Before I'd even woken up this morning the most adorable cat in the world had killed her first sparrow and was tossing it around the backyard like a feathery beachball. We shut her out of the house so she wouldn't bring it in. After about fifteen minutes of this we started wondering how to explain 'you break it you bought it' to a kitten. After she'd pulled all the feathers off she discovered out on her own that they were full of meat and devoured everything except the head, which she left rolling around on the driveway. Circle of life and all that crap.

Spent three days on retreat with (e:dragonlady7)'s parents in Darkest Schaghticoke. It was very restorative. As always, I had some surreal conversations with her dad, who is cool, but a different kind of cool: 'So your car has a continuously-variable transmission.' 'Yup.' 'I don't know how that works.' 'Neither do I.' Then, an hour of talking in circles, including visual aids from a Vietnam-era military manual which, oddly enough, doesn't make anything clearer. Then: cheesecake!

- Z

- pictures for sad children

- Z

- tinfoilraccoon @ flickr

Just for the record, I worked 64hr in five days last week. Those of you who are not suitably impressed should keep in mind that I am a total slacker and one of the reasons I work from home is so that I can generally get away with working about half that. I don't live to work, I work to live.

The office manager [who can never seem to remember to pay me] asked why I don't work full-time at the office instead. Among other things, I said, when you work 'part-time' you get paid hourly. [It seemed unprofessional to say that I do better work with a kitty on my lap and bangin' tunes on the stereo.]

So when I totalled up my invoice [and it was a lot of money - it would have taken me a month to make that much at my old job] I looked at it and (e:dragonlady7) looked at it and she said Hm! and I said yeah, that's nice but I think I would rather have eaten and slept instead.

The good news is I think I'm done.

--

The problem with working for such a large client is their ubiquity. I went with (e:dragonlady7) to the Century to forget about life for an hour or two. But while we're eating our wings a baseball game comes on and my client had bought all of the advertising space in both dugouts. Another guy on the project went to Las Vegas last week and one of the first things he saw was an enormous billboard advertising their products.

But my boss has the worst story: so he's on vacation in the country - no cell phone reception, no internet access, no buildings even. He's walking through the woods and he sees one of their products on the ground. He's like no, you're kidding me. Picks it up and sees the logo. KHAAANNN!!!

- Z

So ... apparently even though Show-Biz Pizza Place [old school holla!] went out of business, the company that made their robot animal band stuck around. They have at least one complete Rock-Afire Explosion in stock that they've dusted off so that the founder and a new choreographer can take requests - HELL YES.



The documentary is coming out this fall. See you at the theater.



- Z

I've sort of dropped out of posting on (e:strip) but reading it keeps me going. (e:tinypliny) I have read a couple of your transient chatter-rants and I think perhaps you're cracked.

I'm putting in serious overtime on a project that's due Monday but needs at least another week. The people upstream were two weeks late getting us what we needed, so it's a moral victory that we've managed to gain a week on the deadline. But it's rough being the anchor on a relay race - the other guys aren't the ones who have to cross the finish line last.

[Z: nobody cares. Can you at least put in a funny somewhere? Thanks. -ed.]

I (gave notice to|asked permission from) my (client|boss) that I was taking some me-time after we're all done with this. I know it makes me a total wuss but this is some seriously intense shit I've been doing and I need another break already.

Either that or I'll go to the next open mic night down at Stimulance and start reading selections from the Adobe PDF Specification Anthology 1.7 while a beret'd buddy jams out on the bongos. (e:tinypliny) and (e:james) I don't know what the fuck you're doing but here's my entry in the Batshit Translated Poetry Contest. Funny, I didn't realize Adobe was deploying the National Guard to Acrobat 8 in order to protect the economic situation.

PDF is sufficient, and that trend xobject more graphics (including the achievement of the objectives, articles, photographs and see an example). May Xobject often in the form of wages - is more than a few pages of all these elements on the page - if you want to do with the same results, so far the only country at this time, and pictures. This is a typical representative of the definition of 'hands to protect the economic situation is very popular, The National Guard and the most popular activities to enhance the color. As a result, reusing memory xobject.

- Z