You win a day (and one internets)

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It’s still the secret bonus day, so I guess I should make a post.

Almost 5 years is enough time for people to lose interest, right?

It occurs to me that I angst and whine and complain way too much on the internet about things, especially about things that really don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. I used to angst about grades way too much. Now I tend to angst about feeling stressed/incompetent at work. Silly me.
Semi-relatedly, I’m generally glad I deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts. Social media may be useful for connecting people, but it also tends to promote a lot of short-form superficial interaction over long-form meaningful communication. And it also means I don’t have control over my data.

I had a Glee-related dream last night, which is strange given I haven’t watched the show since the “New York” season finale that was everything wrong with the series combined into a horrific hour. (And I hear it’s gotten even worse since then.)

The dream involved something like Mercedes’ dad getting a job in Chicago and moving there, and Sam following her in a car. We get shots of Mercedes staring forlornly out the window of a moving truck before the truck whips a quick 360 and drives back toward its origin. Camera then switches to Sam who is driving, craning his neck backward to see the truck drive off (but not turning around himself and also not hitting any other cars). He gets a job in a strip mall somewhere between Lima and Chicago, and we then shift the story to his adventures and dealings as a paranormal investigator there.

Yay bizarre dreams. Pretty much all of my dreams are in third person, but this is one of the few I remember where I’m not actually present.

For those I have not yet poked: I will be in San Francisco next week from Sunday evening through Friday afternoon. Tentative plans include all-you-can-eat pizza on Sunday, dinnar things on Monday, and dinner in Mountain View on Tuesday. Let me know if you are interested in joining for some of these.

Automation, cards, yay

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life has gotten an update that brings it up to present day. Yay life.

I’ve also posted Tartan photos at photos.

While I was batching photos today, it occurred to me that I should learn how to write Photoshop scripts to do the watermarking and resizing for me. (Previously I had been using the standard Image Processor to resize, then watermarking manually.)
The result is this script that opens the watermark files, then resizes and watermarks all jpg images in the selected directory.
Yay scripts. Maybe someone will find it useful.

In non-scripty-Photoshopy news, I’ve been working a bit on cards for the next People Wars expansion, Celebrations.


I mostly just like this image. Josh is over 6’5″ and Jen is shorter than 5′, and it’s amusing to see them together. (Yes, they’re both standing up. Here’s what happens when he kneels.)

Their individual cards are also interesting because of the effects I gave them.

I think it’ll be interesting to see how these work out in the game.

Yay things.

Life

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Life has been up and down lately. Mostly down. Mostly due to work and (sometimes) feeling like I’m drowning in work and that there’s always so much work to do that I will never finish it all.
I guess I also feel bad because the poor QAs on our team are super stressed. And because Greg is super stressed. I really have no right to complain about anything given how horribly busy Greg *actually* is, whereas I have the luxury of 9-5 hours and being able to go do non-work things and keep myself from going crazy.

But that is not good to think about. So let’s not talk about that.

This weekend there were games. There was a very interesting 3-player game of Power Grid where 4 of the high-level green plants were removed from the game and all of the high numbered plants came out early. The result was much unhappiness and a resource track that actually became completely depleted at one point. There was also an interesting game of Carcassone where all of the large city pieces came out at the end, resulting in a 12-point unfinished city for Keith.

Oh yeah, which means that I bought Power Grid last week. It was a good purchase, and I’m very happy with it. I also ordered a copy of Puerto Rico‘s anniversary edition (with nicer pieces) that should be here in a week or two. Board games are nice things to buy, because spending time with people and being social is an awesome thing.

If anyone has suggestions for other games to buy, I will gladly accept them.

The new People Wars expansion set is out. I like the new templates with the larger images. Your mileage may vary.

So yeah. I guess stuff goes.

Bleh

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The world is depressing right now, with all the crap happening in politics and economics such as people thinking fetuses in food is an important (or even relevant) issue, the entire mess with SOPA and PIPA, and CEOs making hundreds of millions of dollars when they leave their companies. Hell, even Leo Apotheker, who was *fired* from his position as HP CEO, made more in his severance package than I will make in my lifetime. And I’m one of the lucky ones who has an excellent job with a great salary.

Sigh.

In the list of things bringing glimmers of light to the world, there’s Dia Frampton’s new album (that was $3.99 earlier on Amazon today when I bought it, but apparently has gone up in price). In particular, the duet I Will is just really happy and uplifting and pleasant to listen to.
(Didn’t realize until after I bought the album that she was on the reality show The Voice. Her album was interesting primarily because it was #1 on Amazon’s albums list when I was browsing this morning.)

In other music things, there is also SafetySuit’s new album that I purchased a week or so ago. Never Stop is probably my favorite track from the album, probably because it’s a good representation of my personal life. :)

In yet more music things, there is this rather old album by (now defunct?) band Over It. Gunslinger is probably my favorite track, but the entire album is pleasant to have running in the background while you work.

Also noteworthy is The Glitch Mob, which Ben pointed me to. We Can Make The World Stop is amazing and I listened to it on loop for a day straight, and their other works are great too.

(I suppose it’s unfortunate that, by purchasing these albums, I’m supporting the backward and antiquated policies of the SOPA-supporting music industry, but hopefully at least some of it goes to the awesome artists creating the music.)

In pleasant non-music things, there’s good food. This last week included tasty dinner (and wine) at the Union Grill and nice lunch at Orient Kitchen with Ben. (It also included halfprice at Mad Mex, which was a place I was boycotting due to their exceeding rudeness a few years back, but it has not really improved, so it is not a pleasant thing.)
I think I’ve decided that really nice food is not something I need in my life. Good quality, plentiful quantity food is what makes me the happiest… not paying $30 for some super-rare or super-fancy dish. Cooking also makes me happy. I really should do that more often.

There’s also my job, which has stopped being (too) frustrating in the past few weeks. I’m starting to get back into the groove of things, and I’m not unhappy most of the time I’m working anymore. Which is awesome.

So yeah. I suppose the world as a whole is full of stupid and horrible, but my life as it stands is pretty nice at the moment.

SOPA, Toast!, Facebook, and thoughts

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I’ve written in this blog more this month than the last two combined (if you include this post). And it’s only the 18th. Weird.

Anyway, you’ve probably been hearing about the various site blackouts today in protest of SOPA/PIPA. Given that I work for a tech company, you probably already know my stance on the issue.
It just occurred to me this morning that this conflict seems to be a lot like the kinds of conflicts you see in tech companies.
You have the management types (politicians, MPAA, RIAA, etc) with the money and the power, who want something to happen without really having an understanding of what they’re asking for. You have the tech people (Google, Wikipedia, Craigslist) who have a good understanding of why the request is flawed.
When a direct conflict between the two groups happens in a company, it’s not a good idea for management to blindly push ahead, insisting that they are right over all the protests of the people who really know what’s going on. Do so, and you come out with a crappy product. Do so too much and the company goes bankrupt, or all of your employees quit, and you’re pretty much screwed.
The same thing is happening here. I find it absolutely insane that Congress is attempting to draft legislation that involves so much technical detail, but refuses to listen to the people who really understand that technology. (Or, you know, dismisses them as “profiting from the illegal activities.”)
Sigh.

In other news, I had a birthday, and it was nice. We went to Toast!, and I got the tasting menu with wine pairing, and it was tasty. Probably not nice enough to justify the price tag, but still really nice.
I suppose I’m one of those people who can’t fully appreciate gourmet food and drink. Wine tastes like wine. Food tastes like food. A $30 dinner may taste nicer than a $10 meal at Orient Kitchen (one of my favorite restaurants here), but it doesn’t really feel like it’s 3x as good. So I don’t know.
Service was also not up to what I would expect from such a place. They forgot the wine pairing with my first course (but made up for it at dessert with an aged tawny port), forgot to switch my butter knife for a meat knife (so I pretty much had to fork my salmon apart; they seemed to get everyone else though), ran out of bread (which I suppose is excusable), and just generally weren’t as attentive as you would expect for a restaurant that was mostly empty. Part of it may be the late reservation (7:30). Part of it may be that I was expecting more from hearing people talk about the place (and how they gauge your reaction to each course when selecting the next). I don’t know.
I guess this means I should not attempt to make a trip to The French Laundry. I wouldn’t be able to properly appreciate the food there. (Although I’m sure a $270+ meal would at least not have issues in the service aspect.)

In other other news, I miss Facebook. This is not because I miss Facebook itself, but rather because I miss being able to contact people. It seems that, these days, AIM usage has fallen off and email is generally neglected. When I want to contact certain people now, I pretty much have to send a text message (and that doesn’t even always work). It’s kind of a depressing thought that Facebook has become such a central means of communication, especially over something like email. I don’t know.
I still don’t have plans to get a new Facebook account anytime soon. I’d rather be unable to contact people than deal with their crap again.

In other other other news, I ascended again in KoL to try out bumcheekcity’s ascension script. Apparently, not only does the script not eat or drink for you, it also neglects to find food or drink for you to manually consume. Which meant I was almost stuck with a super-crappy day 1 at level 3 with no food or drink. Luckily I was able to rest in my campground, use the MP to summon Alice’s Army cards and a snack voucher, and use the snack voucher for adventures to spend at the tavern. I’m wondering what other people do for the script. Or do they rely on having spleen familiars to get the adventures necessary? It’s my own damn fault for not ascending manually, yes, but meh.

In other other other other news, I was looking at Photoshop Lightroom as a potential upgrade from Photoshop Elements organizer (currently using version 5). Unfortunately, while Lightroom does have the ability to import Photoshop Elements libraries, it only does so for versions 6 through 9. So my options, if I ever want to upgrade, are to either buy a new version of Photoshop Elements as an intermediate step (to use to upgrade the album file), and then import the upgraded album file into Lightroom (that is, of course, assuming that all of the upgrades work as promised, or I’d have wasted $80 on something pointless)… or to reconstruct my tag library from scratch.
Neither of which is a good option.
Considering doing a small upgrade now to Elements 6, since that’s supported by Lightroom, and Amazon does still sell it (via third parties), and reviews say it doesn’t suck nearly as much as the newer incarnations of Elements, and the process of upgrading the album should work better than an upgrade from 5 to 10. But still, the entire thing has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Do people really not use software for years anymore? Do companies really expect you to be on the new version as soon as it’s out? Elements 5 is just over 5 years old. That doesn’t seem like an unreasonable amount of time to use a piece of software you paid for.
I suppose it’s also hypocritical of me to use Elements organizer when I decided not to get a Kindle because of the lock-in effect on Kindle books.
I do have all of my tags written to the photo metadata, so I could potentially switch to anything if I absolutely had to without losing them completely, but I would lose all of the organization I currently have of the tags (like categorization of people tags, separation of people tags from location tags, etc). That’s nontrivial when you have several thousand tags.
Sigh.

I guess this has been a list of things that have been making me sad lately. #firstworldproblems, eh?

Edit: From Ian:

I see SOPA in a very different light from you, I think. I don’t see Congress and media execs having any misunderstandings. They’re old, don’t have a use for the Internet themselves, and accumulating short term earnings for retirement. Fuck the rest of the world.

Yeeeeeah. :\