señor taco’s travels

After sitting at the desk for a bit longer I can now at least pinpoint what I’d
like out of that. A desk that is a bit shorter in width (at nearly 6′ it’s
kind of a space wasting behometh right now) and that is closer to the ground.
As I’ve proven many times in the past I like sitting closer to the ground. I
don’t know why, but I do. Of course, I also love my
href=”http://www.biomorphdesk.com/1-888-302-DESK/personal/overview.html”
title=”Biomorph Personal Desk”>adjustable desk that I have at home
(thankfully it was on sale).

I don’t know what I’m going to do about this, but I’ll try to figure out
something soon.

Well, sometimes it takes a while to figure out what’s going to be the major
suck factor when you change jobs. I love working at
href=”http://wildbrain.com/” title=”Wild Brain”>Wild Brain, the people,
the work, the projects. All of that combined with the real reason for moving
(to get out of New York) have been a great change of pace.

Over the last month I’ve been realizing that I’m not feeling as productive as
I should be. Then I started looking at the situation and it dawned on me, my
desk setting is not nearly as optimal for me as it should be, there are just
too many distractions.

Currently my desk is in the open production area and (just like every desk)
consists of a door on two metro shelves (that’s the companies choice and I’m
fine with that). You can even
href=”http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/images/desk-panorama.jpg”
title=”Desk Panorama”>see a panorama of my desk (yes, it’s sloppy, but I
wasn’t going for perfection here). The major thing I would love to change is
the openness of my desk. An enclosed office would be ideal, but barring that
even a cubicle from Blue Sky would be good. At least I could hunker down and
work well in there.

I guess I’ll just stop complaining and start trying to figure out how to change
it. Maybe turning the desk 90 degrees one way or the other (it was turned to
the left when i first got there, but i kept getting people sneaking up on me,
which was way more distracting. Wise-ass remarks and useful feedback welcome.

This last week was my friends Mark’s birthday. To celebrate there was href="http://www.ventanawildernesscampground.com/" title="Ventatana
Campground">camping in Big Sur. On Friday night I met Keith and Ian at
Pixar, we loaded up my car and struck out for points south. We knew that since
we had to leave later in the day traffic was going to be against us, but we
survived.

There was hiking at the href="http://www.parks.ca.gov/default.asp?page_id=582" title="Andrew
Molera State Park">Andrew Molera State Park on Saturday. The beach there
was cool. Keith and I came back Saturday evening as we both had things to do
on Sunday. Some hi-lights of the trip include:

• the cute dog we saw while in traffic. he couldn’t keep his tongue in his
  mouth and kept licking with his tongue flopping around the whole time. it
  was very cute.
• the great windy drive in the dark down Highway One.
• the awesome large redwoods at the campground.
• the very cool sound the water made at the beach as it ran back into the
  ocean over the vast surface of rocks. it sounded a bit like clapping,
  very cool and quite unexpected.

• the fabulous drive back up Highway One in the evening. Some truly
  amazing scenery.

There are pictures, including my first attempts at panoramas, but I haven’t
yet cataloged them nor done the stitching yet.

Sometimes while working I just have to have music. I guess a little background
is in order. I work in a big open area at an animation studio. No cube, no
office, just my desk (which is a whole other story) in it’s location and lots
of other desks around me. It’s not so bad, but sometimes an office or even
private-ish cube would be nicer (and we can’t all work in the perfection of
title="FogCreek Offices">the new FogCreek Software Office).

So, to escape all the conversation around me I put on the headphones, put the
iPod on shuffle by song and then randomly pick one song from all that I have
on the unit. This brings us to the meat of the title (mmmm, meat, *drool*).

Many times I’ll get a new album and I put it on my playlist titled a
rock-n-roll lesson (named that way so it’s the first playlist on the iPod
and the Playlists are the first menu entry so it’s easy to go straight into
it and get playing). I listen to it for a while (and don’t forget, I have a
commute so I get a chance to rock out to it in the car too) but after a while I
always seem to gravitate to the shuffle songs thing. I just let
the iPod play and play and play. There are 5324 songs currently on the iPod (named Bluntman btw). Sometimes
it just what i want, a nice mix and it seems to get about the mood I’m in
(however that is probably just a coincidence of what exactly is on the iPod).
One thing I do find annoying occasionally is that the shuffles seems to get
stuck on one artist. I’ll get 3 or 4 of the same artist in the same or
different albums. That always gets on my nerves. The greatest thing about
shuffling like this is you get a chance to listen to stuff you like but haven’t
listened to in a long while.

Anyway, it’s back to work time. I’m pleasantly blocking out the conversation
to my left and the one right in front of me. Now if only i had a second monitor
at work :)

(update Wed Sep 24 12:18:03 PDT 2003) and dammit
if the shuffle artist stick didn’t happen. Three in a row from Diesel Boy.
Now, while I don’t mind that, I don’t want that either.

Dode always comes up with great comments about the shows we see. Last night was
One Man Army at Slim’s. I went with the afore mentioned Dode and the lovely
Ann Dial. Fun was had by all even though Dode has a broken collar bone,
scapula, and ribs. I’m glad he made the effort to see the show and get out of
his house.

One Man Army were so tight and on target (as usual). Their
set was really fast, and by that I mean they played a normal set really, really
fast. It was amazing. At the end of the set they played a little Clash
mixed into one of there songs (and there was another cover bit and darn it if
I can’t remember it). At the end of the set OMA actually smashed all their
instruments. It was wonderful.

The Reducers S.F. also played. I like them and they were pretty tight, but
the singer seemed a little horse. Oh well. It was a good time.

I really wish my friends CB and Matt (no relation) could have been there, they
would have loved it.

Tuesday was another new music day.

• 
  Avenged Sevenfold - Waking the Fallen
  okay, this isn’t a new release, but it’s new to me. I like this bank a
  lot. Even though this is my first album from then I think it really
  friggin’ rocks so hard. As my friend Matt said “somebody had
  Iron Maiden albums as a kid.” The kind of remind me of href="http://www.avengedsevenfold.com/" title="Atreyu">Atreyu, but
  with a little less screaming. It’s also nice to see the band photo
  with them all in black, the alterna-goth style, href="http://www.misfits.com/" title="misfits.com">misfits belt
  buckle, AFI t-shirt,
  and black nail polish. Someone has too keep it up and I’m certainly too
  old to do it. Keep rocking boys.
• Thursday -
  War All The Time
  The boys from Brunswick, New Jersey have put out another solid album.
  With War All The Time Thursday has returned to the emo-core that
  they are known for. Not super whiney like most emo…more passionate in
  the delivery, lets call it screamo because that fits. This combined with
  the previous two albums makes for a good stream of listening. I’m not
  sure I can say more here, but I will as time goes on.

Jan and I went after work to check out a pub down the street from work. The
place is called Dylan’s and it’s at 19th Street and Folsom. One word, great.
I love that place. It’s a great Welsh pub with great atmosphere and friendly
bar staff. I can see going back there many a time. Woo!

For those of you that may or may not care at all I have written a review of
the O’Reilly published
book, title="ORA catalog">Secure Programming Cookbook for C and C++. The review
is available on the href="http://www.sfobug.org/reviews/SecureProgrammingCookbook.html"
title="Secure Programming Cookbook Review">SFOBUG website. Comments should
be directed to me.

I went to title="HMB State Park">Half Moon Bay State Beach yesterday. I met up
with Jan, Mitch, Deb, and Ryan there. Ryan was very cute walking around and
playing with the sand (there are a few pictures available on request to
qualified individuals).

After the beach we went to a British style pub called Cameron’s (south of
where CA-92 meets CA-1). It was good bar food and the waitresses were all
very nice to look at (he said in his lecherous manner). Anyway, it was
a good day of relaxing.

I love Johnny Cash’s music. I’m sad now that’s he’s passed on. His last
album, The Man Comes Around is
truly excellent. For a while I’ve been buying more and more of his past
catalog, realizing as I go that I really love his work. I know he had been
sick for a while and with the recent passing of his wife I can only imagine
what he was going through.

I’m going to spin some Cash on the iPod today and keep collecting his work
for the foreseeable future. He’s a talented and original artist who’s
contribution to music will not easily be forgotten.