Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • The Weekend Roundup Max was

    The Weekend Roundup

    • Max was sick so we spent most of the weekend pummelling popsicles and baby Tylenol Cold into him. He was not a happy camper.

    • Him being sick gave us a chance to watch a bunch of movies, which I’ll go into more detail on below and some surprisingly good NBA basketball.

    • Now for the movies:

      • Bandits: It had its moments, but overall, it was a disappointment. I’m not sure what I expected because I missed all buzz about it when it came through the theaters, but I expect more from Barry Levinson and Billy Bob. Speaking of Billy Bob…

      • The Man Who Wasn’t There: So, this is what happens when the Coen’s make a film noir. This movie is beautiful, and I completely agree with the Coen’s decision to shoot it in black and white. The smoke, the shadows, everything about this movie had amazing texture and depth. Billy Bob gave a great performance, as did Tony Shalhoub (who should have received an Oscar nomination for his greasy lawyer… amazing). But, for some reason, it was still a disappointment. While it was beautiful, I wasn’t into it the whole time. I found myself looking at my watch, which I’ve never done in another Coen brothers movie. I can’t quite put my finger on it. On one hand, they’ve created a classic film noir, one that automatically ranks in the top 5 all time, yet it was still missing something. Can you make a great film noir and just make a decent movie?

      • The Others: This was the real winner of the weekend. What an amazing film. Forgetting all the hype, it felt like the first time I watched The Sixth Sense. The director did an excellent job of setting the mood from the very beginning, and, while there weren’t a lot of real scary scenes, I was on edge throughout. The ending was perfect, and Nicole Kidman’s performance deserved the Oscar. What a great piece of work. The lighting, atmospherics, acting, everything were spot on. This could not have been done better.

      • Metropolis: Not the old silent movie with Jocasta the lovely robot. This is an Anime film but some guy who’s name I can’t remember that the guys in the video store were watching. I haven’t finished it yet, but so far, it’s beautiful. It’s one of those complexly drawn animated movies I’ve ever seen. The characters and sets are a beautiful mix of cell and digital animation with hand-painted backgrounds. I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s basically what A.I. should have been and wasn’t.

    • Summer TV sucks. Almost all the season finale’s are done, and none of the guilty pleasure summer series have started yet (yes, I’m looking at you Big Brother). Thankfully, the NBA Conference Finals have been excellent and worth staying up for.

  • I’ve been listening to a

    I’ve been listening to a lot of The Police lately. Man in a Suitcase is my new favorite song. The live version from their boxed set is one of the greatest happy depressing songs ever. Before Sting went all new age hippy, they were one of the world’s greatest ska bands. Sting, what happened to you?

  • I don’t know what the

    I don’t know what the fuss is all about: Random Notes

    • Bandits is a crappy movie

    • The Powerbook G4 is the most well-designed laptop I’ve ever see or used.

    • Heluva Good French Onion dip rules

    • Why does it take the NBA until the conference finals to get interesting? Ok, the Dallas/Sacramento series was interestiing, but over too soon. I think the conference finals will be great. The first games have been amazing.

    • Work is crazy. It’s frightening working with people I’ve known for a few years now, but never really worked with. I feel like I’m on the edge of my knowledge, and that’s scary. My old job was comfortable. I knew where I was and that they’d always need what I could do because no one else could really do it. Now, I don’t feel as indispenable, and that makes me nervous.

    • I wish everyone spoke English. Not because other languages aren’t pretty, but programming for other character sets sucks. It really does. And when it doesn’t work like it’s supposed to, it sucks even more.

    • You can do crazy things with Java and they’ll work.

    • You can do crazy things with Tcl and AOLserver and they’ll probably work but you run a very good chance of not doing things the way you should because documentation sucks and it’s a fickle beast.

    • Bandits will just not end. Billy Bob is kind of entertaining, but the rest of it is just dragging. Is it bed time yet?

  • It’s the little things

    In my rush to get out the door to take mom to the airport for her big family reunion trip to Texas, I forgot to wash my hair. It’s really put a damper on my day. I have dirty hair and it’s sad. My scalp itches just a little. It’s disgusting. I’m sure nobody noticed, which is nice, but it’s still just not right.

    I’ve been staying up too late and working too hard. I’ve been neglecting the little things that make life good, like playing with my son, kissing my wife, reading magazines and books (it’s been two months since my birthday and I still haven’t finished Emergence), writing things for this site, surfing my favorite blogs, feeling relaxed at all. I pace when I’m not doing something, and feel like I’m missing something when I am doing something. I’m always running somewhere, whether I’m sitting or standing.

    But, in good news, I just found out (after writing the first paragraph) that I’m getting a shiny new Powerbook from work! It’s the not the brand new ones, but it’ll do. It’s coming tomorrow, and the best part is that I had no idea it was on its way! I wasn’t even sure it was going to be approved! Now I have a reason to come in tomorrow…

  • Flummoxed

    I just like the word. I’m not really. I’m not even sorry that I haven’t been posting. I’ve been steadily busy on a host of important projects and thinking about a redesign. If my scanner was plugged in, I’d post some doodles. I’m thinking of abandoning my stolen spaceman and doing my own. Astronauts with pointed sticks are a ton of fun to draw, and I’m trying to find the right mix of POW and whimsy while retaining the general look of my current spaceman. All of those goals combined with my under-used drawing skills will make for an interesting combination. Maybe I’ll let Max design it.

    I think I’ve hit my stride again. I’m not stressed out, even though the workload is pretty crazy. I’m just chugging along turning out some really good stuff. I’ve written my first real API for public consumption, a ton of frontends for a myriad of products and basically kicked a lot of ass in the past two weeks. I fit in nicely in my little group up here on the fourth floor, in my poffice with a door.

    No Segue, just news… And now on to Max and his amazingness. This week, he wrote Jen a birthday card that actually said “Happy Birthday, Mommy”. I’m not sure how much help he had with it from Grandma, but he’s getting really good with his letters and numbers. He writes the 5 – 10 words he knows over and over again, just for fun. He’ll sit down and go through a legal pad writing out numbers and letters in different colors, as happy as he could be. It’s fun to watch.

    Max has also started making up games. His current is the Oh no, I’m falling… aaaaaahhh game. He’ll take all the cushions off the couch and put them on the floor around the couch. Then, he’ll sit or stand on the couch and in a high pitched voice (higher pitched than normal anyway) will start going on and on about how he’s falling, oh no, and then go “aaaaaahh” and roll off the couch on to the cushions. It’s all very entertaining.

    To wrap up, life is good. Now, back to work.

  • Done

    I know there are other things for me to do, but I feel finished. I feel I could just pack up and go home right now. Is that wrong? I’ve worked my butt off today. I completed a bunch of other peoples’ work, fixed problems, tested fixes, fixed tests and went to lunch with my little family. Is there more I could do? You betcha. Should I? Probably. Will I? I seriously doubt it. I’m done done done. All that’s left is to play some JK2 and go home.

  • The Toddler Recap

    I went down to the basement this morning to get a clean shirt. As I was heading back up the stairs, I hear a loud, plaintive “KEV-IIiiiiin!!!” from the top of the stairs. I thought for a split second that Max had gotten stuck in the garbage disposal or something. But no, it was worse – much worse. My wife appeared at the top of the stairs, hands on hips, grim expression on her face and said, “Max stole my last caramel egg!!!” Relieved that he hadn’t done anything horrible or disfiguring, I snickered and made my way up the stairs. My toddler son was sitting in the armchair, smile on his now sticky, chocolatey face, half-eaten caramel egg in his hand. My wife glared, and then laughed, then in her frustration said, “Now I have to wait until next Easter to get more!!” Yes dear, you do. But wasn’t the look on his face totally worth it?

    In other Max news, he’s reading and spelling now. Yes, he’s two and a half, and he keeps picking up new words and I’m not sure how. We encourage him, but definitely aren’t forcing him. He loves to count, practice his letters and numbers and read stories. He brought Jen a piece of paper this morning (don’t get me started on how much paper this kid goes through) and said, “This spells ‘no’” and sure enough, he had put “no” on his paper. For longer words, he knows all the letters, but when writing, they take a decidedly abstract, Paul Klee-ish look to them. He made a Mother’s Day card for Jen that said, “I love you Mommy”, but it ended up more like “I mo o lo mm v y u e”. The letters were all there, just in a new order.

    There’s more going on with my favorite toddler, but I need to get back to work. Maybe I’ll get Jen to start posting here too… sweetie?

  • The Last Amazing Flight of The Kevinburg

    In all the hubbub at work this week, I haven’t even had time to tell you the very cool thing the search business folks did for me. A long time ago, we did this big deal with another company that used to give people remote-controlled blimps. I whined and whined and whined that if I did all this work for the deal, that I should get a blimp. I never got it. I did get some great swag from them, like a remote-controlled robot, a cool picnic backpack and a nice polo shirt. Alas, there was no blimp.

    As a thank you/congratulations present, the guys got me a blimp!! It was about three feet long, two feet high, and had Where the Wild Things Are pictures taped all over it. It was cool. The first test flight went well. It was just around a little open meeting area. Then, for the rest of the week, it floated in my office, because I was too busy to actually do anything with it.

    Friday afternoon, I’d had enough. I needed to take a break, so a couple of my friends came over and we took the blimp down to the CC2 Atrium. The building I work in now is a big four-story rectangular donut, with this big open space in the middle from first floor to ceiling. I couldn’t think of a better place to try the blimp out. It was entirely too tempting. We fired it up, let it go and puttered around a little over our heads. Then, things went terribly wrong. The blimp hit the air blowers at the second floor and shot straight up to the fourth floor, where it was grabbed and mercilessly grappled by the huge air intake vents. We ran up the stairs (because it was well out of range at this point) and tried in vain to use the poor little propellers to free it. It was held fast. So, I went back to my desk and fetched the Koosh balls, in the vain attempt that we could free it by bludgeoning. No luck. Then, we went back to my office where I humbly called facilities and explained the situation and was summarily bitched out for not realizing that the smoke detectors on the fourth floor could have easily gone off, clearing the building and summoning the fire department. Now, in fear for my job, and being blamed for disturbing people trying franticly to finish work before the weekend, I rushed back to the fourth floor balcony to watch my poor captured dirigible and wait for her galant blue-shirted rescuer to arrive. I expected a big ladder. Instead, he went through the vents. I noticed some clanging, and then a hairy hand reached through the vent and grabbed the blimp. He yanked it towards him and uttered the words I knew were coming, “Am I trying to save this thing?” Of course, I told him to do whatever he had to. He popped it and dragged it through the vent, then told me to meet him downstairs.

    I guess this all ended well. I learned a little about the fire system in my building, and the guy who performed the rescue wasn’t all that upset. He thought it was kind of funny and said people do stupid stuff like this all the time. But, my poor blimp is crumpled in a box in my office… never to fly again; at least not at work.

  • There’s apparently another Kevin Lawver

    There’s apparently another Kevin Lawver in the world. I was pretty certain I was the only one. He’s apparently married and has facial hair just like me. He’s an “evangelist” for a church in Wisconsin.

    Did you ever see Are You Dave Gorman? Well, I’m starting, Are You Kevin Lawver. We haven’t met in person, but there’s another Kevin Lawver out there. How weird is that?

  • Striking Constistency Last night was

    Striking Constistency

    Last night was the last real night of bowling. Our team, The Misfits (man, that name sucks… we’re coming up with our own name next time – like The Pothole Fillers or something), put on an amazing show of offense, heretofore unseen in our collective bowling escapades. We all broke our averages by more than 10 pins, and were absolute models of consistency. Instead of my normal infuriating 103 average, I averaged a strapping 129. It felt great, and better yet, we won! We won handily. There was much hand slapping, fist pumping, manly comraderie to be had. Yes, I am a bowler.