philly

Whose Got Job Leads

Yeah, it's time to move on.

Out Shooting

I was out shooting for several hours today all over town in West Philly and then back in Center City at a few spots. A lunch truck on 38th St, a new fish joint on Locust St and one of the premier restaurants in the world over on Walnut St. And I took shots of this gorgeous city all in between. I did a lot of walking around and taking the bus. It was colder than I thought it was going to be. The weather report said 50° and I failed to see the 30+ mph gusts of wind though. Blech. A Triple5 sweatshirt and jeans weren't enough and I was quite cold. Oh well. I think the shots came out fairly well. Still a few more places to hit up before this first month of AOL freelance work is complete.

Photo Gig

This weekend I'll start on my list of restaurants to visit to take photos for AOL City Guide. Twenty or so places to hit up. Hopefully some free eats along the way! It's a mix of lounges, restaurants, quick eats and some fan-cay places. The wide angle will come in very handy this weeked.

City Guide's site is all fucked up in Firefox. Boo.

Lazy Fucking Gamers

I couldn't believe this when I read it. The NY Times is reporting on a new cottage industry out of China, the outsourcing of video game playing! Fuck Shit Fuck Shit! I've heard of people trading codes and files over message boards, forums and even eBay for games to get certain things, but China's fully commercialized it. Fucking lazy fucks who can't get good enough at a game so they have to pay other people to beat a level for them? Who are these lazy fucks and where are they getting the excess money to spend on an excess expense of video games?

When I was growing up, I grew up on 4-bit Atari then leapfrogged to 8-bit Nintendo. Then came 16-bit Super Nintendo and I think Sega Genesis was also 16-bit. Turbo Grafix was somewhere along the time of SNES and Genesis at 32-bit, I think. And of course Sega Saturn came along with Nintendo64 for the next levels of gaming. And then Sony got in the game with PlayStation and now Mircosoft and their $500M lbs. gorilla XBox.

I loved those dinky games of yore and I even bought an 8-bit NES in college so I could play games like Punch-Out [didn't find Mike Tyson's when I bought the NES, remember they dropped him after the rape charges?], Dr. Mario [I'm the fucking king of Dr. Mario, all challengers are welcome to kiss my ass] and various editions of Mario Bros. - and it's pronounced Mah-rio not Mau-rio dammit. When things got complicated, I did what we all did, stayed up until 4a figuring the shit out. Eventually, things got really complicated and cheat books were made. I must admit, that since buying Sony PS2 several years ago, I've bought my fare share of cheat books, but I haven't PAID SOMEONE to do the work for me! Good god. What is this world coming to.

It takes me many playing hours to go through games like Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy X, but I love it. I'm a vido game geek on a lower level, but a video game geek nevertheless. So who wants to pay me to beat Final Fantasy X2 whent it comes out and then give them the memory card with the final sequence on it so you can show your friends the ending sequence and claim it was "All me"? Pony up, bitches.

Floppy Disk 3 1/2"

At work just now, I was asked to make a 3 1/2" floppy disk via email. The file was attached. The file is 1.206MB in size. I dug into my memory to think up the capacity of a floppy disk. I recalled that it was a whopping 1.44MB. But without checking my box, I was about to reply to the email that I didn't have a floppy drive and I was going to ask another person in the office to do it. But then I thought, "Why don't I just check, for shits and giggles" and lo and behold, a floppy drive! Complete with that little hard push button to eject the disk. I giggled to myself. I felt like I was working on a relic from the old times [which it isn't at 3.20GHz and 512MB RAM].

But where in the hell would I find a 3 1/2" floppy disk? I know I didn't have any stached away in my desk. Just paper clips, binder clips, pads of paper, staples, rubber bands, pens and some sticky notes. I went to the supply closet in the hall and dug around. And at the back of the top shelf what do I find? An entire box of new 3 1/2" floppy disks. Oh man. IMB High Density Pre-Formatted 3 1/2" black floppy disks with that metal cover thingie to protect the read/write plastic underneath.

I walked it back to my desk and on the way, remarked to a co-worker how I could not remember the last time I used "one of these" and now that I think about it, I'd say it was sometime around 2000, so a solid five years.

I inserted the disk and it made that mmzzrt-mzzzrt sound. It brought me back to my first experiences with computers in the old Apple IIGS LogoWriter and PC Windows 3.1 days of yore and the even older 5 1/4" floppy disk with that crazy donut hole that everyone would use to twirl around the disks with and I remember Mr. Cricci [sp?] yelling at us for doing so in grade school. Yes, I went to a school that had a part time computer teacher and computer room in the late 80s - early 90s. Remember that crazy write-protect notch and how you'd cover it up? Sorta like old cassette tapes with the tabs that you could knock out if you didn't want to write over them later, but you totally could, if you just put some dark tape over it, same with VHS. I opened up an Explorer window for the A:\ drive. It buzzed to life reading the blank disk. I dragged the 1.206MB file to the open window and I wondered how much of the 1.44MB disk was blank for actual file space. A prompt opened up and it said that it would take thirty-five seconds to write the gargantuan file. And then it was all over.

A little walk down memory lane. I used to love LogoWriter and making that little turtle spin around and make geometric shapes

repeat 4 [forward 50 right 90]

AOL City Guide Jobby Job

I got the AOL City Guide contract in the mail last week just before Thanksgiving. I read it over and filled out everything last night. I gotta make a copy it all at work and then mail it off. Once all that is processed, I'll have my Purchase Order number to included on my monthly invoices. The jobs should start in January. Sweet.

Office Candy

There is, once again, a bag of candy in the mini-cafeteria here at the office. I grabbed the single Pez dispenser and a bunch of Crunch, Kit Kats, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Mmmm. Sugar.

Annoying at Work

Yes, this is being passive aggressive.

So there's this guy at work. He sits in the same room as me. He has a Nextel phone. He's not always in the room. He gets pinged and called all the time through the day. Doesn't have the decency to put it on vibrate or at least have it with him, in his pocket. Just leaves it there on the windowsill plugged in. Volume on high. He's got a custom ring that says "Hey fatty, pick up the phone" in an odd accent. Sure, funny the first time. Got a chuckle the second time too. But when friends ping his phone over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again not getting it that he's not there, fuck me.

It's been more annoying these past few days. Oh wait, now I think I know why. I've been really busy and haven't been plugging in my headphones. I shall start that up again, if I'm not too busy and running around.

Almost time to stop being passive aggressive with this guy and just simply asking him to turn off his stupid phone.

Pigs Fly, Strike Ends

Woo hoo!

The strike is over as of about two hours ago! Service is intermittent, running at about an off-peak schedule so I read.

Some of the terms:

1. All union members will pay 1% of their insurance premiums capped at a forty-hour work week
2. A 3% raise in salaries
3. This is tentatively a four-year deal

Sweet.

SEPTA Talks

As of 10.45p 12.05a 1.30a, both sides in the TWU - SEPTA strike were talking with Ed Rendell according to this Inky article. It would be nice if A) I read the news that the stike was over before going to bed in a couple of hours or B) waking up and logging onto my computer in the morning to be greeted with the news that the strike was over.

***UPDATE*** 7.38a
The strike is OVER.