This will do

All right, spent a few hours fiddling with the template this morning and I have the blog in a decent condition.

I don't now if there will ever be quite enough control for my taste - I feel the need to be able to tweak every little element.

The fact that apostrophes and quotes are interpreted just fine by some of the 'gadgets' and interpreted as garbage by others (like 'Recent Comments') is truly vexing. Am I the only one troubled by stuff like that? Should I accept that formatting online will never be perfect?

I have a placeholder Flickr thing going, only about ten pics total in my photostream. I really need to go through the PC and categorize all of our pics, delete duplicates, etc.

I also need to call my folks - it's my Mom's Birthday and of course it's Father's Day as well.

Happy Birthday, Catalina Kurilko!!

Three years ago, we brought home a sweet cat named Lina who's been a very welcome addition to the household.

She was two years old when we brought her home, so she's five now - I've read that a well-cared-for cat could likely live for 15 years or more. So she's stuck with us for another decade at least. She's been pretty healthy up to this point - when she first came home, she had three cracked teeth and needed oral surgery, which she promptly received - I think it ran about $500.

I'm the one in charge of feeding, and I give her very careful portions. Perhaps I very slightly underfeed her, but if she lives longer as a result, then it was worth it. She's not skinny by any means, and the vet is always very pleased during checkups that she's a svelte kitty.

I'm recognized by Lina as the litter-scooper, food provider, water freshner, and scratching-post maintenance engineer. I get my share of affection, but nothing like what Cindy gets.

Lina adores Cindy! This is the follows her from room to room, constantly in her lap, sleeps on Cindy's face kind of love. One of Lina's favorite pass times is to stalk Cindy near bedtime, when Cindy is walking to and fro in a repeating pattern of checking this and that before bed.

Cindy is a lot of fun to stalk (bwa ha ha!), as she always lets loose with a very satisfying squeal when attacked. Unfortunately, Lina doesn't just bat Cindy with her paws, but attacks the shins and ankles with her claws to bloody result.

I try to explain to Cindy that she's encouraging this behavior by behaving like prey, and also by allowing Lina to playfully bite whenever they're playing.

I should mention here that Lina does not stalk me - she tried once or twice, but I chased her around the house, barking and growling like a hunting pit bull for about 10 minutes and she got the idea 'Daddy is not prey'. I also do not allow biting of any kind, however playful.

Happy Birthday (month) Lina! Here's to another 25 years!

Love, Daddy

35 years old and still no convictions! (felony, that is...)

Kitty likes bookshelf!

Still trying to teleport...
At least I haven't yet forgotten how to be silly.

Happy Birthday to Me!

It's my birthday - I'm 33.

I got some very thoughtful emails from my Mom, and Cindy called from Florida to wish me a Happy Birthday. Leslie, one of the other store managers, sang the happy birthday song to me. I also got very nice cards from Grandma and Mom, and a handsome gift check from Mom (who promised she wouldn't send me a birthday gift after sharing my airfare with me).

I slept in this morning - maybe I slept too long, because now I can't really seem to get going. I gave myself the gift of "day off" from exercise this morning. Maybe a workout would have helped me wake up, I dunno.

I'm at work now. I installed FrontPage (a web layout program) on my PC at work. Since today is going to be a "sitting around in case someone calls" kind of day, I thought I might get some work done on my web site.

It took a bunch of rigmarole to get the FrontPage program installed - the cd tray on my work PC is broken, and so I had to put the disc into another computer, copy and paste the contents onto the network, copy from the network to my PC, and then install. For some reason it installed to Drive E instead of Drive C and I spent 20 minutes looking for the program, uninstalled and reinstalled it onto C. (See, I know just enough to mess it all up.)

So now it's installed. I open the very first page to work on, and it's all messed up. Text and art boxes are misaligned, everything looks like crap.

It seems that the 'Mike School of Web Design' means that it only looks good on one computer - mine at home. I could fix everything to look good on this computer, and then it would look like crap at home. Not to mention what it will look like to everyone else in the world. Like who knows what.

Ugh. Bleh. Blahgen.
(Blahgen is a new word I invented a few months ago. It means 'frustrated, fatigued, annoyed, disgruntled, or indifferent' Pronounced "blaagin". I just put an H in the spelling to annoy Eddie Izzard.

Eddie Izzard is a comedian, very sharp and smart, he's amazing. Check him out.

I just don't know enough actual web design (or ANY web design at this rate - let's be honest) to do it right. I'd get Fiction Interactive launched, blow my paycheck on advertising, and then wonder why no one uses the site. Why?? Why? Because it looks like crap!! This is not a good motivator.

But not to worry, I'm not gonna give up. I've put too much time in at this point to just walk away. There is a slight temptation to shelve the whole thing till I've gone to school, but no.

I've already streamlined the site drastically over the last few months. The site is now about 25 pages, rather than the dozens it was before. Since I dropped the idea of interactive crime scenes and suspect photos and all the complex stuff, there's no reason why I can't make those 25 pages look adequate.

It's just annoying. Everyone's PC has different settings for fonts and images - how do you allow for that? Bite the bullet and actually learn some real programming, I guess. Instead of just fudging everything with FrontPage until it looks ok.

No worries - I have nothing but time... As of current data, life expectancy is 77. And I have a young wife who can care for me in my decrepitude. Hah! Whack the bootie with my cane. Hee hee!

77 years old. That's 44 more years. My poor children - they will have to put up with me for a long time, and listen to me ramble about how my web site is almost ready.

Bwah haa haa haaaaa (evil laugh) Bwaaaaa haaa haa haa haa

40 is looming...

What do you know, tomorrow is my birthday. 33 years old. Wow. Before I know it I'll be 40 at this rate. The idea of 40 looming is kinda creepy.

Society has all these expectations for a 40 year old. Good grief, I'm just a big kid. I play video games, I watch cartoons. Not that I'm one to keep up with trends or cultural expectations, but I'm feeling this weird pressure. It's not peer pressure, cause my peers are video game playing, cartoon watching big kids too.

I think this pressure is an embodiment of observation. As kids, we observe adults and emulate them. That's how we learn and grow. We expect that one day we'll put on a shirt and tie and grab our briefcase and head off to the office. We'll be All Grown Up and we'll know and understand life and our position in it. Our role and duty will be clear.

This has not happened yet.

Since Cindy and I don't yet have kids, my biggest duty/responsibility is to go to work every day and help pay the bills. Once we have kids, that will still be my job... But right now I have the freedom to work in an industry with little stability. I work as a temp with no insurance and get laid off, on average, about every six months - not a career for someone with children. For a few years, I was working to learn all about the video game industry, what the jobs were, how to get them.

What I learned was that I don't want to be in this industry. It's too 'cool' and popular. There are too many ready-made replacements waiting for you to quit, burn out, or be laid off. All levels - from entry level to management - in this industry are used up and burnt out without concern from corporate because there are lots of people waiting to take your job.

It's like working during the Depression. You can't complain very loudly about any of the terrible truths of the job or industry, because a few hundred guys would happily do the same work for less pay.

It's the nature of the industry and unlikely to change. I got into it with the hopes of getting into the creative aspects of it. They don't want storytellers in the video game industry, they want game programmers and digital artists. Since I'm neither one of those and don't have a lot of talent in either direction, the alternative is management. The pressure on management to bring an ill-conceived project with an arbitrary ship date in on time and budget is not fun.

I've affirmed the fact that I'm not a people person - all of the bullshitting, cajoling, convincing, arguing and etc of video game development is very tiresome for me. I need something a lot more singular. I'm happy to work in a group and on a team, but I have little interest in being in charge of that team - unless I have ultimate say-so.

Also, though video game development is branching out, it's still largely a California job. If you move to Idaho, your video game job opportunities are slim. Cindy's job could be done anywhere there is a bookstore - and every town has a bookstore. Since I'm the kind of guy who likes to move around, I don't want to lock myself into an industry that exists largely in one state.

I have plans for early 2005 to go to college, to study web design. Web design has the benefit of being widespread - I could do web design in any city and even do the work at home. The capacity for freelance work is also good.

Of course, I could not pick something simple. Oh no. Web design is a mixture of functionality and aesthetics. It has to work, and it also has to look good. It's graphic design, journalistic layout, art placement, and programming code. This programming code covers many different functions. For each function there is a language. HTML is the basic language, with Java, Flash, PHP, Perl, and more doing more complex functions.

I don't know if I can do programming. It might involve too much math for me. We'll see. (I noticed a funny class in the listing for Math at El Camino - it was something about overcoming mathematics intimidation - the whole class is to make you like numbers I guess. I know that I need that class.) I had 3 years of Apple Basic programming classes in junior high school. I enjoyed that - (no math) but the programs were very very basic. Very. And that was a long time ago.

Web programming seems straightforward, from my current, ignorant point of view. Web seems a lot easier to learn than game programming. With web programming, you plug in a variable here, save the page, and then view it. You can see your results. You can tell right away that the font size is wrong on the web page, then look at the code and see what you did wrong. Oh - I see the problem. I typed in "12" when I wanted "10".

Web programming seems to be more about understanding the theory, and then grabbing one of your hatful of templates, and plugging in the content (art and story). Then you tweak the code to customize it for that site. Since I'm about to go to school for this, I'm probably about to find out how very wrong I am. In simplifying the steps, I don't expect the classes, tests, and certifications to be any easier.

One good thing about web design as a career is that a lot of people don't need degrees in order to get hired. You create an online portfolio which demonstrates your skills. The potential employer can explore your portfolio site and even check out the code. Some people have elegant code, and others throw things together sloppily. An experienced programmer can tell a lot about your work by looking at the code. It's like a snapshot of your work ethic. Since I have a solid work ethic, this works well for me. Hopefully.

I'll need to work while I go to school, which is fine - that's what happens when you don't go to school when you should (living at home with the parents, right out of high school) but nothing really interested me enough to go to school for in 1990. The idea of going to school for 4 or more years for a creative writing degree - with no job opportunities afterward (journalism annoys me) - was not appealing.

The internet has always inspired me with its possibilities - like the Fiction Interactive site I'm working on now. I'd never heard of the internet when I graduated in 1990. Hell, the DOS version of AOL was not released until 1991! The Windows version didn't debut until 1993.

When I first started getting online, probably in about 1995, the internet was still pretty new - a lot of people thought it was a fad. Nowadays it is clearly not a fad, it's here to stay. We now have cell phones with internet access!

I don't know what I'll be doing as a part time job while I go to school... I don't really want to work a retail or food job if I can help it - but I don't know how many office/professional positions are part time. I'll have to contact the placement agencies I've worked for - Helpmates, Yoh Interactive, and Spherion and see what they can do for me. Unfortunately, the job I have now will last until November.

November isn't a good time to be looking for work. Neither is January, February, or March for that matter. Perhaps I can get a job at B. Dalton through Cindy, especially if just for the Christmas season. Or perhaps she could recommend me for a job with the BN company.

I'm not worried, I'll find some job to do while I'm at school. I might even end up with something at Realtime (where I work now) they like me and always have work to do. I can see them hiring me part time.

So yeah. Almost 40, big kid, going back to school, need work.