Yesterday was such a "meh!" day. Thursday was my Comic-Con day. I needed to hook up with Richard and Wendy of Elfquest fame, to discuss the upcoming web revamp. And I was taking my brother Dana to see the con for the first time. We left Anaheim at around 7:20 am and get on the 5 Freeway. Going ok, until we're about to get to San Onofre. Then the traffic stops. And stops. And stops.....

4 hours later, we finally get to the reason why the traffic had been throughly killed. At 5:09am, a Vons grocery truck was driving along when it hit a mini-van that was parked on the side of the road. It had been in an accident earlier and was unoccupied, but going 65+MPH, it created quite the mess. The big rig slammed into the van, tossing it up the hill about 30 feet, then rolled a couple of times before the gas tanks finally burst into flames. The driver got out before it went up fortunately. However, the fire from the tanks lit the brush on the side of the road and ended up burning 4 acres of brush and torched the mini-van.

When we finally got to the accident, around 11:30am, 4 hours after we left on a 2 hour drive, traffic was still pretty much reduced to one lane.

Yes, that's one lane, with rush hour traffic from L.A. to San Diego AND people coming down for the first day of the San Diego Comic-Con.

All told, it took about 5 1/2 hours to get to San Diego. I was only able to spend about an hour at the convention cause we had to be back in Anaheim for a dinner appointment. I did get to hook up with Richard and Wendy. That was pretty much it.

The only GOOD thing that happened all day was being able to finally hit up the In-N-Out. I sooooooo needed a 4x4 after all that driving.

Hope everyone else had a better day.

 

The day was going so well... then I got home. I pulled the laptop out of my backpack and yet again, the hard drive ate itself. Naturally it's like 2 weeks after the warranty expired.

You know, I'm really sick and tired of hard drives dying. Again, I have no idea what I've lost as far as files go. I may be able to see about getting a professional to try to do some recovery, but I won't be able to do that until the semester starts again in August. Until then, I'm back to the tower. All of my email from the last 7 months are prolly gone. I know the originals for the Voices For Tolerance site are gone. I'll have to reconstruct those. Fortunately I kept that simple.

I really hate having to reverse engineer projects because of hard drives that totally suck. Now I have to see what I have backed up and what's missing. My last backup was apparently the end of May, so it's not quite as bad as it could be, but still.

What's really sad is that the hard drive died just 7 months ago. Two dead drives in less than a year is bad.

I'm just really tired of this kind of stuff... I miss the days of Seagate Barracuda drives installed in computers. I really do. Those things NEVER died.


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Well, I finally got OS X installed on my FireWire drive and the laptop booted up just fine there. Translation: Hard drive is dead. Computer is fine.

It's really sad too. Computer can see the drive. It just can't read anything off it.

Exceptionally frustrating. Now I need to get a new hard drive... but again, not until next month. Horrible time for all this. Right before the Disneyland/Comic-Con trip.

Ick.


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Well, maybe not. Did a software update and then the FireWire drive stopped working... Prolly something in addition to the drive dying.



 

So, I had this bright red Squire Bullet guitar in storage for like 5 years. I finally got it out of storage and, since I have some time finally to do some things that I've either been too busy or too lazy to work on, I decided to start noodlin' with the guitar again. I took the holiday weekend to go up to the Guitar Center in Salt Lake and poke around. It's been forever since I've been to a music store, so it was nice to be able to hit one up again. While I was there, I picked up a Marshall Mini Amp and a Boss Chromatic Tuner pedal and starting playing around.

I need to practice my fingerwork on the basic chords. I'm horribly uncoordinated when it comes to my left hand, so making it do some work for a change is going to be fun.

After working on chords for the last hour, fingertips are nice and throbby. Just the way I'd hope they would be after doing all this for an hour. Once I get the chords down, I need to work on switching between them. That's where the uncoordinated fun will come in. It'll just take practice I suppose.

I am surprised though that the guitar, despite sitting in the heat of a storage unit in Corona for 5 years, it was still relatively in tune. I think only 2 of the strings were horribly off. Not bad me thinks. I'm glad that I swopped out the strings when I first bought it. That Chromatic Tuner pedal is just a wonderful thing too. I'm glad that I saw it in action with hsdshinji. A lot of the reviews I read were exceptionally favorable too. It's such a beautiful thing. Thanks Jon! :)

Now if it wasn't hella hot out here right now. I hate trying to go to bed in the heat...

I'm not too sure I have the energy or desire to really go into the events of this last week here. Suffice it to say, a lot of friendships are going to end because of this last week.

And I don't have the energy to fight about all this shit anymore.

For those that care, I'm going to move my LJ from here over to my skyfall account. I don't want to see the side of this that is just going to cause me more pain, grief and stress. If you'd like to keep up on the world of me, please feel free to poke your head over to the skyfall account.

To the rest of everyone, it's been real. There's nothing more here to see. Move along.

 

You know, this has been a long week... I'm not too sure I have the energy to comment on it yet. Maybe later.

For now, we're stuck on a layover in Kansas City. Our plane has been delayed from Albuquerque. Apparently, there's weather there. Who knew? :P

We'll be getting into Chicago about 15 minutes late or so (at least that's what the dood at the podium says) so things are ok there.

I just can't want to be home at this point. -_-;;

Greetings from the layover in Phoenix. Only like 2-ish more hours to go until we're in San Diego. :)

 

Yes, it's that time of year yet again. I'm 8 hours away from being on the plane, heading to the ultimate convention, San Diego Comic-Con. It's nice to get down to SD. Nice weather that's not overly hot or overly icky. Lots of silliness always in store too. And we've got a lot of new people joining the crew down there this year. It'll be fun.

Like most years down there, I have little to no money, so I'm just going down to veg and enjoy the con. Last year I didn't really go to any panels. Not sure if I will this year... there are a few things that I noticed in the schedule. I'll have to look through again and see if there's REALLY anything that I want to go see...

We should have internet access at the hotel, so I'll still be online, but I'll be away from the computer most of the time. :)

Until I get back, have a great week everyone. To you all that are going to be down in SD, I'll see you there. :)

 

Ok. So yesterday was rather bizarre.

Yesterday morning, there were little plans for the day. We had to get ottermama down to the Culinary School in Downtown at 10:00am to talk with the advisement doods down there and then I had a second phone interview with a potential employer scheduled for 1:30pm. Was set to be a nice simple day...

8:30am - We leave the house, heading toward Downtown. The car needs some gasoline in it first.

8:40am - We arrive at the Speedway to put gas in the car. Gas price: $3.05.

8:44am - We pull out of the gas station. Gas price: $3.25. Yes, it went up $0.20 while we were sitting there.

9:20am - We arrive on Lake Shore Drive, turning toward Michigan Avenue.

9:22am - I receive a phone call from one of the temp agencies out here, saying that there's a dire need for a designer... like, today. I tell them that I have a phone call that I'm waiting for at 1:30pm. They send my info over to the client to see if they want to use me.

10:15am - I get a call back and they say that the client wants me to come down. They want me there at 2:00pm.

11:25am - ottermama gets done with the folks at CHIC, and I tell him about the fun that has been presented for the afternoon...

12:00pm - Arrive back at home. I have just enough time to get a quick shower and get back out to Downtown, where the client is.

1:20pm - I arrive BACK in Downtown on Lake Shore Drive and head over toward IBM Plaza, where the client, Jenner & Block, is located.

1:35pm - My phone interview calls. Interview seems to have gone well. I'm SOOOOO hoping that I get this one. It's just what I've been looking for. Mostly print designing. Very little web.

2:10pm - I get to the lobby of J&B. I get the quick tour and start in on various things.

8:15pm - I finish up for the day and head home...


Yeah, it was a crazy day yesterday. Not ANYTHING like I expected it to be. It's a good thing though. This freelance stuff will help with getting into an apartment this month.

For right now, I'm down at J&B, sitting on the 46th floor, looking out on the killer Chicago area. Boy, I sure do love it in Chicago.

 

Well, it's ACen time. I'm off to get ready to head over to the hotel and then the insanity may commence. I'll be offline for the next few days and we'll see everyone when the weekend is over. Or if you're going to be there, I'll see you there! :)