GX notes - September, 1999
9/30 yesterday, chris, wilda and sam and i left the office for lunch. chris had eaten oriental food for the last couple of days, so that wasn't an option. we discussed the quality of pasand (which i like) - chris thought it was poor quality, which he ascribed to the buffet.in search of new dining options, we scour university. i run into holly kreuter. we find "hong kong villa" chinese and japanese food, all you can eat for $6.88. Hello sketchy - platters of sad looking raw fish under flourescent lights buffet style had chris and my friendexcited to consume their weight in sushi. ii joined them, though i know the high extreme quality of sushi, it's best to be reminded of the other end. i treated myself to a nap afterwards. it wasn't bad - i didn't die.
after beer and fish/chips last night i woke up this AM having dreamt that i was at the GX office and lyle, nick and matt(lithium) were killed in a fire from an appliance when one of them plugged in a wet plug. it was tragedy. people were shell shocked. i talked to joel for some time about things, he was shaky. then i ran in thump, i asked if it really happened, because it seemed too strange! and he replied that he wasn't going to jerk me around with white boy jokes, yes, this had really happened. then i ran into lyle - it turns out that dennis had died, not lyle, and lyle was verging on distraught but controlling it, with wetness in his eyes. i conselled him to take time away to heal his soul, but he was set on launching the site soon. losing three people like that was quite a blow. everything was turned over. i woke up feeling this was a bad dream.
9/29
playstation games like driver and (devil something) let you do bad things, act a criminal, but concoct a backstory that makes you an unwitting evildoer.
when the weather gets hot, everyone takes regular ice cream breaks, people talk louder and act sillier, less work seems to get done. except monday, i put in a day from 8am until 10pm, with a longish lunch. i think i got stuff done that day! after realizing that my goals were too high, i lowered my goals! ahhhhhh.
Another thing I'm learning about - Asian girl groups, like Korea's FIN K.L. - something like that - "Fine Killing Liberty," basically four 18 year old breastless beauties who sing. during the day you can catch hank watching their music videos on his computer, and kirk in dev has a few of their calendars and fan literatures on his desk. how strange!
9/28
i asked chris for some tech support on my audio card/video card incompatibility, and he came to my (old ibm) keyboard and remapped all the keys to be in alphabetical order.
every day Sam and Brandon compare prices for home theatre equipment on uBid and ebay. I bought a DVD player, the same one as each of them bought, they joke about my eventual fate to be well equipped with nice shit. I make my own jokes about the kind of poor quality home theatre I have.
brandon couldn't believe that I wouldn't buy a Ferrari if I had the money. Why would I buy a Ferrari? Can't drive it anywhere, gotta be paranoid about parking and speeding. Besides the Ferrari experience is all about being close to death, right? After a few times out in the car you've got to act really stupid to make that still exciting.
Brandon is so enamoured of that kinda car he'd love to just clean it! he's got a deep-seeded appreciation for fine automobiles.
meanwhile sam took delivery of some very nice think copper speaker cables from crutchfield. I'm learning more about high end home theatre than I ever expected.
9/27
trish showed a tape of her public access show about computer games, she still works on it, taping every saturday. she wears pigtails, the audio is hard to make out. nice to see other folks with their fingers in a few pots.
jah: nat covered his window in tin foil
egg: like elvis
jah: really?!
jah: i didn't know there was a historical precedent in this.
egg: yes elvis did that
jah: why? he did a lot of strange things
egg: he was on drugs, he didntlike the light9/13/
Sam is running two KryoTech Cool Athalon 800 machines - 600 mhz chips overclocked to 800mhz, and kept at -48 degrees centigrade by a liquid freon cooling system.
9/2
i have to decide between my headphones, my own musical world, and listening to the conversations around me. this is always such a tough choice. i take them off when i hear something interesting (like "beer" for example) and then conversation stops in part due to my interupting - "what? what?" and i put them back on.
* * *
http://i.got.a.tit.job.so.romero.would.fuck.me.but.now.i.need.herpeshelp.org/~ellis/asscreek/
we're looking at a webpage lambasting the female level designer for ion storm, who supposedly makes shitty levels and slept her way into the job, with john romero (cheating on his wife). she's our age and she's being ruthlessly slagged. she looks like blonde, breast-augmented, trying to make herself attractive. these men here say things that would not fly in a co-ed or larger office
talking to john joh, our art director and punk publisher; substandard records.
* * *
9/1/99
this is the time that we strap on headphones, order pizza and take long breaks to talk shit and college football. a deadline from on high just came crashing down and turned it from a fun internet startup to an insanely pitched fun internet startup
i think this company is bipolar with regards to moving - we all want more space for ourselves, like even make cubes and bigger desks and not bumping into each other all the time. but i am seldom bothered by all this (most of all the small desk - hard to be expansive that way, but it forces me to keep my shit together more or less). i like the comraderie of being in each other's midst all day. i have headphones for privacy.
when we move and the firing squad is in a different part of the office from gamers.com: playstation and i have more authority and regular meetings and a cublicle to hide in, i won't have to work so hard and i won't have so many work friends like this. i won't see all of sam's hardware tests and wayne's korean girlie popstar windows backgrounds, or send out a mass icq with a weird url and hear the office collectively shudder
these boys won't know what they're missing until they expand (or maybe they've been at it longer than i have and they're ready for something else).
justin's links by justin hall: contact