Hey, y'all.

I sat down and made a brief list of everything I've been meaning to write
about. There's a lot of stuff. It's almost frightening how entertaining
even mundane things can be.

For example, Chad had done his homework; apparently he's discovered that
Orange County is home to about 30 percent of the country's donut
shops. Who knew? Not only do I get the joys of BOTH Circle K and 7-11 out
here, but it IS indeed true; there's a veritable smorgasborg of donut
shops. Many of them are open 24 hours, in order to value-add to the
service of...donut supplying, I guess. Is this not commercialism gone
horribly awry?

Other news: Time Crisis II is no longer my quarter-swallowing
addiction. Since I can beat the whole game with my eyes closed, I've
moved on to other games. I'm now preparing diligently for a life of
second and third mortgages by repeatedly draining my Power Card on
"Silent Scope" (and Silent Scope II, but who's counting?). Also good is
"Crisis Zone," which is basically Time Crisis II with new levels...and a
machine gun. Ho ho ho.

It's odd...the best way to kill your addiction to "kid's stuff" like
video games is to work in the industry. If I never see Heroes of Might
and Magic III again, it'll be too soon. Same holds true for
Civilization...and I only spent about 48 hours hacking at that. If
nothing else, it's driven me away from my desk and back into the
arcades. It's like going back to gang-banging for white boys.

The real news is that tommorow (today?) I'll be moving into my
HOUSE. Actually, not mine; I'll be moving into my ROOM.  That's cool. I'm
only there for about 45 days before I'm out looking for new digs
again. Unless I can convince Daniel to move in here (and convince Lance
to not turn that extra room into an office)...it's not a big deal, but MY
GOD...this house is SWEET. I'm going to very thoroughly enjoy crashing
here for the next month and a half. It's a four bedroom number that
looks, inside and out, like a step below the place from Fresh Prince of
Bel-Air.

...but then again, i'm used to roach-infested shitholes. And screaming
kids at six in the morning, so it could be in South Central L.A., and I'd
still consider it paradise, so long as the only noise before 10:00a.m. is
some gunplay and maybe a screaming crackwhore. Crackwhores don't have the
same vocal range as three year-olds.

This will give me a decent chance to figure out what I still own. Packing
in Charlotte was basically a matter of throwing everything into my car,
so if it isn't in the backpack I've been living out of since January, I'm
probably no longer aware of its existance. More importantly,
claustrophobics will be able to ride in my car again when the piles and
piles of crapola are removed.

Ooh...gotta backtrack for a moment, though. I was in Charlotte last
week. Here's the highlights really quickly:

- Saw two plays: "Death and the Maiden" and "The Effects of Gamma Rays on
  Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds."  (whew!)
- Wrote an article for Freshmeat.net.  Got a lot of hatemail for it. I
  love hatemail.
- Hit Lupie's for MEATLOAF NIGHT.  Don't be fooled; when you leave
  Charlotte, you WILL miss Lupie's.
- Robbed my previous employer blind. More on this in a moment.
- Slept very littled. Hacked quite a bit.
- Saw "Pump up the Volume" for the first time. If anyone blows up an
  plane after reading my last email about airlines, I can be the next
  Christian Slater. Just call me Charles U. Farley.
- Met "Gertrude" at the BareBones cast party. I'll get back to this next email.
- Saw quite a few people on this list.
- Other important stuff that'll hit me as soon as I send this email.

...so I visited my old employer's office suites last Friday. Every Friday
they feed the whole staff pizza so the proles forget how badly they keep
getting fucked by the upper one percent. So I thought it might be funny
to sneak in and steal a box of pizza. I take about three steps towards
the door and my old boss sees me with pizza in hand. He yelps, "Ryan!"

I'm expecting this joke's gone very badly, but the next words out of his
mouth are not, "Security!"  In fact, they are something more akin to
"Thank god you're here...there's some nasty bugs in the Mac code...can
you fix them?"

Here's your job-security tip for the day: Work for a Java-based company,
and be the only guy who knows C. Bonus points if you can pick up PowerPC
assembly language on-the-fly.

With this in mind, I remind him that I don't work for free when I'm
on vacation.

"No, we'll pay you."
"Yeah...but it ain't gonna cover my THERAPY BILLS for having to be
here..."
"Fifty bucks. An hour. Under the table."

...


I mean, damn. I know good prostitutes that don't make that much. So I did
some whoring of my own. For 11 hours. Not a typo. That'll finance the
Palm IIIc that's on it's way to me...can't wait to try and get Eric's
Ultimate Solitaire working on that thing.  :)  This is not overlooking
the fact that this was a paid vacation on top of everything else...oh,
yes. Life is good.

So I gotta go. I need to get a little more Silent Scope in before this
place closes for the night.  Love me some sniping.

More tommorow.

--ryan.