thanks to twitter, I have learned that the whole Lolcat phenomenon is actually more than 100 years old. Turns out that the first person to take a picture of a cat and affixing a silly caption to it was Harry Pointer, a photographer from Brighton, UK. Starting around 1870, he began publishing his The Brighton Cats series, which, by 1884, had included some 200 photographs.

So, in the scheme of things, HappyCat is a relative n00b, by more than a century.

Overall, I’m sure moving to this new job is the good kind of stress. However, good or bad, it’s still stress, and it plays havoc with my system in all sorts of unpleasant ways. I am, as many know, a creature of habit, almost compulsively so; these changes (new position, new place of business, new work schedule, etc) are totally blowing my routine, and throwing me off a bit. Give me a few weeks, though, and I’ll be used to it.

In the meantime, here are some tunes:

1. “Who Do You Think You Are” – Spice Girls
2. “Doreen” – Old 97s
3. “The Engine Driver” – The Decembrists
4. “Because” – The Beatles
5. “Walk to the Water” – U2
6. “Ribbon of Honor” – Innocent Nixon
7. “Going Through The Motions” – Aimee Mann
8. “Heaven & Heaven” – Rock Sugar
9. “Got My Own Thing” – Liz Phair
10. “Michael Jordan” – that dog.

Does this surprise me? Not in the least.

Gran Turismo 5 is delayed…again.

This game has been in a constant state of “delayed” for most of the PS3 life cycle now – the “totally official this time we mean it guys, really” release date was supposed to be November 2, 2010, though now, apparently, it’s going to be out “sometime in the holiday season,” which could really mean anything.

The only thing I guess you can say is that if they were intent on getting it out two weeks from now, I would assume that it’s got to be basically done by now – I know the software development cycle enough to know that if you get this close to the actual release without delaying, the problem you’re running into isn’t a serious one. But with any project, there’s a point, like, say, now, when you just have to leave well enough alone and just release your product into the wild.

I guess if waiting a couple of weeks (I wasn’t likely to grab this on day one anyway – it’s pretty much what I’m asking for for Christmas) avoids a big day one patch download, I can live with it. But, it’s probably just time to let it go: I would assume that the packaging has already gone to the printers at this point.

I understand perfectionism, but c’mon Polyphony, just let it go.

Those paying attention have probably noticed that for the last month and change, I haven’t been posting much, and when I have posted, I’ve dropped little hints about things happening that I didn’t necessarily want to talk about it.

At this point, I feel it’s safe to talk about those things, at least in general terms.*

For the last almost nine years, I’ve made my living doing software and business process development for a large federal agency. Starting tomorrow, I’ll still be doing that, but on a different project with a different part of the agency for a non-trivial increase in annual salary.

In practice, not a whole lot in terms of my day-to-day life is going to change. The work will be pretty much the same as now; it’s still logistics software (hell, mostly the same software), only being used to buy and store and ship different kinds of things. Also, I’m not moving – this project is kind enough (or deperate enough) to continue to pay to put me up in hotels and feed me along with the usual compensation in order to take advantage of my “expertise” in sorting out business processes and tweaking the software to make it work with those processes. What’s different is that I’ll be working directly for the agency HQ organization, and reporting officially to someone in DC rather than locally (though they’re kind enough to let me keep a desk in the Richmond metro for the time I won’t be travelling).

And yeah, a bit more money. I like that bit of it quite a bit.

Not surprisingly, I’m looking forward to trying something different, and learning new things; I’m not simply kissing up to the new bosses when I say that the areas of business I’ll be dealing with have some terribly exciting things going on, and some interesting process problems to solve. Also pleasant is that I’ll be on a team with some dear old work friends I haven’t had a chance to associate with in several years – it’s a good team, and for the most part, it’s folks who already know how to work with each other, so yay.

…as for why I wasn’t saying much of anything for the last however long: simply, I didn’t want to jinx it. There’s all sorts of strange human resources calculus going on behind the scenes that’s way beyond my ken, leading to some interesting wrinkles and hoops to jump through to put the team together. That, and I didn’t want to say anything until it was officially official; saving the the trouble of backing statements off if things all fell through. That’s it, really. I have been rather excited about the possibility for some time.

In any case, that’s my big news. We now return to our regular practices of not talking about work any more.

_____________________________

* –For a number of reasons, I don’t make a habit of talking specifics about my work or my job in this forum; I don’t mention specifically where I work, or name names, or anything like that. I believe I’ve scrubbed all the specific mentions from the archives. Yes, I know many of you readers already know. I do this mostly because it’s not really anybody’s business; and as it is, it’s easy enough to connect the dots to create a profile. Also, on the rare occasions where I do drop the occasional non-specific bitchy comment about the office, I don’t want my blowing off of steam to tie itself to the organization, because I like my job and would like to keep it, thank you very much.

Stuff is happening. Good stuff. I’ll cover it in a separate post a little later. Here are some tunes.

1. “A Certain Romance” – Arctic Monkeys
2. “Our American Cousin” – Molly Lewis
3. “Goodbye” – Patty Griffin
4. “Radio Romance” – Tiffany
5. “When You’re Gone” – The Cranberries
6. “Slave” – Syn D’ Cats
7. “Come All You Sailors” – Wailin’ Jennys
8. “Abacab” – Genesis
9. “Dose of Thunder” – The Replacements
10. “Right Through You” – Alanis Morissette

…but I have to admit that today, I’m having a good hair day, a good clothes day, a decent body day…I actually kind of look good.*

All that biking might actually be working for me a little bit.

_______________

* – for certain values of “good” which allow for thirtysomething nerdy balding guys built on oddly-shaped frames with years’ worth of built-up low self-esteem.

In my honest opinion, Mega-Shark vs. Giant Octopus is a better film than Mega Piranha. Round one of the contest goes to Deborah Gibson. We’ll see if Tiffany Can tie it up by delivering the more riveting performance in round two’s head-to-head competition when Mega Python vs. Gateroid gets released next year.

Here’s some totally unrelated music:

1. “Kill My Girlfriend” – Innocent Nixon
2. “What Kind of Fool” – Syn D’ Cats
3. “He Wasn’t (live)” – Avril Lavigne
4. “Song for A Future Generation” – The B-52s
5. “Reservations” – Wilco
6. “Dull Life” – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
7. “Like O, Like H” – tegan and Sara
8. “Sixteen Military Wives” – The Decembrists
9. “Canary” – Liz Phair
10. “Beautiful Dawn” – Wailin’ Jennys

Space Beer.

Living in the future is cool.

Jo Walton over at tor dot com touches on a phenomenon that I’m sure a lot of us have experienced over the years in her piece about “The Suck Fairy”: that little fey beastie who invades our bookshelves, making certain books we loved when we first read them, well, “suck,” when we pick them up for a re-read years later.

One über example from my youth, Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, is a common target of this fairy. When I read these books as an elementary school student, I loved them for the fantasy and adventure; but when I picked them up again as an adult, all I could see was the heavy-handed Christian allegory and casual racism, sexism, and the general awfulness of how Susan gets handled. I still have affection for the books given how much I loved them as a kid, but I don’t expect I’ll be picking them up again any time soon.

I’m sure we all have similar things buried in the dark, snow-covered corners of our wardrobes*.

So much of this, of course, has to do with the way we, as readers, grow and change, our broadened experience making us more aware of and sensitive to certain issues, and giving us a greater ability to perceive levels of depth (or perhaps, lack-of-depth) in the literature we consume. As we evolve, so do our tastes; it’s inevitable that some of the stuff of our youth falls victim to hordes of suck fairies. Youth makes us oblivious to certain things, and yes, it’s sad that the stuff we loved doesn’t always hold up. This, my friends, is life.

The good news that Walton doesn’t touch on is that there exists a force in opposition to the suck fairy – call it the “better than I remember” fairy, or the “Now I get it!” fairy that can help us overcome our despair. Some of the stuff we once enjoyed superficially when we were younger can present new levels of appreciation and understanding and things we couldn’t get into as a kid can become new favorites as we get older**.

So, I guess my response to Walton’s post is one of agreement, but would add that while much of the fuel for our youthful imaginations doesn’t have the potency it once did, some of it becomes more powerful as time goes by._______________________

* – also in my wardrobe are piles of Tom Clancy (Then? masculine military adventure. Now? right-wing screeds), Anne McCaffrey (great worldbuilding and storytelling, but I have a hard time with the rapey stuff), bunches of licensed Star Trek paperbacks (so utterly cookie-cutter and bland, except perhaps when Peter David wrote them), and, of course, stacks of 80s hair metal cassette tapes.

** – I find new things to appreciate in Watchmen every time I re-read it, and if I had given up on Lord of the Rings the first couple of times I tried to read it as a kid, it never would have become one of my favorites. Then there’s the whole 80s music thing – I don’t think my 9th grade self would have appreciated REM and The Replacements back then, but their music of that time really resonates with me now 20 years after it was recorded.

Not sure of the reason, exactly, but last night I was moved to pull out my bass and shake the rust off of my meager skill at filling out the bottom end.

It turns out I wasn’t entirely embarassed with the results: I could still pound out the scales and runs, and didn’t fudge the bass line to “Livin’ On A Prayer” all that much (go ahead, laugh, it’s not a bad tune to warm up with).

However, it’s been a least a year since I last touched the instrument; after less than an hour of playing, I had raised, and subsequently burst, an inconveniently placed blister on the tip of my right middle finger.

I guess you could say I’m out of practice; I won’t be ready to hit the road as part of the rhythm section any time soon (or, more than likely, ever). But, I had a little fun; certainly enough to overshadow the bit of suffering I did for my art.

I’m okay with that.