must get them a gift.

We had a New Year’s Eve party at the house last night, which was somewhat low-key.  Cary’s shirt never came off.  Seriously!  We realized that it was almost midnight a minute before, and had to scramble to switch from the Wii over to TV and get one of the stations doing the ball drop — got it with 12 seconds to spare.  Toward the end of the party, Dave Delmont decided that some of us should go to the White Wolf office and play Rock Band.  So we did.

Boy, do I suck at singing.  When I was just singing to sound like the songs, I was doing horrid.  When I actually paid attention to the little pitch bar, I got a better score, but sounded much worse (in my opinion).  But then again, I’ve never pretended to be able to sing, so there’s no surprise there.

I was awakened by an annoying cat after 4 hours of sleep, so here I am at work doing some financial reports and coding.  It never ends.  Hopefully sometime in the next week or so, I’ll get the in-person interview at White Wolf.