July 31, 2004
Day ElevenHaving had quite the full day, I've only just finished my daily web rounds. At the last message board I visited, I was struck at once by the breakdown in essential thought processes. Previously I've noticed my own ability to problem solve has become deficient. But what I saw there greatly concerned me. Reading comprehension on a site filled with presumably adults (or atleast kids over 13) is almost non-existent. A simple turn of phrase will cause heated debate between the people who correctly interpret the phrase in the context of the paragraph and the people who cannot see beyond the literal. The English language is breaking down, and I fear for a society where the people don't have adequate words to express their passions.My morning started early; too early. I woke up at 7:30 knowing I had a doctor's appointment at 9:15. Unfortunately I'd gone to bed at a late hour the night before; consider the timestamp on yesterday's entry and then understand that on top of that I fixed myself a bowl of cereal, broke my glasses, searched for the tiny pieces, tried in vain to repair my glasses, and read a few chapters out of Order of the Phoenix before hitting the sack. Whether it be nerves or a continuing poor diet, I again suffered from a case of the Hersey squirts, though far less severe. I worked for a bit on the video thing that's been processing for days now and then read until a quarter of. After checking again on the video, I had nine minutes left to get myself ready and go. Since my mom works there as a nurse and it was my first time going there, I tried to dress the best I could but there weren't alot of options. I get there and am again polite. I sign a few forms and then my mother weighs me and seats me in an examination room. She comes and goes anwsering phones, at one point publicly and a bit loudly criticizes my clothes, half jokingly. To my immense satisfaction, her co-workers stood up for me. The victory was somewhat tarnished once I found out how crappy the rest of her day would go. During the time before my Empire vision appointment at four, I left another message with my friend Maia and tried IMing another friend about her graduation party, but she was out. Maia called back later and asked if I wanted to catch the free production of "Fiddler on the Roof" at Washington Park with her. I agreed. After the Empire vision appointment - where my father and I working together couldn't solve the forms they gave us upon arrival, and where they blew air into my eyes and asked me to stare at a picture of a farm house in a machine, but neglected to ask me any questions - I got home having ended up with a very similiar perscription to my current one and very similiar frames, though slightly thinner and a good deal lighter in color. "Fiddler on the Roof" was a fun time, and the crowd the Park Playhouse productions draw is always interesting. The whole cast did decent job with their respective roles, but their Tevye and Yente really achieved stand out performances. And now I am home, and I am tired and I am thinking strongly of going to bed. Hopefully I'll be more profound in the morning.
posted by Adam at 01:14 |
July 29, 2004
Day TenYou'd think boiling life down to mere simplistics would make it seem that much emptier. But this is simply not so. In fact, the simpler I can let life get, the fuller it seems. While sitting on the toilet after my latest round of bowel acrobatics with head in hands, elbows on knees, I realized finally why I no longer fear death the way I once did. It began with the revelation that I had no reason to care what happens a hundred million years from now. My window of perception is the few scant decades ahead of me. What happens after that is irrelevant save for mild feelings about the outcomes of the loved ones I'll be leaving behind. Death, if there is no afterlife, I decided, is really like the liberating moment after you've just finished an exam and know that regardless of success or failure, it's done. Death is an eternal snapshot of that moment, before you realize that you have another exam coming soon. With that outlook, the only thing worth fearing is the tricky sections left to go before "Pencil's Down."I went over to Ron's today to fix his computer. He's currently diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease, and the experience was quite surreal. I've fixed his computer many times before; he's always managed to find new and fascinating ways of mucking it up that I've never seen before. But it was always almost fun; we'd joke and laugh and pop in a movie while a virus scan was running or whatever. Wherever he was, he was in the center of things. And since the disease has stripped away his voice, you just don't get that experience - though there are enough glimmers to make the experience worthwhile. Right from when I got there and his girlfriend's father answered the door instead of him, I knew things would be fundamentally different before. I'd seen him several times before since his speech had gone bad, but it had always been on my terms. To see how much his home environment had changed (and not just because of the disease), well, it was like hearing one of your favorite old acoustic tunes redone by a one hit wonder using exclusively synthesizers. You can understand the appeal, but for you it just isn't the same. This is all of course very selfish on my part in saying, but there it is anyway. The man behind the eyes is the same, and him just being him made the afternoon more than worthwhile. There is something irrepressible about Ron's essential nature that glimmers through regardless of the cosmetic changes, and it was through that that I returned to the flow of things. The computer was gloriously befuddled, a scene I recognized for having sorely missed without recognizing it. The only thing that got to me was the silence while I worked. That was the truly jarring thing. I'm not used to there being silence around Ron. And with that last paragraph I've been unintentionally far too honest in places. The glimmering emotional complexities just beneath the surface remind me why a simplistic lifestyle is impossible to maintain. And yet, somewhere buried in that paragraph is the meaning beyond meaning. I've got to treat people better. I feel better about myself when I treat people better. And yet their own inadequacies mean I go from being the opressor to the opressed. I must find a way to assert myself without dominating. And now I'm strongly considering a bowl of cereal. Followed by a few chapters from my book and the bed. Now that's gloriously simple. And for once no guilt about it, either. Less is more.
posted by Adam at 12:11 |
Day NineIt is quite fascinating the effect a minor fixation can have on one's perceptions of the world around them and the meaning of the events that happen within it. When the world can be glimpsed without that fixation, it is like a breath of fresh air. During the length of such a fixation, I was utterly convinced that my life would be depressing and barren without it. And yet, I have found that after the fixation disipates (or atleast loses its intensity) that the return to meaningless existence isn't nearly so depressing or barren as I had feared. The words of Amanda at the end of Another Roadside Attraction come to mind: "To say it has no meaning is not to say it has no value ... Mystery is part of nature's style, that's all. It's the Infinite Goof. It's meaning that is of no meaning." And so I look to the future with a little less trepidation.I had another ephiphany pulling out of the parking lot from work it day and knew I should write it down, lest I forget. I have indeed forgotten; perhaps I should keep a pad in there. Just finished the "Dumbledore's Army" chapter of Order of the Phoenix. God I love this stretch of the book.
posted by Adam at 03:31 |
July 28, 2004
Day EightI have just in the last hour or so discovered that having a reading lamp baking you from behind makes it both infinitely more difficult to prepare yourself to go to bed and infinitely more difficult to collect your day's thoughts into some sort of reasonable form. I look back at my day and only get vague flashes that hold any meaning. Part of the problem, I suppose, is that I did very little today.I woke up at ten this morning and - dammit, I just had to turn that reading lamp off - found that the MPG file was still encoding from the previous night. So I fixed myself some breakfast and rubbed my lower jaw on the left, where the entry point for yesterday's novacaine (how do you spell that anyway?) still rather painfully resides. In spite of my minor discomfort, I was feeling pretty good about things. There was a fresh box of Frosted Mini-Wheats, bite-sized, and I haven't had mini-wheats in a fair while. The milk tasted like it was going a bit bad but this had minimal ill effect. The taste of a soggy milk-filled mini wheat is a near unstoppable force. And the milk was probably fine, as I'm more than a little neurotic when it comes to expiration dates and food. I have one of the worst gastro-intestinal systems of anyone not diagnosed with a medical condition. My trio of green, white, and pink pills go with me whenever I venture into foreign territory. If the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are the Holy Trinity then surely Tums, Imodium, and Pepto Bismol can't be all that far behind. Meanwhile, there was a massive thunderstorm and subsequent flood warnings that ensured my first perfect work day of the season; the magic, almost legendary zero customers. This meant I had to sort swimming lessons (a task I performed correctly but with the wrong timing such that my work was worse than useless) but also managed to breeze through roughly 200 pages of Goblet of Fire. I finished it tonight while still dicking around with the video. Damn that book has a great finale. It also leads breathlessly into the most fully-realized and deliberately paced of the series, Order of Phoenix, which I plan on starting immediately following the completion of this journal entry. The final encode on the first of the three discs worked out well. I ended up burning it twice, since the first had severe artifacting when I put it in the set-top DVD player. As it turned out, the problem lay with the DVD player rather than the CD burner. For a good five minutes or so, it wouldn't read any Video CDs at all. After applying the dubious recovery methods usually reserved only for the troublesome burner, I achieved successful playback at least through the night. Meanwhile, my own stupidity and overzealous need to delete files has resulted in an additional seven or so hours of encoding time on disc two. Lest I jinx it, I will say no more on the matter. I'm still trying to get the schedules worked out for my as yet uncertain DVD party on the seventh of August. There's a good possibility that it may be our last, so I kinda want to make sure it happens. The last hold-out should let me know by tomorrow or the day after. God willing, my current project will have reached successful completion by that point in time. Otherwise, it has been a rather quiet leisureful day. I even had some fun laughs with my mother doing stupid shit. Reminder: I have to look up billing practices for RIT for Dad. Tomorrow I wake up at ten, and with a little luck am in for an equally enjoyable day. For now, the computer will process it's video. Here's a question for you: If a computer can now exactly how long it will take to reach the desired result, why can't it just skip ahead and get there? I swear that question sounded more intelligent in my head.
posted by Adam at 01:00 |
July 27, 2004
Day SevenAgain a late post. Sorry about that, it's just the way things tend to work.Having found a note on my keyboard the previous night on the matter, I woke up this morning and returned a co-worker's call. Turns out he needed to someone to take his shift on Friday. I knew I had the day off, except for an appointment in the morning so I said sure. No sooner had I gotten off the phone then my mother tells me she's scheduled an eye appointment for me that very afternoon. So I had to call him right back and take back my offer. He's traded with me a few times, so I felt like a real jack ass. If nobody takes his shift come tomorrow, I'm gonna reschedule my eye appointment. Quality PAL to NTSC conversion can be a real bitch. I got a certain video file at 25 fps. Since it was sped up from it's native 24 fps film format, I ripped the audio, used a program called BeSweet to slow the speed to approximately ninety-six percent of it's original speed and then used another program called VirtualDub to reencode an AVI file where the 25 fps video plays out at 23.976 fps without dropping or merging frames. That last step took approximately two hours, and then when I get it into a third program called TMPGEnc, I get an error. So I had to encode the SVCD's audio track seperately first from the BeSweet file and then encode the video as a whole. When I wake up tomorrow, I'm going to have cut the video file at the point where the audio has already been cut and multiplex the two files back together. And that's the simplest third of the operation. Wasn't a big fan of getting the filling done either. Previously, they never gave me enough novicane and I could feel this cold icy pain as the drill hammered away. Today, I couldn't feel the drilling 'cause the dentist (a different one this time albeit in the same office) gave me so much. But I couldn't really feel my mouth through supper time, and shortly there after it caused me such a minor miserable pain that I popped 600 mg of Ibprofen. And all through this, the video's encoding in my room. Once I'd got my tooth pain taken care of - and after catching up with this week's episode of "The 4400" - I took another bath. As I sit here typing, I remain stark naked save for the towel I used to dry my seven a couple hours ago. I made it through "The Second Task" on Goblet of Fire and I'm really sucked in. Good to know the books can still hold magic for me. Finished my night by updating Serenity Cortex with seven new pictures from Comic-Con and two new news articles. Exhausted but still focued, I clicked over to Blogger and began writing this entry. Oh, and we had Pork Roast for dinner, with Apple Sauce. I could taste approximately half of it.
posted by Adam at 02:37 |
July 26, 2004
Day SixWay too late to be writing a journal entry. I'm very tired, and for the moment content with my place in things. Just did a bunch of updates to Serenity Cortex. Got to get a filling tomorrow. Also, return Rob from work's call. Went to friend's house. Finally saw My Cousin Vinny's theatrical cut. An absolute scream. Re-distributed pictures. I better not have to work on Friday.God bless you all, and good night.
posted by Adam at 03:18 |
July 25, 2004
Day FiveI'm tired, I'm thirsty, I have a headache, and I wan't to go to bed. Alas, I started my previous entry too early, and missed things. And now I start this one to late, and am certain to miss a good deal more.The big news on my geeky front: the last Star Wars movie ever is called Revenge of the Sith. I enjoy the symmetry with Return of the Jedi, but have two _____ of the ____ titles in a row is rather repetitive. There was also a good deal more posted for paying customers only. I didn't get my hands on all of it, but what I saw was pretty awesome. Needless to say, Star Wars had to be the talk of Comic-Con today. Besides that, a rip of the Return of the Jedi DVD, scheduled for release in September, is spreading across the internet like wildfire and getting the behinds of many in a bunch. Work today moved by pretty quick. Of the time I got paid to work, approximately an hour-and-a-half was spent playing "Uno" behind the desk. The majority of that time was spent on one awful game. I swept all three. There was a situation brewing regarding a pavilion and some missing property. We sent the woman at the center of the problem to maintenance. Apparently they weren't there because she cornered me after we'd closed why I was putting stuff in my trunk. Having been locked out of the office already and without access to all of the necessary phone numbers, there wasn't a heck of a lot I could do, so I just pushed the problem on down the line. The graduation party was a decidedly unique affair. When I got there, there were several people from my school there and a couple that took the AP test with me. Now there was a fun conversation. But soon they all left but I, being in need of food after a long foodless shift at work, politely overstayed my welcome. Everyone was very polite and courteous, but the her family background is so unique that I found myself a very fascinated fly on the wall to all the proceedings around me. I come from a small family, so it was a very different experience for me. All in all, not a bad family though, since they got along well and comfortably with one another... better than I can say for most. All in all a fairly fun time, and I had the bonus of seeing my eighth grade math teacher doing a roofing job three houses down. I'm pretty sure I've crossed the three hundred page mark in Harry Potter 4. I'm pleased to say that the bathroom environment is much more conducive to getting wrapped up in the book, and I look forward to continuing tomorrow, even though I know what's going to happen. But first: sneakers and pants shopping.
posted by Adam at 02:08 |
July 23, 2004
Day FourAt the moment, I'm experiencing a crushing feeling of lack of purpose. I know what my purpose is tomorrow and I know what my purpose is right before I go to bed. But for the couple hours in between my freedom is absolute. And in that freedom I can find only dispair. Throughout history, people have dedicated their lives to making a better future for their children. The story of America has been to unchain the next generation a little bit more from the ties that bind them down. Now we have an entire generation that is completely free to pursue any future they want. And not being led down the proper path by necessity, the vast majority of us are lost. No wonder the planet's going down the toilet. I finally remember what "the other thing" I thought of on the crapper was last night. I was thinking about God and what place he has in my life as of now. Not be raised in a religiously devout household, I've never had what you'd call unshakable religious convictions. God's never really been a certainty in my life. As a child I accepted that He in fact was by the very virtue of the fact that everyone else seemed to. Now, as people fight court battles to change the Pledge of Allegiance and remove God from every level of society I'm not so sure. My worldview is inclusive of a greater something, even if that something is just the mechanics by which the universe operates. In rotting, I will rejoin the processes of life in a more direct fashion. But I wonder if there is not some sort of higher purpose in the meantime. I've always persued religion with the caveat that I can never choose to follow a path in order to use God to prop up my existence. I always wanted to find contentment in a world without God before I explored my options for a higher power. And yet now I find that making sense of a random universe is a more challenging task than I thought. If contentment is to be found, I feel, it surely must involve love. It is the idea of a loving God that allows Christianity to still hold so much sway with me. That and the immediacy of what Jesus is and represents. The Old Testement reads to me mostly like the tall tales of my younger days. The world of Jesus is one that I can relate to, if only fleetingly. And yet I'm still not convinced. I was hoping for a storm today, but all we got was a little rain. I finished Prisoner of Azkaban and got a few chapters into Goblet of Fire. Damn I love how that one starts. Still, there's a disconnect. I fear I'm losing my ability to emotionally involve myself in fiction. And yet Star Wars: Medstar I - Battle Surgeons had me hook, line and sinker. Perhaps I will take a bath tonight and see if taking a stab at it away from the office doesn't provide a more rewarding experience. Got my class schedule for R.I.T. today. Not as bad as I thought it'd be. My fingers are crossed for a manageable first term. I think I'm gonna bring in a floppy to work and try writing some. Just sitting around there wasting away will drive me insane soon enough. Speaking of writing, I used my I Love Books gift certificate, thus far completely useless, to buy a graduation gift for a friend. The cashier frigged up the transaction which led to the kind of non-confrontational humor that makes me hate this town increasingly much. Damn, I don't want to leave, but the people here are practically driving me out. I got a profile pic up now. It's me kayaking at Old Forge. It's not the most flattering pic of me, but I think it sort of suits this blog. The light bulb in my ceiling fan has been out for several days now. I think it would improve my mood drastically to have some light in my room. Damn my laziness. Damn it all to hell. I'm working tomorrow, then going to a graduation party. Hopefully I'll actually know some people there other than the host. Either way, I can probably stay for about a half-hour and make polite conversation. She stuck through mine for that long. I just pulled something of unknown origin off of my collar bone. I thought I'd killed a bug, but it doesn't look animal in nature. This makes me question what's falling from my ceiling. I'm filled with the sensation of being very close to understanding something, and so will probably regret writing this entry so early, but for the moment I have focused my freedom into purpose and now I think I'll take that bath.
posted by Adam at 21:13 |
July 22, 2004
Day ThreeJerry Goldsmith is dead. I had an overwhelming desire to start tonight's entry thus, and so it is. It was a tidbit that I caught at some point in the day. I'm not very familiar with his film scores and thus was not deeply affected. Yet I got a vague understanding of his greatness by the way the others around me mourn. And I know he was on level footing with John Williams (who ended up with the job by luck of scheduling) for scoring duties on Superman: The Movie, and that's not nothing.Forgot to bring my books to work today, and my inability to avoid the boredom through reading less to something in the range on an epiphany. As a result, I made two very satisfying pieces of art in MS Paint and helped go over a poster in marker. We also had an unusually busy day. The total result is that I had the most satisfying day of work in recent memory. I will return shortly. At the moment I have to shit And now I return from quite the stimulating bowel movement. As I pushed the feces through my rectum and out my anus, I came to understand why schizophrenia is such a difficult illness to overcome. And then I thought about writing. There was a third thing too, but it's been lost in formulation of these preceeding sentences. I've also become fascinated (when thinking back to the first two entries) about what I choose to write about and what I choose to admit. It puts the things that make me personally uncomfortable into rather sharp relief. Alas, at least for now this blog will tiptoe around the more central things in my life. I find that I can only address the most important and personal preoccupations though my fiction. And my fiction is for the time being hopeless. In other news, I received a rather humorous letter from RIT. They informed me that as I was too stupid to pass my AP exam, I would not be eligible to receive credit but that they looked forward to having me as a student in the fall and wished me success in the year to come. Got my schedule for work next week. Day after tomorrow's the last Saturday, and I'm stuck working it. Oh well, in better news, office hours are an hour shorter starting Monday. I don't have to work, since I'm getting a filling that afternoon. Since my third co-worker is going to be back, I'm only on for two days and I'm out by 4:30. This makes my outlook considerably more optimistic. Speaking of work, a particularly poignant thought struck my brain as I was pulling out of the parking lot today. My periods of depression come from having a clouded perspective. In those rare moments of clarity, the universe is a decent place and one that I am pleased to be in. Some exciting news from me on the Serenity front. The editor from "Firefly" is doing the movie, too. Meanwhile, the producer posted a new blog entry with a bunch of tidbits that tickled my fancy. The thing that lit the biggest fire under my ass, though, was learning that the big wooden table from the series would still be in the movie. Some of the strongest moments in the series were went the whole casted was gathered round that table. Really hit the family theme home in a way that got to me. Damn I love that 'verse. My website on the movie can be found at http://serenity.50free.org/, by the way. That pretty much does it for me, tonight. Gonna surf the 'net for a bit, with vague notions of going to bed at a reasonable hour. If I remember, I'll share more Old Forge tidbits tommorrow.
posted by Adam at 23:22 |
Day TwoI highly recommend starting your day to "Jet Airliner" by Steve Miller Band, preferably absolutely cranked. It wakes you up and invigorates you, like manual labor used to for our ancestors.Making a CD for the car ride tonight: 1) Steve Miller Band - "Jet Airliner"
2) The Spinners - "Rubberband Man" (long vinyl version)
3) John Mellencamp - "Authority Song"
4) Jimmy Eat World - "The Authority Song"
5) Steve Miller Band - "Take the Money and Run"
6) O.A.R. - "Hey Girl"
7) Boston - Peace of Mind
8) Counting Crows - Accidentally in Love
9) Carbon Leaf - The Boxer
10)Paul Simon - Me & Julio Down by the Schoolyard
11)Jack Johnston - Plastic Jesus > Fall Line
12)Ryan Adams - Monday Night
13)Josh Ritter - Snow Is Gone
14)Barenaked Ladies - "testing 1,2,3"
15)Uncle Kracker - "Memphis Soul Song"
16)Rolling Stones - "You Can't Always Get What You Want"
17)Fountains of Wayne - "No Better Place"
18)Simon & Garfunkel - "Homeward Bound"
19)Phantom Planet - "California" Anchorman was a fun, dumb time. The weatherman, Steve Carrell from "The Daily Show", stole every scene he was in. We took the Northway home on a whim and had a fun time. Northway driving used to bother me, but now I rather enjoy it. Less things to worry about; you just pick a lane and stay in it. When I got home I sat down and update my Serenity site with a press release. I was thinking about work and got rather depressed for some reason, can't remember exactly why but I think it has something to do with the fact that I'm going in the wrong direction with my life. Sometime soon I'm going to have to stop surviving and start living. In other news I got a whopping "1" on my AP Calc BC exam. This was expected from the moment I'd left the exam room. I'm nervous about Calculus in college. Hopefully it'll be easier the second time around.
The CD went over well. I just discovered that iTunes will make really cool mosaics out of the CD covers from the tracks for a mixed CD. Just go File > Print. Tommorrow I've got work (well, technically today as of three minutes ago) and I figure I'll finish Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and start Goblet of Fire, maybe label some more pictures. That is if the higher-ups don't have something more pressing for me to do.
I've already labelled my graduation pictures and my Old Forge pictures. The Old Forge pictures came out better than I thought, but only because I thought I'd fried the camera by getting it wet. I favor the wide shots, and there's too many pictures where you can barely tell who the people are. There's a few good ones, and the group shot (taken by the maid!) outside the motel room came out great.
Prisoner of Azkaban was always my favorite Harry Potter book, but the passion's just not there this time around. The movie didn't capture those key rousing moments for me, and now I can only conjure the movie's (not as well executed) visualizations of events. Ah well, gets me through my shift.
Got more college stuff from RIT. It says something when there's more information about financial options than everything else combined. We'll see how that turns out.
In the mean time, I'm just standing by and waiting for something to happen. Gotta get Kate something for graduation. Hopefully I won't get stuck on Saturday with working. For now, I wait for the repeat of last week's "The 4400" to come on at one. I was at my friend Alex's graduation party when it first aired on Sunday.
posted by Adam at 00:21 |
July 21, 2004
Day OneSo it begins, I suppose. I'm slightly amused by the realization that Day One is really being written on Day Two. But I can't work with CSS so my Day One (after work, UGH!) was spent converting the whole damn template into HTML and localized style tags. I only kept the CSS for the links; who isn't a sucker for links that only underline when the mouse is over them?
The banner I also made today, since the rather bland text title didn't do much for me. I used three images that I had previously made for a T-shirt and two scanned photographs. The one on the left is at the Mayan ruins in Mexico and the group shot on the right is from Old Forge, this past Fourth of July.
I maintain a website for the upcoming movie Serenity (I'll post a link once I've had enough sleep to manage it) so I'd better get updating that before I hit the sack. Anchorman tomorrow. I'd better not forget to make a profile image so the box isn't a red "X"
posted by Adam at 01:37 |
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