Jay McGavren’s Journal

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I adopted a cute lil’ Scotty fetus
from Fetusmart! Hooray fetus!

Dawn of the Dead was freaking awesome - A premise as creepy as the original, but with a much needed update to the makeup work. (Blueface, anyone?) I felt like it ripped off 28 Days Later for a lot of its visual style, but it’s a damn good film on its own merits. We’re talking all-time top 10 good.

Gothika wasn’t too original, and there was at least one plot hole big enough to drive a truck through.

Cabin Fever - A decent story, but the cast is unremarkable. And you know how every horror film has that asshole/snob/ditz that you hope is the first to die? *Every character* is like that here. Rent this one if you want to have your faith in humanity shredded.

I finally have my Perl module talking with the Apollo system! (I’ve been trying to do that for over a year, but other projects keep coming up.) It was always an embarrassment having to say that I support “all the GDSs. Well, except for Apollo.”

Kinda dumb that I couldn’t get to it until it looked like I’d be leaving my department. Oh, well, at least it’s done.

P.S.: While I was writing this, my test script freaked out and crashed. :P Hopefully it’s nothing major.

I mounted a motherboard in a case and installed a CPU without frying it last night! It *appears* that the IDE controller in Diana’s old motherboard was indeed the problem; I formatted the hard drive and installed Win2K without any trouble. I won’t believe it’s really fixed until I’ve hooked it up to the Net and left it on for 24 hours, though.

Hmmm, maybe I *will* assemble my next Intel box from scratch, after all.

Right now, though, I’m looking long and hard at Macintosh. I’ve picked up a copy of Mac OS X Hacks, and it seems this OS is *highly* scriptable, more so than Linux. I’m gonna browse it more this weekend, and if it looks like I can do all the stuff I want, that’s where my tax refund is going.

-Diana’s bracelet: Repaired. They did a solid job; nothing short of serious trauma will harm it now.
-Diana’s PC: Hard drive is going bad. It’s a relief just knowing for sure what the problem is, though.
-CSS: So simple a monkey could do it. I won’t need to devote much time to this.
-JSP: Ugh. This stuff produces nothing but ugly code. I’m not going to enjoy working with it much if I *do* land this position.
-Resume: Haven’t touched it.

The resume, CSS, and JSP may be a moot point, though. My bosses are talking about a project that may land me that spot in Product Development. My name has already been mentioned once to the CTO, who showed some interest in what I’ve been doing down here in my current department. And I can’t pursue any of it if I go after the Professional Services position.

All I need here is a clear path to follow - is that too much to ask?

The Barenaked Ladies sure know how to give a concert. They made lots of desert jokes, and they did a little song about the Phoenix zoo. (Yeah, it was a stupid song, but it still makes you feel kinda special to have a one written just for your town.) They did a cover of “Rio” for their second encore. :)

Tempe Beach Park is a pretty cool place to hold a concert in, too. We had a mountain on one side, two beautiful skyscrapers on another, a lit bridge on a third, the lake on the fourth, and planes coasting silently into PHX over our heads. (BNL said the planes weren’t real, just part of their high-budget special effects.) Almost made me forget about the mosquitoes and the drunk woman who splashed beer on Diana. :P

Anyway, a very good night overall, and a nice end to a stressful day.

Currently on my plate:

-Fix Diana’s PC, which may simply need a reformat and reinstall, or may need a whole new hard drive.
-Finish the next chapter of Greenwood (probably the last before I quit), which is two months overdue.
-Chase after Ticketmaster for a refund, because they didn’t send me my tickets for the Barenaked Ladies concert tonight (which we are now going to miss).
-Have Diana’s bracelet (a gift from me, which broke shortly after I gave it to her) fixed.
-Update my resume.
-Learn CSS in the next 2 weeks.
-Learn Java Server Pages in the next 2 weeks.

…I expect to have maybe 16 hours in the next week in which to work on all this, and I’m sure more stuff will have piled on by then.

Help!

[Edit:] Well, strike one off the list - I got through to Ticketmaster, and they set us up at the Will Call window. Yay!
Evidently they did the same thing to one of my co-workers for a few days ago. :P

Layoffs in the IT department were just announced this morning. Here’s to Mark and Stan - good men with great skills who nonetheless got the axe. Hope there’s nobody else.

Diana discovered my car’s tilt steering lever this weekend - I’d been driving with the wheel practically scraping my knees. I really need to RTFM. :P

This was a personality quiz that even I had to go for.