Time:	2:13 pm.
Mood:	embarrassed.

There are few things quite so emasculating as being unable to help your girlfriend with her differential calculus homework.

I console myself with the knowledge that it has been seven years since I solved a seperable differential equation. But that's hardly an excuse!

edit: Through a judicious contribution of binomial expansion and reciprocal crossmultiplication, my masculinity (and

ytaya's assignment) has been salvaged. Whew!

Comments: Read 8 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	Panda Express has the best fortune cookies
Time:	7:51 pm.

Today's fortune cookie -- I kid you not:

If you cannot find wisdom within, try the Internet.

Comments: Read 6 or Add Your Own.

Time:

5:43 pm.

I think if TiVO and Lifecycle let their powers combine, they could create a nearly unstoppable implement of physical fitness!

It's too bad my apartment isn't just three feet wider, or I would prototype such a device myself.

Comments: Add Your Own.

Time:	10:52 pm.
Music:	some wierdo harmonica techno thing.

There's nothing like the feeling you get when your game -- your game -- that you've been working on since it was a file in /src/prototypes, starts being actually fun to play for the first time. It's what keeps me in the business.

Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.

Time:	9:41 pm.
Music:	Collide - Euphoria.

The week in review.

This week I implemented the Viper Missile and the Pulse Deflexor (the names are sure to change). I also fixed some special-effect bugs and rewrote some of the math library in assembly, as an exercise to stay sharp with the metal. I have done more; I have worked faster. Sometimes I wonder if I am really the same man that thought nothing of programming a command shell, digesting a history, writing a short story, and lighting a play in the space of a single week. Perhaps I have in fact been surreptitiously replaced under warranty with a B-stock factory-refurbished model.

Gym success rate 2/4.

Assault on Precinct 13. More and more I find it difficult to distinguish modern action movies from third-person shooters. The variety of weapons in this one was outstanding, but the enemies were all the same model over and over again, and the cutscenes dragged on too long. I liked the boss fight at the end.

Los Angeles is warm in January, not a brief gasp of heat in a dreary winter, but a nascent warm like spring in Philadelphia. Stepping out into the evening, the dark sky alive and perfectly temperate, I catch a whiff of floral pollen and suddenly I'm 2700 miles and four years ago, walking from the lab to the cafe with

ironroot and friends, talking about our final projects, anticipating final exams, looking forward, planning ahead. Then I see a palm tree and I'm back in Santa Monica again, grabbing dinner in the dead of winter, and still a year of work before Christmas. It seems not right to go from one year to the next without at least a day of bitter snow; I feel somehow like I have been cheated out of the chance to mark the passing of time.

Tonight's plan: home, shower, midnight drinks with an old acquaintance from high school serendipitously in town for the weekend. Tomorrow, either Universal Studios or I'll do the Seismic Blaster. And who can know what Sunday brings?

Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.

Time:	11:50 am.
Mood:	working.
Music:	whoosh.... BOOM!.

As a child, I always hoped that I would grow up to work on guided missiles. Today I would like to thank Naughty Dog and SCEA for making this dream possible.

Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.

Time:	3:08 pm.
Mood:	nerdy beyond belief.
Music:	Katamari Mambo (Katamari Syndrome Mix).

While reading the ever-thrilling Playstation 2 VU User's Manual I learned something totally sweet --

we have a RXOR opcode. That RoXORs!

Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.

Time:	1:23 am.
Music:	Wildlife - All Things Just Keep Getting Better.

I am suddenly struck by the irony that Fox Network, beloved news source for conservatives and Puritans, also runs such televisual assaults on the American family as Who's Your Daddy and Trading Spouses; whereas Bravo, poster child of the "Hollywood Liberals", air a program wherein five gay people take a disheveled young man, cut his hair short, give him a nice suit, and teach him how to look like a respectable professional.

Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.

Time:

5:35 pm.

You can always tell when your graphics guy is researching new shaders, because you start seeing teapots on his screen all the time.

Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.

Time:

2:54 am.

Movie Review, Primer:

???!

Comments: Add Your Own.

Subject:	Out for the holidays
Time:	1:34 am.

Flying back to the Philly/NYC area for Thanksgiving. All you lovely people who live out that way: still interested in grabbing a latte near midtown or Sansom Street? Give me a call! If I've got your PGP key then you can get my cellphone number from inside the cut below; otherwise I guess those of you from the second floor will just have to use the Force...

( contact info )

Comments: Add Your Own.

Time:

3:17 am.

Occasionally I realize that the contents of my journal are too much polemic and too little of the daily minutiae of life that LJs are supposed to be. Okay, then, here's a bit of daily minutiae for you: guess which doofus locked himself out of his apartment and is now spending the night at his office? Hint: he wears black and has an unhealthy fascination with blackjacks.

I suppose the positive side is, now I really have got nothing to do but be productive. Ah, fine bedtime reading shall the PS2 EE Core Instruction Set Manual make.

Comments: Read 6 or Add Your Own.

Time:

11:01 am.

What could possibly be more exciting than the return of Iron Chef to active production?

Iron Chef hosted by Alton Brown, that's what!

Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.

Time:

12:11 am.

Jak 3's at a store near you right now. Go buy it. Go! GO!

(At least give it a look while you're picking up your Halo 2 preorder. Please?)

Comments: Read 9 or Add Your Own.

Time:

12:26 am.

So the candidates elected to the Santa Monica City Council this year consist of Richard Bloom and Ken Genser, two gentlemen from the local Green Party; and Herb Katz and Bobby Shriver, both of them put forth by the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce. Bloom and Genser support rent control, a halt on new development, traffic calming, tax protection of single-family homes, and widespread bond issues. (They're also the self-appointed Hedge Police.) Katz and Shriver support small business incentives, free-market rent, a "move along" homeless policy, and major streamlining of building permits so new multiunit housing can go up.

City Council meetings are so going on my Tivo Season Pass. This is going to be awesome! Greens vs. Business, FIGHT!

Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	Movie Review: The Incredibles
Time:	2:43 pm.

This movie tries to be a lot of different things: a family film, an action film, a superhero movie, an animated comedy, a video game ad. It is entirely successful on every level. 4/4.

Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.

Time:

5:17 pm.

If I ever open a gun shop, I'm going to call it Arsenal Of Democracy. (Too bad there isn't a Democracy, CA, or that would be the perfect place to put it.)

Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.

Time:	1:25 am.
Mood:	disappointed.

Well, on the downside, it looks like my presidential pick has gone down the tubes and we're all doomed to be burned from the Earth in the glorious name of Allah.

On the upside, Herb Katz remains on the Santa Monica City Council. The only candidate I voted for that won, in fact. Go Katz! Free our hedges from their Green oppressors.

[edit: Yes, Santa Monica's voters did eventually vote against cybernetic assimilation. Rats! I'd already got the paperwork to change my name to "thirteen of forty-nine."]

Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.

Time:	11:37 am.
Mood:	relieved.

The Internet saved my grandmother's life!

(She was taking a computer class instead of shopping for groceries this morning.)

Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.

Time:

2:15 pm.

The people across the alley are blasting music so loudly that I can hear it through their and my closed windows! Under ordinary circumstances this would annoy me, but apparently they're Depeche Mode fans.

Comments: Add Your Own.