imaznation

I’m completely obsessive-compulsive about having a clean computer. As in, I don’t want a single piece of crap on it. No spyware, no background processes that I don’t need, no stupid OEM driver software, etc. Nothing.

Right now, my install of Windows XP is a mess. I’m thinking of cleaning it up and dual-booting (or triple-boot?) Vista Ultimate and maybe Ubuntu. Should I?

I never really understood why I like to keep a blog so much. On-and-off, I’ve kept a blog (either public or private) for about six years now. And the entire time, I always wondered about why I always go back to blogging, no matter how many times I tell myself I’ll stop.

Why? To remember my life. I didn’t realize it until today. So 2008 is quickly drifting towards us and I decided it would be a good idea to pull up my resolutions from last year and see how well I did. What did I realize? I couldn’t find them. Why? Because this time last year, I wasn’t blogging. I can find every one of my older resolutions, but just couldn’t find this year’s.

Hopefully, I’ll find it. Even though it’s not in my blogs, I’m sure it’s out there somewhere. I make a list every year.

You know what feels good? Tidying up my apartment and re-arranging my furniture. My bedroom now look at least 20% bigger after I re-arranged my bed and nightstand and picked up all my clothes and random stuff off the carpet. That is all.

It’s almost Thanksgiving. And there are a lot of things to give thanks to this year. I will now list a few of the many things that I am thankful for, in no particular order at all.

1. Thanks to Will and Alan, for always being there to give me rides and a place to crash when I’m in Austin.
2. Thanks to Diane, for always giving me good advice and keeping me company.
3. Thanks to Josh, for helping me make the move to Seattle all that much easier.
4. Thanks to Ray and Jerry, for inspiring me to become a more creative DJ, and for helping me keep up with the latest music.
5. Thanks to Tap House Grill, for providing buy-one-get-one-free entrées.
6. Thanks to Honda, for making a nice-looking car that gives me 24 MPG when gas prices are $3.25 per gallon.
7. Thanks to IC2, for giving me the opportunity show my skills and shine.
8. Thanks to Facebook, for allowing me to keep track of all my friends, no matter where I go and where they are.
9. Thanks to Apple, for making the iPhone.
10. Thanks to Microsoft, for their generous support of all my purchasing habits.
11. Finally, thanks to all the producers, artists, deejays, bosses, promoters, cooks, servers, flight attendants, distilleries, fishermen, and concierges that work hard every day to make my life easier and more fun.

Once again, I’m flying back to Austin. And once again, it’s to DJ at a club. Sometimes this feels like work. Other times, it feels like the best job in the world.

Too bad the flight is four hours. Would’ve been great if Austin was just an hour away.

I just realized, as I was logging into WordPress, that I totally could’ve wrote something like this. Design a publishing, validation, and compile/build system that is meant to handle thousands of articles authored by hundreds of different people around the globe and put that on a website that is accessed by millions? That’s exactly what I do at work every day.

Yes, I know, this site still looks crappy with its default WordPress theme. I’ll get around to it, I promise! I’ve even got a design mocked up in Photoshop. I just need to find a free weekend (okay, so I guess this is never happening) to code the theme!

Speaking of which, this upcoming weekend will be my only free weekend until probably next year. Sad, isn’t it? Maybe I should find some time to do work after work. I mean, work on personal stuff after work. Because, you know, you gotta keep your work/life balance right? At least that’s what everybody seems to be saying at work these days…

I always knew After Effects existed. People told me it was the Photoshop of video editing. Unfortunately, I tried it out many years ago and didn’t think it was all that great. After Effects has gotten a lot better, apparently, and I’ve re-discovered it today.

Thanks to a bunch of tutorials and my years of Photoshop experience, I should be able to get up to speed with creating fancy effects in no time. This, combined with my experience with Flash and my 1080p HDTV, will allow me to create some awesome videos, I hope. If not, then I’ll just make really cool-looking intro animations.

One thing that I noticed about Seattle is that meeting new people is hard. Very hard. Especially if you’re somebody like me.

The upside about people here in Seattle is that they’re relatively young, relatively rich, and relatively social. Unfortunately for me, that’s a bit too relative. I’m in my early twenty’s. Everybody else is in their mid- to late-twenties or thirties. I like to party like you party in college. They like to party like they have kids or something. For some reason, hanging around and making smalltalk at a bar/lounge just doesn’t seem all that fun. And they don’t know how to dance either. As somebody who DJ’s and goes out a lot, that is simply unacceptable. Come on, people! Dancing is a basic survival skill! Learn it! And by dancing, I actually meant bumpin’ and grinding at a club. People here may be able to salsa, but they can’t get low even if they tried. Although with most of them in their late-twenties or early thirties, that may be a good thing.

Anyways, so that’s my rant about the nightlife here. Introduce me to some cool kids please.

Today’s episode of Heroes was awesome. This season is definitely turning into an exciting season. Which means that my Monday nights are now dedicated to watching TV.

In other news, the rest of the shows on TV aren’t that great. I’ve been watching Chuck and High Rollers as well, but they just don’t have the same appeal as Heroes for some reason. Probably because they’re new shows and don’t have the back-story that Heroes does. Maybe it’ll be better after the first season. Maybe.