I’m sitting at work, listening to the Hi-Fi stream of the RFB.
There is something amazingly satisfying about this. 🙂
3:48 PM Well, not anymore. It’s gone to just static again. Bummer. I won’t be able to fix it until I get home.
Right in the middle of Radiohead, too.
Dang.

Good morning, everyone! I just have a minute, this morning, and I wanted to make a few announcements.
*I’ve had this auction up on eBay for about a week, and it’s ending in 1 day, 12 hours. I just thought I’d remind anyone who wanted to check it out.
*This morning, I’m going to be recording my nararation for the A&E Biography of River Phoenix. I was reading over it last night, getting ready for today, and it really brought back a lot of happy memories, and a feeling of extreme sadness…there are parts of this that are going to be very hard to get through, and I would like to personally say, “Fark You, A-hole”, to all the people who knew River was using cocaine and heroin, and didn’t try to stop him. Good job, guys.
*I just found out that my brother and his fiancee are moving really close to me!! Like 5 minutes away!! I can’t wait. My brother and I spent much of our childhoods at odds with each other (mostly because I was an idiot), and we’ve gotten much closer in the last 6 years or so, and I am so excited that he’s moving closer to me, so we can hang out more often.
*I’m looking into a permanent message board solution, that would be hosted off-site, so that we don’t have these problems, anymore, like we’ve been having with the soapbox. It’s really tearing me up, because I really want to just use OS stuff, and support that movement, but I have to find a balance between stability, my technical skills, and reliability for all of you guys. Remember how happy you all were when the soapbox crashed twice?
*Yesterday, I went down to Lightspeed Fine Art, and signed a few lithos for them. I’ve been getting lots of requests for autographed stuff, and since it looks like I won’t be able to make that manay appearences in the near future, I thought that it was a good way to get some stuff out there for the people.
*Recently, I’ve searched for my name on eBay, just to see what people are selling, get an idea of what I should charge for shipping, etc. I have seen lots of faked autorgaphs. I mean, TONS. I sent email to one seller, and they took the picture in question down, but there are others. If you’re going to be buying autographs there, you really have to do your homework. I think it just sucks that people would rip other people off, like that, so you gotta be careful.
*I also saw that Stile said that “Wil F***ing rules!” (without the *** of course. I’m trying to keep it sort of clean, here, kids. :-), and that Alex has writen niceys about me, again. Cool! (Both of these sites are NSFW, BTW)
*Finally, *I want to say thank you to everyone who’s emailed kinds wishes, advice, and support over the last 6 weeks or so. I’ve been reading all the emails, and I’m very sorry that I haven’t been able to respond. Actually, it doesn’t look like I will be able to reply to every email, now, because my time is just not there, between my new job, auditions, and trying to spend time with my family. I will continue to read everything, but replies will become the exception, not the rule. It’s not because I don’t care…I mean, it’s not you, it’s me! You’re fine, I just…well…uh…I need my space, because we’re getting older now, and, well, I just don’t want you to get hurt.
Hey, we can still be friends, right?
Have a great day, everyone. Don’t forget to check out the return of the WFS shirts, for a limited time!

When my alarm went off this morning, I was in the middle of a dream. I was talking to Jean Stapleton, but she looked exactly like she did when I worked with her in “The Buddy System”, and she was a teacher at my elementary school. I was about to tell her something really important, and the alarm went off.
So the first thing I thought was, “damn. I was in the middle of a dream.” The Bangles did the rest, without any prodding from your humble writer.
My first day at G4 was awesome.
I was so scared on my way in, I can’t even tell you. I was absolutely terrified that I would mess up, or do something wrong, or crash the network, or just not fit in…but everyone there really is amazingly cool, and really made me feel at home. It’s weird…I’ve never sat at a desk before. Usually, for me, work means that I go to a set someplace, get ready, then sit around and read a book for a while, or play a game or something. I actually “work” for just a few hours out of the day…so I was really out of water, to say the least.
But it really worked out well. I had a couple of meetings, got used to my desk, watched a huge structure fire in Beverly Hills, ate lunch with my friend Travis, who was instrumental in getting me this job.
[Tangent: my friend Travis has really been amazing in my life since we started the whole “Mind Meld” thing for Vega$. That show would never have worked without his help, because I so didn’t know how to produce anything, and Travis did. He kept me sane and made that show come off without a hitch. Without Travis, the holidays would have been so much worse than they already were. The short version is, I owe Travis more than I will ever be able to repay, and I am eternally grateful for his friendship. If you have a friend like Travis, and if you do, you know it, consider yourself one of the luckiest people alive, and make sure that friend knows how important they are to you. Travis also has the coolest girlfriend, ever. She watches him play video games. For reals. Okay, end Tangent]
After lunch, I played my first ever game of Counter Strike…and I must say, I can’t believe that I’m getting paid to play this game. It is awesome. Yes, I know that I am a bleeding pacifist, but it’s just a game, folks, and it is REALLY fun. Especially when you’re playing on a LAN, and you hear the computer next to you errupt with gunfire, and across the office (we have the whole top floor of this building) you hear somone yell out, “Aw shit!”
Finally, I watched a beautiful sunset. There is something wonderful about watching the sky turn from silver to gold to red and finally to indigo and black. There’s nothing between our building and the sea, too, so when the air is clear, I get to watch the sun sink into the Pacific. I think I’m going to be really happy here. The only thing that I don’t like are the absolutely awful flourescent lights that sit above my desk. I had a headache in my eyes by 11 am. I’m told that everyone hates the floursecent lights, though, and I think we’ll be getting rid of them shortly.

ACME

The ACME show was awesome on Saturday night! All the sketches just killed, and I got, as Ed Marques put it, “sitcom-style exit applause” whenever I left a scene. A couple of people who read this site actually came to the show!! Kat came with Alex, and Dawn came with a whole OC posse. Dawn doesn’t have a website, and you’re sorry she doesn’t, guys. Dawn is a babe, and really nice, too.
I really, really miss the show that we did last summer. I made such great friends in that show, and things have been so busy and stuff since then, I haven’t been able to hang out with them at all, and, since haven’t been in the last two shows, I haven’t seen them every week. If you’re one of the pussies (that’s what we were called, like the “sweathogs”, but you can’t say it to your mom…sorry mom.), I MISS YOU GUYS!!
My friend Debra also came to the show, and she brought her cousin, who gave me a stile project T-shirt, which I wore proudly to the new job today. It was very funny to watch people look at it, and realize that they knew what the website was. I’d say the recognition was split about 50-50 between “That site is SICK!” and “That site is FUNNY!”
After the show, I went next door with the cast, and had a beer. We laughed like crazy, complimented each other on the great show, and talked about how much we needed to all get together.
I don’t know what’s more sad: not being able to get together, or saying we’ll do it, knowing that it’s not going to happen.

Return

By popular demand, I have brought this back. It will only be available for a short time, though, so if you’ve been beating yourself up about missing it last time, now’s your chance.

Wow. I found this via Pyramid at Steve Jackson Games.

Boy, what a day, yesterday. I sat here, all day, working on the old weblog entries, trying to get greymatter working again. I guess that when my site was on the old server, and the server kept having to be reset, because of the traffic and the load, one of the entries got massively corrupted, and was making GM spin whenever I tried to rebuild.
So, I got on the horn with Domesticat, who is currently maintaining GM, and we spent close to 4 hours tracking down this corruption, and fixing it. Thank you, Amy!! Without your help, I would have never been able to figure out the problem. I am in your debt.
Now, I have absolutely loved using GM, because without it, I don’t think that my website would be worth a damn. Well, maybe worth a damn, but not worth shit, that’s for sure. Having the ability to just login and write whatever was on my mind has been amazing, and it’s what I enjoy the most about having this website. It’s been nice that I can use blogger, but I’m afraid that blogger is going to have to start charging, because the economy is in such bad shape, especially the online economy. But I’m going to have to switch my journaling software to Moveable Type, because I think it will do all the things that I want it to do, and, more importantly, be able to handle the load that my site puts on the server. GM is amazing, but it just can’t handle the huge amount of comments we all make around here. While I was working on GM, talking to Amy, we spoke about journaling software…I realize that the vast majority of webloggers feel pretty passionate about the software they use, and loudly proclaim that anything else “sucks!”, but I would suggest this: the best journaling solution is the one that works best for you. When I was at the lame old page, Blogger worked best for me, then GM worked best for me, and now, I’m using Blogger again. Not that it’s a big deal, but it was an interesting conversation, and I thought I’d muse about it this morning.
I know what you’re thinking. I said “all day” and I’ve only accounted for 4 hours of it. Oh, here comes the fun. I followed MT’s extremely easy instructions for exporting GM entries, and importing them into MT, and everything was going beautifully, until we hit an error in one of the date headers. So I poked around for awhile, and figured out what was wrong, and I totally fixed it *beam*. So I restarted the import process, and I foolishly tried to do some other things while it was importing…I’m working on getting the soapbox back and running, so I was importing the databases, and that started to spin, then my brother wanted to try out his new netcam, so we tried to start a netmeeting, and that farkin’ netmeeting crashed my computer. 2 hours into the import. So I restarted my computer, which was an ordeal in itself, because there’s something wrong with my keyboard cable, and sometimes my system doesn’t see my keyboard. So I have to reach around back, unplug the keyboard, and plug it back in. Not that big a deal, right? Well, not unless you set yourself on fire while you do it.
That’s right. I set myself on fire. I keep this candle near my computer, because it smells good and I think the simplicity of fire balances out the complex technology of the computer…but when I leaned over the desk to mess with the cable, my shirt fell into the flame, and caught on fire. I’m sure that I looked very funny, trying to put it out. I should have remembered to “Stop, drop, and roll, Dick, roll!”
The fire extinguished, and computer restarted, I hopped onto my server and killed the runaway processes, and went into MT to restart the whole thing, and guess what? MT is corrupted now. Beautiful. I was trying to delete the entries that had been imported, so I could start over, and the goddamn thing spun, and now it’s completely borked. So I will have to do a complete re-install of MT, which I’m not going to have time to do right away. Dammit. Oh, and I can’t get the database to upload, either. I was so excited, too. The site was going to be so much closer to it’s original…uh..glory(?) The wait will have to continue…because I am about to get really busy…because I GOT A JOB!!!
That’s right. I got hired to be a host and writer for a new TV Network. It’s AWESOME. The network is called “G4” and it’s all about video games, and the people who play them. I am so excited. I get to work with my friend Travis, and, I get paid to write! I start on Monday.
This job is going to be awesome, and the people I’m working for are just amazing. I get to play games all day long, write commentary about video game culture, and, the best part is, when I get work in a movie or series, I can take that job, and write my stuff from home, or the set!! It’s so the best of all worlds.
So, back to my day. When I realized that this wasn’t going to work, I cursed loudly at my computer and the internet, and took Ferris to the pet store for food and treats. I love to take her there, because she gets so excited when we pull into the parking lot, and I let her go to the aisle with the bones, and I let her pick out one. It’s so funny to watch her sniff around, and finally settle on one. While we were there, I learned just how strong Ferris is, because she saw something that excited her, (she has two speeds: excited and asleep) and yanked me into a huge, heavy metal bin, filled with rawhide chewies. My foot smashed against the corner, and I have a huge bruise on it…but while I was regaining my balance, I saw this sign, off to the side of the bin:

Didn’t Find What Your Looking For? Call [something, something]

Read that again. This is a printed sign, in a nationally owned pet store, (PetSmart), and it says “Your” instead of “You’re”. So, I know that it’s probably pedantic, and anyone who reads this site knows that I am not the best speller, and if you were my high school English teacher, you know that I can’t write at all…but “Your” and “You’re” are BASIC FREAKING SEVENTH GRADE ENGLISH!!! Have people really gotten this stupid? Or lazy? Or disinterested?
So I mentioned it to the cashier when I was checking out, and she looks at me, so incredibly put out that I even brought it up (which was done very politely, with a great amount of self-deprecation), and she sighs, and asks me if she should get a manager. I told her that it really wasn’t the most important thing in the world…but I just thought that it made the company look foolish.
Ferris was really ready to go at that point, so I thanked her for indulging me, and we left, got some In-n-Out on the way home, and split the evening between Tony Hawk 3 and website stuff.
All in all, it was a good day. I didn’t even have to use my AK.
I’m off to ACME for the sample class. Remember that you can come and see me tonight in the ACME show.
I’ll leave you with a Thought For Today, from The Dalai Lama:

Our planet is blessed with vast natural treasures. If we use them wisely, beginning with the elimination of militarism and war, every human being will be able to live a healthy, prosperous existence”