I have yet to sort through the mountains of photos on my digital camera left over from my trip to DC. Most of them were taken walking around the Mall and museums in the crowds and heat and humidity, and I’m afraid that the later it got in the day, the punchier I became and the more I just pointed my camera randomly and hoped for an interesting shot.
Unfortunately, the best parts of my week barred me from taking photos, so I have no sharable record of them.
First, I went to see the Senate in session on Monday. Not only do they ban photos, but they confiscate all electronics on the way in, just in case.
It was the first day of the Sotomayor hearings, but I got there way too late to see that. Instead, I saw Carl Levin (D-MI) rail against the procurement of F-22s in a room that was empty except for staff, pages, and a late-arriving John McCain. I listened to Levin read letters from Obama and Gates into the record for over half an hour before leaving. Sure, it’s not as exciting as a Supreme Court nomination, but it was still important enough for the Washington Post to write it up.
Then, yesterday I finally got into Mecca itself as I attended a taping of The Daily Show. The episode aired last night, with guest HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (who mostly stuck to talking points rather than answer Jon’s questions). Such a strange feeling to finally be in the studio after watching the show, almost without fail, four times a week since 2002.
Cameras and cell phones were allowed inside only if they were turned off the whole time. A few people snapped photos of the set on the way out, but I just left instead. Once I get around to organizing my DC Tourist/Fugue State pics, I’ll post a link here.
I went on my first hike with the Appalachian Mountain Club on Sunday. I chose one of the shortest and easiest hikes available in their schedule (6 miles, moderate pace), yet afterwards I was still exhausted, hungry, and sweaty, with sore feet.
I think what I enjoyed most about the day was using my camera and looking for shots that might be interesting. I just put up a Flickr group for the day’s photos. This one is probably my favorite, since I was lucky enough to get the bee in the shot.
Things I will need the next time I do this: arch support inserts, especially for my left foot; a proper backpack with a chest strap; an actual lunch rather than hoping snacks will last me for 6 hours; a hat and poncho, even though I was lucky enough to avoid rain this time.
The news is out there, so there’s no reason not to comment on it: yesterday, I survived a rather drastic round of layoffs at work.
Three years ago, CourtTV was split into In Session (daytime court coverage) and truTV (nighttime reality/documentary shows). Now the Turner mothership has decided to run In Session directly, meaning some positions will be eliminated as of November while others will vanish from New York and re-appear in Atlanta. According to this, either “up to 65″ or “around 100″ jobs will be cut from the NY location, out of a workforce of 300+.
Yesterday afternoon, the major department heads called mandatory, all-employee meetings on short notice, a little over an hour in advance. They explained what was going on and told us that by the time we returned to our desks, we would have emails saying whether we were laid off or not.
My job has almost nothing to do with In Session, so I’m still here. However, the press release includes this bit:
A second change involves a restructuring and new identity for truTV’s marketing efforts. The newly formed Brand Strategy & Marketing umbrella will include the Digital Content & Multi-Platform Development group, formerly the online group. truTV’s affiliate marketing activities will move to Atlanta, which is the base for the overall affiliate marketing team for truTV’s sister networks, TNT, TBS and Turner Classic Movies.
I’m in the Web Services group, not Online, technically, but we’ll still have to see whether this affects us in the future.
I’ve fallen behind on keeping track of the latest MST3K DVD releases, but I’m pretty sure Shout Factory’s cover design strategy can best be described as “Screw It, We Give Up:”
To be fair, I’ll buy ‘em anyway, won’t I? Besides, the extras are a lot better on these volumes than on the Rhino releases.
By now, everyone’s seen the big E3 presentations about Project Natal and Milo (Crown Price of the Uncanny Valley, who will someday become sentient and wipe out the human race) and the like. But here are the real items of interest for me:
1) The game generating the biggest buzz from game critics isn’t a big expensive high-tech shooter, but Scribblenauts for the DS. You solve puzzles by writing words using the stylus, which the game then conjures into the gameworld — and if you can think of it, the designers have probably included it and made it interact with everything else. Scribble “Cthulhu?” It’s in the game. “Keyboard Cat?” In the game. Want to see God fight a Kraken? It’s in the game. It looks amazing, and I can’t wait for its October release. Official trailer is here.
2) Telltale Games is singlehandedly bringing back the adventure gaming pleasures of my misspent youth. In addition to Sam & Max and Wallace & Gromit, they just announced new monthly episodes of Tales of Monkey Island starting in July, bringing back most of the voice cast from Curse. The downside? It’s only available for Wii and PC, meaning I’d have to either buy a Wii or a new PC to replace my 3.5 year old laptop to play it. (Or Sam & Max Season 2. Or Strongbad. You’re killing me here, Telltale…)
On top of that, LucasArts is re-releasing Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition this summer as well — to XBLA, so I can play it. Finally, a Lucas special edition I can get behind. I’ll happily re-live that part of my high school years in widescreen hi-def. (But only that part, mind you.)
Hey, you! Do you like the Evil Dead movies? Do you wish Sam Raimi still made crazy horror-comedy-cartoons? Well then, get thy sorry butt-cheeks to Drag Me to Hell while it’s still in theaters. Because, seriously, only the old-school fans are gonna love it.
Also, how in the world is this movie NOT rated R, when Evil Dead 2 went unrated for fear of getting an X? Have we — and the MPAA — seriously become so jaded that demons, blood geysers, and flying eyeballs merit a PG-13?
Yesterday was the semi-official fifth anniversary of this blog. It went live days before my first-ever visit to Seattle and Vancouver, BC. Before three cross-country moves, before migrating from MovableType to WordPress and from my old web host to Dreamhost… before a lot of things.
And the state of the blog today? I’ve almost stopped updating it altogether. Presently, the first 10 posts on the front page go all the way back to mid-March, which is still less dead than a lot of personal blogs, but would have embarrassed me when I first started out and was writing something — anything — here almost every day.
Why have I stopped?
Partly, since Internet years are even longer than dog years, this site is roughly the equivalent of this. New toys become old toys, and the compulsion to keep playing naturally fades, especially as shinier tech like Facebook passes them by. I’m linked to practically everyone I know there, so it’s easier to update my status if I have news to share or just want to remind people I’m alive.
Partly, I don’t have as much time as I once did. Work has been too hectic lately to goof off and write blogs, and my hourlong commute cuts into the rest of the day.
And partly, life isn’t going all that well for me these days, either at work or at home, and I tend to not write when I’m unhappy. I’m not the type to publish my personal life in a public space (at least I’m not anymore), yet I get too distracted by my problems to blog about much of anything else.
So what should I do with this place? Since Facebook has blogging capabilities and a larger (and controllable) audience, I’m tempted to just keep everything over there. On the other hand, I still use my front page every day as a control panel and convenient link collection, so I want to keep it around. Whatever I decide to do with the blog, thank you for reading it.
My knee-jerk reaction based on the first trailer turned out to be more right than I thought: Star Trek very much reminded me of the reboot of Doctor Who. It ramped up the action and enthusiasm so much that you didn’t care that the plot was a collection of massive coincidences and hand-wavey technobabble. (Although to be fair, Trek practically invented hand-wavey technobabble as a plot device.) Several characters had David Tennant Moments where they ran around excitedly being brilliant.
