Friday, March 31, 2006

chuck harvey

When I was at work a couple days ago, a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to see a lecture given by a former Disney animator, Chuck Harvey. I jumped at the chance, so I used it as an excuse to ditch Econ yesterday. He presented for more than two hours on the process Disney used to create their animated feature films, and his role as an animator. Chuck started at Disney in 1971 and hand drew scenes for Robin Hood, The Little Mermaid, The Rescuers, and The Fox and the Hound before he moved on to Warner Studios where he animated for Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, and (his personal favorite) The Tick. He is an amazing artist, and quite a character in person as well.

After the presentation I was hanging around (The lecture was literally right next door to my cubicle), and I was invited to go to pizza with Chuck and his wife and a couple other students. I agreed of course, but the plans changed a little. The dean of the college of engineering and computer science decided to treat the 6 of us to dinner at probably the fanciest restaurant in the city, the 5th Street Steakhouse.

I rushed home and changed into some nicer clothes (I was wearing flip-flops...) and met the group there. What a dinner! It was me, Brendan (the guy who invited me to the lecture to begin with), another student animator, and a staff person where I work sitting across from Chuck Harvey and his wife over an excelent steak dinner, fine beer, and a nice bottle of wine. Oh, how I wish I was twenty one. Anywho, Chuck is an amazing guy. He told the best stories, did the best imitations, and had the table laughing the entire night. His wife was also a fireball; she is very animated and entertaining, but when the two of them got together there was no stopping them. It was great company paired with a superb dinner (with a hefty check to go along with it).

I've met the dean of the ECT college a couple times - I'm in his program after all - but he wouldn't know my face or name by any means. I thought about just walking into his office and thanking him for dinner just to see his reaction. Perhaps on monday :)

And it amazes me, being a college student. Last night I was eating steak at the fanciest restaurant in town, and now I have water boiling for my mac-n-cheese. Funny these things, aren't they?

Sunday, March 26, 2006

europe or bust

It is a sure thing now; I am going to be flying British Airways departing June 14 and returning July 26 from Paris, France. I sat down last night with a big map of Europe and started highlighting places I wanted to go during my six week trip, and have quite a list going so far :) In no particular order, it includes: Bergen, Oslo, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Cologne, Bonn, Munich, Paris, Chambourd, Zurich, Dachau, Venice, Nice, Florence, Cinque Terra, and Rome. Okay, I lied, the list goes from north to south :) I also would like to get to Spain (mainly Madrid and Barcelona) and Morocco sometime, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to on this trip.

I bought a backpack and a pair of hiking shoes at REI today, and am getting more excited about the trip every day. I have a feeling it's going to be the only thing that gets me throught finals week in May.

Anyway, if you know any places you think I should go, I'm doing the whole planning thing right now, so please shoot me an e-mail. I'm planning on going north to Bergen (if I make it that far) first, then widing my way south through central Europe down to Rome, then catching the overnight train back to Paris to make the flight back to SFO, so anything is fair game. Like I said, the only places I don't plan on going are the UK and Spain, but hey, plans change, right? I'm not making a huge itinerary; just getting an idea of where I want to go and see what happens when I get there.

I'm sure I'll post more details as they come, but I'm just getting so excited about this trip I could crap my pants.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

googlepages - is google taking over?

Another day, another google product.

I finally got into googlepages this evening, which is Google's way of letting you self-publish on the internet. They already acquired Blogger several years ago as their free blogging solution, now they have a website builder. Also, they recently acquired writely, that nifty Web 2.0 app I was raving about a while ago. Not to mention the scores of other stuff they have been working on. There have been rumors of GoogleOS, possibly an ubuntu-like version of linux. Makes you wonder what else they have up their sleeves?

Anywho, I spent some time on the script that controls the on-page comments. Nothing drastic, but now it scrolls out when you view the comments, though it still loads dynamically using the XMLHttpRequest object in javascript. Fun.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

tahoe and returning

So a couple days before spring break Cavan asks me if I want to go with his family up to Tahoe where they have rented a "cabin" for the week. Knowing I had to work on Tuesday, I happily said yes. Well, I never made it back to work on Tuesday. In fact, I spent the last 5 days in the great city of Incline Village right on the edge of lake Tahoe. How close to the edge? Here's what it looked like the night we arrived less than 200 yards from the house:



That was a 15 second exposure for those interested :) But how about this "cabin" they had rented? Lets just say 5 bedroom, 4 bath, 3 stories, 2 door garage, and 1 hot tub. Don't believe me? Check it out on Tuesday, right after it dumped about a foot of snow on us:



And another shot from the lakeside:



So we were livin' it up, snowboarding at Northstar every day for 4 days straight. Tons of fun, lots of powder that was waist deep, and a terrain park that was to die for.

But okay, that was all fine and dandy, but where's the REAL adventure you ask? If you know me at all, you know that if there's anything to do with cars, trains, busses, etc... that something HAS to go wrong. Well, take the trip back. I got on the bus at Truckee (of all places...) at about 4:45PM yesterday, bound for Sacramento where I would catch the bus to Chico and get in around 11 or so. Well, we got to Sac-town uneventfully considering we were driving through a small blizzard over Donner's Pass which has several feet of snow still. In Sacramento, I got comfy because we were waiting for the train coming from the South which had transfering passengers. Well, turns out that someone had a heart attack and died right on the train, so they had to stop it, get the coroner, etc... which delayed it 2+ hours. If that wasn't enough, a freight train hit a truck that was stalled on the tracks, killing the driver, and delaying the amtrak another 2+ hours.

They finally sent a bus for the stranded train passengers, and I got on it about midnight after a 4.5 hour wait at the lovely Sacramento Amtrak station. Meghan was kind enough to pick me up from the train station at ~1:45 this morning and bring me home.

Home; another funny story. My 3 roommates were all still out of town as of last night, so I was groaning at the thought of having to dig my keys out of my bag. Alas, as I neared the front door, I noticed it was ajar slightly. That deserved a resounding "WTF Mate?!". I shoved it open and moved upstairs to drop off my bags and board. I went back downstairs and turned on some lights. I noticed Damien's door was open, which is unusual for him, especially if he goes away for more than a day. It was then I noticed his doorframe:



Shit. Someone kicked it in. Then the front door, which was less of a shock:



Long story short, someone kicked in our front door and my roommate's door, but didn't steal a thing. Not a THING! Not the XBox laying on the floor, my bike in the kitchen, my roommate's computer, NOTHING! How weird is that?

I guess it was last night I realized how cool my neighbors really are. Within 30 seconds of me finding out, I had a beer in my hand, half a dozen guys in my house playing detective, and talk about how Russ would kick the guy's ass if we ever found out who did it. (This made sense after meeting Russ... let's just say I'm glad he's a friend instead of an enemy)

Well, I finally got to bed around three, just to wake up at 7 to come to work by 8. It's been a long day, and I want to go home. I'm sleeping at least 12 hours tonight, no matter what anyone says.