So the week was pretty busy, but standard as far as a work week goes. I am now totally setup at work and busy coding away.

This Saturday was a real treat since I got to go up and visit my aunt "Sugie" and cousin Annie, and I must admit that they are a couple of the most fun people to be around. So I drove up and met up with them on Saturday and we had a good time relaxing and doing little chores around the ranch. We also got to watch the the turkey's flock to roost for the night, which is a pretty amazing spectacle. We had prime seats too, so the turkey's actually flew right over our heads ... wow 8-)

Michael also came and joined us for some dinner and surprisingly a little karaoke. Singing has never really interested me that much, but I must say that we ended up having a really fun time. Then somehow Annie and I got into a heated debate over the whole Iraq issue, which was really good because she is much better educated about it than I am, so I got some good info.

Today I dropped Annie off at the airport for her flight home and have just been doing some stuff around the house and making sure that everything is ready for my trip to Chicago on Tuesday. I am really juiced about the trip. Its gunna be a blast. Next entry will be from the windy city.

-- AG

I feel like a rabid dog. Its pretty exciting since it is my first week at work, but then to compound my newly demanding work schedule I have to take care of everything while my parents are in Cabo this week. And then of course adding more fuel to the fire is the fact that nothing has been setup for me at work, so I don't have an actual badge or account to login and use a system and email. So this means that I have to be chaufered around by someone anytime I want to leave the building, yay!

Then whats funny is that on only my second day I pretty much sat in meetings all day. I quickly began to wonder how people manage to get anything done when so many people seem to be in meetings all the time. Eh, who cares, I write code, meetings are for other ppl :)

I am also a little stressed about my project, because I found out that the timeframe for my portion of the overall project is due to be completed by mid to late April. So with my being gone in Chicago for almost a week, that is going to give me a grand total of about 3 weeks to implement a rather important project. No fear though. heh.

Well, this should be fun.

-- AG

I have been working on lots of programming stuff for the web site lately, but finally this weekend I began to step back away from that and work toward spending a little more time reading, writing, and drawing. I like doing all the technical work, but its good to have a balance. Besides, I'll be starting work on my new contract this week and so I'll be spending plenty of time programming all day long.

I've also found that I have gotten a bit better with my drawings, mostly in the sense that I can now achieve results that are closer to my intended image. This is enormously gratifying, because the single greatest deterant to learning how to draw is seeing exactly how bad you suck. Maybe this is why most artists start as children and only make it if they draw their whole life, that way when they suck the most they are just kids and don't really give a shit. As adults it is much harder to stay motivated when you have lackluster performance and improvement takes so long. Anyways, I have stuck with it off and on for a while now, and I am happy to notice some positive changes.

I'll rest with that thought for tonight.

-- AG

I was thinking today. yeah.

What the hell am I really supposed to be doing with all my time? I really try not to be the lazy ass unemployed bum who sits around all day watching tv, or whatever useless activity you can think of. Luckily I have had different projects for my website that I have been working on, but during the times I am off my computer I almost feel lost. This is complete and utter tyranny for me. I feel like my computer almost commands me.

Now, that being said, despite the ruthless rule of my computer I do try and participate in other activities. Reading and drawing being the most noteable, followed up by movie watching, which I enjoy most but try not to make too habitual. This weekend, Ralph Bakshi may have sparked the flame that will lead me beyond this oppression. He said, "It doesn't matter if the animation is good, just get your ideas out there." He was talking directly about cartooning, but the motto holds, "don't let a little think like drawing skill get in the way of getting your ideas down." I think this is extremely pertinent.

I do not fear failure as much as I fear lack of trying, but fear of either can be paralyzing.

-- AG

The weekend was pretty packed with events including: City of God, Coonskin and Bakshi Maverick Spirit Award, Dinner and Bowling, and paintball.

Friday night I went to go see City of God, which was unnerving in a good way. Review is up. Then on Saturday I went with my dad to see a special screening of Coonskin followed by an interview with Ralph Bakshi. I must say that the film was pretty incredible and Bakshi himself was very interesting. He truly was revolutionary when it came to animation.

We began Gun's birthday celebrations Saturday night with dinner at Pedro's followed by some late night bowling. It was fun to see everyone together having fun, and Gun, Heather, and I sure had our share of drinks. I ended up spending the night at Gun's place and then getting up to go paintballing with everyone the next morning. I liked the last paintball course we went to a little better because it was more interesting, this course was just too simple. But of course we had fun, and I am just proud I of the round I made it on the fire truck and Panos rushed everyone and surrendered 3 or 4 people.

good times.

-- AG

Fortune forsake me this afternoon when I had a problem with my monitor and thought it had gone bad. So I hooked up a different monitor and everything was working fine again. Eventually I decided to give my normal monitor one more try to see if it was just a fluke, and behold, it worked again, but at a costly price. For some lame reason switching the monitors froze my computer and I was forced to, oh dare I say it ... *whisper* reboot */wisper*

It is certainly good that my monitor still works, but there goes my 80 days of uptime.

I finished up the portrait I had as homework for my life drawing class and decided to post a 3 pic series of the progression of the drawing. All the info about it is available in the "art" section, which has been pretty dead for a while now.

Saturday night I was over at Justin's new place for a little welcoming party. Nothing fancy or formal, just a relaxing get together amongst friends. The place is pretty much perfect, especially for the rent they pay. After drinks and food we were all just relaxing and conversing until we decided to play "Battle of the Sexes." The game was pretty fun most of the way, until the end when everyone started getting tired and the game seemed to drag on a bit. Unfortunately, the game is rather crappy and really provides little more than supposedly sexist trivia questions.

Sunday started out pretty slow after getting home around 3 and then waking up around 12. I spent a while working on a drawing assignment for my class then met up with Justin, Tim, and Adam to see Cradle 2 tha Grave.

As of right now I am just waiting for some paperwork to go through before I begin my new job. Then I'll finally be able to pick up some of the toys I have been thinking about getting lately as well as some nice new anime to watch.

So I gave the site the 'ol once over and dabbed some content here and there. Slowly but surely its coming around and things are starting to fill up. I added a bunch of cool stuff about my system over on the engineering page, as well as putting up some bare bones versions of the stub galleries. I think I will increase the resolution on the stub picture size though ... right now they are a little to small to see clearly.

Next I'll be reformatting the Journal and simplifying it a little. I also need to start adding stuff for the art galleries, which I will hopefully get around to trying out this weekend. I would also like to do a bunch of little graphic work all over the place, just to add the nice little details that really brighten up the place, but right now its just not a priority. Anyways ... there is obviously still lots to do.