Jay McGavren’s Journal

I’m in Omaha! Yay. I’m posting this from Glen’s PC at his new house (which he shares with three roommates).

Definitely a high geek quotient here - there are Dilbert stickers and calendars all over the place, co-ax and cat-5 cable strung everywhere, a video game system occupying every available shelf, and boxes of anime in the basement. None of this, as far as I can tell, is Glen’s doing…

From SlashDot: “Fox reports that Dell is moving its call center operations for the Latitude and Optiplex computers back to the US from Bangalore, India after an onslaught of complaints from dissatisfied customers who couldn’t cope with the differing accents and scripted responses.”

The story

Hopefully IT jobs will be coming back next. The project I wanted to land a spot on already got outsourced to an Indian IT firm…

One of my co-workers used to work for Boule, a French IT company, and had to work with a lot of technical documentation in French. At one point he came across this lovely phrase:

La compilateur pedale dans le chacrôute.
The compiler is pedalling in sauerkraut.

Evidently “pedalling in sauerkraut” is an idiom meaning “not getting anywhere”. I’d like to know how they came up with that one…

Latest wildlife sighting: a coyote, just ambling down the middle of Greenway this morning.

“You need something done, go see Jay. He may leave a dead body behind, but he’ll take care of it.”
-One of the developers I’ve been working with, regarding my programming style.

Should I be proud or embarrassed? :)

For no reason at all, I go from happy yesterday to grumpy as hell today. I’m tired, but that alone shouldn’t be reason, should it? Maybe I got a pot of bad coffee.

Anyway, I’m shutting myself in my apartment for the evening, for the good of the rest of the world.

Oh, and by the way, this was a very good weekend. That’s all I’ll say for now.

Yet another game I’m discovering months after I should have. I will never tire of punching bullets back at enemies. Hell, I even kinda like the dub.

The preview video of Product Number 03 included on the disc looks pretty cool, too. Gonna have to check that out next. Go, Capcom!

OK, so here’s a weird but cool idea - I’ve wanted a simple replay editor for fighting games for a while now, but why not go all out and make a full movie-making suite? Picture this: Tekken Movie Maker.

They re-use the engine from a popular fighting game (wouldn’t have to be Tekken, but that sounds coolest in the title). :) They let you set up the scenery and a few basic props, and let you pick one or more character models to be in the scene. Then they give one or more “actors” full control of the characters’ movement, and allow them to enter “battle mode” with each other at will, where the normal fighting engine kicks in. Their movements are recorded to memory for later playback. Headphone mics (such as that used for XBox Live) record their speech as well.

Then they allow you to set up lighting, camera speed and angle (bullet time included, of course), and effects (fade to black, text, etc.). You can also go back and add in timed explosions, car crashes, and more. Your finished movie is saved to hard disk for further editing or playback. Networked systems would allow the finished product to be shared with (and edited by) the Net at large.

I know I’d buy it, and I think several of my friends would, too. It might happen; stranger things have been released.

We finally went to see -itis tonight… Holy shit, these guys can rock. I didn’t care for the album I heard, but it’s a totally different story live. Never seen a band incorporate dildos into their act, either. :P

During the show, they were offering up their albums for 10 bucks, “or have a friend burn a copy for you, we don’t care.” I went ahead and bought one anyway. Guess reverse psychology really does work.