Geekman's Log: Supplemental. Spent much of the weekend with Angela. Loved it. Le sigh.

I have an assignment for lyrics class: to put new words to an existing pop song. We've been encouraged to stay as far from our usual genres as possible. So I'll be re-doing Toxic by Britney Spears. I'll also remix the music a bit, maybe try to give Britney a bit of a Trent Reznor spin. Hawt.

Also working on a piece that takes some of my old material and orchestrates it resulting in music that sounds like a ripoff of virtually every piece written by Danny Elfman before he started to diversify a little. Stay tuned.

Posted at 08:15 PM | Comments (1)

Funeral today. Somehow a long Catholic ceremony followed by a reception filled with free food and wine provides a strange sense of closure.

Angela's coming by to meet me at work and ogle me in my suit. By the way, I LOVE ANGELA. She is the most wonderful girl in the history of time (no offense, Nadia, Mom, Sis, etc...).

It broke my heart to hear JP's best female friend and apparently-up-until-now secret girlfriend give a eulogy. Being in a situation like this makes you realize that every single day is precious, and that you have cherish every moment you have with the people you love. It may sound cheesy, but it's true. Life and death are cruel and unforgiving boolean values: on or off. You never know when the switch will be flipped. So be open, let people know how you feel, and what you're thinking. Do the things you want to, accomplish the goals you desire to. Tomorrow, you may not be around to do so.

Posted at 03:41 PM | Comments (3)

Paul hugged me today. That was a little weird, but comforting. We've reassigned Mike to New Dawn's side of the office today. He's trying to crack the accounting file for US Geothermal, which was password protected by JP, who is no longer around to provide the password. The funeral's on Friday, we're shutting the office down that morning.

Now I'm going to distract myself by writing about something else...

The XBox 360 has re-ignited my hatred for Microsoft. Where do we start? Well, just like the original XBox, it looks like Microsoft is taking a huge loss on each console. Why? First, they think they can make up the capital on game sales. Second, they have infinite cash, resources, and connections to exploit to make sure that they can dominate any market they want. If Microsoft decided tomorrow that they wanted to dominate the cell phone business, two or three mobile phone companies would be bankrupt within two years. It wouldn't matter if Microsoft made crappy products that exploded and killed people, Microsoft has the power and stamina to get what they want. That's business monopoly. That's a corporation that needs to be regulated in order to ensure that the free-market system "works".

And Microsoft does make crappy products. For example, there have already been many reports of the XBox 360 crashing repeatedly right out of the gate. Some users report that flagship games on the platform like Quake 4 and Project Gotham Racing 3 are not even playable due to bugs and crashes. Word is that the problem is chronic overheating. One player even reported that he nearly burned himself on the Project Gotham disc after ejecting it from his console. Remember when the Republicans railed on the DOJ antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, calling it an attack on America's "best and brightest"?

Yeah... Republicans are stupid...

Posted at 10:21 AM | Comments (5)

My coworker, JP Larkin, passed away this morning in hospital. In the end, the injuries sustained by his organs from the impact were too much for his body to handle. One of the New Dawn guys ran out the door crying as I got into work, I was told by someone else that it was only a matter of time. I had rather hoped that JP was going to pull through, so this all comes as a bit of a shock.

I'm sitting here at work, and every so often I have to remind myself not to cry: I didn't know JP that well; don't choke in front of the guys. I know his aunt Sylvia and his father Paul a little better, and it's them I feel the most bad for. JP was only 31, and was Paul's eldest son. There are only 10 people in this office on a full day, and the fact that even one of us could be plucked from the mortal realm by such a senseless and indecent act reminds me that we're all made with a built-in expiry date. It's just a matter of when. What will it be that gets me? A heart attack when I'm 60? Will I step between my wife and a mugger with a gun when I'm 30? Will I electrocute myself with a faulty appliance? Or maybe some dumbass will run me over on my way home from work today... and maybe then he'll ditch mommy and daddy's car and hop a plane back to Asia, and never face justice for killing a me and one of my friends, or for causing so many good people so much pain...

It turns my stomach. It makes me sad for the Larkin family and makes me sick at humanity. I don't know where this person is, but I have only the worst wishes for them because of their horrible crime. I can't ask for JP to pull through anymore, so all I can do is pray that justice shall be served... though I doubt it will be.

Posted at 10:46 AM | Comments (2)

It's been 2 1/2 years since I wrote anything new. Sure, I dabbled and arranged stuff, but I didn't actually compose. Now I've made friends with GarageBand, and so I've completed a new piece of music. It's purely instrumental, and doesn't really have a point except to get me writing again. Still, I'm proud of how it came out, and hopefully it's the start of much more music writing.

Posted at 11:43 AM | Comments (2)

I'm almost finished the first real piece of music I've composed since I left UBC two and a half years ago. This is all thanks to me getting a laptop that I can use to compose music anywhere, and me making friends with Apple's GarageBand. When I'm done, I'll post an MP3 file here for your enjoyment.

Brad J. Guigar has finally relented and discontinued his comic Greystone Inn in favour of one of it's subplots Evil Incorporated. Evil Inc. is a comic about life in a major corporation run by and for supervillains. Their ideology: that you can accomplish more evil within the bounds of the law with an evil corporation. I can't wait for their 2006-model giant battle-robot.

The other day I was riding the bus home and we picked up a talker. You know, one of those crazy poor guys who just talks and talks and talks about crazy stuff. A lot of it had to do with municipal politics. For example, he called Vancouver's NPA (the non-partisan association) the "Nazi Party Association". But my favorite repeated rant was the one about "Rhona Raskin and her child sex prostitutes". For those of you who don't know who Rhona is, she's the local Vancouver version of Dr. Ruth or Sue Johansen. It got to the point where the rest of us regulars (who up until this point had just ignored eachother) started striking up conversations in order to shut the guy out. At one point I chuckled and said to the woman in front of me, "Later on, I'm totally blogging this." She laughed. And I have.

Posted at 09:13 AM

Mom and Dad got me a Canucks jersey, which I am quite pleased about. I may now enter officially into the realm of "hockey fan". Angela got me a care package of teas. From the Dixons Iain and I received gift certificates from Future Shop, which we used jointly to buy a copy of Star Wars Battlefront 2. I know two people named Jen Clark(e). Each of them got me a bottle of red wine for my birthday. Weird, huh?

Speaking of wine, I sampled some of Dad's Black/Raspberry wine on Sunday. It's turned out very nicely, and it's ready for bottling. Dad says it's still "green" wine and needs to age in the bottle for about a year before it's truly drinkable. I'm going to design some nice labels to put on the bottles.

Posted at 03:04 PM | Comments (3)

I just received a call from Andrew. Friday morning, after 1AM, one of the men I share an office with was getting out of a taxi with some of his friends on Hastings street. They were hit by a Porsche SUV that had spend away from a police roadcheck. Police had given up the chase five or six minutes earlier, but the driver was still speeding. He killed one of the men. The fellow I work with is in critical condition. If he pulls through, his life will be very different indeed. I'll leave out the grisly details.

The driver ditched his car elsewhere and escaped on foot. Frankly, I hope they catch the fuckwad and cut off his balls. Fortunately, I feel assured that the family of my associate can likely afford good lawyers. I hope that at the very least, the driver of that car will spend the rest of his life in jail.

Posted at 03:59 PM | Comments (1)

It never ceases to amaze me how poorly adjusted many people are. They're nice, friendly, pleasant to talk with, but unfortunately they're also fucked up. Right now I'm looking in the direction of self-destructive women. I seem to keep running into them in all sorts of situations; I even dated one for far too long a time. There's some sort of underlying self-esteem problem and so they start engaging in behavior that's bad for them. All kinds of stuff: self-cutting, undereating, overworking, lawbreaking, uncharacteristic promiscuity, etc... And there's always an excuse for why they're doing it that's perfectly rational. But I just get so sick of the bullshit: "Yes, of course you don't have time to eat" "Yes, you're totally in control of the situation 100% of the time". It's so obvious from the outside, but who am I to analyze their behavior? What the fuck do I know about it?

I develop such a strong empathetic connection to my friends that whenever I see them hurting themselves I feel like part of me is dying. Eventually, I have to stop caring as a protective mechanism. Just shut down to them. I'm not going to buy into the excuses anymore. Fine, I'll butt out: it's your life. But don't expect me to keep paying attention with a perpetually horrified sense of compassion.

Posted at 09:53 AM | Comments (1)

Earlier this week I replaced my two and a half year old laptop with a shiny new PowerBook G4, on which I am writing this very post. Using the handy Migration Assistant I was able to copy my user account, passwords, programs, and documents over to the new laptop with just a FireWire cable and a few mouse clicks. Sadly, not all went as planned, and I had to erase some buggy configuration files on the new machine before I could get it to work without crashing every few seconds. Luckily, my first hunch turned out to be the correct one, and the machine now works like a dream.

I'm often fond of quoting the the adage, "Computers only do what they're told". That is, a computer is a machine that follows a predefined instruction set. We apply malevolent personalities and chaos theory to our computers because of their complexity. Nevertheless, they are merely following instructions dictated by flawed human masters, be they users or the programmers themselves. This is why bugs have been around since the very dawn of computing, and will likely continue to be with us in the future.

But bugs don't just cause inconveniences, sometimes they cause serious damage or even death. Wired magazine has compiled a list of what are arguably History's Worst Software Bugs, and MAN, some of them were doozies.

Posted at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)

In case you hadn't noticed, the big intellectual tumult in Unamerica right now is the debate over "The Theory of Intelligent Design": the new name for biblical Creationism. Soon, many fear, Unamerican kids will be learning about how God created all life on Earth a few thousand years ago, instead or learning about Darwinian Evolution. Oh, who shall come to the aid of the few, embattled, sensible, smart people in the United States?

Why, the Catholic Church, of course.

Today a representative of the Vatican issued a statement saying that Charles Darwin's theory of Evolution is totally compatible with the Genesis story. Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, was quoted as saying: "Fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim". He went on to say that the real message in Genesis was "the universe didn't make itself and had a creator".

Wow, that really puts things into perspective, doesn't it? The Catholic Church, arguably the most conservative Christian organization on the planet, accepts Darwinism. Meanwhile, the Church of Unamerica, his Holiness Pontiff George Bush II presiding, wants us to believe that the Earth was created 5000 years ago and that no evolution has ever taken place. Will this perpetual asshattedness ever end?

Posted at 11:02 AM | Comments (3)

A letter I'll be sending soon by postal mail (since apparently no one at Apple Computer has an e-mail address):

Dear sir or Madam,

I am the owner of a 12-inch iBook G3 900. I bought this computer in the summer of 2003. Since then the logic board has failed a total of four times, most recently in October of this year. These breakdowns have been a huge inconvenience because the iBook is my primary computer, used at work, school, and home. After getting my computer back most recently I contacted your company by phone about the issue. I was hoping that Apple would be willing to give me a discount on a new computer, or at least suggest some options which would allow me to discontinue working on a machine which is continually prone to component failure.

While the person who initially handled my call was very receptive to my situation, when her superior was invited to consult I was tersely informed by him that Apple "does not offer discounts". When I inquired as to whether there were any other options I was actually told that I had "no options" because Apple does not replace working machines. Despite my argument that a machine which has failed four times due to the same problem does not truly qualify as "working", I did not get anywhere further in my conversation with him.

I have been a Mac advocate my entire adult life. My iBook represents the fourth Mac I've owned, not counting a machine I've purchased second hand to function as a OSX webserver. I've personally convinced several friends and family members to switch to Mac OS. That said, I've never experienced such horrible performance from an Apple product, nor received such utterly unhelpful and disappointing customer service for an investment of this importance.

The fact of the matter is that Apple designed a product that wasn't properly quality-tested. They put a laptop out on the market which wasn't capable of standing up to the daily rigors of being a portable machine. Now I, the loyal consumer, am expected to put up with those inefficiencies. Because I was hoping to be able to use this machine smoothly for another year at least, this is a bitter pill to swallow.

At the very least, your company owes me a sincere, personal apology, along with a damn good explanation as to why I shouldn't seriously consider switching to Linux or Windows.

I await your reply,

Jesse Schooff

Posted at 12:58 PM | Comments (4)

Tea has claimed me. I am now a tea-drinker. Orange Pekoe, White Chai, and numerous other wild and crazy blends are ever on my nostrils, my tongue lusting to be scalded by that first precarious sip of delightful brew. Before Steph moved in, I drank tea perhaps four times a year. But her constantly asking me "would you like a cup of tea?" has conditioned my behavior. Now tea is a daily ritual. Mmmmm tea...

I've gotten flack in the past for not reminding people enough in advance: November 11th is my birthday. It's a Friday. There will almost certainly be some kind of celebration. So if you've been looking for an excuse, this is your chance to shower me with love. Yay love...

Posted at 09:45 AM | Comments (3)

I kind of skipped over the weekend report on Monday morning. To keep you all apprised, here's how things went down. Saturday night was our Batman Halloween party. The cast was as follows: myself as the Joker, Steph as Batman, Jen as Robin, Iain as the Riddler (or the Green Hornet depending on how many question marks you noticed), Angela as Poison Ivy. Danielle made the freaky choice of coming as "anti-Danielle": a disturbingly pink alternate universe version of herself. Pictures will be posted once I collect them all from the guests.

Sunday night Angela and myself went to Video Games Live: an orchestral concert of video game music. The concert opened with a medley of early Atari and Nintendo music, starting with the "blip bloop" of a pair of Pong paddles (scenes from the games in question were displayed on a giant projector screen). There were some great performances. I have to say that I was very struck by the medley of music from Metal Gear Solid; it's main theme gorgeously sounded by full orchestra and choir at the very end of the piece. Also impressive were the compilations of themes from Tron, The Legend of Zelda, Medal of Honor, and Warcraft. The concert ended with the theme from Halo, which was given excellent treatment by the musicians.

Unfortunately, the overall sense was of one of those concerts where half of the material is incredibly awesome, and half of the material is shameful filler. There were some games that I'd never played or even heard of, and given my attention to the gaming industry these past few years, I can be reasonably sure that they were not bestsellers. The arrangements of themes from Super Mario Bros and Sonic the Hedgehog were painfully lackluster, and included only about three themes from the original games, omitting plenty of much more memorable music while supplying uninspired orchestration. Themes from Final Fantasy and Everquest were not on the program, despite being advertised as such. VGL is a great idea, and I hope to see it become an annual or biannual event. It's worth noting, however, that there's a lot of room for improvement.

Posted at 11:08 AM | Comments (4)