Month: August 2001

Temptation!

by

Ooers…talk about a (potentially, at least) agonizing decision.

A while ago, a guy I was talking to online about dj’ing pointed me to a webpage advertising positions for DJ’ing aboard a Carnival Cruise Lines ‘Fun Ship’. I figured what the heck, and sent off an e-mail. Yesterday when I was checking my e-mail, I finally got a response, inviting me to call if I was still interested.

So, now comes the question. Seeing as how I just landed this position with Xerox/Andersen, and that I know they’d like me to commit to at least a year, do I stay with the safe bet with good future opportunities? Or do I chase a dream to see if I can get a spot on the cruise ships? Ergh…I’m at least going to call the number I was given to talk to the Carnival people to see exactly what the deal is — talking can’t hurt — but until I know more about it, I’m not sure.

It sure sounds like a great opportunity, though. Get a six-month contract to go tooling around on cruise ships to who knows where, and have a blast doing it. Here’s a blurb from the webpage linked above:

The Carnival Disc Jockey entertains in the Dance Club each evening and at private events. During the light of day, he can visit beautiful tropical ports, relax at any of the deck swimming pools, or exercise in the fully equipped health facilities.

Sounds rough, doesn’t it?

Well, there’s no way I can make a definite call until I talk to the people.

Suicide isn’t painless

by

I did want to take a moment before I went home to comment on the recent suicide attempt that has, apparently, been making national headlines (see Suicide attempt draws nation’s attention, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Aug. 30th; and Commuters’ mood turns ugly as suicide try snarls I-5 traffic, Seattle P-I, Aug. 29th).

Now normally, suicides — or suicide attempts — aren’t really newsworthy events (unless, of course, they happen to be by some already-noteworthy personality…and even then, I often question if it’s really that newsworthy an occurrence). However, this event has been garnering national media attention not because of the suicide attempt itself, but because of the depressingly horrendous way that people here reacted to it.

In a nutshell, an unidentified woman decided to at least appear to want to commit suicide during the Tuesday morning rush hour. Pulling her car to the side of the Ship Canal bridge, she got out her car and sat on the railing overlooking Lake Union 160 ft. below. Someone called the police who quickly arrived to try and talk her down, but by this point, the mood was already getting ugly. Someone sitting on the edge of a bridge is sure to draw attention, and the arrival of police officers drew more. As traffic was slowed by the gawkers, people frustrated by the slow pace started yelling at the woman, telling her to jump. Eventually, the comments and obscenities from the passing traffic were causing enough problems with the police officers’ negotiations with the woman that they found it necessary to close down I-5, causing a huge traffic jam in the middle of the morning rush.

About two hours later, the woman jumped. Surprisingly enough, she survived the fall into the lake, and was taken to a hospital, where her condition has gone from critical to serious over the past day.

The thing that gets me about all of this — and what has been getting to many people — is how horrendously people acted. When I-5 was closed down, it was not closed down because of the possible jumper. It was closed down because so many people felt that they had to insult and verbally abuse an obviously already distraught woman, to the point of purportedly yelling, “Jump, bitch, jump!” as they drove by. For a city that has an image of being one of the nicer areas in the northwest to live in, this seems to have taken quite a lot of Seattle — and the nation, from the ongoing stories — by surprise. It’s a sad commentary on things when something like this happens. A freeway full of people, and not one would pull over to try and talk to this woman, or to see if something could be done. Instead, they did their best to urge her on — because as she had the temerity to try to commit suicide in a public place during a high-traffic time of day (now, is it just me, or doesn’t that scream out “cry for help?”), she was inconveniencing them.

Right.

Anyway, there’s not much I can really add to the general onslaught of reaction to this travesty. I’m surprised and somewhat disheartened that it all played out like this, of course. It’s not at all what I would have expected to see happen. Hopefully the next time something similar happens (though, admittedly, it would be best if that weren’t to come to be), people will think a little less of themselves.

I’m not sure I’m too optimistic about that, though.

Kev, drama queens, and Bumbershoot

by

Okay. So what’s gone on the past almost two weeks in my little corner of the universe? Hm…lots of little bits and pieces. This may not be my most fully-fleshed out post, as I’m pretty tired, braindead, and ready to head home…but I wanted to get at least a summary up here, and knew that I most likely won’t make it here this weekend. So — here goes.

Work-wise, things are plugging right along. John (the gent I’m replacing) has left his post to bigger and brighter things within Xerox, so this was my first full week on my own in the printshop. I think I handled most of it fairly well…about my only real headache was dealing with end-of-the-month inventory today. John’s a great guy, but not the most organized out there, and trying to track down where everything is stashed took a bit. Anyway, last Friday was his last day there, and we ended up having a nice little office party towards the end of the day as a combination “Say goodbye to John and meet the new Xeroid” shindig.

It’s outside of work where things have been more interesting of late.

Kevin, me, Seattle, WAFirst things first — my bro was in town! Kevin’s fiancee’s parents had given the two of them a Suburban, on the condition that they get it to Alaska. Since Emily is off in Ghana, Africa with the Peace Corps at the moment, it fell to Kevin to fly to Tennessee, then drive the beast up the Al-Can to Fairbanks. On his way north he stopped off in Seattle for a couple days, and we got to hang out and visit Saturday and Sunday evenings. Was all sorts of cool — what with him being a back-woods hick and me being a big-city boy (grin), we don’t get to hang out all that often.

Most of the weekend we spent either wandering around the streets of Seattle or kicking back in the ‘porch’ area outside my apartment, talking, having a few drinks, and watching the world walk by. Was a really good weekend, and to top it off, Kevin was kind enough to spot me the $40 for a 4-day pass to Bumbershoot, Seattle’s annual music festival that will be going on this weekend. Should be very cool — take some time to poke around their website and see if they’ve got a schedule up…it’s just amazing how much is going on.

By far the most entertaining aspect of the weekend, though, was my next-door neighbor, Cody. While I’d known that he was a bit of a drama queen (it’s pretty obvious, really), things apparently got too out of hand for even him to deal with — and so he decided to skip town. So, this weekend I was treated to watching Cody kick in his own door when he forgot his keys, toss what little clothing he was taking into a few duffel bags, and bail to Hawaii (at least, that’s what he told us), leaving everything else in the apartment to be cleaned up and parted out by his friends. It was pretty entertaining, actually — and I managed to snag his futon off of him before he bailed, so I’m not sleeping on the floor anymore! It’s a full-size futon, and isn’t in the greatest shape in the world…but hey, it was free, and it’ll do quite nicely until I decide I want something better.

So that pretty much wraps things up for now. Oh, last Friday I did get a chance to see Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back — very funny, and a fitting end to this era of Kevin Smith’s career. This weekend, I’m off to Bumbershoot to see what can be seen…fun fun fun!

Laters….

A few more movies

by

I added three more DVD’s to the collection over the weekend. Here’s what they were:

The Black Cauldron: Based on a series of books I enjoyed as a child (The Prydain Chronicles, by Lloyd Alexander), this was one of Disney’s least successful animated films, but it always had something of a cult following, and was one of my favorites. Interestingly enough, the reasons that it failed are most likely the same reasons that I enjoy it — it is one of the few animated Disney adventures that is not a musical, and it’s more intense than most, to the point that it was Disney’s first (and, I believe, is still their only) animated ‘family’ film to earn a PG rating. It’s a good one, though, and this DVD was something of a revelation, as the original aspect ratio of this film is 2.35:1 — the really wide “scope” format. In other words, with the full-frame video that I’d had for years, I was literally only watching half the film! Only a few Disney animated films have been made with this aspect ratio, and I was very pleasantly surprised to find that this was one.

The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover: While not exactly a well-known film, this has been a favorite of mine for a few years now — and goes solidly in that classification of “oddball, screwed-up, disturbing” films that I enjoy so much. Much of the premise of the film can be inferred just from the title, but what that won’t tell you is just how visually stunning this work is. There are five major sets to the story, and each set has its own dominant color scheme to set the mood of the characters and action in that room — to the point that as the characters move from room to room, their costumes will change colors to match the theme of the room they’re in. Fascinating stuff, though not at all a movie for the masses — it was decried as pornography as much as it was hailed as genius when it came out. Ah, well…either way, I enjoy it.

From Dusk ’til Dawn: Just an absolute blast of a film. I’ll leave arguments as to whether it’s really “good” out of this — it’s a hell of a lot of fun, and that’s all I want sometimes. Besides, the first time I saw this (in the theater), I went in not having seen any previews for it, so the sudden change in tone halfway throught the flick caught me completely unawares…made for a very cool show. This edition of the disc is nice, too, as it is a two-disc set that includes a full-length documentary on the making of the film called “Full Tilt Boogie”. FTB’s just packed with fascinating stuff — as it’s an actual documentary, rather than just a 20-minute promotional fluff piece, it gives you a ton of detail on what it takes to make a film like this. Very, very cool.

Dub-yuh’s at it again

by

Okay, let’s see if I’ve got this straight.

Dub-yuh and his financial people take a look at the budget a few months ago and see that we’ve got an apparent surplus — $281 billion or so, $122 billion once we set aside a chunk for Social Security. He then introduces his famous tax cut/rebate program, which not only reduces the amount of money that the government will gain through collecting taxes, but sends a huge chunk of the surplus out to the American public (and I’m still convinced that this $300/person ‘rebate’ check was nothing more than a bribe to get his tax-cut package through as easily as possible — kind of a ‘spoonful of sugar’ technique, only with poison instead of medicine going down in the end).

Then, when the economy (as it is wont to do) does something other than as predicted in the most optimistic forecasts, the government suddenly realizes that it’s got a whopping $600 million surplus — instead of $122 billion — and is surprised?!?

Ah, well. At least I’m not the only one with tight finances these days. But at least I didn’t blow $121.4 billion dollars to get there.

Creative test answers

by

I know these things bounce around the ‘net from time to time, but I hadn’t seen this particular set before it made the rounds at work (I’m posting this from work on a quick break).

In any school district, one must give credit to the creative minds among us. These are actual test answers from various schools in the Huntsville, Alabama metropolitan area.

  1. Q: Name the four seasons.
    A: Salt, pepper, mustard, and vinegar.
  2. Q: Explain one of the processes by which water can be made safe to drink.
    A: Flirtation makes water safe to drink because it removes large pollutants like grit, sand, dead sheep, and canoeists.
  3. Q: How is dew formed?
    A: The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them perspire.
  4. Q: What is a planet?
    A: A body of earth surrounded by sky.
  5. Q: What guarantees may a mortgage company insist on?
    A: If you are buying a house, they will insist you are well endowed.
  6. Q: What are steroids?
    A: Things for keeping carpets still on the stairs.
  7. Q: What happens to your body as you age?
    A: When you get old, so do your bowels and you get intercontinental.
  8. Q: What happens to a boy when he reaches puberty?
    A: He says good-bye to his boyhood and looks forward to his adultery.
  9. Q: Name a major disease associated with cigarettes.
    A: Premature death.
  10. Q: How can you delay milk turning sour?
    A: Keep it in the cow.
  11. Q: How are the main parts of the body categorized? (e.g., abdomen.)
    A: The body is consisted into three parts — the brainium, the borax and the abdominal cavity. The brainium contains the brain, the borax contains the heart and lungs, and the abdominal cavity contains the five bowels, A, E, I, O, and U.
  12. Q: What is the Fibula?
    A: A small lie.
  13. Q: What does “varicose” mean?
    A: Nearby.
  14. Q: Give the meaning of the term “Caesarian Section.”
    A: The Caesarian section is a district in Rome.
  15. Q: What is a seizure?
    A: A Roman emperor.
  16. Q: What is a terminal illness?
    A: When you are sick at the airport.
  17. Q: Give an example of a fungus. What is a characteristic feature?
    A: Mushrooms. They always grow in damp places and so they look like umbrellas.
  18. Q: Use the word “judicious” in a sentence to show you understand its meaning.
    A: Hands that judicious can be soft as your face.
  19. Q: What does the word “benign” mean?
    A: Benign is what you will be after you be eight.
  20. Q: What is a turbine?
    A: Something an Arab wears on his head.
  21. Q: What is a Hindu?
    A: It lays eggs.

Pie, ghosties, scots, and naked girls (kinda)

by

Sunday rolls around, and another week has done and gone. Been a good week, though.

The work week was pretty uneventful, for the most part. It seems that the opinion is that I’m catching on to things rather quickly there, however. John (the person I’m replacing) has decided that this week he’ll only be working half-days, and will make this Friday his last day…then I’ll have the shop to myself. Pretty cool. I also talked with Shelley (my boss within Xerox), and the impression I got is that while I’m not using my DocuTech training at this position, there are good possibilities for that in the future. This was great to hear, as it makes it sound even more possible that I will be getting hired on by Xerox on a permanent basis at some point in the future. It may be a while before that happens — as I understand it, they’re currently in the midst of a hiring freeze right now — but with any luck, I might be officially part of Xerox sometime after the first of the year.

Earlier this week I went out to see American Pie 2. I’m not entirely sure why that ended up being my choice, as I am no great fan of the first one, but that was where I ended up. Pleasantly enough, it wasn’t that bad. I wouldn’t label it a classic by any stretch, nor will it be a ‘keeper’ for me when it comes out on DVD, however it was surprisingly funny in spots, and I ended up enjoying it much more than I did the first installment. Much of it was a rehash of the original, but it felt to me like it held together better this time around…more of a real story connecting the characters, rather than merely placing a bunch of misfits in screwball (and often disgusting) circumstances one after the other. And, I gotta say, Alyson Hannigan (as Michelle, the ‘band geek girl’), was great — stealing the film, in my eyes, at least. So, all in all, not as bad a film as I thought it might be.

I also went out Friday night for the midnight show of Poltergeist. Very cool…it had been years since I’d seen this film, and along with many other horror films that were beat to death with sequels, it’s always pleasant to revisit the original and see just how good it actually is. Probably very much due to the production (and uncredited co-direction) of Steven Spielberg, the film is much more along the lines of what I like to see in a horror film — a slow build that allows you to make some connection with the characters before things start getting freaky, followed by truly innovative ideas as these unexeplained events start affecting the family. Quite nice.

I’ll try and get around to at least moving these mini-reviews into the Movies section of my messageboard soon…kind of tired now, as I’ll explain in the moment, so didn’t do that part yet.

Saturday, I headed out with a full crew of people (Casey, Dez, Chad, Don, Karl, Tim, Jenny, and Wendy) to go see the Barenaked Ladies in concert out at the Gorge (a gorgeous [no pun intended] outdoor amphitheater by George, Washington). Casey had bought me the ticket before I had even made it down to Seattle as a ‘welcome to Washington’ present, which I thought was all sorts of cool. We all loaded into three cars Saturday afternoon, and undertook the roughly 3-hour drive to the Gorge. We eventually made it out to the campsite at Potholes State Park — apparently, it was the closest one available, even though it took us another 45 minutes or so after passing the Gorge to get to it — and set up camp there. Admittedly, it was a very pretty little campground.

After getting everything set up at the campsite, we packed ourselves into two cars, and headed down a quicker route back to the Gorge for the show. The way there was fascinating — currently, huge amounts of the state of Washington are on fire, and there were amazing clouds of smoke from the fires just 40 miles away or so in the sky. The smoke turned an otherwise clear night to a completely opaque murk. Just fascinating to see — and the smell of burning pine in the air was an added reminder that all this stuff wasn’t that far away.

Wildfire smoke, Barenaked Ladies trip, WA

We got to the Gorge during the first opening act (who, unfortunately, I can’t remember the name of), found a spot and got settled during her last couple songs. The second opening spot was The Proclaimers! All sorts of cool…though I’ve only ever picked up one of their albums (Sunshine on Leith), I’ve enjoyed their music since I first heard “1000 Miles” in the movie Benny & Joon. They played a short (or so it seemed to me) but very clean set, with a nice mix of songs, some that I recognized, and some that I didn’t. After a short break while the stage was slightly rearranged, BNL came on.

This show was great. While I’ve never known much of BNL before this (most of my exposure has been their radio tracks — ‘If I Had A Million Dollars’, ‘One Week’, and ‘Pinch Me’, all of which I’ve liked), so didn’t know many of the songs, these guys put on an incredible show. They obviously have a lot of fun with their music and their concerts, and spent a good amount of time between songs joking around and generally having a lot of fun (from the lead singer while relating a story: “We were celebrating Christmas. Sure, I’m Jewish, but we’re big fans of presents…we’re not big fans of a kind, benevolent God. We like the Old Testaments wrathful, vengeful God. So now we celebrate Easter, too.”) Bouncing back and forth between their songs, with frequent jaunts into random snippets of other music, plus three encores, the show was an absolute blast.

After the show ended at about 11:30pm, we all went back to the campsite, and ended up sitting up and talking until sometime after 2 in the morning. We started out just sitting and talking, still pretty jazzed from the show, then Karl, Casey, Tim and I got into a discussion covering everything from Economics to Politics to whether or not the human race is breeding itself into extinction, and didn’t realize how long we talked until someone actually thought to look at a watch. The night was absolutely beautiful, too — I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Milky Way as visible as it was last night.

This morning we all got up, slowly got ourselves ready to go, packed up, and headed back into town. Now I’m back at Casey’s just long enough to put this post up, then it’ll be time for me to head back to my apartment and crash out before it’s time for me to work tomorrow morning. Very good weekend, though…was a whole lot of fun, and a nice change from kicking around my apartment. So, this is it for now…until later….

A good view, a picnic, and naked women running up and down staircases

by

Okay – back to the weekend, and I made it back here to the ‘puters.

Most of the week has been pretty uneventful — amazingly uneventful, in fact. John — my trainer at work — was gone this week, training for his new position in Xerox, so there was a floater who’d worked in the Anderson XBS office before to help, since I’m not fully trained yet. As it turns out, I probably could have handled the week by myself, as the workload was slow to the point of being almost nonexistant. While it was pretty relaxing, and Loren (the floater) and I were able to chat a lot, it made for a really long, slow, boring week. Maybe a good thing, as I’m still learning the ropes, but not exactly very stimulating.

View from the Columbia Tower, Seattle, WA

During my lunch break on Friday, though, I hiked up a couple blocks to the Bank of America tower on 5th and Columbia. Seattle’s tallest building, at 1,049 feet above sea level it’s roughly twice the hight of the Space Needle, and is the tallest building (by number of stories) west of the Mississippi. 76 stories high, it has an observation deck on the 73rd story, and I decided to wander up and check out the view for my lunch. I’ve got to admit, it’s quite a view — especially on days like we’ve been having (more unusually gorgeous weather, Seattle is in the middle of a heat wave, with temperatures topping out yesterday at 87 degrees). I took a few shots, two of which are posted in today’s update.

View from the Columbia Tower, Seattle, WA

During the day Friday, I’d gotten a call from Shelley (my supervisor at Xerox) letting me know that there was a Xerox get together on the campus out in Tukwilla that evening that I was welcome to come to — even though I’m a temp — if I could show up. I figured I might as well…my schedule isn’t exactly full to bursting these days, and it could be good to meet some more people within Xerox. As it turns out, while I did meet a couple people, I also ran into Chris and Donna Bennet, who I knew from Anchorage. I’d worked with both of them at Kinko’s and at TimeFrame over the years — they were working at Kinko’s when I started there, each of them moved to TimeFrame before I did, then they left TimeFrame not long after I showed up there. They spent some time up in Fairbanks, then came down to Washington a while ago, and are both now working for Xerox. So the picnic ended up being a much more entertaining experience than I’d expected it to be.

That lasted until 9pm, then I grabbed the next bus back to Seattle, and got home around 10-ish. I spent the next couple hours working on a new mixsession, which came out pretty good. I can’t post it to my DJ propaganda page yet — rather than running my equipment into my computer, as I had before, I recorded directly to my MiniDisc recorder — but as soon as I can get it .mp3‘d, I’ll get it up. Anyway, just a bit before midnight, I headed out to the only movie I treated myself to this week — the midnight showing of Showgirls. Had a blast watching that…it’s a horrid film, but that’s a lot of the fun.

And that pretty much covers things for this week. Until next time….

Impressions of work, and lots of movies

by

Welp, after just over a week of nothing, I’ve finally made it back over here to update things again. Sorry about the lack of updates…but now that I’m back on a work schedule (Monday – Friday, 8am – 5pm), by the time I’m off work, bussing out to Ballard to dink around on the ‘puter isn’t the highest thing on my list of priorities. I’ve gotta admit, I’m going to be so incredibly happy when I can finally get all set up at my apartment and don’t have to do all this goofball running around anymore.

Work is going well. It’s been really interesting so far…a very big change from the prinshop environments I’ve worked at in the past (TimeFrame and Kinko’s). As XBS@Andersen, LLP (the official name for where I’m stationed) isn’t open to the public, but is the private printshop for Anderson, it’s much more focused than the more ‘anything-goes’ workloads I was used to. There are five or six primary styles of reports that I’ll be making that make up the majority of the work, plus whatever other copy projects the company comes up with, but it’s a lot more predictable. Definitely takes some getting used to…I’m not really sure if I can say if it’s better or worse, but it’s definitely different.

Seattle, WAOne thing’s for sure though — I miss my DocuTech! I got really spoiled by my years of working on that beast, I think. As this printshop is much smaller and has much more limited runs, they don’t have the high-end equipment I’ve been able to play with for the last few years. I’m back to working with analog equipment…and the digital copiers we have aren’t networked, so everything I work with is hardcopy. A big switch from the push towards all-digital (or at least as much as possible) that TimeFrame was working for. It seems like every time I turn around, with almost every job I do here, I’m seeing ways it would be easier and/or faster for both myself and the client if I had a DocuTech at my disposal…but at the same time, I know that the volume isn’t high enough to justify the expenditure that that would be. A shame…maybe if things go well I can talk them into networking the newer machines in so we can get some digital quality. Who knows? Since I’m still on temp status at the moment, though, I’m not going to start pushing for that just yet.

In other news…well, there isn’t really any other news. Now that I’m working again, I don’t have my days free to wander wherever I want, and I’m still not quite financially comfortable. I’m not in dire straits or anything, but I’m not to a point where I can drop money every time I feel like it, either. I’ve been killing a lot of evening hours watching movied rented from Blockbuster…however, I can’t remember quite all of them. Hrm. Let’s see&…ones I remember as being on the better end of things include The Million Dollar Hotel, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Gift, Snatch, Wonder Boys…What Lies Beneath was better than I expected…and I know there have been a few more, I’m just spacing on them at the moment. I also got to go see Dr. Strangelove (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) at the Egyptian’s midnight show last Friday. That was a lot of fun…more so because there were a few people near me who obviously had never seen it before, and it was great to hear people laughing at it for the first time. In a day and age when most people won’t be satisfied unless the newest and fanciest CGI graphics are splashed across the screen every fifteen seconds, it’s great to hear that there are still people entertained by a mid-60’s (?) black-and-white political comedy that appeals to the mind rather than being just pure eye candy.

So anyway, that’s about it for the past week. It may very well be another week before I get to another post, due to my work schedule. In the meantime, I’m going to keep working on figuring out what to do about getting my ‘puters over to my place so I don’t have to keep making this trek. Wish me luck!