I've written out several posts lately, but they all seemed too whiny to post, I guess my self censorship everyones been talking about is finally kicking in.

Lot of things went on this week. First and foremost you probably notice the new LJ design? I got sick of the hassles of modifying the old one, so I found a new one I liked and went with it.

Its been 4 years since I created my LiveJournal in a moment of extreme sadness. Its weird how things that were so important to you other people can forget so soon. I mentioned the circumstances leading to the creation of this to one of the people involved, and they had no recollection. I probably need to move on.

Earlier this week, maybe Tuesday(?) our lead developer gave me a case of beer for my hard work on a project I've been working on since before Christmas, which is finally going live.



Went a Kraftwerk concert with Jeff. who came down from Fargo for it, last night (Saturday). Ran into Nick Miller, its been a few I hesitate to say years since I've seen him last, didn't have too much to say to him. Had a good time. The PSD was quite high, heh... PSD is an arbitrary measurement Jeff and I came up with a few years back for measuring the Bass output of a speaker, it stands for "Pants shaking distance". As Jeff said last night though, there were points there where he could feel the bass in his muttonchops.



Up until a few hours ago I still had the band on, because I'm cool like that.



Well I should get to bed, so thats about it for now. I'll try and update again later in the week.

Today while rummaging through some things in the basement my dad found a box with my name on it. In the unopened box was a set of toy trucks, receipt dated 1992, and a birthday card from a dear dear family friend, Jerry Beverdorf (Beversdorf? Mail order receipt says the prior, spell check the latter) who passed a number of years ago now. My dad remembers him saying that I was probably too young for the toys and to hold onto them until I was old enough not to break them. I am happy and yet at the same time quite sad from this discovery. Attached below are pictures of the gift and card.

I’ve been putting off writing this one for a while, and all things considered, I’ll be surprised if this goes up tonight. 

I think I’ll break this up into two sections well presuming I post everything I want to.

So what’s happened. As most of you probably already know my grandma had been back and forth between the nursing home for I’m guessing a little over a month, after having hip replacement surgery she developed antibiotic resistant staph infection She passed roughly 2 weeks ago today.  At almost the exact time of her passing our grandfather clock stopped.   I find this a little spooky. 

The following Friday we had the service.  I can’t put my finger on it, but I honestly believe it was the best funeral I’ve been to, and I’ve been to far too many for someone of my age.  My sister read from the bible and after refusing to read aloud to us to practice mispronounced the same word several times in a row, but otherwise did a very good job.  Following this a family friend, Wally, went up and spoke of how my grandmother had helped him find his heritage as a Native American, and spoke of her character, along with mentioning our clock, and a stone he found the day she passed.  He closed by singing a Sioux chant, the whole thing was very nice. 

 

Alright, so on to something more recent.

Last night Paul had one of his shindigs, and as shindiggery goes it was one of his better in quite some time.  Only a portion of who RSVP’d on facebook actually bothered to show, but this is to be expected.  It was mostly who I’d consider the core of the group.

I don’t want to sound…  I don’t even know a decent word for it… like someone who does nothing but complain about their life constantly, because I know enough people like that as it is, and I know I’ve been guilty of it in the past.  About half way into the party I got this wave of depression.  I know I usually get it post party from the realization that the fun is gone and it’ll be weeks to months until I do something again, but it struck me early last night, and I’m just wondering if its because I knew it was coming mixed with alcohol being a depressant, this has been bothering me all day.  Alas, I just needed to get that down for some reason.  It was later in the night canceled out by something to most people would be completely meaningless, but to me meant the world, and to name it here would be to identify how terribly lame I am, so I’m not going to do it, no way, now how.  Just know that something happened last night I’m sure no one noticed, and it sure as hell made my day. I probably just need sleep, I’ll get to that soon here.  The end of high school “I’m loosing my freaking mind!” that actually resulted in my creating of this live journal was likely due to lack of sleep, combined with the fact that I’ve since discovered I get very depressed in the first few weeks of spring for some mysterious reason.  Man I am so lame…  look at me writing this, I’m like a freeking emo.

I’ve got a video from last night I’m debating posting, if I do, I’ll save it for a later post.  Its low quality, sadly I had my phone set to the lowest setting.

 All right, lastly, I give you a listening recommendation.  The album “In Our Bedroom After the War” by Stars.  Its terribly contrived like most of their other works, and it just, its amazing, I bought if off Amazon maybe a week ago, and I haven’t quit listening to it since.  Perfect timing, I am actually on the very last track of the album as I write this sentence, having started the album on beginning this post.  Of course there will be post formatting, getting the image and what not, but still it’s a neat coincidence.

There were a few other topics I actually wanted to touch upon, but I'll save them for another night

Note: Theres some crazy stressful stuff going on with my family right now, I'll write about that in weeks to come as it happens, but until then I give you: sketches A year ago on October 12th I did a post of a bunch of my sketches. I figured it was about time to post some new sketches as I prepare for my anual Halloween image. Still am uninspired for that though. Anyway, heres some of my sketches, hope you like them, if anyone actually sees them, heh.

( View Sketches )

I bought a 5lb bag of olives from amazon. They are how you say, le awesome.

I quote now a previously unposted live journal entry from if this file is dated correctly, March 29th... which is exactly a month ago, neat. I didn't post it because the server was down, and I believe I mentioned my not posting it in a following post.

So here it is, a month late.

Wankering

All right, so I’ve been meaning to post for a while now.  But things keep coming up. One of the biggest of all, the server broke.  That made it hard for me to post images, which lately I’ve enjoyed doing in posts.

Firstly, my mad buying spree has continued.  I bought a number of things, including:

1. Xbox 360
1. Camera for it for some crazy reason
2. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night  (for Xbox Live Arcade, I missed this originally because I’ve never been big on Playstation)
3. Oblivion (yeah I know I already have it for PC, but its addictive)
2. An awesome coat rack
3. Some neat hand blown iced tea glasses (They were very poorly packaged for shipping, with just a thin layer of bubble wrap in the original packaging (should have been double packaged)  one arrived pre-smashed.  I’ve contacted the seller, but I suspect I may be out of luck.)
4. A bunch of DS games, including the incredibly awesome “Feel the Magic: XY/XX”
5. Bunch of DVD sets I’ve meant to buy for a while, Boondocks Season 1, Aqua Teen Season 4, House Season 1 and 2, Brak Show Season 1 and 2, Strong Bad email (like the first… 125 I think? It was 2 sets) 
6. A couple of books I probably won’t get around to reading.
7. Bunch more random crap I don’t need

Works still going well, I had my 3-month review review, at which I got a very nice raise (which is only encouraging this mad buying spree).  I wrote a little php script that integrates with firefox so we can get to our test sites without typing out the whole address, and everyone’s seemed to enjoy that.     In fact, I got an award for it, combined with some information I sent one of our SEO ladies on using CSS print style sheets. “Geek of the Week” is the award. A few weeks ago I pushed through a test order on a cart I was building out and in the comment box I put “I am the king of awesome” Ends up the manager of the project was set as the store owner and she saw the comment, and spread it around the office.  Kevin, our lead programmer a few days later came up and taped a “King of Awesome” he had printed out to my monitor.

Springs here, and this year more than most I’m hating the warmth.  I can’t really explain it, but I’ve grown to love something about the unforgiving cold.  Spring time depression is indeed setting in though so far at least seems less harsh than previous years, perhaps because I don’t feel like as much of a failure. 

Still haven’t done anything useful with my fancy Wacom.  We’ll see… (UPDATE: I created this... not sure if its good)

Oh, I started writing another Dashboard Widget, this time it parses various web comics and displays them nicely (throw a picture in here)

A friend left me a seemingly semi-desperate voice mail during the middle of the night a week ago, and I’ve been unable to get a hold of him, so if you’re reading this, give me a call.

Lastly, my xbox live gamer tag…

I’m going to try to update this a little quicker next time, as if someone cares.

Blonde Redhead - Misery is a Butterfly

Also note, I was geek of the week again last week, woot.

Well, its time for a post.  What’s new in the life of Jesse Donat?  Well I’ve been trying to fill a void with things…  that’s never good… I’ve been on a literal buying rampage… Checking just now, from Amazon alone I’ve made 7 orders in the last 2 months.  That’s just Amazon.  Many of these had several things in them… 

I got something I’ve always wanted, a bigger Wacom.  A huge one in fact, an Intuos3 9x12…  the largest 4x3 tablet it would seem Wacom makes, if only I knew how to draw.   So large in fact that its too big to put in my desk, so I’m uncertain what to do with it when I’m not using it.  I’ve been putting it back in the box…  My friends pegged me on, and I figure if I’m going to get one, might as well go all out.   I received it on Valentines Day, and a friend joked that it was my “Valentine Date” which ends up being far too true.   Alas… I’ll be sure to attach some pictures.

Some other things I bought, notice in the picture of my tablets stylus, directly behind it the little black box?  That’s my new 4 gig micro drive.  That was a woot.com $25 special…

I’ve been in a weird mood last few days…  I’ve been having the night terrors again where I wake up questioning my own existence, which hasn’t happened since high school.  I try to tell my self “I think, therefore I am” but it does little to comfort me.  Anyone else get these, or is it just me?  I think I mentioned these before… and I think it was about this time of the year too…  My annual spring depression is fast approaching… crap. 

All right, below here some other random images enjoy!

Works still going well, my 90-day review is coming up quick, and all signs point to good.  I’ve tried my hardest at learning the cart and not wasting company time, though a few days lately have just been a bear to concentrate.

Oh, also, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat is awesome when you get into it.  It’s a platformer that uses the Bongo controller, awesome, no?

All right, time for some classic whining.  I’m lonely and bored… whine whine whine.  Now that I got that out of my system…

Lambchop – Damaged is the best album I’ve heard in years…

Also, I need a haircut again!  I’m waiting for it to warm up a little though for I do enjoy the natural hat it makes.

Oh, and for my bedtime DVD status, I’m watching “House” Season 1 before I go to bed.  Do you watch House?  If not, you should.  Best-damned show on TV, especially now that lost jumped the shark again… with time travel...  Lost, I’m done with you, get lost.

I've been messing with the style of my journal, I hope you like the new design!

All right, lastly, I’ll probably have a second sketch post up in a few weeks as I do have the new gynormous Wacom and have made a number of drawings including the one by Forshizzles request of an electric organ in a bamboo forest.

First though, I give you this http://donatj.homeftp.net/upload/Genie.jpg  One of my friends seemed to really enjoy this for some reason.

p.s. If someone actually reads this whole thing, I'd love to know... Let me knows I'm not just writing to oblivion. That perhaps I actually exist. If a man lives and makes no mark did he exist?

The day started out like any other Christmas... here I am opening a hypnotized snake... Taken with my family's new snazzy digital camera.



But soon after the gifts were unwrapped, tragedy struck (wish I had a better word than that). Our dog, Mr. Uggins, formerly Puppy Uggins (He was promoted on his first birthday) was struck by a car. My sister went to call for him to come inside, and he didn't come, so I went to get my shoes to go look for him. Before I could get out the door, I hear screaming. He was lying in the middle of the road, with his head ran over. I saw my mother carry him back, and at first I thought he was still alive, because his legs were kicking, but these were just spasms... What a Christmas...

We Love You, Mr. Uggins. Rest in Peace.

I still take too many of these, this one describes me perfectly though. I did this one because it was on my friend Meka's LJ, and its pretty damn good.

I've been meaning to post for a while now, but after I get home from work I've got little left in me. Speaking of work, the other day it quickly went from

this



to this




And yes, that is a site I'm working on loaded on that mac, I test things incrementily (... is that a word?) on the ancient version of Safari they have loaded up on there, more than other people, but I've gotten some interesting results to deal with in safari.

Anyways, its xmas eve, I'll write a longer post later. Also as a final note I use my image here "Communist Propaganda" on ICQ on my works network, I've gotta wonder if anyones noticed.

I started work on Monday; I believe I told you I got the job at ecreativeworks.  It’s pretty nice.  It’s a small company, which I like, can’t be more than 20 people.  You don’t get lost in the crowd.  As most of you probably know, this is my first “real” job.  Sure I did that work for Joel, but that was kind of “here’s some stuff for you do to, get it to me sometime.” That’s not to say I didn’t work hard because I certainly did, it was just a different feeling.    It’s been a lot, fast.  I feel as though I’m coming off as very awkward there, which I have a tendency to do around people I don’t know very well.  On my second day I got the task of assembling my new chair, which is nice because the one I had before was known office wide as the “fart chair” because whenever you sit in it, it makes the noise its name implies.  My new chair though is amazingly comfortable.

Here’s a picture of my desk.  Notice my Samsung LCD, its beautiful, and that means a lot coming from me, as I hate LCD’s.  Its only 1280x1024 but that’s livable.  Also notice the box of Earl Grey back there, which has recently become one of my favorite teas. 

This Eels song I’m listening to has the lyrics:

“
I don't leave the house much
I don't like being around people
Makes me nervous and weird
I don't like going to shows either
It's better for me to stay home
Some might think it means I hate people
But that's not quite right
”

That is me to a tee..  Maybe that’s why I love the Eels, or just E, so much. 

I love typography; it has always been a secret love of mine… I yearn for kerning?  Heh, excuse that completely pointless alliteration.  I took a graphic design class in eleventh grade, half the class was manual design, sketches, and typography, the other half was computerized.  I took the class for the computer portion, but found myself learning the most in the manual half.  Everyone but I seemed to find that portion pointless, but it just added fuel to my typography fire.  I have to say when I first heard about xhtml, rather than html 4.0, where you don’t use font tags, I was very skeptical.  Working with CSS I have grown to love it.  It makes so much so much simpler.  I don’t know how I ever thought styling every instance of something was a good idea. 

The relatively small amount of PHP I’ve done at work this week has actually vastly improved my knowledge of the language.  It’s involved a number of things I’ve touched on, but never really become too comfortable with, including associative arrays.  Man they really simplified a problem I was having with this admin page I was writing.  The thing you have to know about php, and the thing that I actually find somewhat irritating is that there is no correct way to write it, and often you find gigantic applications that are written  completely straight through, with everything global.  Its very very common for everything to be global in php, which is one of my biggest complaints.  It is also very rare in everything but the latest apps for classes to even be used.  Oasisband, my website which has a fairly large amount of ancient content, has something in the order of 5 functions for the entire website.  That’s going to be remedied eventually.  I had planned on working on the site some tonight actually, but I’m cold, and tired, and I think I’m just going to go to sleep.

Now that I’ve ranted about programming, which no one but me cares about do I have anything else to say?

I have a tendency to prefer writing these gigantic monthly posts as opposed to every day as things happen, and often times I forget the small things that might actually be interesting to write about.

Well, here is a description of my life last couple days…  Heh, I’m really short on things to write about.

Monday—Friday

• 5:45am Get woken up by my Mac Mini with the app “Awaken” Go to work.
• 7:30am (8:00 this Monday, I changed my hours)  Arive at work, do various tasks.
• 1:00pm Realize you’ve forgotten to eat, take lunch.  Go sit in conference room, eat sandwich, come back and dick around on the computer a bit to finish up the half an hour.
• 4:00pm Head for home
• 7:00pm Watch Various TV Shows
• 9:00pm Go to sleep (Except for Wednesday, in which case Medium is on, as I do love Patricia Arquette. She’s not quite Uma Thurman, who Paul can attest I believe to be the most beautiful woman on earth, but she’s up there.  A quick IMDB reveals the only thing they’ve done together is “The 62nd Annual Golden Globe Awards”)

I feel like I’ve got “Pauls Case” damn you, lit class.  Damn you to hell.  Introspection, you leave… now!
Bah, well here’s to us, who’s like us, damn few, and they’re all dead.

Try to get through to me. There may be something left.