So, our transmission died on the way to work today. Something went “crunch,” the engine spun way up, and we started slowing down. The moment this happened, I realized what was happening, and took stock of our surroundings. We were at the top of a hill just south of Jack London Square on 880, and I didn’t know *exactly* where the next exit was, but had a pretty good idea.

Immediately, a number of questions popped into mind – could we make it to the exit? Was it where I thought it was? Would it be better to pull over to the side and stop here, at the top of the hill, where we’re very visible? How ’bout at the bottom of the hill, where the shoulder is almost wide enough for a single car? Even if the exit is where I think it is, can we make it all the way there? The gas literally does *nothing*. If we make it, can we make it *out* of the exit lane, which is extremely short, but also extremely narrow? If I switch into a different gear (even in the auto) would it make a difference? Blinkers on. Anyone behind us? No one in front, so we don’t have to slow down.

It became instantly a game of strategy – inertia vs. safety – each moment a question as to whether we had enough momentum to get us to somewhere safer, or whether we were going to pass up a relatively safer spot, and get stuck somewhere more dangerous.

Fortunately, the exit *was* there. We had enough momentum to get completely off the freeway, and even though we rolled through a stop sign, enough momentum to even get us to a parking lot across the street from the exit.

When I put the car into “Park,” the transmission literally “crunched.” I hopped out, opened the hood, and lookd under the car. There was a leak, and the transmission was steaming. Nothing say, *smoking,* but something looked quite horribly awry. Still, not much to be done but call AAA, so Ei-Nyung called (she has the Gold level service), and twenty minutes later, the tow truck showed up.

When the guy attached the car to his truck and lifted it up, the Civic immediately dumped all its transmission fluid onto the parking lot. With the vaguely reddish transmission fluid pouring out, it looked distinctly like the car had been stabbed, and was bleeding to death.

We brought it back to the shop it had been serviced at yesterday (needed new front axles and CV joint boots), where the owner of the shop was apologetic, and promised that he’d get the car fixed up right by the afternoon. He was good to his word, and even though we were a little peeved that his company had screwed things up the first time, at least it was repaired quickly, and didn’t end up costing us anything. Hopefully nothing else was damaged as a result.

Ended up taking the bulk of the day off work, due to the lack of a working car, but in the afternoon, I took my mom’s car, and brought Mobius to the beach. That was one happy dog. Because no one else was around, I took him off the leash, and kept throwing his giant stick (3.5 ft. long) into the bay, and he kept chasing after it. Because the particular area we went to is relatively shallow, he didn’t do much swimming, but after an hour or so of running like a crazed beast into the bay, and doing a little swimming to get the stick when I threw it a bit farther, he ended up quite throughly pooped.

The rest of the day was spent answering work e-mail, and napping. In the evening, Ei-Nyung & I went to an Indian restaurant we’d never been to before. We’d intended to go to Cuvae, an Asian/American fusion restaurant that we’d been to once before and enjoyed, but they were closed today for upgrades. Hopefully not in a Bonaparte’s kind of way.

Instead, we went to the Indian restaurant that was across the street. Place was bustling, so we figured that must be a good sign. Prices were on the high side for Indian, but since it was so busy, we figured it’d be worth a shot. Got a Lamb Briyani, which was quite tasty – spicy without being overbearing, and with reasonably tender, flavorful meat. The garlic naan was quite good – the garlic wasn’t burnt, and the bread was perfectly done. The mango shake I got was tasty, and Ei-Nyung’s hot chai had a pleasant note of cardamom. The only issue was Ei-Nyung’s chicken curry, which had only white meat, but was definitely overcooked. The meat was dry, and bland, and the sauce on the whole just was sort of limp and lifeless. The individual flavor wasn’t terrible, by any means, it was simply underwhelming in almost every respect, and the dry chicken really brought the whole dish down.

It looked like they specialized more in the tandoori dishes, but we didn’t really get that vibe until well into the meal. We ended up with gulab jamin, which are those dough balls in honey sauce. They were appropriately spongy, and reasonably good, except for a strange overpowering butter flavor. Sounds strange, I know – and they weren’t *greasy,* it was just that the really strong flavor of butter, which was almost savory, overwhelmed the sweetness of the honey. Not quite the right balance of flavor.

Personally, I prefer Kerry House, which is one of those Indian restuarant/Irish pubs, and they win on three counts. Bolder flavor, better pricing, and they deliver. Still, not a bad meal, and a pleasant way to spend the evening. Certainly better than our lunch at Noah’s. First they forgot my sandwich, then they burned Ei-Nyung’s bagel, then they forgot my potato salad, and then when they re-made Ei-Nyung’s sandwich, they didn’t toast the bagel to any appreciable degree at all. Still sort of the standard flavors, I suppose, but all in all, a really unpleasant, uncoordinated service.

Ah, back to work tomorrow. After having worked my way down to zero bugs, I’ve now built up another day’s worth of bugs to work through, then I’m supposed to go in on the weekend to test, and to deal with the flood of bugs that are coming in, because they’ve apparently doubled the number of testers on the team. We’ve gotten a *lot* of really poor bugs already, I can only imagine what it’s going to be like dealing with another 50 green testers. Fun fun.

I *LOVE* testers, just to be clear – I love what they do, and find them immensely valuable. Without them, we’d be absolutely sunk. But it’s *really* frustrating to get bugs that are literally unintelligible, or bugs that are “suggstions” that are based on essentially no experience with the system. I don’t mind those “suggestion” bugs coming from the experienced testers, but when someone’s saying that some minor detail should be changed, and they don’t have any idea what they’re talking about, it can get frustrating. Still, I hope this weekend will be productive. While personally, I think I won’t have any trouble keeping at zero bugs at EOD for the rest of the week, I’m not actually sure (with the influx of new testers coming in so late) that we’ll hit 0 for our predicted beta date. We’ll see.

So, all dogs can swim. Just the way it is. Maybe barring some of the very large or very small dogs, but basically, most dogs can swim, they just need to be “motivated” to do so. For a couple months, we’ve been taking Mobius to the beach in Emeryville, where kite surfers launce their boards, and coaxing him into the water with little sticks, or by running into the bay with him. At first he was scared, but he quickly took to running around in knee-deep water (for him, chest deep, but whatever). Still, he never took that crucial step, and actually *swam*.

A couple weeks ago, we realized that he likes chasing, and fetching, *large* sticks. Three, four feet long sticks. He’s not so keen on shorter sticks or balls, but he loves running after large sticks.

So, today, we found a nice three foot stick on the beach, and I tossed it into the water. It’s a bit steeper into the water at the place we were today than where we normally go, so even modest throws would put the stick in water that would come up to his back. One time, I accidentally threw it a bit too far, and instead of waiting for it to float closer, he paddled out to get it. Just happened to be at *just* the right distance to make him actually swim. After a few shallower throws to give him some time to recover, I chucked it out a little ways, and out he swam, completely enthusiastic and fearless.

Awesome.

So, I picked up a pair of Puma Auto Mostros the other day (in the post below), and now that I’ve worn ’em around for a day, I’d just like to say they are *fantastic*. They look a little weird, definitely – when you’re wearing long pants, it really looks like you’re almost just wearing some sort of weird socks.

But they do a really good job of cushioning the feet, but still letting you feel *everything*. The sole’s really thin, and I suspect it’ll wear out reasonably quickly, given that the majority of the surface are just little nubs. Only a pair of reasonably large pads, under the heel and the ball of the foot, provide the kind of major contact points that will absorb the bulk of the wear. So, we’ll see how they hold up in the long run. But overall, I’d *highly* recommend trying a pair on, and walking around in ’em for a while. If you’re looking for minimalist shoes, these are *definitely* worth a look.

Also, been playing RE4 on the Gamecube – it’s a beautiful, extremely atmospheric game. Gory as hell at times, and almost always extremely tense. This is the only RE game I’ve made it this far through (almost 4/5 of the way done), because I’ve *hated* the controls and save structure in previous iterations of the game. In this game, the controls are pretty decent (occasionally clunky, but responsive for the most part), and there are enough save points that I’m rarely “stuck” looking for one when something else comes up. But mostly, it’s a beautiful game, the atmosphere is tense, and immersive, and all in all, a great little experience – highly recommended.

Picked up Battlefield 2 the other day, and was playing some at work. It’s also an extraordinary game, largely because the environments are so insanely detailed. I’ve never seen a game where you could walk into a bombed out city, walk up almost any building, snipe from the roofs, and basically just use such a dense environment to your liking. I really hope they bring it out for the X360, just because I’d love to see it via Live, and with more consistent performance. My work computer’s pretty beefy, but even it chokes with the settings jacked up.

Some days, you get a bunch of productive stuff done, you feel good about yourself, and you’ve made your world a better place to be. Some days, things go wrong, stuff gets broken, or you find out that things are maybe worse than you thought they were.

The Mini’s exhaust disconnected from the manifold. This had happened before, but wasn’t all that big a deal. This time, it’s because the flange on one of the pipes broke, rather than because the clamp had come loose. That’s bad news.

The last of the south facing windows now has a confirmed leak. I know it hasn’t rained in ages, but this is the first time I’ve seen clear evidence that the window was leaking. It’s hard to spot, and you need just the right lighting conditions, which is why it took so long to see, but it’s definitely leaking.

My grandparents’ credenza, which has a *lot* of sentimental value to me, on top of being a very nice credenza, now has a big, black water stain on it from a plant that one of my housemates had been watering, whose pot was cracked, letting water leak out onto the top surface.

I’m thinking that perhaps today’s a day to touch or interact with as little as possible, lest other weird crap happen that would either break, or illustrate that something’s been broken. Just doesn’t look like it’s as good a day as it ought to be.

I was considering going under the house to see if I could hook up the electricity into this room (we’re currently still running this room off the old circuit), but holy shit I’m staying as far away from THAT as possible. Yatz.

Picked up some shoes. Ei-Nyung & I decided to go check out the mini-outlet mall that’s a little south on 880 from us, and we ended up at the Nordstroms Rack. I’d been looking for a pair of Puma Mostros for a while – two of my coworkers have variants of them, and both say they’re the most comfortable shoes they’ve had.

Of course, since it’s an outlet store, they don’t have a lot of variety, and for the most part, the varieties they have are the least favored ones. The only ones I could find for a good while were the laceup ones in white, and the velcro ones in a weird reddish color. The laceup ones were fine, but I was looking for the velcro variety. On my last run through the section, while Ei-Nyung was grabbing some shoes for herself, I happened across the white and blue ones, which weren’t say, pretty, but also weren’t explicitly ugly. The ones pictured are ripstop, but the ones I got were leather. Indeed, they’re quite comfortable, and instantly feel “broken in” due to some open bits on the sole that are designed to flex with your foot. Very comfortable, very light, and a little weird looking, but not entirely unattractive.

Also picked up a canvas jacket at the Old Navy outlet, and some drab painter’s jeans. Oh, and an orange shirt. Not bad, all told, for a total of… $88. Given the shoes retail for $110.

Other than that, today consisted of going to the farmer’s market, finding our neighbors have a BBQ stand there (which was fantastic, incidentally), having some samosas, picking up some greens and some corn, and walking around a bit. Had a little ghetto picnic with the samosas under 580. Gotta love it.

I wonder if I’m having some sort of lame self-image crisis. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it’s an ego thing, I dunno. I used to think I was smart. Moreover, I used to know that other people thought I was smart. I think that’s the important one for today’s topic of discussion.

These days, at work, I’ve got a lot to do – and by that, I mean a large number of relatively smallish tasks to accomplish. It was, over the course of the project, split between design work, and object engineering. The design work was interesting, and challenging, and the object engineering (OE) work that was involved in realizing the section of the design I was responsible for was again, challenging and interesting. It put me in a relatively unique position of actually being able to iterate very quickly, and redesign things on the fly. Not only was it interesting, it was fun, and I’m pleased with the results.

But the other part of my work has been relatively simplistic, and with the exception of some weird bugs I’m having trouble finding, incredibly … uninteresting. Partially because I kept getting my responsibilities towards that side of things shifted around – I inherited the design work from a guy that quit, then it got transferred to someone else after I’d finished most of it, then I got it back, then I got the OE side of it as well, and blah blah blah. I’m now not really fully responsible for it, but also am. It’s a weird combination of responsibility for someone else’s decisions, fixing mistakes I’d made previously, and just trying to figure out how it all fits together. Because responsibility for it essentially changed so many times, and in such an indistinct manner, it became really hard to “own” the thing. Probably suffered somewhat as a result, even if the current incarnation is pretty close to the original concept.

But I digress. The problem is, I don’t really get a chance to really put my mind to anything in a coherent, novel way anymore, and instead, I find myself chasing little fires, making small decisions, and fixing numerous mistakes. In some sense, that’s what design *is*, and in another sense, I want a sort of grand intellectual/conceptual *challenge*, and I feel like that’s at least in part missing from my day to day experience.

I dunno though – that’s not quite the entirity of it. And though I wrote the above sort of searching for something that would make the concept click, I think the fundamental problem is that I’m not really consistently in the 99th+ percentile at *whatever* anymore. Time was, I could pick up anything and very quickly be better than most people at it. Maybe not 99th percentile, but certainly 80th+ very, very quickly. Now, I’m not sure whether I’m simply not presented with the challenge, or whether I’ve simply become mentally complacent, but I guess in some sense, I simply don’t feel like I’m impressing anyone anymore.

I’m proud of the design work I did for the game this year – I think it’s really quite cool, and if we’d had a little more time to implement some features, I think it could have been even quite a bit *better*. But it is what it is, and I think it’s uniquely *mine*. But I guess in some sense, I’m not sure anyone cares. And part of me’s not sure why I give a shit whether people care or not, except that I remember when people used to, and though I feel like a completely egotistical jackass for saying so, I miss that feeling.

Hm.

So, this year, the game schedule hasn’t been too bad. Aside from some weird milestone scheduling, the hours have been reasonable, the schedule’s been manageable, and I’ve been able to maintain some semblance of normalcy for the better part of the year. All this has been a marked improvement from last year in every way.

The last few days, though… wow. Hectic. Alpha submission was last night, so there was a mad dash to finish off all the alpha bugs, and get the whole thing submitted for verification. At about 4:20, I got two bugs back “fix failed,” which I had to get fixed and submitted by 5. That was one of the most intense and stressful 40 minute spans I’ve had in some time, and if that 40 minutes had been the entire day (which ended up being about 15 hours, including waiting to make sure the build was clear), I’d *still* be exhausted.

It’s been strange – though the schedule’s much more sane this year, the punctuated bursts of insanity are as intense as ever. It’s often quite exciting, and gratifying – but holy shit, it does a number on my nerves. Whoo. Still, compared to last year, this year’s product is *so* much better, there’s really no way to compare.

Other than that, almost everything else has fallen by the wayside. So… yeah. Gonna try again to start exercising on some sort of marginally regular basis, but we’ll see.

Just out of curiosity, if Bush, say, *wasn’t* going to fire Rove, what would happen? Would we have a top presidential advisor working from prison? I mean, I’d like to think that the person responsible for the leak would at least be spending *some* jail time, no? Which raises another question – given that Robert Novak wrote the column that publicly outed Plame, why isn’t he *already* in jail? I mean, he has no defense – the column’s a clear violation of the law by *any* interpretation that I can understand. What’s the deal?

So… what did it take for the Plame/Rove thing to finally blow up in the media? The White House Press Corps finally had irrefutible proof that the White House was lying to them. They had it, because Time handed over Matt Cooper’s notes to the Federal Prosecutor.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I remember a time when journalists actually did *work*, and weren’t just stenographers for the Man. And to me, I see this and I think, well, shit – what it took for this story to “stick” was to get it to the point where journalists, with a couple exceptions, didn’t have to do a goddamn thing except take notes about shit that was already happening – that people had already found – that took no work on their part to uncover, or understand. Hell, even after all this, the Republican machine is able to peddle bullshit like “Rove didn’t leak her *name*,” because some journalists are *so god damned lazy* that they’re not even willing to read the text of the law, which says unequivocably that it’s “identity” and not “name.”

I think sometimes about what the news media said in the wake of 9/11 – that the Condit bullshit, and the celebrity gossip they’d been peddling was garbage – and that from now on, they’d be “serious,” and get back to real, hard journalism. But instead, we have the Michael Jackson trial, we have missing white middle class women, and again, becoming stenographers for the right wing government and conservative media influence peddlers.

Not that this is a particularly novel or interesting observation – but I think it should be noted that the Rove story stuck only because the White House Press Corps’ feelings were hurt, which is mostly due to the fact that they were so goddamned stupid that they took Scott McClellan’s word, when it was obviously bullshit, as gospel, because they were too goddamn lazy to do a lick of actual work.

“Journalism” like that… call it what it is. Call it propaganda. Don’t let the “journalists” wield their titles with pride, or a sense of history – the White House PressCorps is merely a propaganda outlet, and aside from a select few who actually *do* something, they should all be ashamed.

So, it’s not that the internet started this – obviously, you’ve got critical spoilers for widespread, mainstream media as far back as who knows when. But there’s a difference between having your friend tell you what/who Rosebud is/was, and having CNN.com or some schmoe on some messageboard spoil a plot point of a major media event for you.

On a messageboard I frequent, apparently one of the new users spoiled the new Harry Potter book, which is sort of the cause in the cause-and-effect of this post. But I’ve had other things spoiled for me via the ‘net – Survivor, Alias, part of Batman Begins, etc. And basically, what it comes down to is that I consume so much information from such a widespread variety of sources in a given day, it’s almost impossible to insulate myself from spoilers for something like Harry Potter, or a major movie. Hell, even for something like Halo 2.

What this means is that essentially, in order to guarantee a spoiler-free experience, I have to essentially consume that media experience as fast as possible, and so does everyone else. This means that essentially, we have a setup where anyone who wants to maintain the integrity of the experience *has* to partake in these things as soon as they’re released, and as fast as possible, or sequester themselves quite thoroughly from any potential spoilers – things that can appear anywhere, from discussion about politics, to … whatever.

I wonder if there was anything that forces such synchronized media consumption – well, I suppose TiVo/Replayless broadcast TV did that at one point – but frankly, having gotten used to being able to control when I watch anything, the notion that I must adhere to a societally imposed schedule or have that experience ruined for me is a bit… irritating.