Change of plans.

I'll be in Michigan in ten hours. Will update tomorrow morning. :)

Back up your stinking data!

Secret Weakness

84 Hours

That's right, three and a half days until I'm on the road. Oh yeah I should probably clarify - the boys producing the film I'm going to be AC'ing for in Michigan are paying me to drive myself and three friends all the way there and back. Even better than flying (to me, anyway.) What's better is that not only is everything paid for, gas, hotel, etc, I'm also getting compensated for wear/tear on the car. Basically I'm cheaper than a rental company because they don't need to pay for any kind of insurance fees. It's beautiful.

..

Lately, I've been drawing a million comics. Well, not a million. I've got five or six more that none of you have seen yet. Two of which I drew in the last ninety minutes at work babysitting the computer lab (Saturdays are the worst). As I write this, I'm wondering what sort of format I should adopt for releasing them. I know you all wish I could release two every day, but I'm not ready for that sort of commitment. ;) We'll see. Just know I don't plan on stopping any time soon.

Yesterday I took a trip to Borders after work and picked up a few CD's. Interpol's new album, along with Kaki King's latest and Leslie Feist's (from Broken Social Scene) awesome album, The Reminder. I think I prefer Let it Die over it, but she's still great. I was really disappointed that I couldn't find Set Yourself on Fire by Stars (Amy Millan - also from Broken Social Scene) in spite of Borders' computer saying they had it in stock. That stupid Harry Potter release turned thestore upside down, the clerk told me as I told her my troubles. Why Harry Potter freaks would mess up the music section, I have no idea. *sigh*

There's Truth in Paint in Pixels

What a wonderful feeling

I've decided that purposefully overpaying my credit card bill engenders quite possibly the greatest feeling I've had this summer. This afternoon, I opened my mailbox and found that dreaded envelope with the "Capitol One" logo on the front. Begrudgingly, I opened the statement to be reminded of last month's overpayment. Capitol One owes me sixty-eight cents! Joy!

In other news, I've been second-guessing myself lately concerning the film-trip to Michigan. All expenses paid for two weeks. Sounds like a dream. On the other hand, Josh, my fellow student-worker pal is also going to be taking those same two weeks off for different reasons. Robert, one of my supervisors, has jury duty on the 8th. Basically, the Helpdesk would only have two people to run it for the second week of August, with no student workers. I've been prodded by some graduated friends of mine. Every one of them is telling me to go for it - I'm never going to get a chance like this ever again. It only happens once that this sort of expense-free opportunity comes along. I'm going to Michigan.

Changing the subject - You've probably noticed the three comics I've posted in my blog. I haven't really talked about them, I'm just sort of throwing them out there. *shrug* I got bored, and stupid ol' msPaint is so... old, but fun. Hehe, that "BFF" picture of Matt on my Myspace was a result of being awake for far too long. I was really bored. I'm going to try and keep the dumb comics coming along though - even if some people either don't get it, or don't even think they're funny. I enjoy it. :)

Alright, it's time to wrap things up. Only 20 more minutes of work! Hehe. I'm shouting out to everyone subscribed to my blog. I've got around nineteen people subscribed right now (including my MySpace blog, since I mirror there), which is actually down two from last week (One is out looking for direction in the wrong place right now, and the other probably just got annoyed of seeing all these unfunny blog posts.) So to everyone subscribed, cheers. And if you're keeping a regular blog and I'm not already subscribed, let me know. I'm usually pretty good about keeping track of it on my own, but I'm also very careless at times. Hopefully I'll come up with another moderately funny comic by tomorrow night.

Until then, cheers.

Number Three

I reworked this one a bit. It should make a little more sense now. ;)

How to choose an operating system...

A little flowchart I drew up while babysitting the computer lab at work this morning...

I've resorted to circle graphs...

I've had it with trying to put people in boxes. They're much easier put into circles...

I blame Mr. Park for making us use these dumb things in 9th grade English.

I can has light!

Genesis
LCV (LOLCat Version)

1In teh beginning, Invisible Man make univerz. 2Invisible Earth wuz invisible. 3Invisible Man say, "I can has light." Gots light. 4Light iz good, iz not dark. 5Invisible Man can has day and nite. It be furst.
6Invisible Man can has expanz. 7Below expanz iz water. It happen. 8Above expanz he call 'sky'. It get dark, then lite: nex day.
9Invisible Man can has water over here, no water over ther. It happen. 10"Not water iz 'land'. Water iz 'seas'. Iz good.
11Invisible Man say, "I can hasvegitashun." It happen. 12Land has lots of vegitashun, all kindz. Iz good. 13It get dark again, then lite: day tree.
14Invisible Man say, "I can has big lite in day, small light in nite." 15Teh Earth gots light. It happen. 16Invisible Man make big lite in day, small light in nite. He make starz, too. 17They go in sky. 18It good. 19It get dark again, then lite: day fore.
20Invisible Man say, "I can has fish n' birdz." 21Fish go in water, birdz go in sky. It good. 22Invisible Man say, "Make lots little fish and little birdz. Fish make fish in water; birdz make birdz in air." 23It get dark again, then lite: day fife.
24Invisible Man say, "I can has aminulz." It happen. 25Invisible Man make kitteh n' cowz n' snakes n' stuff. Iz good.
26Invisible Man say, "I can has man that look like me." He rulez. 27Invisible Man make man look like him, boy and gurl. 28Invisible Man tell man, "Ur in mai Earth, pwnz0rz mai aminulz." 29And u eats fruitz. 30Aminulz eats greenz.
31Invisible Man saws creayshunz, iz good. It get dark again, then lite: day sicks.

2 Teh heavenz n' teh Earth wur done. 2Invisible Man finish on day sevn. He rest: Caturday! 3Invisible Man make Caturday holy 'cuz he no work.

Adam n Eve

4This wuz how teh Heven n teh Earth wuz made. When Invisible Man creat dem, 5der wuz no rain n no man. 6Then water cames. 7Invisible Man make man from durt. He breath on man. Man can has life.
8invisible Man can has Garden o Eden. Man goes in Garden. 9Invisible Man made treez that look purty n taste yummy. Garden can has in middle, good tree n bad tree.
10A river goes out of Garden fore wayz. 11One way is Pishon: it go thru Havilah, land o gold. 12(Gold iz good. Ther is pearlz n onyx, too.) 13Two way is Gihon: it go thru Cush. 14Tree way is Tigris: it go bai Asshur. fore way is Euphrates.
15Invisible Man put man in Garden o Eden to wurk ther. 16Invisible Man say, "U can eats from any tree--17but not good-bad tree 'cuz u will has death."
18Invisible Man say, "Iz not good for man to be 'lone. I make helpur."
19Invisible Man made kittehs n birdz. He take aminulz to man so man can name dem. What man call aminulz, that wuz name. 20Man name cowz n birdz n kitteh, but he does not have helpur. 21Invisible Man make man tired......

Hehe, so if you know nothing about LOLCatz, you're a lost soul and have little hope of appreciating a good dose of one of the internet's greatest inside jokes. What you just read was an excerpt from the LOLCat translation of Genesis posted by Ted at NotABlogTM.com. If you have any hope of getting caught up, click on those two links I just gave you and play catch up.

Enjoy your Caturday tomorrow.

I've been waiting for this

Too excited to explain it in my words, here's the email peppered with my explainations [in brackets]:

Here's the deal, we got a pretty big epic film that's happening in Michigan for 2 weeks in August, called "Ice Shield of Alethia." Stephen Allison (Robin Hood) is directing it and I'm [Peter Borrud] shooting it. I just got back tonight from weekend trip in Michigan for tech scouting with the film and it looks like the film is gonna come together. However, we're still in need of some more crew.

First though, here's some more details about the film.
- Current Bud get $30,000 (not prospective, but current).
- We're shooting on HD, with 2 F900's, including 2 Fujinon zoom lenses (one is an E series which was used on Star Wars Episode III, and Sin City).
- Wherever you are in the U.S., we'll fly you out to Michigan and back. You will also have a place to stay and will get free food of course. So its sort of like a vacation, depending on how you look at it I suppose.

- The story is a fantasy film, and will not be owned by Biola, so it does have a potential to make a profit and go elsewhere (maybe even Blockbuster someday).
- We have a professional fight choreographer working on several of the action scenes in the film, involving things like: swordfighting, setting someone on fire, cable fighting, horse wrangling, and pretty much a lot of other things I probably don't even know about yet (he knows a lot basically).

- And we hope that this will be a dang fun project to work on. There's already several other cool people working on it. Some of them include: Abe Sherman, Melissa Cobb, Aaron Smith, Ricky Norris, Dan Parris, and a few other possible people right now. And yes, we will have a 2nd unit director as well.

- Dates: From Shoot to Wrap 8/4-8/17 (before school starts of course).

Here's What we need still:

- Key Grip
- 2nd Unit Gaffer/Key Grip
- Best Boy
- A and B Camera Operators
- B Camera - First Assistant Camera [<--- me]
- 2nd Assistant Camera [<--- or me]

I'll talk more about this later. Just thought you all should know.

Redesign

I've been doing some rennovations in my personal blogosphere on MySpace and my actual Blogger site. It's purdy. I miss green. Green is definitely one of my top two main color themes on site design. Cameron's old site CommunityForums.com no longer exists, but I think it had one of the best themes ever. *sigh* I miss those podcasting days too. For those of you who know me more recently (or even some of you who have known me forever and just never heard) I used to participate on podcasts on iWouldntDoThat.com on a weekly basis. Then we all got busy and the site broke down. It was fun while it lasted though - gave us all something to do. Cameron, Max, Jeremy, and I made a pretty decent band of hosts. Cameron and Max subsribe to my blog, so guys, we should pick up where we left off. :)

Enough daydreaming. I got off work about an hour ago. Saturdays are the most boring day of the work week. The regular helpdesk is closed, just the lab is open - meaning that for six hours I babysit a freezing cold room full of computers while one or two people filter through every hour. I typically take advantage of the situation by popping in a movie or playing games on the laptop. What's worse is when someone has a problem and they need help (I'm afraid to say this, since that's the sole reason why I'm even at the helpdesk on Saturdays!) Typically I'll go for the entire day without a single walk up, so I expect nothing more.

There is a fine line between relaxation and busyness that I absolutely dread dwelling in. I'll elaborate: During regular hours (8-5, M-F) it's easy to stay super-busy especially over summer since there's a TON of preparation work for the Fall semester. After hours work, when half of my 40 hours a week are spent, usually constitutes of semi-lucid staring at my laptop as the hours drearily poke me in the side, reluctantly passing like kidney stones. The on/off combination of both environments kills me.

On a Saturday afternoon, not a soul may have been seen for hours and then suddenly, without warning, someone will approach the desk. In anticipation of a question, I'll take my headphones off and nod in awknowledgement. Typically the problem is simple - "I'm having trouble printing," "What are your hours," "You're really cute, we should go out for coffee sometime." You know, typical stuff I generally hear every day being the techie hawtness I am. Really, I just like saying "hawtess."

Sometimes though, on a rare occasion, a completely off-the-wall problem will arise to an unsuspecting student. The question comes to me, and like being shaken out of unconsciousness at 3am in the morning and asked what the capitol of Wyoming is, I stare, blink, swallow, blink, "I'm sorry, what?"

This is my job on Saturdays. Such is my life.

Why I love xkcd...

All my life I've been subject to punny phrases from my oh so moderately hilarious father.  Unfortunately, most of his humor has rubbed off on me.  Perhaps such is the cause of my uncontrollable laughter at the sheer brilliance of xkcd.com:

Today's to-do list:
1.)  Escape from work.
2.)  Stare at cell phone.
3.)  Escape from consciousness.

Yep, lots of escaping and staring for me.  Delightful.

The Ultimate Question

"The iPhone does everything, but will it blend?"



I take pride in the fact that I am more excited about the release of this video than that of the iPhone.

Growling at the Computer

Grrrr... Biola's server has been down for the past three days now - which is the cause of my background, a couple of pictures, and the music player on my Myspace profile not loading. It's got me edgy since I have files on there that I desperately need to get to a friend soon.

What an opener, just brilliant. In other news, Matt and I went to Oakland this afternoon to watch the A's suck at baseball from $40 seats. The weather was the only thing great about the whole thing... and the food, naturally. I also bought me a new A's hat, since I lost my old one about a year ago now. *Sniff* My favorite hat is gone and I don't even remember where exactly I lost it. Sad days.

The strangest thing occured to me this morning. As I was driving to Matt's house this morning, I saw some Jehovahs Witnesses doing their bi-monthly door to door evangelism routine. They stopped coming to my family's house years ago after my dad got in a 90 minute debate with one of the leaders that left in the Witness screaming at the top of his lungs at my dad, and my dad requesting that they never come to our house again. Hehe, I remember it like it was yesterday. Anyways, sidetracked. Where was I? Oh yeah - as I saw the JW's doing the rounds, I called my mom and gave her a head's up, momentarily forgetting that we're on the "Don't" list. After I hung up, I began a personal evaluation of myself, and why I lack this conviction that they seem to have. Why have not I made it routine in my life to constantly profess God's love to those around me?

One thing I know as a fact: not many people who do not consider themselves to be "religious" or "God-fearing" react positively to evangelists. I don't know, maybe they feel like it's some sort of "system" and they're just turning into another number as these people go door to door converting people. It makes sense. So here is personal goal for me now: Once or twice a week, I'm going to seek out a complete stranger during my daily routine and just ask if there's anything they would like me to pray about. No strings attached. Actions speak louder than words.

Ha, so read the first paragraph again and tell me - did you even have a remote idea about where this story was going? I sure didn't ;)

Blowing Things Up

First man made fire. Then man made boom. Not too long after man made boom, man put restrictions on who can use boom. The 4th paid no respects to such rules. On Wednesday, I made boom. And it was good. All day I hung out at Meenk's house with the Andersons, the Kennedys, and the Hudgins families (the usual group). The day had a few highlights - one of which being Kyle acting out a near-perfect cherade of the phrase "naked chef." Even better - while everyone else was laughing their heads off, Karen Anderson took a few snapshots on her phone. Yup, when Kyle gets married, those pics will definitely be in the slideshow. After sunset we got to lighting the goods off. Now, there are only three fireworks that I buy in California. Fountains are worthless to me. They do nothing. The only fireworks worth buying are as follows: Picolo Petes, Ground Bloom Flowers, and Crackle Balls. Most famous for the ease of manipulation are the Picolo Petes. A couple whacks at the bottom section with a hammer to a Picolo Pete, and you've got yourself a regular firecracker on steriods. Hammer the bottom then wrap it tight in duct tape, and you have one doubly so. Not too many people know how to abuse Ground Blooms past chucking them into the air. My discovery is really tedious and tricky, but when it works, it's well worth the ten duds before it. Basically, one needs to take two Ground Blooms and tape them (or crazy glue) them together, side by side with theier fuses on opposite ends and sides respectively, with a slight tilt downward. This gives them an improved spin while also generating lift as the slight tilt towards the ground accelerates them upward. Even more difficult than taping them together at the right angle is getting both fuses lit at the exact same time. I've had quite a few work well, floating a few feet in the air. One time, I did something just right and it shot upward reaching about fifty feet in the air before it died out. Most of the time it's a complete failure. Sometimes they'll spin in circles, other times they won't spin at all, just burn out like a flame on a sparkler sitting on the ground. My favorite rig, next to hammering Picolo Petes, is taping Crackle Balls shut. In case you're not familiar with them, Crackle Balls typically come in six-packs for around two bucks. You light the fuse, toss them into the street, and the green plastic ball bursts open and an instance of crackling sparcs explodes for a fraction of a second. Left alone, the area of sparks is fairly contained to where the ball landed. Once taped shut, the ignition inside the ball has to push much harder to get the pieces to come unstuck. Once that amount of pressure is met, the effect is launched from the ball just like an aerial shell, covering a diameter of about ten to fifteen feet instead of a measly two. Of course, the best fireworks are the ones brought in from out of state, but I don't live near the border, so that was out of the question for me. Oh well. It's much easier messing with the stuff that's for sale right down the block anyway. What amazes me further about this 4th of July, was that the more "cracking down" the local police departments try to do on people using illegal fireworks, the more people smuggle them in and light them off. Seriously, California's "Safe and Sane" skies easily matched those of any aerial-legal "Go Ahead, Blow Your Arms Off" state. Honestly, I think the entire issue at stake here is about money. I wonder how much revenue is generated each Independence Day from illegal posession fines. Wow. I'm awake at 3:30 in the morning blogging about fireworks. This is lame. Goodnight.

Don't fall asleep at the baseball game

True Love

My roommate and his girlfriend are breaking all rules when it comes to conventional dating.
They're playing WoW.
Together.
He's at his desk.
She's on the couch.
Neither of them have said a word for the past five minutes.
Nothing says true love like slaying orcs in cyberspace.

But hey, who am I to criticize? I don't even have a girlfriend.