Thrust Head-First into Reality

Two weeks ago, I graduated from Syracuse University.  I am no longer a college student.

The transition was a bit delayed since I didn't actually move out of my apartment until last Friday, and then zipped off to Albany with Christine for the weekend.  I returned to Pittsburgh monday night, and am only now starting to get settled back into the house it no longer feels appropriate to call "home."

So now I'm on my own.  A college-educated, presently unemployed, adult living in his parents' house.  It's a perfectly expected and nigh-inevitable situation, but a sobering one nonetheless.

I have no idea why I'm writing this so formally.  I guess I just have some need to make it sound as important/scary as it feels right now.

In any case, here I am, trying to figure out how to make the transition and find some sort of job in my desired field, nebulously-defined as that is right now.  I have a few possibilities:

1. Leverage my old contacts from my internship last summer to try getting more PA / low-level production work.
   
2. Try to get into a post-production / visual effects house in Pittsburgh.  I've found a handful online, and this is definitely more what I'd like to do.  But I have no idea if I'm qualified enough, and I definitely don't have any "ins" anywhere.
   
3. Start my own shop or do freelance videography.  I've thus far been unsuccessful in using my past unpaid and not-for-profit work with WDUQ and the LWV to springboard into additional work, and all conventional wisdom suggests that trying to start up a post house without first having experience working in one is a bad, bad idea.  (Not to mention, I obviously don't really have the capital to do it properly right now.)
   
4. Throw my hands up in the air and just try to get any kind of job.  Best Buy, GameStop, Arbys... something, anything with a paycheck.
   

Of course, the other option I haven't mentioned yet is looking outside of this city for work.  Particularly, the standard-operating-procedure for my peers in my major to make a pilgrimage to New York, or especially Los Angeles.  For one thing, I'm not really enamored with the popular idea of moving to a very expensive city with the one-in-a-million hope of landing a fortune once you get there.  I'm also unsure I'm comfortable with the amped-up professional politics that seems to go hand-in-hand with working in either city.

But there's no denying the other reason.  It's true that my short-term life goals are now no longer just about finding a good job.  I want to find a job that not only allows me to enjoy myself, make a living, and start my own life... I also do not want to go on living about 500 miles (or more) from Christine.  She has a job in Massachusetts lined up for the summer, but come September her future is as uncertain as my own.  Pittsburgh is a city we both like, and has a relatively strong showing now in both film production (for me) and theater (for her).  It seems to be our "best bet" at the moment.

So that's where I stand.  I still haven't decided which of those bullet points is the best option at the moment, so right now, I'm going to try working on things that I need to do for any of them.  For now, that includes doing the necessary "phone interviews" with the Newhouse career center to complete their job search program and gain access to the alumni database, taking advantage of as many non-paying production stuff as falls my way so I can build my "professional" experience, continuing to do post work on my own to gain more familiarity with the tools (before graduating I picked up Lightwave 3D with my academic discount, so I can get back into that), and probably most importantly:  finish my demo reel(s) and my website, as they are liable to be my calling cards for most anything I might do.

I don't know where I'm going, but I need to get there soon...

Twitter!

I finally did it. I know some of you have made fun of the Twitter service in the past, but come on, it really is the future. Plus, ever since I saw how Jeph Jaques uses a flash embed to show his tweets, I realized how easily I could tie Twitter in to my existing website.

Thus, behold!

Once I figure out how, I'll probably be incorporating this box into the sidebars of both this blog, and Directionless. Heck, given my poor history in actually updating the blog itself, this can probably stand in for times when I'm not otherwise posting!

Are you as excited about all this as I am? Then Follow Me on Twitter!

When "Targeted" Ads Fail

I've been hearing a lot of talk lately about Google's decision to start using AdSense to deliver ads that are targeted not only based on a web page's content, but also on each user's history and interests. The tactic isn't new, only the pervasive, widespread reach of Google is.

The privacy concerns of this have been talked about endlessly, and I'm not writing to add to that discussion. My question is: privacy aside, how many companies actually have the intelligence to even use such a system effectively? Theoretically, the more information you have on someone, the better your targeting should be. Given this logic, a service like Facebook, which knows a lot about me, should have very-well-targeted ads.

Theoretically.


I mean, come on. This isn't rocket science, people.

Now I Can Track My... Pizza?

Earlier this afternoon I decided to pre-order some pizza for the Superbowl later (Go Steelers!).  I wanted to make sure my order was in early so I'd get my pizza despite the inevitable madness that will ensue around 5-7ish tonight.

I placed my order through the Dominos web site, and after it was submitted, I saw this:

Wha-  I can even get tracking info on my pizza now?  I did some Googling, and it seems like most of the reporting on this new feature is relatively negative.  The verdict in a nutshell:  Their pizza sucks anyway, and the only people who will use this are antisocial web-addicts with no life and nothing better to do for 30 minutes.

Obviously, I can't speak to the taste issue - to each their own.  But to throw my two cents in, I'd say this is a nice reassuring feature to have in a case like mine, where you place your order several hours before you want to see your food.

Media and Technology: An Interests Showdown for Obama

Last tuesday, like most people at Syracuse, I watched elatedly as Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States.  It was a historic moment any way you slice it, and all eyes are on Obama now as he attempts to live up to the hope over 66 million of us placed in him last November.

There's been no shortage of news speculation as to how he will handle one pressing issue or another.  However, being me, I've been wondering about another angle.  Perhaps not the most important or pressing, but one which greatly interests me.

Aside from the pomp of the ceremony itself, two things about President Obama's inauguration day struck me. First:  the new website at WhiteHouse.gov, which went live before he had even finished taking the Oath of Office.  Second:  The star-studded "Neighborhood Ball," hosted by ABC, which kicked off the string of events he and Michelle danced at.  These two events stood out to me because they highlight two "interest groups" among which Obama has strong support;  the wired world of the internet, and the glitz and glamor of Hollywood and the entertainment industry.

Barack Obama ran what is widely hailed as the most technology-savvy campaign in history.  With the small but passionate exception of Ron Paul supporters, the "internets" as a whole loved him for it, and looked forward to a presidency that understands and embraces new technology.  So far, signs that Change has come to the members of the executive branch are good.  The new White House website is every bit as fancy as the Obama team's previous online works, and having a weekly video podcast of sorts sounds like a great way to engage the populace.  Later in the week, we heard about the complaints staffers have been voicing over the archaic I.T. infrastructure in the White House - a lament all to familiar to any geek who has found themselves thrust into the bureaucratic technology morass that typifies most established institutions (50 meg mailbox quota for Syracuse students' e-mail, anyone?).  Heck, even the fact that the president fought to keep his Blackberry shows that he's a new breed of president - one who "gets" technology.  Let the Tubes rejoice!

However, the "Neighborhood Ball" I saw tuesday night on ABC demonstrates Obama's clout with another group: the entertainment industry.  During the campaign, one of the first widely-talked-about attack ads from McCain was directed at Obamas "celebrity" appeal.  His life up to this point reads like an Oscar-winning screenplay, and like most Democratic candidates, he had his fair share of supporters among the Hollywood elite.  That ABC would get together with chart-topping recording artists to throw the first of his presidential balls further proves Obama's appeal among the entertainment industry,

Clearly, both groups are looking forward to a plethora of wonderful changes our new President will bring.

One problem though:  These two groups are currently at war.

Media piracy is one of, if not the biggest issue facing the content creators in the film, television, and music businesses.  It is also at the forefront of the freedom-loving culture of the Internet.  Media companies view tech-savvy consumers as criminal scum, and brilliant programmers worldwide take pride in cracking every new protection scheme the entertainment industry can come up with, either out of belief, necessity, or (I suspect most of the time now) out of sheer spite.

In the last decade, this issue has become the defining conflict for both sides, and both no doubt would like to look to Obama as their savior.  I'm very curious as to how he will navigate these waters, not least of which because I often find myself straddling the same fence.

Christmas 2008 and New Year's 2009

Monday night I got back at Syracuse for my last semester of my undergraduate career. After that, it'll be time to face the Real World.

Side note: Aaaaaaaaaah!!!

Classes don't start until next week, so for now I have some time to sit around in my apartment, get work done, and... oh yeah! Update this blog!

Winter break went pretty well for me. I sat in on a meeting with Fitting Group, the design firm for the WDUQ.org revamp, and that appears to be moving forward rather well. The design looks great, and I think the Joomla developer they hired understood the issues I raised that need to be addressed before we go live. By the end of this month or next, I should be helping the DUQ staff with porting over content.

I played with my new N64 a fair bit, and picked up The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for it, which seems pretty great so far.

Christmas was good as always. As always, my family cut our own tree at a tree farm in Butler County and, also as always, it was rather large.


My presents were nice, including a very nice TERABYTE external hard drive from OtherWorld Computing, and a new 250 GB internal drive for my laptop as well, both of which should be very useful. Although tearing my current laptop down and replacing the non-user-replaceable hard drive does seem to be turning into an odd holiday tradition for me...


However, as should be expected, the highlight of the break for me was Christine coming to visit again. This time around, I deliberately left the schedule of "things to do" a little more open so we could spend more time just hanging out together, but there were a few fun excursions, not least of which being New Year's Eve.

Yes, for the first time I decided to go "out" with my girlfriend for New Years' eve. Not for a fancy black-tie dinner and play, but to a club on East Carson Street. Specifically, the "Bliss" New Year's Eve party at Diesel Club Lounge. I've been to a couple small clubs in Syracuse, and more than a couple bars, but this was the first time either of us had gone to an all-out Club with the focus on a big dance floor and whatnot. Needless to say, we had a great time. The DJ was pretty good, the alcohol wasn't too expensive (with one exception noted below...), and the lighting system was very well put together. (even Christine thought so, and she's the expert!) Naturally, Christine looked beautiful, and I think I pulled off a respectable outfit as well, given my usual inability to properly dress myself. (We both wisely decided against trying to keep track of our cameras in the crowded club, so I unfortunately have no pictures from the night.)

As I said before, the drinks weren't too expensive considering it was a New Year's Eve party at a popular nightclub, except for Christine's ten dollar appletini. (Which, she points out, wasn't even the best appletini she'd had. That honor belongs to the eight dollar appletini she got at Ohm in Syracuse last semester. The only other nasty surprise that night came when we realized that, as this was the only club or bar we'd been to outside of New York State, smoking was permitted! It didn't bother me too much, although our clothes definitely needed a good washing the next day!

Getting to and from Diesel went pretty well, all things considered. I knew from the start that I didn't want to drink and drive (just say no, kids!) so transportation came down to busses or taxis. The busses in Pittsburgh don't seem to run much past midnight, so I knew we'd have to get a cab home, but we tried to save a little money by taking the bus system downtown. This was a success in that we only ended up paying $2.50 a piece (actually, my mom payed. Thanks for passing us the bus passes on the way out the door, mom!) but we did have a little trouble find the right stop downtown for the transfer to our second bus. Aside from some very cold feet, no harm done there.

Getting home was more interesting. We left diesel at around 1:30 AM, and I tried to call a cab. When I finally got through to a dispatcher, we were told that the estimated wait to have a cab sent to us was over 3 hours... but that "we're sending a bunch of taxis through that area tonight, so you're best bet is to hail one." Sounded good, but there were a few hundered other people trying the same thing within a few blocks of us, so our odds didn't seem so great. Fortunately, there was a great pizza place across the street where we could eat and pass the time while the crowds thinned out.

After that we tried again for a cab to no avail. Christine randomly contracted a case of the hiccups, so we stopped in another small restaurant to get some water. This happened to be the "Cambod-ican Kitchen," a decidedly strange little place. They served up oriental food of some description, but had a running joke throughout the establishment about serving cat. I doubt this was the case in reality, but there it was nonetheless. Over the ordering counter there was a Garfield stuffed toy with "Eat Me!" cleverly scrawled across it's belly in permanant marker.

The owner of Cambod-ican kitchen (or at least we assume he was) was a sight. Orange camo-pants with a Leatherman strapped to his belt, and a cowboy/Crocodile-Dundee hat started off an image that finished with a witty t-shirt touting "The Best Pussy You'll Ever Eat!" After getting two bottled waters, Christine asked where the restroom was. She was then handed the ladies' bathroom key... which was chained to a huge black rod, vaguely reminiscent of The Club. He instructed her on how to most usefully hold said ludicrous object while unlocking the door (Answer: like a shotgun). The key to the men's room, it should be noted, was tied to a simple wood block, easily held in one hand. Don't ask me.

We eventually returned outside around 3 AM, and teamed up with a guy in an ugly red and white striped shirt to hail a cab. He and a girl from the group he had gone out with went back to their hotel, and gave me more than enough cash to cover their part of the fare. (thanks, Red Shirt Guy!) We then continued back to my parent's house, where we collapsed into bed and pretty much didn't get up until the following afternoon.

In the end, it was an incredible night in my opinion. For the rest of Christine's visit we went out to eat, spend a fun day at the Carnegie Science Center acting like 7-year-olds, saw another couple laser shows (not as good as the ones over the summer, but still fun), and spent some much wanted time just sitting around the house spending time together. I've alluded to it before, but I don't think I've ever come right out on this blog and mentioned how much I love this girl. (Hai bb!) Next week we'll have been dating for a year, and I couldn't be happier.


However, one thing I'm not incredibly happy with is how long this post has become, and especially how late I have been up writing it! Time to sign off for tonight. Have a great 2009, everybody!

Whoops...

I seem to have inadvertently deleted the customized theme information for this blog...  Have picked one of the stock themes for now.  I think I have a backup... If not, I may be redesigning my blog sooner than anticipated!

Home for the Holidays

I got home late wednesday night.  Well technically thursday morning.  In any case, the lights were still on when I got home, which is more than Christine can say.  After the big storm that blew through New England on Thursday, there's still several thousand homes in upstate(ish) New York without electricity.  Four days later.  Kind of outdoes the should-be-more-of-a-surprise Comcast outage that greeted me when I got home.

She'll be coming to visit for New Year's, but since we're at our respective homes for Christmas, we exchanged gifts before we left.  I think she liked the necklace I got her:

Emerald, because it's her birthstone, and because it goes well with her eyes.  I suppose jewelry is kind of a typical boyfriend-present, but I think she liked it.  :-)

And I know I liked my present!

Yup - a legit Nintendo 64!  Just like the one on which I wasted so many hours playing Mario Kart 64 with Tony, Eddie and Kevin sophomore year!  My girlfriend is awesome.  Speaking of which, Christine also got me Star Fox,  a rumble pack, and... Mario Kart 64.  Goodbye, productivity!

And yes... I've already unlocked the "Extra" reversed versions of all the tracks in Mario Kart, and beaten Star Fox once.  Crazy freaking floating monkey head...  (Yes, I got the lame noob-Andross because I suck.  Don't judge me!!)

Now that I'm home, I've got lots of time to play video games and the like (already ordered Ocarina of Time on eBay...).  Although there are of course plenty of other things I should do.  Things like updating my resume, putting together a legit demo reel or two, and trying to do at least some networking before college cuts me loose in May...  (Aaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!)  I also think I'm going to revamp HanleyFilms.com yet again.  Present glitchy navigation aside, its hard to keep it really up to date when it's all hand-edited HTML, and Directionless has really shown me how much easier it is to maintain a site built on some sort of Content Management System.  Since I'm already helping transition DUQ FM's website over to a new, Joomla-backed design, now might be a good time to use Joomla to build a new  professional website for myself as well.  If I'm trying to make contacts in the Film/TV/Media/Computer/Gaming/etc market in Pittsburgh, having a well-polished web presence would kind of seem important.

Oh, and speaking of Directionless.  Damn.  I really need to get on that...

Back at SU... For a Week and a Half.

Thanksgiving coming so late this year has created a rather weird schedule for those of us going to college (relatively) far from home. I just got back to Syracuse last night, and I'm leaving for Christmas Totally-Not-Organized-Around-One-Religion's-Holiday Break next week on Wednesday or Thursday. In between, I have to do one final exam, two 2-page "memos," one 8-page creative history writing assignment, a presentation on the play "Art," and a 10-second-long 3D animation in Blender. And a few late-night shifts at the Newhouse edit suites. Fun!

Over thanksgiving, in addition to eating a large amount of turkey and stuffing, I also participated in the Black Friday shopping "experience." Didn't actually get going until "late" - after 6am. The parking lots were pretty crazy though. At the mall one guy almost backed right into us at a fairly decent clip, while we were distracted by the children trying to get run over on the other side. Needless to say the stores were swamped, though oddly Best Buy still had some 2 gig SD cards for $7 apiece left. So now I can take over a thousand pictures on my digital camera at a time. Or an hour of MPEG4 video. Wow.

I did get some of my Christmas shopping done, with presents for my dad and brother, as well as something special for someone special... :-)

But now I am back to school, and back to work. Boo.

Halloween 2008

This post will probably get pushed down by newer, more up-to-date stuff in the near future, but since it's over half a month overdue, I wanted to get it up.

Halloween this year was pretty fun. I actually knew what my costume was going to be way ahead of time this year, as opposed to my usual habit of having to come up with something days (or hours...) beforehand. And honestly, it's been pretty much inevitable since high school that I'd eventually do this one.

Yup. I finally did Smith.

In addition to being the one night in the year when my hairline was actually an asset, my costume also went together very nicely with Christine's:

And apparently, we weren't the only ones in a Matrix-y mood that night. On our way down the massive Clarendon hill to get to our intended party, we got a number of hoots and hollers of approval, until we saw one of the Twins in a very convincing costume. (Sadly, there was only one. Even sadder - I didn't think at the time to yell for him to stop and pose for a picture!) Once at the party, we also ran into a Neo upstairs. Surprisingly, there seemed to be very few Jokers and Sarah Palins out that night.

Overall it was a really fun night!

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on SNL

Pretty spot on, if you ask me.

I know this is all over YouTube, but hey: you can watch it here without worrying about NBC taking it down! Score!

MSNBC's Countdown - For Free on iTunes

These days, I get most of my actual news from the front page of NYTimes.com, or sometimes Reuters (mostly for Oddly Enough).  For television news and political commentary, I generally fall to the Stewart-Colbert dream team, or Countdown, Keith Olbermann's show on MSNBC.  (Hey, if republicans can sit while their eyes glaze over from Fox News, I think I'm entitled to a little of my own preaching-to-the-choir punditry!  Besides... Keith's wittier than Bill O'Reilly.)

Of course, I don't exactly mark my calendar to make sure I catch Countdown on TV.  To be honest, I don't even know its timeslot off the top of my head.  Which I was pleasantly astonished to find it in the podcast section of the iTunes Store.

Not just clips, or sound bites.  Video.  Of the whole show.

It's not perfect of course.  Mainly because each episode eats up about 220 meg on my hard drive.  My laptop hard drive with 20 gig free.  So, uh... don't think I'll exactly be archiving these things.  But it is impressive that they did this, if not entirely surprising.  Olbermann has long tried to stay on top of the "internets."

Of course, as always with these things, while I'm impressed and grateful to get this so conveniently (and so free!) I'm still a little confused as to the long-term business model of giving non-ad-laden stuff away on the internet for free.  Nice publicity stunt, but how far can you go with it?  Hmm.

As a side note:  MSNBC didn't exactly pick the most flattering picture of Keith there, did they?

The Wisdom of Calvin and Hobbes

“If life is just a stage, then we are all running around ad-libbing, with absolutely no clue what the plot is. Maybe that’s why we don’t know whether it’s a comedy or tragedy.”

- Bill Watterson

Google Experimenting With Customizable Search Results?

Today I noticed some new icons next to my Google search results...


Seems they're part of a trial "Edit Results" program Google is testing on a random selection of people with Google Accounts over a few weeks. They set up an informational page to explain it more.  This feature only applies to people who are logged in to their account when searching, and it only affects the result list of that particular user.

You can click on the Up arrow to promote good results to the top, delete bad ones altogether, and add notes about different results.

This seems like an interesting way to approach user-feedback-driven search, without actually making Google search results user-feedback-driven.  However, if they could figure out a more configurable way to do this (split into different "Search Sessions," perhaps?) I think it could actually be very useful when trying to do research online, especially with the note-taking feature.

My Room is a Digital Graveyard

It's really pretty sad. The truly depressing part is - this isn't even half the stuff. It's just the junk I'm currently trying desperately to get rid of!

Click the image for a larger view. Any or all of this stuff can be yours if you want it, just make me an offer. ("Free" counts as an offer. Ok, maybe not for the 350W power supply. That's still almost useful.) I'd just throw most of it in the trash, but I've got too much Liberal Guilt for that. (I mean, come on now.)

A list of this stuff as near as I can figure...

1. External 56K modem. Supposedly works with Macs or Windows 3.1/NT/95. Serial connection. Copyright date says 1998.
2. Stereo multimedia speakers. They sound pretty tinny, as I recall. Standard minijack plug.
3. Seagate IDE hard drive. About 150% as thick as most 3.5" drives. Doesn't list capacity, but I expect a few hundered megabytes...
4. Seagate IDE hard drive. 261.3 megabytes.
5. 2x Sun SparcStation IPC's. You can Google them. 25 MHz Unix workstations that should outperform most 50MHz Intel 486 PCs! They power on, but use an obscure monitor type that I can't find, and so I have no idea how well they work.
6. Sun keyboard, mouse, and monitor cable to go with one of the SparcStations. Also, a few little adapters that supposedly let you connect the boxes to a VGA monitor, but they only work with "sync-on-green" VGA monitors, which apparently none of mine are.
7. An ancient NEC 5.25" hard drive. Weighs a ton, and uses some sort of pre-IDE proprietary connection that hooks up to the attached 8-bit ISA card... The date on it is 1984...
   
8. Bog-standard 5.25" floppy disk drive. Nothing exciting or exotic here.
9. 90-watt AT Power Supply (came before ATX)
10. 350-watt ATX Power Supply (this is probably the only one I'd expect any decent price for, as it's still somewhat decent, and works fine)
11. Creative CD-ROM drive. Doesn't use IDE - I think it has to hook up to some sort of Sound Blaster card it was bundled with. No idea where said card is though...
12. Logitech "Scanman Plus Controller Board." ISA card. Copyright date is 1989.
13. Some sort of ISA sound card. Pulled from an old IBM Aptiva.
14. Lucent 56K modem. ISA card. (and the telephone cable to go with it! Awesome!!!!1)
15. Random old floppy cables, the kind that go to a 5.25" drive.
16. Actually, these two adapters are kind of neat, in an old-tech sort of way. They're used to hook up a 3.5" floppy drive in machines that were only designed to support 5.25" drives.
17. A Pentium I heatsink.
18. VEGA graphics adapter from 1986. 8-bit ISA card. Uses an older, pre-VGA graphics plug (looks like a serial port)
19. "ATI Mach 32" 2D video card. ISA card, normal VGA connector. I think its big selling point was it had an amazing 2 megabytes of VRAM... or something.
20. SMC network card from 1993. ISA card, does 10-baseT ethernet, or two different, obsolete networking connections (including one that appears to use coaxial cable...) This was actually the NIC that was in my machine when I first started playing CounterStrike and going to LAN parties...
21. Assorted F-ing RAM. All pre-DDR, mostly SIMM's (pre-DIMM)
22. A couple of standard CD-ROM drives. One of them is 52x! I don't remember if they work...

Most of this stuff should be functional. Or at least, it was functional the last time it was in a machine.

And like I said, that isn't even close to all of my older computer junk... It's just the really ancient crap I'm trying to get rid of, hopefully without it ending up in a landfill. I still have (including my normal everyday machines) 5 computers that will boot and run, a couple spare AMD motherboards and AGP video cards, 2 Palm PDA's... and a few assorted knick knacks:

New Comic Up at Directionless!

Bet you thought I wasn't going to get a blog post in for March, huh? Now that the pigs are already airborne, I'm going to turn down the thermostat in hell by announcing there's a new comic over at DirectionlessComic.com!

For those of you keeping score, yes, this is the first new webcomic out of me in over two years. (though why anyone would be keeping score is beyond me...) 

Newsflash: Computers Crash

It's pretty common knowledge that some people get as worked up over their computer's operating system as others do about, say, religion. (I mean, I really like Macs, but just listen to the caller at the beginning of this web-show where the woman on-screen is installing Vista on her MacBook Air. You want to cry...? My goodness...)

Sometimes, a little perspective is fun:



And I know some have tried to compare me to the caller in that first link. But, come on. As strongly as Final Cut Pro pulled me into the Mac universe, Portal still keeps me pretty rooted in Windows XP... :)

Update: Ok, this one's funny too!

21st Birthday!

Wooooooooo! 21!!!! Partaaaaaaaaay!!!!!!

Ahem.

Actually, with the big 2-1 falling on a tuesday for me, the traditional barhopping drunkeness may have to wait. (Though never fear! I fully plan on making up for it this weekend) Although I did have one drink (admittedly, one rather strong drink...) last night a bit after midnight. I had to. You know how it is.


And Christine made a cake! THANK YOU CHRISTINE!

Why Does Apple Have Such a Good Rep? This Might Be Part Of It...

It's no secret that Apple usually gets some of the highest marks for customer satisfaction among computer makers in places like Consumer Reports. But why is that? The value proposition is about the same these days, objectively anyway. And Macs certainly are just as capable of having major hardware mishaps as other manufacturer's machines - especially now that the Intel transition is complete and everybody basically uses the same guts.

So why do people love on Apple so much? A pretty GUI and elegant OS architecture don't make Customer Service any better. So what gives?

I offer this anecdote:

A couple weeks ago, my trusty, almost 3-year-old PowerBook G4 started having a few issues. Namely, Kernel Panics, the UNIX-y equivalent of the infamous Blue Screen of Death. Now, if your PC bluescreens, you just cuss Bill Gates (or Steve Ballmer, your pick) and reboot. On a Mac, if things manage to go this wrong... it means there's something wrong!

Long story short, some troubleshooting of my own narrowed it down to the RAM, and specifically, the actual RAM slots in the logicboard (Mac-parlance for laptop motherboard) as opposed to the sticks themselves. Bummer. Fortunately, this problem cropped up two weeks before my extended AppleCare warranty was set to expire. So I made an appointment and brought the machine in to the local Apple Retail Store, where the guy there confirmed the problem, checked with me to make sure I had everything backed up (I did) and shipped the machine off to the nearest Apple repair center. Zero cost to me, because it was all covered under AppleCare.

It was away for about a week, mainly because they don't keep a ton of spare parts for machines as old as mine on hand. The next week, I get a call.

"We have the machine back here... but it's failing our standard diagnostic test. It says here there's a problem with the VRAM. Now, it does boot, so if there's an immediate need for the machine you can come and pick it up, but I'd just as soon send it back and have them re-replace the logic board."

Ok, so that's kind of crazy... but hell, my AppleCare is expiring soon so yeah, by all means send it back until it gets a clean bill of health.

Another week passes, and I get a call.

"Ok, so the machine is still failing the diagnostic. So... there's two options I'm authorized to give you, but I think I know which one you're gonna take..."

I'm listening.

"First, we can order yet another new logic board, have it delivered here to the store, and install it ourselves to make sure it's done right, and hope that fixes whatever the issue is."

Or...?

"Or... we offer you what's called a CRU Exchange, which would be the closest replacement machine that is not lower spec'ed than your current one."

...meaning?

"You'd get a MacBook Pro."

Needless to say, I went with option 2! So in a nutshell, my computer started acting up, and now - at no cost to me whatsoever, - I'm going from this:

PowerBook G4 15.2-inch
1.67 GHz PowerPC G4
2 GB PC2700 DDR RAM (upgraded from 512 Meg originally)
120 GB ATA hard drive (upgraded from 80 GB originally)
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 - 128 Meg VRAM
2x DVD Burner

To this:

MacBook Pro 15.4-inch
2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2 GB PC2-5300 DDR2 RAM
120 GB SATA hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT - 128 Meg VRAM
8x DVD Burner

... Sweet. For comparison purposes, this is my current "gaming rig" PC tower:

AMD AthlonXP 3200+ @ 2.2 GHz
1 GB PC3200 DDR RAM
160 GB ATA hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 non-ultra - 128 Meg VRAM
DVD... reader.

In short, once I get this new machine (in a week or so.... whatever, I can wait) I'm going to be very interested in seeing how 3D Mark scores match up once I make a WinXP partition (ah, the convenience of Intel chips!).

In conclusion, if you ever wonder why Apple's customer loyalty is so high - stuff like this is a big part of it. Oh, and if you ever get a Mac, particularly a laptop.... get AppleCare!
Update: Corrected the spelling of "CRU." Apparently it stands for "Customer Replacement Unit." Pretty straightforward.

Webcomics!

I'll probably put something on Facebook once this stuff gets closer to reality, but I figure'd I'll mention it here first.

Longtime followers of my online activities will be familiar with the two webcomics I've worked on in the past: Medieval Mayhem, the borderline-8-Bit-Theater-ripoff sprite comic I made in junior high, and Directionless, the semi-autobiographical borderline-MacHall-ripoff I briefly made during my freshman year of college. After my life got a little too busy spring of freshman year, I abandoned that comic and haven't really done anything since. That's about to change...

One of the classes I'm taking right now is TRF414: Writing and Designing for Interactive Media. Turns out this class is mostly a "how to make web pages with Dreamweaver and HTML" class. Clearly, well below my ability level, and the professor knows this. So instead of sitting bored in class as we do things I've known about for years (this is a "tag") he's allowed me to basically turn the credits into an individual guided study sort of thing.

Directionless
For this class (and really, I think getting a grade on this will be pretty good motivation!) I will be bringing back Directionless. Instead of the clunky free hosting I had on Comic Genesis last time, I'll be getting the comic it's own domain, and piggy-backing on the server space for Hanley Films. I know some of my friends from high school (Halapy in particular... thanks for nagging!) liked to read the comic the last time I did it, and since then I've had several people here ask "why don't you do more of those - you should put us in it!" so there's plenty of reason outside of the TRF class to do this as well.

Plus, I don't have any film/video production classes this semester, and if all I do creatively is write, I'll go crazy!

The resurrected comic will follow the same format as before: semi-autobiographical, but probably about as loyal to the facts as the father in Big Fish... However, I will likely be the only returning character, since I don't really see much of the guys from my floor freshman year anymore. Instead, the new comic will focus around the group of friends I tend to hang out with now (don't worry - we're all plenty crazy too!)

The website will take a while to put together, since I plan on making it much nicer than my previous ones: probably a dynamic PHP site with a MySQL backend to make uploading new comics really easy once it's all running. Now, my previous experience with MySQL is approximately... none. So while that's all coming together, I can hopefully get a buffer of comics going so I won't miss as many updates as I've been known to in the past!

So, expect to see more on Directionless v.2 in a few weeks!

Medieval Mayhem
What? You thought I'd forget this classic? Though Medieval Mayhem only ran for 32 actual strips, and I don't really want to revisit making sprite comics, it was fairly humorous, and had a halfway decent following for what it was. (hell, the guy behind Elftor make a guest comic!)

Because of this, I'm looking into options for something my mother has been asking for for a long time - a printed book. I'm still looking into it, but it looks like if it happens, I can get a 34 or 36 page comic-book-style (saddle-stitch) full color printing without too much trouble. Unfortunately, unlike Directionless, Medieval Mayhem was put together at web resolution, so the DPI isn't as high as I'd like for printing, but there's not too much I can do about that.

I was thinking of pricing them at $5 a piece, and I'm very interested in how many people would be interested in one at that price. (Yes, obviously people who express interest to me early could get signed copies.... for whatever that's worth... which is probably nothing. Meh.)


So that's where things stand with me and webcomics. There's a lot coming up, so stay tuned!