I have a day job. It’s a damn fine day job too. I work on movies and in the end the product is seen by millions of people all over the world. I’ve been doing this day job for over a dozen years now.

With every production I’ve been on there are crunch periods. If it’s not for you it’s for then you can bet someone else is working overtime. For the last couple of months I’ve been working Saturdays trying to drive to a deadline for the next feature, not even the one the rest of the company is trying to wrap up. The last couple of weeks have seen the workload and my hours increase a lot. Like near the 70 hour mark. I know. I know. First world problem. And don’t get me wrong, the overtime pay is coming in handy. I just get the feeling like it’s all work and then I just go home to sleep and barely see my wife.

Every so often I feel like I should be working for myself. I’m never going to get there if I don’t take steps now. I’m going to setup my own personal two-week sprints to see what I can get done while not at work and still keep my personal life in balance. I won’t be starting today or even this weekend, hours at work and a good friend’s wedding this weekend are going to chew up all my free time. If I can on Sunday I’ll map out the tasks I need to complete. Once I start I can’t turn back. To do so is to fail, and I don’t want to fail that easily.

I’ll post more as I can, but for now I’m keeping my trap shut.

Yup, the title says it all. I got married!

Jo and I are super happy that we decided not to wait any longer.

(update: apparently this post was sitting in draft status. oops!)

Today, 3 February 2009, marks my twelfth year of gainful employment after graduating from university. I’ve been fortunate to have stumbled into a remarkable industry that has afforded me the ability to develop my mental skills and branch out to areas that were once unfamiliar to me.

In my studies for forestryforestry the professors not only taught what we needed to know about forests, but they also prepared us for life in the business world. We were prepped on how to interview and that we should always wear a suit to an interview to show respect, unless informed otherwise.

It was with that preparation, and a bit of dumb luck, that I ended up in Harrison, New York to interview with Blue Sky Studios. While studying for forestry I worked in the GIS lab assisting with classes, managing the workstations, and programming. As I was getting ready to graduate I contacted a friend from high school that was working at Blue Sky. She got my resume in front of the right person and before I knew it I was being flown to New York for an interview. Predictably I wore a suit and tie to the interview. That certainly made an impression, but when I accepted the job my soon-to-be boss told me that if I wore a tie again he’d make sure he cut it off. To this day I’ve only worn ties to formal or celebratory company events. That was in January of 1997. I had interviewed a few other places and I kept pushing them off waiting to hear back from Blue Sky. Once I got the offer from Blue Sky I accepted, packed up, and moved to New York. I really had no idea what was in store for me, but I jumped in feet first and started working.

I couldn’t imagine a better course of my life. I worked at Blue Sky for six and a half years with a small three month stint at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). I worked on many projects between those two places: Bunny, Ice Age, Fight Club, and Alien: Ressurection to name a few.¹ After those formative and fortunate years at Blue Sky learning more than I ever had in university I decided it was time for me to head west to California. I think I had always wanted to live in California, I certainly did like visiting there. As with Blue Sky and ILM I got my next job at Wild Brain through people I knew and had worked with before. The idea was that Wild Brain would be starting up on producing an animated feature and they needed people to help develop a pipeline. That was a fun three years with a very tight-knit group of people. In the end the movie never materialized and I decided it was time for me to move on.

Proving once again connections are key, I finally got my foot in the door at Pixar Animation Studios. I was in the Production Engineering group at Pixar. The group that supports the software tools used to (thus far) make every film there. I worked through the release of two films there, Ratatouille and Wall•E.² That was a great time and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, but it lead me to my latest adventure.

Taking an opportunity to transfer within the Walt Disney Company I decided to embark on a new adventure at ImageMovers Digital (IMD). Getting to stay in a large and stable company like Disney was important, but at IMD we’re working to build the studio from the ground up while working on our first feature. Moving here also gave me the title of Senior Production Engineer. It’s something I was ready for and brings much more responsibility and learning with it. I’m getting to direct software projects and I’m finding out what people relying on you means with some long, but fulfilling, hours.

I don’t know what the future will hold. I’ll be at IMD for a while because it’s so challenging here I want to keep doing it. I often find myself drifting towards the possibility of indie work, but I’m not sure if I’m ready to strike out on my own just yet. Whatever may come in the next dozen years I hope it will be as awesome as the last twelve.

1. You can see my full credit list at IMDB.↩
2. With the long production times and overlapping production schedules at Pixar I actually did work for Up and Toy Story 3 as well.↩

The Inauguration of President Barack Obama – The Big Picture – Boston.com

48 pictures from around the globe of the inauguration of President Obama.

via: Iminta.com | my feed @ Iminta.com

This last weekend I took a motorcycle rider safety course from the Motorcycle Safety Foundation and put on by Bay Area Motorcycle Training.

It. Was. Awesome.

I got on a motorcycle for the first time and learned the basic skills needed to ride safely on the road. I don’t yet have a motorcycle or the gear, but I plan on getting those in due time.

On a related note, my cousin David also took the rider course and got a sweet ride.  I can’t wait to see (and ride?) it in person.

I Am a Constitution Voter

• I believe that no one — including the President — is above the law.
• I oppose all forms of torture, and I support both closing the Guantánamo Bay prison and ending indefinite detention.
• I oppose warrantless spying.
• I believe that government officials, no matter how high-ranking, should be held accountable for breaking the law and violating the Constitution.
• I believe that the Constitution protects every person’s rights equally — no matter what they believe, how they live, where or if they worship, and whom they love.
• I reject the notion that we have to tolerate violations of our most fundamental rights in the name of fighting terrorism.
• I am deeply committed to the Constitution and expect our country’s leaders to share and act on that commitment — every day, without fail.

Seven years. It’s flown buy. I’ve gotten three new jobs and moved from one coast to the other in that time.

Seven years ago today I was at work early when Jack Ham cam over to my cube and told me his wife called to say an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center. We looked out the window and sure enough, there was the silhouette of the WTC as normal, but with a plume of smoke coming off of it.

We thought it was an accident and then the second plane hit while we were watching the TV.¹

Seven years ago the unthinkable happened.

Seven years ago lives were changed.

Today we go on.  Tomorrow we go on. Forever, we never forget.

1. In Andre’s cube was the only spot we could get over the air reception. That was right next to my cube. There were many people gathered around that spot all day. Later we’d go to a bar and then people that couldn’t get back into NYC stayed with those of us that lived in Westchester.↩

This morning I was listening to NPR and the weekly StoryCorps segment came on. I’ve been fascinated and delighted by StoryCorps. It’s a project well worth the time people are putting into it.

Today was Marry Ellen Noone talking about her great-grandmother. There was a disclaimer on the radio that this segment was hard to listen to. That disclaimer applies here as well.

Mary Ellen Noone on StoryCorps.

That a person could have so much hatred, distain, and disrespect for a human as what happened to Mrs. Noone’s great-grandmother makes me sad and angry at the same time. I realize the event was almost 100 years ago, but that our country and the world ever got the point that degradation of humans was acceptable I sometimes wonder how we ever got where we are without destroying ourselves.

At any rate, StoryCorps is fascinating. If you’ve got some time browse through it and listen to stories. If you have a story I encourage you try and share it with StoryCorps.

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying from pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving talk, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals.

[via Clickable Bliss]

I’ve visited New Zealand — Aotearoa — twice now. Both trips were a fantastic time and I really enjoyed seeing the country, meeting the people, and enjoying the culture. Often it’s interesting to see how other countries approach issues that arise in your home land.¹

When first I visited New Zealand they had already done away with the one cent coin. In the intervening two years they abandoned the five cent piece. The smallest denomination they have is ten cents and they use Swedish rounding to compensate for values not on the ten cent mark. In the USA the elimination of the one cent coin, which now costs more than one cent to make, has been opposed by the zinc industry and it is just plain ridiculous that companies can fight something that makes sense for our country. Also in New Zealand and Switzerland² the lowest paper denomination is the five dollars/francs and anything below five units is in coin.³

What is this all leading up to? It was hard to pin down for a while, but I’ve become unsatisfied with the state of the nation I call home. For the longest time I never thought about moving out of the USA. I look at how our society in the USA is falling down and I don’t like it. I was always told to try and change the system from within, but when you have a corrupt administration blatantly ignoring the populace what are you supposed to do? Sure, the last election had some hope, but then the ugly bi-partisain nature of our political system reared its head again and showed how it will continue to fail us. There’s always revolution to be sure, but we’re not anywhere near that state.⁴

The Constitution still works, and I have faith that the legal system will work through all the issues, even if it takes a long time to happen. In spite of that I have a feeling of dread that most people don’t really care though. They’re willing to be lead about by the nose, snapping up the cheapest products and latest gadgets they can and giving fuck-all about the world until it impinges on them, and by then it’s very hard to make changes, but they can be made.⁵

New Zealand is the one country I could consider immigrating to. The country was clean, the people friendly, and the government seemed responsible from the discussions with Kiwis that we had. People didn’t seem concerned about showing off if they were wealthy but more about if they were living a good life.⁶

I know that while on vacation a place can seem magical and it’s hard to see the tarnish. I can assure anyone that more research would occur on my part before I jumped in. This kind of decision is not one to make lightly and I’m not going to pack up and move as soon as I can. I’ll wait and see what happens with this next election at the least. I should give our representative process a chance to work, but I do despise the fact that there are only two sides that seem well versed in shouting, disagreeing and railroading just because of perceived opposites with labels.⁷

For sure the decision is made harder because my entire family is in the USA. I’m also still single, which could be a good thing or a bad thing were I to move. Moving 6,729 miles (10,830 km) from all of my friends and family is not something to take lightly. I’ll be thinking this over but one never knows, I might revisit this subject in a month or a year and come to the conclusion that I’d be insane to move. Only time will tell if this bug will stay.

1. Notice, that’s “home land” like where you live, not the fascist “Homeland” like the USA’s security theater department.↩
2. Places I have traveled and payed a little bit of attention.↩
3. With the Swiss having a five franc coin as well↩
4. At least, the levels of oppression that would make me revolt aren’t apparent.↩
5. I too like gadgets but I’m not going to go for consumer gratification over being a citizen.↩
6. We only saw one Hummer the entire time we were there and trucks we did see usually looked like work vehicles and showed it, not showpieces.↩
7. I don’t identify with any political party because I think they’re all flawed. I vote for the candidate that best meets my ideals be they from the Republican party, the Democrat party or the Baby-Mulchers party↩