maniacal rage

Is the plural of hiatus hiatusi or hiatuses? Either way, I took an unplanned one last week. No writing, no podcast work, not much of anything but hanging out with people who were in town. Got to hang out with Blue Flavor on my soil, show a few of them the "New York office" and did plenty of sitting around in bars and walking in the rain late at night.

And now I'm back to work, both for Blue Flavor and the podcast. We've nearly completed shooting for episode three of MRTV and we're hoping to get it out as early as next week.

I was supposed to fly home on Friday, but the weather was a mess. In Seattle it was dark and brooding, raining on and off in torrential downpours that filled the streets with nearly a half-foot of water in 10 minutes. In New York City, it was supposed to get even worse throughout the day.

I'm a terrible flier. Or, at least, I used to be. Having traveled quite a lot the past few years, flying is getting easier and easier each time. But still, there are a few things that add exponential amounts of stress to the experience. One of those things is hearing the words, "severe weather across the US, especially on the west and east coasts." Not exactly thrilling me and pushing me toward the gate.

Once my flight was delayed to the point of me getting in at 1AM, as well as dealing with the stress of knowing it was going to be a very bumpy ride, I decided it was better to just delay by a day: The weather report for Saturday was drizzle in Seattle (also known as "normal") and perfectly clear everywhere else.

After waiting on the phone for 30 minutes, I finally managed to change my flight. The JetBlue rep told me there was going to be a $45 fee, which I replied I would not be paying. She paused for no more than half a second before saying, "Okay, no problem," and changing the flight for free. I guess she had to try first. JetBlue is so on edge with their customers after the recent canceling/holding-people-on-a-plane-for-30-hours fiasco that I'm sure I could have told her I wanted a free flight and gotten away with it.

And, as expected, the flight yesterday was crystal clear. Take off was a little bumpy because of the huge gray clouds hovering over Seattle, but the rest was perfectly smooth. Another pleasant side-effect of flying Saturday afternoon was the airport was a ghost town. I made it from checking out my hotel to sitting at the gate in 31 minutes—probably the fastest airport trip in my entire life (keep in mind that Sea-Tac is an estimated 25 minutes' drive from my hotel and I had to return a rental car).

It's amazing how such a small change could make my travel experience so much better. While I'm still not the best flier, little things like this make it easier and easier to do. If given an opportunity to make things less stressful on myself, I'll always take it.

I certainly did not expect to be in an ambulance last night. But, after a full day of being nauseous and short of breath, with my heart beating very hard, Katia thought it might be a good idea to call the nurse service of my insurance company. I told the woman all my symptoms, my history, all that good stuff. She was very nice and patient, and at the end of the call she calmly said, "Okay, Garrett. I'm gonna go ahead and have you call 911 and get an ambulance out there right away. Then have them take you to the hospital." Not exactly what I wanted to hear. Then again, I was feeling light-headed and having trouble breathing so I figured maybe it was solid advice.

And so the EMTs took my vitals (heart rate was tachy at 122, blood pressure was fine and lungs were clear) and suggested that I go to the hospital. They gave my oxygen in the ambulance, which felt really nice since it was the first time in many hours I felt I could get a full breath of air. Katia followed us in to the hospital, occasionally waving to me through the back windows of the ambulance.

They took me to Woodhull Hospital, in Brooklyn, which turns out to be a really awful place. It was crowded, loud and dirty, and the staff wasn't exactly interested in helping out. Luckily for me, it wasn't a real emergency, since they gave me a bed, some oxygen, and never came back. About the only thing they did in the two and a half hours I was there was take my temperature (101.3°F) and accuse me twice of being on drugs. Finally, we decided to leave and head to Overlook Hospital in Summit, New Jersey, near where we used to live. It's a very nice, clean place and we knew we'd get seen pretty quickly.

At Overlook, they took my vitals again and things had calmed down for the most part. My pulse was only 99, my temperature was 99.8, and my breathing was a little easier. We waited for a while and then a doctor finally came in and asked a few questions. He seemed pretty sure it was a fluke—that running too hard yesterday and being out of shape, combined with anxiety had caused it—but wanted to do a chest x-ray to be sure. They gave me IV fluids, some Adivan to relax me, and some anti-nausea medication as well. Then they did an EKG. I was exhausted at this point and fell asleep.

A few hours later they woke me up and took me to have my chest x-rays, and then a few more hours later they woke me up again to tell me everything was fine. They sent me home at 8AM. We drove back to my mom's house in Staten Island because traffic back to Brooklyn was so bad, and I slept a few more hours. Now I'm back home and doing well. I'm really hungry, though. I feel like I haven't eaten in two days.

I've been traveling for the past few weeks. It's been fun and tiring and I'm glad to be home. Two weeks ago I was in San Francisco for WWDC, where I spoke in a session that went very, very well. Got to see the keynote in person for the first time (nerd!) and hung out with lots of awesome people. Brian and I spent nearly every night that week with Sean Madden, Cindy Li and Mark Trammell and had a blast. I spent far more time at bars than I did in sessions, although everything I saw regarding Leopard was pretty neat. Not thrilled with the transparent menu bar, but someone has already written an app to get rid of it.

Last week I was in Seattle, working and hanging out with the rest of Blue Flavor. I hadn't seen everyone since SXSW in March, so it was nice to the in the office for nearly a full week and to welcome Jeff to the family. On Friday night, we threw the AEA Seattle closing party and played some Guitar Hero II on the big screen. Loads of fun. I also got to hang out with my friend Erin a few times which was great.

It was a nice two weeks, but it's good to be home. Back to work, back to pining constantly for the iPhone. I'll be in Atlantic City this Friday and I'm hoping that Apple Store isn't too crowded. Until then I'll be catching up on email, working on the podcast name change-over, and trying to reset my body's internal clock for EDT.

Well, I'm officially over the hump and heading toward the dreaded three-oh: Today I turn 26. Birthdays don't really mean much any more these days, I guess. Katia and I plan to have dinner in a nice restaurant, grab a drink and then I'll cry into my pillow for two hours. Okay, so it's not so bad. But I do remember people saying you're supposed to get wiser as you age, and I don't think that's happening.

Whenever I travel to Europe, I always drink a crap-ton of orange Fanta. It sounds silly, but the UK/European version of orange Fanta tastes a lot better than the US version. Without going into too much detail, the non-US version contains some actual orange juice, while the US version contains only citric acid and high fructose corn syrup (it's a different discussion entirely to explain why the US uses corn in everything, and we'll save it for another time). Suffice it to say that foreign versions are better. So when I'm abroad, I drink it like crazy.

When we went to Japan a few years ago, we found that Fanta was available almost everywhere we went—from Tokyo to small towns alike—in vending machines for our convenience. It was almost always sold in these cute little metal bottles, and usually available in both orange and grape. The grape version in Japan tasted a lot like carbonated Dimetapp, if that means anything to you (and if it does, that will probably evoke sweet memories of childhood). We also came across a few cans of melon flavored Fanta (not sold at all in the US), which tasted like bubble-gum.

It's a strange thing to say, but Fanta has been a part of every trip abroad I've ever taken. Whenever I fly into Heathrow, the first thing I do is buy a bottle of Fanta. When we left Japan, I brought home an empty grape Fanta metal bottle. And when we were in Italy I refused to shower in anything other than pompelmo Fanta. Sure, it got expensive and I never really got clean, but it was worth it. It's strange that I never drink soda when I'm at home (except random occasions of root beer or black cherry cravings), but I always drink it when I'm abroad.

As part of my they're-starting-to-sound-creepy-now Fanta thoughts today, I happened upon the Wikipedia page for Fanta and learned that it was created during World War II in Nazi Germany. Due to a shortage of Coca-Cola syrup, the plant in Germany (which, contrary to urban legend, was not run by Nazis) had to get creative and they made Fanta out of whatever they could find. They started with whey and leftover apple fiber. Mmmm.

For the most part, I'm left handed. I say for the most part, because there are certain things you learn to do with your right hand when you grow up left handed (or at least if you grew up 20+ years ago). I learned to throw a frisbee right handed. I bat with both hands. I can write on a chalkboard better with my right hand. And I learned to use a mouse with my right hand like every other kid.

These days, I use the mouse with my left hand. It wasn't out of choice, though. A few years ago my arm started to hurt like hell when I touched a mouse or typed. I guess it was from many years of using computers (a lot of which were Counter-Strike in college). At one point about three years ago it got so bad that I couldn't do work at all. My arm, my shoulder, everything hurt.

I went to the doctor and they told me I had damaged the tendon and bone on the inside of my elbow from repetitive motion. It's called medial epicondylitis, or, to get all layman on you: Golfer's Elbow. Which is actually really annoying because I don't play golf. Basically, I was kind of screwed. The primary thing doctors suggest for this is rest and icing and taking some time away from activities. But I can't really do that.

So I switched to using my left hand. I know how that sounds—I chose to begin injuring my left hand instead. And that's sort of true. I figured I had at least a few years of use before I get into the same situation on that side. That, and I have made a conscious effort to be smarter about how I use the mouse, my computer, my seating, everything. I've taken much better care of my left arm in the past two years, and I've experienced no pain thus far.

My right arm still bothers me, especially if I type for a long time. Frequent breaks make it better, but I could definitely never play computer games for long stretches any more (that's why I switched to console games, although even those hurt after some time). If I even touch a mouse with my right hand, the pain almost immediately starts. It's no good.

So now people say, "Hey, you're left handed!" when they see me using my computer. It's a bit ironic, since I've always been left handed. I would punch these people, but my right arm hurts too much.

Answers to a few questions I've received since I announced that I've joined Blue Flavor:

Will we be moving to Seattle? Nope—I'll be working remotely from my home office in Brooklyn and traveling to Seattle fairly regularly to hang out and work directly with the rest of Blue Flavor. With Katia about to start grad school, we're going to be in NYC for at least the foreseeable future. Luckily for me, everyone at Blue Flavor understood that and didn't let it stand in the way of bringing me on board.

Will I continue to work on SimpleLog? Absolutely. Even more so. Everyone at Blue Flavor is just as excited about SimpleLog as I am, and I plan to continue to add features and better the application. It will remain open source, free, all that good stuff. Additionally, in the near future, I'll be opening up development to a few key contributors so updates will be even more frequent. I love SimpleLog and I love working on it and I'm not stopping any time soon.

Will the podcast continue? Of course! We're on a temporary hiatus while I'm at here at SXSW, but as soon as I get back we'll finish up episode 18 and release it. Have you listened to episode 17?

Will I write more or less on this site? More. I'll be working on some really fun and interesting projects in the near future and I'll write a lot more about the things I'm doing. One of the primary reasons I joined Blue Flavor was to get back to working for interesting, diverse clients and on exciting projects. In addition, Shawn and I have started planning some new short films so I'll be talking about that too. And, as always, I'll continue to write little bits of fiction.

Once I get back from SXSW (which is a blast so far, by the way) I'll be writing more about what Blue Flavor means for me, for this site and for Blue Flavor's clients. In the mean time, hopefully this answers some of the pressing questions.

Today I can finally share some exciting news I've been keeping under wraps: I've joined Blue Flavor! In the coming days, I'll have a lot more to say about this but for now I just want to say that I'm thrilled to be a part of the team and look forward to working with this fine group of people. And what perfect timing—Blue Flavor has just launched its new site.

I'll be at SXSW this year. I want to meet you. If you're going and would like to meet up to say hello, please drop an email to garrett at maniacalrage dot net.

I spent nearly the entire weekend blowing my nose and whining about my sore throat, lying on the couch watching TV and drinking juice. Being sick sucks.

I kept thinking about how much worse it would have been if I were still a smoker (a habit I quit a little over a year ago), and within two days I was feeling better. Smokers know how long being sick can last (I remember times in college when I was coughing for a full week, but that's partly my fault because I refused to quit smoking even when I was sick), and I'll tell you that it's almost worth quitting entirely for the short and less-frequent unwell episodes.

I managed to catch up on The Unit, watch a few movies and write some more SimpleLog documentation, so it wasn't a total loss.

A little birdy tells me SimpleLog 2.0 will be released Tuesday.

The last few weeks have been mostly a blur. I have three large projects going at work (all in Rails), along with a million little side things and loose ends. At home, a lot of time has been spent working on SimpleLog, helping Katia polish grad school essays, working on a new podcast website, and, when I can, playing Zelda. December is usually the breeziest month in the year for me, but right now everything is cramming together at the last minute.

SimpleLog development has been going for over four months and I'm really anxious to release. I've had a lot of help from all over the place and we're getting very close but, as usual, it's just not ready yet. It doesn't help that I keep adding features and tweaks. It's hard to nail down a release date when you keep changing the app. It's all for the better. The next version is going to be so significant of an improvement that I don't look forward to writing the "what's new" text because it's going to take all day.

The podcast website, which I've been talking about redesigning for months and months is getting closer to completion and I'm really anxious to get that up and done as well, since the current site is awful and really killing me. I hope to wrap it up before January 1 so that we can start 2007 with a fresh site.

And then, of course, there's the Wii and Zelda. I can't describe how great Zelda really is. It's hard to put it into words. Besides, I don't want to spoil it. Let me just say—the $250 USD price tag for the system is worth the cost just for Zelda alone. It's that much fun. There are also rumors that the next game is coming much sooner than you would expect.

I know these catch-up posts are annoying, but I wanted to give everyone an update on what's going on around here.

If one had a device that allowed one to look back in time (N.B.: The Light of Other Days, by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter), and one were to look back upon me during college (especially my first year), one would regularly witness the following schedule:

• Wake some time between 12 and 4PM
• Eat at the "Rain Garden," a crappy little "restaurant" in the student center
• Go to class until around 9 or 10PM
• Grab Mountain Dew, cigarettes and sandwich, head back to room
• Play Counter-Strike until 7 or 8AM
• Sleep

Counter-Strike was my life. I started playing CS back in high school when the very first beta was released, and I got more and more attached to it until my second year of college, when my right arm pain got to be too much for me to play any longer. That was a sad, sad time. Since then I've not returned to the first-person shooter genre via a PC (except to play Half-Life 2, which was painful but worth it), but instead have relegated myself to console gaming, that which luckily doesn't hurt my hands or arms.

One of the great things about Counter-Strike was the "realism" of how the game played—instead of instantly re-spawning when you die, you would have to sit out for the remainder of the round (usually no more than five minutes), and you had to buy your weapons with money you earned by doing well in the game. Effectively, it was a more reality-based version of your standard deathmatch FPS game, and it was loads of fun.

I've not played in a long time, but last week I came across the news that they've instituted a CS Weapons Market in the game, and I was instantly jealous. The new global system for weapons prices keeps all weapons in a constant state of flux depending on world-wide demand. If everyone buys a sniper rifle one week, it will become very expensive and therefore the next week most people won't be able to afford it. I love the idea of using the power of the internet and community gaming in this way, and it takes the realism to another level.

If you listen to the podcast of the closing panel from @media 2006, around the 24:16 mark, you'll hear Jon Hicks mention my name in the context of his thoughts on the trend of developers hoping to get bought by companies like Google and Yahoo!, and what that means for the quality of web applications. We spent a good deal of time the night before talking about what he mentions, and it was nice of him to mention me. At the time, however, it scared the hell out of me because I was digging around in my bag making noise and when I heard my name I thought someone was calling me out for being an ass.

(I meant to post this a while back, but I forgot, and the audio wasn't available until a few days ago.)

It's been forever since we've released a podcast. Believe you me, if it feels long to you, it feels much longer to us. The last time we sat down to record was prior to my trip to England and vacation in France, and that was the beginning of June. It feels like it's been forever.

The reasons are various—constant construction in my apartment building the last two months, getting rid of my G5 in favor of a MacBook Pro, vacation, lots of work, summer, my great aunt falling and breaking her hip (I swear, I didn't make that up), the list goes on—but I think both Shawn and I are really dying to get back to doing it. The truth is, it's a hell of a lot of work, and creating a podcast on a bi-weekly basis is quite an undertaking.

But fear not! I am currently (well, I was a minute ago and will continue shortly after finishing this post) writing again, and Shawn is too, and we're recording this week. I know that sounds like an empty promise, based on the fact that the podcast website has said we're recording this week for about four weeks now, but it's the honest truth.

We're very excited to start the show back up again, and we hope you can forgive the lengthy hiatus.

Update: I also just noticed we're back up to five stars at the iTunes Music Store. Awesome!

I haven't been without a computer at home in a very long time, and I must say that it's a very strange feeling. I'm so used to using a computer all the time. Even when it's unnecessary. I'll check my email ten times while watching a DVD. I'll browse the internet while waiting for food to cook. I'll check the weather a few times before I leave the house in the morning.

Lately, I haven't been doing a lot of "real" computing stuff at home (hence the selling of the Quad), except for the podcast, so I'm not feeling a serious lack without having a computer around. It's just the little time fillers. I'm so used to having a computer within reach at all times that I'm going through a little bit of withdrawal.

Combine the lack of computers with Katia being gone for the weekend visiting a friend and me being in the office by myself doing some work, and I've had a very strange and isolating few days by myself. I wouldn't want to live this way, but it hasn't been too awful.

Things will begin to change on the computer-front at home on Wednesday, when the first of a few toys arrives...

Right, so I sold the Quad, and I also sold the older PowerBook. That's fine and all, except that I sold both of them on the same day, and now I have no computer at home. There are new things on their way (more on this later), but they won't be here until the middle of next week.

Until then, however, I'm computerless. I could use my PC (yuck!), but I sold all of my displays! I'm completely screwed. And, to top that off, I have a project I have to finish this weekend, so I'm at the office working here. It's a nice day out, it's memorial day weekend, and I'm here, in the office, doing work. Weee!

Hey, at least there are new toys coming soon...

Over the weekend, we had a small party for my birthday. For a few hours before the party, I had a few people over early to play XBOX 360, which was a ton of fun. We played Fight Night Round 3, bashing each other in the face while yelling and screaming because of the ultra-realistic boxing graphics, and then some Call of Duty 2 (Goldeneye-style four-player split-screen Allied versus Axis action) and it was loads of fun. Truly the official christening of my XBOX 360.

Once everyone else arrived, we turned to drinking, eating and, eventually, playing some pictionary. I had a fun time, and it seems like everyone else did as well. The night ended with a lengthy discussion on current trends popular music and everyone scraping the bottom of the seven-layer dip container.

We bought way too much alcohol, so Katia will be drinking forty beers a day for the next month to get rid of it. You can see a few pictures from the party on Flickr.

It's official: Today I'm 25. This is the start of a week-long one-third life crisis, during which I will experience fits of crying, then laughing, then crying again. At one point, I will buy a Porsche and crash it into a ravine. Then I'll go back to my high school and wear clothes that are too small and pretend that I'm still seventeen, and that I don't have to go to work every day and be responsible, and I'll talk about how it's so great to be young and how we'll be young forever.

For the past few years I've managed to get sick right around my birthday, and this year is no different. My allergies tend to start up pretty hardcore in late April, and, perhaps out of laziness, my body decides not to fight off any incoming germs.

Luckily, I'm finally starting to feel better after a week of coughing and snot and malaise. Everyone who has asked about episode seven of the podcast—it's coming shortly. My sickness made it difficult to record audio, and I haven't had time to finish up editing. In the next few days I'll get it online.

This site is hosted by Segment Publishing and has been for just over two years. Segpub is a fantastic hosting company with unparalleled support and, quite frankly, the fastest Ruby on Rails hosting on the planet. If you're on Dreamhost or TextDrive right now, you have no idea how fast Rails can be when hosted properly—I urge you to look into Segpub if you're looking to host Rails sites, especially larger, mission-critical applications. I get no compensation for anything I'm saying here, or for referrals. I'm just being honest.

I've spent the last five weeks developing a rather large events management site using Rails, and we launched a week ago with Segpub and the results have been nothing less than perfect. Insanely fast application speeds and great support to work out the kinks (all of which I created).

The more I work with Rails, the more I fall in love with it. The past five weeks have been a ton of work, but it's actually been, well, fun, which is not something most people can say about building a large web app. As the popularity of Rails increases, Segpub is going to prove invaluable to people who need their app to work quickly and pain-free. I'm telling you—start now.

And speaking of that five weeks: A majority of my non-work time was been spent sitting around and sleeping, trying to build energy, so everything else suffered. The podcast took an unexpected hiatus, but is coming back this week, and I haven't uploaded any of the photos I've taken over the past several weeks. I'm mostly playing catch-up at this point, but I'm getting there.

Katia: "I just saw on the New York Sports Club website that there's an outdoor, roof-top pool you can join on 34th and 2nd, and then I called to find out how much [it is] for the summer. Guess?"

Me: "One billion dollars."

Katia: "No, guess seriously."

Me: "That was serious."

Wow, surprisingly, after many months of not winning, finally, today, I won on Blingo via Shawn. Granted, it's only a movie ticket, but still—wahoo! It's funny that with all the different people who signed up as my friend, Shawn would be the first winner.

Now I'll just sit back and wait for Shawn to win an iPod nano...

Had the third improv show on Monday this week after finishing up the third level at the UCB. Two more classes and I can legitimately claim that I'm a trained improvisor.

The show went really well. I'm always much better at what I do when there's an audience; I had terrible practice shows in class the whole time, but the second there was a real (albeit small) audience, I suddenly felt much more comfortable and funny.

I need to build future posting into this system so that I can write stuff and have it auto-publish and ping and such at a certain time, because I go in these ridiculous bursts where I want to write ten entries at once but don't want to spam the site all at the same time. The other side of this is that if I don't post all ten, I forget about them and never get to it. Future posting would solve this.

I am nearly obsessed with the Olympics. I love the Olympics. Since the year 2000, I have watched nearly every event of every Olympic games. I don't know why. I don't even like ice dancing, but I watch it. The only events I haven't seen a lot of this year are curling and ice hockey, the former because it's on at awkward times and the latter because I just can't watch thirty hockey games. We've got about fifteen hours of Olympic games currently on our DVR box, with more pouring in each day. Nothing else is getting done around the house, because we have to watch the Olympics.

I find the Olympics comforting. I'm not sure why. Katia thinks it has to do with the fact that the Olympics bring the whole world together—if everyone can be in the same place and get along and play games like curling and go sledding together, maybe there's hope for us after all. I think that's part of it. But there's something else—something I can't explain—that just comforts me. I'm not sure what it is (hell, it might be Costas), but when I flip on the TV each night and downhill skiers zoom by the camera I immediately feel content. The only problem is, in a few days, it will be gone. Then I'll be forced to wait another two years until the 2008 games in Beijing.

Wouldn't it be great if you could buy the entire 2006 winter games on DVD? Or how about select events in the iTunes Music Store? I'm not the only one to think about this (see Mat Honan on the subject), so I'm sure someone at NBC has considered this as well. What's the holdup? Is the IOC preventing this from happening? I'm sure there is plenty of money to be made from selling copies of the games in various formats—I know I would buy a copy. Until then I'll have my DVR recordings, which I'll hold on until the last moment, when episodes of 24 and Smallville will force them to be deleted.

Things to accomplish today, March 2, 1995:

• Put gel in hair, try to make it look like Chandler's on Friends.
• Talk on the phone for four hours.
• Watch Friends at 8PM.
• Listen to "Comedown" and "Glycerine" from Bush's Sixteen Stone fifteen times each.
• Hang up new Friends poster.

I keep hearing people talk about how they've been winning prizes with Blingo recently. It sounds nuts, but Blingo actually gives out prizes to random people who use their search engine (which is just Google with a new design), and, even better, they have a "friends" network that works like a pyramid scheme—if you sign up as my friend, when you win, I win. Then you sign people up, and it goes on and on.

I imagine Blingo can give these prizes away because of all the sponsored-link-click-through revenue they're generating, but it sounds like a win-win situation to me. I use Google all day, every day, so if someone is going to potentially give me prizes to do the same thing, I'm all for it. That's assuming I ever actually win, which is a separate issue.

Here's an experiment: Register as my friend on Blingo and let's see if we win some prizes!

Update: I should clarify that I know people who have actually won, not one of those "I've heard you can win a free iPod by signing people up!" kind of things. These people are real, normal people, who have one some cool stuff (most notably, a Sony PSP and an iPod Shuffle).

Another update: To improve chances of winning, I realized I would need to replace the Google search bar in Safari with a Blingo search bar (since that's what I use the most). Easy way to do this? AcidSearch. It's a free app that allows you to customize the Safari search bar. Add Blingo and make it the default and you're all set.

If you're a Firefox user, you can easily install the Blingo Quick Search box to your browser by following the link on the Blingo howto page. Bring on the prizes!

Yet another update: In case you need help setting up AcidSearch for Blingo with Safari, here's a screencast to help you along.

Hopefully final update: I wasn't paying attention and didn't realize that Blingo only gives prizes to US residents. That stinks. Sorry for all of my international readers (and thanks Jay and Mathew for the heads up).

After two long weeks, the podcast is back with Episode III, and so is my twice-special guest, Shawn Morrison. Topics run the gamut, from music to Batman to freestyle rap. It's good to be back!

I'm working on a new site for the podcast, but for now just subscribe and enjoy. You can send feedback to podcast at garrettmurray dot net.

Things to accomplish today, July 18, 1985:

• Play He-Man.
• Go over to Mario's house and play He-Man.
• Complain and cry when you get your hands dirty.
• Play He-Man.

I was tagged by Mathew, so here goes my addition to the "four things" meme:

Four jobs I've had in my life:

• Front Desk Agent, The Grand Summit Hotel
• Clerk, West Coast Video
• IT Bitch, Deloitte
• Senior Developer, Web, CCG

Four movies I can watch over and over:

• Groundhog Day
• The Matrix
• Tommy Boy
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Four places I have lived:

• Bellevue, Washington
• Kent, Washington
• Summit, New Jersey
• Brooklyn, New York

Four TV shows I love to watch:

• 24
• Smallville
• Gilmore Girls (yeah, that's right, I said it!)
• Saturday Night Live

Four places I have been on vacation:

• London, England
• Dublin, Ireland
• Sicily, Italy
• Tokyo, Japan

Four of my favorite dishes:

• Chicken Guaco Loco at San Loco
• Tempura (all kinds, give me all of it)
• Pan-fried Porkchops
• Various cereals with loads of milk

Four websites I visit daily:

• MacRumors
• Digg
• Daring Fireball
• Projectionist

Four places I would rather be right now:

• At home
• Tokyo
• San Loco
• Mountain Creek

Four bloggers I am tagging:

• Shawn
• Jeremy
• Phil
• Greg

Episode II of the podcast is now available. You can subscribe at my podcast information page. My guest for this episode is Shawn Morrison, who you probably know from our short films.

I think this episode is really great, both in its content and its quality. The sound is very, very good—from this point on, all audio will sound at least this good—and it's more structured. The first episode was an experiment-turned-podcast, but this episode is the beginning of the real thing.

In the near future, I'm going to build out the podcast page to include show notes, individual episode downloads and more, but for now, just subscribe to keep up to date. As always, for the best experience you should use iTunes.

New episode next week. Feel free to send your suggestions for topics or anything else to garrett at maniacalrage dot net.

Over the weekend I started playing with the podcast studio inside Garage Band 3. I've wanted, for a long while now, to start doing a podcast—nothing major, just me and other people (call them "special guests," if you will) talking about random topics that interest me and, hopefully, them—and this weekend I sat down and started. My first guest is an old friend, Kevin Pang, who writes for the Chicago Tribune.

While too long, a little strange and not terribly well edited, the first episode is a decent attempt to start playing with making a podcast. It was easy to do using Garage Band and now that I've figured it all out, the next few episodes will be much easier. And they'll be more structured.

Until then, feel free to subscribe to the podcast and listen to the first episode. Hopefully, we'll improve as time goes on.

You can find out more about the podcast on my name domain, garrettmurray.net. I've decided to host the podcast there because, while it has to do with this site in some way, it's more about me personally and therefore it fits better on that domain. It's also available in iTunes and on Odeo (you can find that information on the podcast page).

Your feedback is, of course, greatly appreciated. Suggestions for future topics would also be lovely.

Update: If you subscribed at Odeo, you'll need to resubscribe to the new Odeo channel. Simply click the Odeo link on the podcast information page. I forgot that Odeo doesn't work with M4A files, so now Odeo users will get vanilla MP3s without the extra touches. For the best experience, use iTunes.

A few things that happened in 2005, in no particular order:

1. I changed jobs twice, once in February and then again in June. Finally feel comfortable and *gasp* enjoy my job.
2. Turned 24.
3. Traveled to Japan and Seattle.
4. Completed our first professional-quality short film and entered it into a short film competition (and lost).
5. Participated in the 24in48 project.
6. Watched Oscar seemingly nearly die and then recover fully.
7. Saw The Sound of Music for the first time.
8. Redesigned this site twice.
9. Fell in love with Ruby on Rails.
10. Remained in love with Katia.
11. Started taking improv classes.
12. Posted 1,945 photos to Flickr.

2005 was a very good year for me. As the clock struck midnight on Saturday I felt, for the first time in a long while, satisfied with the passing year.

I've been taking an improv class at the UCB for the last eight weeks and tonight was our class-ending final show. About five minutes into the event I started getting nervous because I couldn't think of any initiations and I was just watching scenes go by (I was terrified I was having an off day on, of all days, show day). Then I stepped into a scene and from that point on it was like butter.

Forty-five minutes later I was so into it that I was surprised and upset at blackout—I was ready for another hour of work.

What I thought would be an off day turned out to be one of my funniest days in recent history. Lots of laughs and everyone did a really great job. The next-level class starts tomorrow and I'm anxiously waiting to get back to it, tapping my feet and talking too loudly in small rooms, excited and hungry for it.

I've been having an insomnia problem lately. It always manifests itself just when I'm getting ready for bed. I'll be sitting in the living room watching an old episode of Seinfeld or something and just when I get up and go to bed, I completely wake up. All of a sudden I'm fully awake again and I don't really feel tired. It's like if I miss that one opportunity, it never comes back. It's 2:13AM right now. I felt like going to bed 2 hours ago. I got up, felt wide awake again, and I've been sitting here ever since.

The only cure is going to bed, covering my face and trying not to think about anything. 30 minutes or so of that and my body finally gives in, but in 30 minutes it will be 2:45AM so that's not exactly early.

I don't know what triggers the bouts of insomnia, but they usually stick around for a few weeks every few months. I think it must have something to do with work—it's like my body wants to stay awake at night because I want to do stuff I can't do during the day (like watch TV) and it knows that if I go to sleep that's it, it's over.

One of the reasons I wasn't posting a lot of entries on the site before this new RoR version was that the CMS I built wasn't working. Adding a new post required using phpMyAdmin and manually creating tag associations as well as creating a Markdown version of the content as well. It was a pain. I used to have a fully-functional CMS, but it broke when we moved to PHP5 at Segpub and I never bothered to fix it. So for the last year or so, I've been entering posts via the database itself, basically. And it was cumbersome.

Another issue was always having to think of titles. I hate thinking of titles. I don't want to do it anymore. The new site doesn't have them (technically, it does, you just never see them because they're for my reference only—this entry is called "Pooping Out Bananas") and I love it. No pressure. This goes hand-in-hand with the whole one-entry-on-the-index thing I started with the last design, which nearly immediately killed the site. Having only one entry on your index page at any given time is ballsy—it requires that you actually have good content that can last for several days, something that's, well, nearly impossible in this medium. I would find myself looking at an post 20 minutes after I published it and already being pissed off at the stale feeling it gave me. It's one thing for a long piece of fiction, but when it's just some nonsense about nonsense then, well, it's annoying.

And then there's the lack of comments. I must say, I fucking love it. I don't have to worry about saying something so fantastic that you'll feel obligated to respond, and I don't have to worry when you don't. Clearly, you're here—I still get plenty of hits a day—and if you want to say something you can send me an email (there's a link in the info section) and I'll respond.

This new format feels freeing and suddenly I'm writing without worry or responsibility. Stripping away everything but the most basic of content has given me an internet boner for this site which, effectively, is the same thing as a real-world boner except that it's really shiny and keeps beeping. See, no responsibility at all.