And the packing continues

by Matt | Aug 26, 2005 | Personal

So, we’re down to the last few things. By few I mean many and by things I mean half the apartment. Actually, it’s not that bad. We have all the “little stuff” all over the place. My CD’s on my desk, the Xbox, the knives in the kitchen, the toiletries in the bathroom, you know, the important stuff. The bulk of the books, furnature, appliances, etc, are all ready pack and ready to roll. Tonight it’s a mad dash to cramp little things into boxes that inevitably will be marked as “computer junk”, “matt’s stuff” and “living room misc.” That’s ok.

This whole ordeal will commense at 10am tomorrow. We’ll pick up the keys and start loading stuff in. Time “we hate our customers” Warner has decided it’s a beautiful thing to leave me without cable for a week and a half. So, SEPT 6TH those asshats are coming back out to reconnect me. Until then I fully plan to STEAL wifi from the nearby apartments. Way to go modern technology.

Anyway, I’ll update from my sidekick and from work. But, until the 6th, I’m out!

More moving, more work

by Matt | Aug 23, 2005 | Personal

We’re knee deep in boxes. I don’t believe we have a dining room any more. If I can’t see the floor I don’t consider it a room. More like a sea of carefully stacked cardboard in what use to be my place to eat. We’ve still got quite a bit a packing but I think we’ll make it. I’ve gotten help offers from all over. I’m going to borrow 3 or 4 large dollies from work to relieve some stress of carrying. Chris, Jake, Sherzan, and Lauren’s parents have all offered to help which is quite gracious. With the combined might of 4 pickup trucks it should hopefully be an easy move. The way I figure it, if we take the furnature first, when all of us are there, then if we have anything left Sunday or Monday, I can move it in my car. I can’t move a couch by myself, but I can move the computers or a box or two. The big stuff is where we need the help. So, all that is on going.

Tonight is League Night. CAL 8 on 8 BF2 matches are every Tuesday and tonight is no exception. I’m also on the roster, which I’m excited about. I usually make the roster, but tonight I get helo duty, so some extra pressure there. We’re also playing a map I dislike. It’s very lop-sided unfortunatly. Both sides have equal armor and helos but it’s the terrain that makes the difference. One team starts at the top ridge of a valley. The other at the bottom. The team on top has almost instant firing positions over the other and can rain death down into the valley, especially from the chopper. It should be an interesting match.

Lastly, a big thanks to Chris A for helping me out with my photo shoot yesterday. We got the job done and I think the photos turned out well. It was a corporate headshot shoot with a few groups in there too. With the exception of a light that refused to play nice I think it went off without any major hitches. Chris seemed to enjoy the lunch at our new Mexican place here in the Heights as well. Anyway, thanks again.

Ok, back to work. Matt out.

So much to do

by Matt | Aug 19, 2005 | Personal

So little time.

We’re starting to prepare for our move next week. We going to start packing up excess dishes and such tonight and then tackle a different room each night as we go. The closet in my study is of great concern since it’s still packed floor to ceiling with things from 2 years ago when we moved IN! I guess most of it should be junked, considering I haven’t even considered getting any of it out in over 2 years. I should at least try to EBay some of it though. I have a nice comic collection and a $300 guitar that probably shouldn’t just be given away.

It’s going to seriously suck bill-wise this month but I think the price will be justified since we’ll be considerably happier in our new place. We get to paint walls, which makes Lauren happy, we’ll have a huge new kitchen, which makes me happy, and it’ll be cheaper rent each month, which makes everyone happy. It will however, require a extra months rent at our old place, $150 pro-rate for the last few days of August for the new place, Septembers rent at the new place, but all the nifty little fees for having things like cable internet and phone transfered. $890 + $831 + $150 + misc = OUCH.

Also, for some reason I can’t begin to fathom, I’m being made to work on Monday. Which pisses me off. Not that I’m working, just the fact that I’ll only get one day off and I doubt it will be restful. I NEED two days off. Remind me should I ever need to find employment elsewhere, to make sure it’s a M-F gig. I can’t stand this Saturday shit. Everyone else works on Monday’s and they expect that you do to, which is why shit like this gets scheduled.

I’ve also taken a sudden interest in CSS again, the style sheets, not Counter-Strike. I’ve started to disect a few websites I enjoy that are completely and totally CSS based. Check out KomodoMedia and see what I mean. Beautiful site, truely. I’m digging through code trying to figure out how he did the tabbed/switched images on the right. I really dig that style.

Briefly I toyed with the idea of doing a pod-cast-esque audio entry, maybe every Monday or something, but was always concerned about the bandwidth and the hosting of large MP3s. I might give it a whirl now that I’ve found OurMedia and PodBlaze. Both are free and both look promising. I’ve got a headset and various wav-to-mp3 converters, so who knows, maybe we’ll see a DocHoloday.Com Audio Journal entry at some point.

I’ve also decided to try and get the Battlefield 2 map editor up and running. With a whole host of tutorials and tweak guides, hopefully I can figure it out. The last editor was a bit like working in 3DStudio Max and I gave up after a while. I’m just not down with the 3D rendering scene. This seems more like a “terrain editor” in a cut and paste fashion. You’re kind of brushing textures on and just ploping structures in. I don’t plan on getting into any heavy editing or mini-mod making, but I would like to throw a few levels together. The weird thing about the levels though is I’ve yet to see a good way to distribute them. Most of your homemade levels from other people contain about 70 different files and aren’t compressed into a “map file” of any sort, just a collection of textures and meshes and whatnot. Very weird indeed. I wonder if EA has publish standards on how to do it or if people are just making it up as they go.

Lastly, Chris is coming to visit Texas next month, which is very cool. From what I gather he’ll be staying with his friend Doug who has the week off from work. I have to work the whole time he’s here but would like to catch a few Astros games or grab some dinner at some point. He also asked me to see if I could get tickets to the Texans game that Sunday. It looks like I have a crappy event to be at from 12-4, so that puts an axe on that idea. Sorry bud 🙁

Matt out.