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.

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.↩

Warren Ellis writes:

“The more creators who only took on housepainting as a part-time gig, the healthier this medium would be.”

Oh man, so true. This is why staring my own work up is very appealing.

I try to donate blood about every 60 days or so. I usually get a call from the Red Cross to remind me and set an appointment. Today at 14.00 I gave my pint (473.2 mL) and while I was donating they noticed I’m a pretty regular donor. Today they asked me if I wanted to see if I have a high enough platelet count to do apheresis donation. It takes longer but you get your plasma and red blood cells pumped back into you. If I qualify I’ll probably try it once to see how it is.

If there’s one thing I didn’t want over the holiday weekend it was an anxiety
dream. You know the kind, where you wake up stressed out. Bleh.

Anyway, it starts with me visiting a hybrid software/game/animation company
(yeah, huh?) and somehow I’m supposed to be interviewing for a job there but I
didn’t know it. The interview starts and it’s everyone piled into one office
with me sitting in the corner. Apparently I had sent them a bunch of crap
attached to my resume that they could have looked up had I just referenced it
correctly. This made one person in
the group unhappy and he kept grilling me and belittling me through the
entire process. The kicker was, the guy that seemed angry with me was
Patton Oswalt the comedian. That
really freaked me out. I pretty much woke up in the middle of the dream so
there was no resolution and I was wicked stressed.

I hate dreams like that. I mean, what does it all mean? Curse you
subconscious!

So, about 11 months or so ago I started growing out a goatee. After a while
I decided not to trim it back and just let it grow out. Now it’s a
few inches long and i can braid it but that just makes it short so that’s out
for now.

Recently I’ve been thinking I should shave off my goatee. I’ve grown used to
it so it’s not an issue of it getting in the way or anything. I’m more just
wondering if I should cut it off or not. Generally when I get this way I’ll
think over it for a while and then go the direction I originally thought, in
this case that’s shaving it off.

Feel free to comment below on the issue if you know me. Maybe I’ll wait until
the end of September. Hmmm, there’s an idea. Have it for the weeding I’m
going to, but then remove it. Hmmmm, thoughts.

So, recurring dreams. Strange stuff. As it is I don’t remember too many of
my dreams. However I have some of the same dreams several times and themes
are definitely repeating. One of the major ones is, um, dead bodies (or parts
thereof) and bears. The bears are never causing the death and they don’t mess
with the bodies.

Last night was a new dream for me. Everywhere I went there were arms (both
left and right) from the elbow up sticking out of the ground. I could
recognize some of the arms via jewelry, watches, or tattoos but I have no
idea why they were there. None of them moved and they were obviously dead.

As I walked along I came across a bear. He told me his name was Shamus (the
first time a bear has spoken in a dream) and offered me a ride. We rode for a
while and then watched the sun set from the hills over the East Bay. Thats
when I woke up.

I have no explanations for any of it, but one friend told me that bears are
supposed to mean strength. That’s a little comforting I guess. At least I’m
not afraid of the bodies and the bears are always peaceful or non-threatening.

Do you ever have recurring dreams? I do. For many years I’ve had recurring
dreams that I’m in a car wreck and I lose part of one of my legs. It’s never
the same leg, but is usually the right leg. Sometimes I’m driving and
sometimes I’m a passenger. Over the years it’s been in different cars and
with different people.

Last nights version was me as a passenger in my roommates car. We were
blind sided and I lost my right leg from the knee down. Then I got a
prosthetic and ended up working with the doctor and developer of the leg
to give all prosthetics better AI software so they were more life-like.

It’s so odd. I’m sure it will continue just like the other recurring dreams
I have. The The first person to suggest therapy is going to get a big
slap on the back of the head the next time I see them.

This last week, starting with last Friday, has been my worst week for
Repetitive Stress Injury (RSI) pain in quite a long time. Starting with last
Friday I have been getting the oh so lovely burning and stabbing pain in my
forearms and wrists. Over the weekend I was reaching into a shopping bag and
pain shot up my arm just by grabbing an item inside. All week it’s been
little bits of pain here and there. Doing the dishes, grabbing things, just
sitting around.

To counter it I reduced the amount of time between my href="http://www.lcdf.org/~eddietwo/xwrits/" title="Software: Xwrits">forced
breaks, I started stretching more and even using a href="http://www.wristwand.com/" title="Tool: WristWand">WristWand that
one of my coworkers has (note to self, you really need to make one of those
for yourself). I guess I can only be preventative once again now, because
once you start feeling the pain it’s a little too late.

I of course attribute the buildup in RSI stress to two things:

1. doing more typing at work for my project (that can’t be helped, but I can
   be careful);
2. having the title="A Desk of Distractions">Worst. href="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/2003/09/30#desk-situation2" title="The size
   of the desk">Desk. href="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/2003/10/10#desk-situation3" title="Two
   Inches Means A Lot">Evar! And I mean that in all honesty. This is the
   worst desk I’ve ever had to sit at for an extended period of time.

Hopefully I will be able to correct it, but only time and vigilance will tell.
As a point of reference I took two forced breaks in the typing of this short
entry.

…well, one that I remember at least. I shall describe it here so I can find
it again later.

It starts out with my family and I driving in my car. My mom is operating it and we’re on Galveston Island.
Along the major city portion of Galveston is a sea wall. It was built after
the 1900 storm and raised the level
of the entire city by 17 feet. So, in my dream it’s a little different than
reality. At the west end of the wall it’s not 17 feet but about 100 feet and
very narrow. There are also factories or refineries along both sides. As
we’re driving along a giant storm has come in and there is water up around
the refineries and really close to the top of the sea wall. Pipes and stacks
are still visible and still billowing but there is very cool looking wave
action happening around them. At this point something goes wrong with the
narrow roadway and we end up careening off the side and into one of the
refineries. It’s amazingly open inside and quite calm under the water. Once
the car settles on some platform I open the door and it’s like we’re under
water, but no water comes rushing in. We can talk, but also swim around and
everything seems to work so I try to make a call on my cell phone, only I can’t
because I have no signal. As we’re waiting in the bowels of this refinery an
elevator door opens and this woman tells us she’s the caretaker of the place.
She lets us into the elevator. Once we’re topside we end up on the beach
with the 17 foot sea wall that is right next to the 100 foot sea wall and the
refinery is still under water. At this point the army is hoisting our vehicle
out of the water for us with some helicopters. Only they don’t pull my car
out the first time, instead it’s some other silver car that some other guy
claims is his, but when he gets into it it turns into a very futuristic
looking two wheeled motorcycle but with a large passenger compartment. He
drives off and then I wake up.

I love remembering dreams, it’s too bad I don’t do it more often.