Picked up a pair of Shure e2c’s after borrowing a friend’s e4’s. Not cheap, by any stretch, but they’re *really* nice. They fit really well in my ears, and the soft rubber inserts do a great job of, well, keeping EVERYTHING out. I honestly can’t tell a difference between the e4 and e2c’s, aside from the size, and my ears are big enough that there’s no real need for “smallness.”

The office I work in is ridiculously loud. Basically, I work on a wall adjacent to a furniture maker, and as a result, randomly throughout the day, his saw fires up, and runs really loud. On top of that, the HVAC system and my own computer, even, make a LOT of ambient noise, to the point where I’d find myself much more worn out during the day than I wanted to be. Using my friend’s headphones for the last few days has really made me feel better, and as a result, the cost seemed like it would be worth it to me. I had the Apple in-ear headphones, which were nice enough, but these do sound markedly better, and keep more of the noise out. I can’t say whether I’d have noticed in any other environment, but where I’m working, the difference is noticable.

I’ve heard the etymotics are good, as well, but buying them from a local store with a return policy was valuable to me, and so, the e2c’s won the deal.

Good stuff.

It feels like a ball of Silly Putty in my hand. This thought – that one day, I’ll be working for myself, with a group of good friends, on a project that we’re all excited about. I squeeze it, and it resists. The cold, hard mass feels solid. But the longer I hold it in my hand, the warmer it gets. Softer, more pliable. I squeeze it, and it forms to the shape of my hand. I roll the ball around, feeling it – the texture of my own skin embedded in its surface. It feels warm now, familiar. I squeeze, and it seems through my fingers. Not as though it’s getting away, but rather, like it’s becoming part of me.

I put the ball in my mouth, and it turns to liquid. I roll it around, and it tastes like … nothing. Slowly, it takes on a flavor – a dull savory sensation, complex, like something that’s been developing for a long while. It’s barely there, on the tip of my tongue, but I can just almost taste it, and it’s good.

There’s something, obviously – the risk, for one, that makes me hesitate. There’s the fact that I know Ei-Nyung wants stability, and is resistant to this sort of risk. Not unjustly so, and it’s important to her, so I respect that. Hell, it’s not like I didn’t see the impact entrepreneurship had on my parents’ relationship over the last few years. Still, every day I’m at work, it feels like I’m painting by numbers, and every day, it gets easier, less challenging, and less interesting. It’s not even that the project I’m working on isn’t good. I think it could be quite novel – it’ll certainly be an oddball game. But the fundamental fact of it all is that I’d have done it totally, totally differently. And basically, as long as I’m working for someone else, whether it’s EA, and their marketing-driven development, or it’s my current employer, beholden to the client’s desires, I’m never really going to make something I’m genuinely *passionate* about, in part because it’s unlikely that my desires will match with some arbitrary client’s, and in part because frankly, it’s hard to get passionate about making someone else rich. off a creative endeavor that you *know* you’re responsible for bringing greatness to.

The prevailing wisdom is that Edison was right, it’s 1% inspiration and 99$ perspiration. And that’s true – a good idea is only the first step in the process. But a lot of people interpret that saying (in the game industry in particular) that it’s the process of development uber alles, and that the idea is arbitrary – anyone can have an idea, after all.

But that’s not the case at all. Yes, it’s the process of development that’ll separate a good studio from a great one. But after what, three years in development, one thing has become really, really clear to me. There are a *LOT* of absolutely terrible ideas out there that get millions of dollars put into them. And sometimes, you can in fact polish a turd. But I know enough that between me, and a couple of my friends, we have genuinely good ideas. Great ideas. Creative, passionate, interesting, innovative ideas, and now, we even have the process experience to back it up. We’ve individually worked to *put* those various ideas into place, to get them into shipped games that have gone to the market, and been successes in their own right. And contrary to that, I’ve worked with a couple designers who are the exact opposite – so utterly devoid of creative thought, inspiration, passion, or any sense of originality that they might as well be replaced by a herd of robot monkeys. So, there’s a difference between good and bad. I’d even say that I know the difference between competant and extraordinary. That’s not to say that *(* am in that 99th percentile yet. But I’m definitely fighting to get there, and I think I’m finding that I have the capacity, I just lack the experience of developing a concept from scratch on my own terms.

Again, that sounds pretty egomanical, and maybe it is. But I’ve pursued greatness before, and found myself lacking. I’ll never be a great swimmer, for instance, no matter how hard I tried. I’ll never be a great artist, though I spent thousands of hours drawing through high school and college. I just didn’t have it in me – I could *feel* myself hitting the limit of my ability. Maybe with focused, guided effort, I could have become better, but I’d never be great. With game design, it’s not to say I’m that good *yet*, but I’ve been running at a full sprint for the last few years, and I haven’t even seen the wall yet.

And I feel that way about a good number of my friends.

Getting those people together, getting them to realize that the time is *now* and that it’ll be worth the investment, and that we can do it with minimal risk…

Well, maybe that’s the 99%.

So, gardening’s not really my thing. The big point is that I’m basically allergic to grass, so any time I go out in anything but long sleeves, adn start doing stuff, my forearms end up itching like crazy. If I had a brain, I’d actually also use the dust mask with the carbon filters that my dad gave me when they moved. Of course, I’m an idiot, so instead, I thought, I’m just gonna go to the back, and start tearing stuff up until I fill up this green waste bin.

The bad part is, completely as expected, my forearms are patchy, red, itchy as hell. My eyes are watery, and my throat’s scratchy.

The good part is, it basically only took 30 minutes of just ripping stuff up by hand until the bin was full.

Tore up an armful of blackberry vine (though in comparison to what’s *left*, there’s probably six to ten of these bins more to go), a bunch of weeds that were growing in/near the “patio” and basically cleared out the walkway from the side of the house in the back.

Oog. Now, to shower, and get this crap off me.

Spent the last couple hours cooking, and listening to Fischerspooner’s “new” album. Good times. Basically, doing a second French Laundry party (if you weren’t invited, it’s not ’cause we don’t like you, it’s ’cause we have to keep these events relatively small – so, we’ve rotated the whole cast (except us, obviously), and there are no repeats allowed).

So, this time, we’re making the “Caesar Salad” which is a bizarre twist on the regular concept of a salad. It’s basically a parmesan custard, with a little lettuce, and the standard Caesar dressing. Looked weird enough to be worth making, so that’s my contribution to this event. Ei-Nyung’s making Il Flottante, which are these insane merangues – I made the mint oil, creme Anglaise and the chocolate mousse filling, while she dealt with piping and cooking the merangues.

Tomorrow, I’ve gotta make the custards for the … well, I’ve gotta make the whole salad thing, which looks to be about a four hour process, *including* set up time, so about two hours (I’m budgeting from 11am to about 1 to get them done and in the fridge. Whew. Sounds fun.

Pictures on flickr later.

I really like cooking. There’s just something about taking things everyone can get in the supermarket, and turning them into things that aren’t obvious. That’s not to say I’m a good cook yet, but getting there. I mean, mint oil. WTF? Who makes mint oil? NO ONE. That’s because it’s totally ridiculous. But when you tasted the chive oil that we made for the last of these events, it was *TOTALLY WORTH IT*.

This time, it’ll be interesting because we’ve got nothing to do with either of the entrees. Oh – I’m also making a cream of walnut soup, which is essentially a dessert canape. So, we’ll have the salad off as a starter, then we don’t do any service until the end of the meal. Ha! I’m really looking forward to this. This has got to be one of our better ideas – the timing’s really good, because a lot of our friends are anywhere from competant to extraordinary cooks, and we have enough that we can literally “staff” three of these meals, rotating groups. There’s no way I’d spend four hours or five hours cooking a single meal (ok, I have in the past, when making things like ribs). But there’s no way I’d spend four or five hours making what amounts to five or six bites of food, since the French Laundry’s recipes are so damn small. But when you get a bunch of people together, and everyone’s devoted that much time and energy to making another five or six bites, you’ve now got enough food to eat ’till you’re stupid, and the quality of the food is *astonishing*.

Looking forward to it.

fo’ sho. (and if you haven’t seen The 40-Year-Old Virgin, you *totally* should.)

Per Rioting

Your Stress Level is: 49%

You are somewhat prone to stress, especially when life gets hard. When things are good, you resist stressing over little problems. But when things are difficult, you tend to freak out and find it hard to calm down.

Man, I’m so sick of CNN’s bullshit headlines.

JonBenet Ramsey is not national news. It’s just not. It’s absolutely, positively not news when there are two major wars in the world. Nothing PAris Hilton does is news, ever. EVER. A rural boy’s worm-selling stand – not news. It just nauseates me how much the US is caught up in the cult of celebrity and nonsensical “human interest” bullshit, to the point where a years old murder of a girl (a terrible tragedy, but ultimately unimportant on the world stage) overshadows a war, our current disastrous political climate, and all sorts of issues (global warming, corporate corruption, whatever) that actually *matter*.

Fuck you, Fox News. Yeah, your “news as entertainment” angle is, indeed more appealing to the American public. That’s our fault, but it doesn’t make me hate your company any less for exploiting it, and making it the defacto standard for success in the so-called “news” business.

God, I’d be *so* ashamed if I considered myself a journalist these days. How do you look someone in the eye and tell them that you’re a journalist, when journalism, as a whole, is so incredibly pathetic and meaningless? When what once was a noble institution with integrity has been so subverted, so upended, and you let it happen on your watch?

Ugh. It all just makes me nauseated.

Some things, you only learn by really sticking your feet in, and doing the damn thing. I know this sounds totally obvious, but it’s applied to a whole lot of crap recently, and so, though it’s not necessarily a revelation, I think what’s happening is that my resistance to learning by doing is lessening to a certain degree.

* Cooking – obviously, you learn to cook by cooking. You can read about all sorts of stuff, from detailed explanation of the denaturing of proteins, to reading cooking “manuals” like the Joy of Cooking, but basically, you’ll suck at it, without question, until you get your ass in the kitchen and put fire to food. No amount of reading will replace the experience you gain by tasting something, thinking it’s horrible, and trying to figure out a.) where you went wrong, and b.) how you can fix it. Learning some of the fundamental properties at work goes a long way towards making b.) easier, and paying attention while you’re cooking makes a.) easier to figure out. So there’s definite value in absorbing as much outside information as possible, but there’s no replacement for the hands on experience.

* Home Repair – a lot of times, this can be really intimidating. For some reason, even relatively simple crap like fixing the fence took me forever – it required all of screwing in a bunch of L-brackets. That’s it. But so much has gone wrong, and the house, as a complete project, is so freakin’ HUGE that it’s sometimes hard to realize that the baby steps are actually easy. So, putting up trim broke down a lot of the barriers in terms of “hey, with a miter saw, this is really quite trivial.” There’s a LOT left to do, and I can’t do a good portion of it myself, but a lot’s possible. One thing I hope to do is build some sort of bench/chest for the space below the downstairs window in the living room. Hands on, I think.

* Photography – I should really have just said, “taking pictures” at this point because all I’m doing is largely point-and-shoot. But trying to figure out why something’s lit poorly, or how to capture moving subjects, or even what looks good on screen vs. in the viewfinder – it’s just a matter of taking a bunch of pictures and figuring out what works.

I dunno – it’s all so obvious. But between NaNoWriMo forcing me to actually WRITE, and all the myriad random crap I’ve tried to pick up in the last few years, it’s just been good to finally internalize that no one’s gonna show or tell me how to do a huge portion of this stuff, and that learning by fucking it all up a couple times isn’t, for the most part, going to cause any permanent damage. 🙂

So, there’ve been a few things I was interested in writing about, but keep putting it off, ’cause recently, my schedule’s been sliding forwards – sleeping later, waking up later, and I just haven’t found the time. And, I seem to only be able to remember the relevant crap I was gonna write about when I’m in a car, or in the pool, or wherever, as far as I can be from a computer, or when I have the least free time possible. Anyway – quickie media recommendations:

* Hikaru no Go: A manga about a sixth-grader who gets inhabited by the spirit of some ancient Go master, and ends up learning Go and playing in a bunch of tournaments. Fun, and really reminiscent of old sports comics that I read when I was really young. Fun stuff.
* The 40 Year Old Virgin: A both hilarious and sweet movie – manages to skirt the sappiness of a lot of these sorts of comedies by actually having reasonably fleshed out and realistic characters, so it doesn’t feel arbitrary or weird when conflicts, or resolutions happen. Steve Carrell is awesome, and the supporting cast is frankly awesome, too. I’d love to see them work together more.
* V for Vendetta: I picked up the DVD when it came out, and watching again (a couple times) reminds me that this was my favorite movie of the year, hands down.

Thoughts:

* The time is perfect for a game startup. Many years ago, you could develop a game in your garage, with a couple friends, and sell it on a relatively small scale, either through local companies, or through publishers, who were looking for any content, because the industry was really small. That time has come again – with Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft all on the online distribution thing, and with Valve’s Steam providing a similar service on the PC, it’s clear that smaller, cheaper, often simpler quality content finally has an outlet again. You can make a game with five to ten people, in less than a year, and actually sell it somewhere without fighting against EA’s marketing idiots, or Wal-Mart’s buyers, for shelf space next to Generic Space Shooter Fifteen.

What it requires is taking those first steps. And I’m scared to death of the risk, having watched my dad suffer through the last few years. But on the flipside, is this the thing where I look back five years from now, and say, “dammit, I was right – and I know because those *other* five people – they’ve done what I said I should have done.” I don’t want that. I also don’t want to jeopardize Ei-Nyung and my financial security – we’ve got a good thing going – on top of just stable, things are really good. Progress is being made against the creeping anarchy of home repair, and we’ve got money saved up – a reasonable amount of it, for whatever the future holds, whether that’s catastrophe, or a child, or whatever. We’ve got some safety in place, and that’s a good thing.

But there’s that question – what if? I know a lot of people – the *right* people – who are asking themselves similar questions. I know they’re the right people, because they’re asking the same questions as I am. 😉 But there has to be a way to do this with minimal risk – it’s certainly looking into whether that’s a tolerable situation, and what pursuing it would entail. It’s taking the first step that’s the hardest – even looking implies a certain seriousness that I’m having a hard time mustering. Weakness, or sensibility? Maybe both?

Then, there’s thinking about NaNoWriMo this year – thinking about what I like writing about, a certain structure presents itself relatively clearly. I like writing little things about characters. I like writing about stuff I’m passionate about. And one thing that I’d like to capture is the sense of calm before catastrophic death. Yeah, I know it’s weird, but there’s a certain… I dunno – value in having had that experience that I’d sort of like to share in some way without almost crushing everyone’s head with a car.

So, I think the basic story will be about a game designer, who starts a company with some of his friends. There’s a good portion of the book that goes on about that, and their various problems – conflicts with publishers, money issues, design brainstorming, production issues – what it’s like to see a game come together, and actually play something that months ago was merely a dream in your head. It’s a pretty thrilling experience, honestly, and capturing that would be pretty cool. Some portion through the book, something happens, and it’s not done in an overly dramatized way – it’s an event that has been portrayed in countless works of fiction, but I’m hoping that I can deal with it instead of how it’s been done in those works of fiction, in a realistic way – how a generic schmoe who’s worried about his deadline at work deals with this sort of catastrophic event. Then, at the end, it all culminates in a single moment where everyone has the same moment of realization.

I dunno – it’d be a *real* trick to pull off, and have anything compelling. My guess is that it would take a better writer than me to actually pull it off, but I guess in some sense, I’m hoping that if I’m not good enough at the beginning of the month, I might be by the end of it. 🙂

I could be wrong about a couple of those, but that’s my best guess.

Ok, so I don’t mind much that despite the general “no dogs at work” policy, someone brings in their dog. I love dogs. Still, it’s a workplace. A yappy dog at a workplace makes it somewhat difficult to concentrate. But when it’s the same person that regularly brings in their screaming, crying kid, I can’t say I’m not more than a little frustrated. I’m not fucking paid to sit here and try to work while your kid’s screaming like you’re twisting his head off. I’m not paid to sit here and let you lounge about with your yappy dog while I’m trying to concentrate. Fuck you. It’s a goddamn work space. Treat it like such, or get the fuck out.