Brain Fried

When I get home from work, I am burnt out.  I want to do something productive and creative but my brain is fried.  It's getting on my nerves.  I'm forcing myself to type this up in hopes to see what comes out.

So I need to give myself SOME credit.  I have been writing a ton - the kind with a pencil on paper.  Lots of thinking and pondering and planning and drawing shapes and bullet points.  I have been reading articles and stuff online, as well.  Mostly it's 'original creative and productive stuff' that I wish I was doing more of.

For example, I read this breathtaking article by someone picking apart the first Portal storyline.  It's amazing, and it hit me square between the eyes, because I had similar thoughts about Portal 2.  When I played the sequel, especially the coop storyline, (which I still haven't completed!  My partner wasn't into it as much as I was,) my mind was blown.  I took pages and pages of notes and wanted to write this huge essay - how GlaDOS is my favorite villain, what her REAL motivations are, etc.

Needless to say, the notes sit collecting dust in one of my many notebooks!

You will learn to get used to me saying "I had this idea..." The story above is not unique.  I am abused by the muse - she strikes at the worst possible times: in bed, in the shower, in the middle of a meeting, a drive, a kiss.  It's agonizing to not be able to get an idea 'down' - pencil is too far away!

My List Of Stuff To Do is filled with lots of nubbins of creative things - write this article, read this thing, play this game, watch this thing.  They end up getting complex and evolve from nubbins to nubs to paragraphs to outlines to projects.  Then they get neatly filed away into the sea of other projects that I can't work on next because you can only work on one thing at a time.

So I guess the writing part isn't the problem.  Most nights I write myself to sleep - words and words and thoughts and thoughts and ideas and ideas until I find myself holding a pencil with my eyes closed.  Often times my brain still wants to go but my body has already paid the check and the waiters are waiting for me to leave so they can clean my table, restock the napkins, get their tips and leave.

I need to give myself the credit that I am being productive and creative - the issue is just that I need to find an efficient way to share it with you!

I leave you with how this feels:

Facebook Ads

I was chatting about Vegas with a friend of Facebook.  It dawned on me that when the ads on the right refreshed, I was now looking at ads for Vegas-related stuff.  I have been paying more attention to these ads, and a few have caught my eye.

I saw this ad on Facebook today.

Is this system working?

Aperture Science and Black Mesa Issues

Gordon Freeman and Chell got out at the right time - the two facilities ended up on some hard times and had to pivot.  Let's wish them success!

Doughnut Grandmother

Thomas Mannino: some 80 year old grandmother

Thomas Mannino: makes herself a cup of coffee in the morning

Thomas Mannino: takes her sweet time, shuffling around the kitchen

Thomas Mannino: gets a big doughnut on a plate and waddles out to the living room

Thomas Mannino: sits on her big comfy chair

Dingo Bonecrusher: the slow shuffle yeah

Thomas Mannino: pulls the news paper on her lap,

Dingo Bonecrusher: puts on the glasses

Thomas Mannino: yeah

Thomas Mannino: pulls the doughnut to her mouth

Thomas Mannino: takes a bite

Dingo Bonecrusher: aahahahha yep

Thomas Mannino: her eyes lock into the paper

Dingo Bonecrusher: PFPPFPDSFDPSFPDSPFP

Thomas Mannino: "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK"

Dingo Bonecrusher: hahahahaha it goes for miles

Thomas Mannino: yeah

Thomas Mannino: and then cut to her highlighting it with a yellow highlighter

Thomas Mannino: end

Dingo Bonecrusher: wait no

Dingo Bonecrusher: thats not ht end

Dingo Bonecrusher: the end is

Dingo Bonecrusher: highlight

Dingo Bonecrusher: thinks about it for amoment

Dingo Bonecrusher: cut to her in bathtub dropping toaster

Dingo Bonecrusher: end

Thomas Mannino: hhhhahahahah

Thomas Mannino: too soon

Dingo Bonecrusher: too soon, she was 80!

Dingo Bonecrusher: hahaha

Thomas Mannino: she had like 5 good more years of doughnuts in her man

Thomas Mannino: then Paul Newberry ruined it for her by fuck-ing up a good article

Dingo Bonecrusher: five more years of lonliness and donuts

Thomas Mannino: all she wanted to know was who the Bulldogs were facing on Saturday

Dingo Bonecrusher: hahahhaa

Thomas Mannino: I'm posting our LARP

Dingo Bonecrusher: do it

End Of The Year

It's the End Of The Year.  We've assigned a great importance to recognizing this passage of time - the earth's trip around the sun. As a result, 'The Holidays' are usually a great time of self-reflection - to review what happened in our lives during the current sun-lap.  This usually coincides with some sort of trip 'back home' to visit family, which, for me, means plenty of time to do nothing but think and write.

The past year has been crazy, to say the least.  The past few, also crazy.  Some recent and major life changes have inspired a particularly retrospective and self-reflective period - lots of soul-searching and self-discovery.  I've made some amazing discoveries and realizations as well as come to some awesome conclusions.  Perhaps I will write about this stuff someday!

Things to focus on for the next sun-lap:

• Clear all debts
• Express myself
• Relax

Pretty reasonable, yeah?  Let's see how I do.

I am a recent first-time-smartphone-owner - it's been a few months but I'm still enjoying having a picture-taker at my fingertips at a moments notice.  Obviously, most of those pictures are of my cats, but sometimes I take pictures of other things, like my holiday trip.

Pookie helped me pack my underwear and socks.

Frodo knew I was leaving and was clearly devastated.

I parked on the Upside-Down-L-th floor.

Nativity Goats(e)

Rudolphasaurus ReXmas

Pwned shrimp.  (Don't worry, I picked the tails clean.)

LANocalypse 2011 was exhaustingly amazing.  Played lots of ARAM in LoL, with breaks to watch the MLG for SC2 (and some LoL).  Some D3 Beta was played as well, albeit lackadaisically by some, as it was at the end of a very long, drunken night.  Lots of acronyms!

ARAM is fun, especially because we had a few new players.  It's a great way to learn new champs quickly, because you remove most of the context of the game and are forced to fight 5v5 at very low levels.  Each champions 'gimmick' is put on display fairly quickly.  In a lot of cases, I build my champs completely differently in ARAM then normally - max out cooldown reduction, more mana regen, etc.  You don't get to buy/go back often, and you level fairly slowly, so you want to stay relevant.

We also found that with ARAM, originally we had problems inviting 10 people into one game.  We discovered, however, that if someone makes a game, you can just join it manually and we had no problems after that.

LANs are such simple pleasures to me.  It's one of my absolute #1 favorite fun things to do.  I love playing with humans, against humans.  I didn't get to participate in much 'teamwork' in my life until recently, mainly in a gaming scenario, so doing it now is incredibly fulfilling.  Being able to cheer at your team or yell at a friend who just killed you is wholly gratifying.

Keep Calm and Carry On

R.I.P. LasagnAlypse 2011

Friendly Bullets:

• Done with antibiotics.
• Give me them probiotics.
• I'll settle for bionics.
• Magic Castle tonight for a sweet wrap party for a vidyuh game!

Tableflippin'

I've been working hard recently at reducing my life's frustrations and stress - doing whatever I can do to simplify things or make things easier on myself.  One of the constant brain-messes that I deal with daily is the absolute mess of websites and web space I've managed to slop together over the past decade.  It's like a big, imaginary desk that hasn't been cleaned for..ever, really.

For whatever reason, I was thinking I would separate all my ideas and creations out to my various URLs to keep my ideas segregated. A site for my pointless Flash animations, another for a webcomic I never made, another for my personal/professional thoughts, another to talk about gaming, etc, etc.  Each site represented, in a way, a facet of myself.  In a perfect world, I would have established a system by now that would let me create and maintain all of these facets easily.  But this world is far from perfect, and neither am I - more sites mean more mental clutter and investment required to update and maintain. Maintaining each site could be a full-time job.

The more effort it takes to create, the more of a barrier I have to overcome, and more reasons to procrastinate.  Why make an animation, a mini game, a quick blog post, an essay, or whatever, if I don't have a 'good place to put it.'  All the while, I've done exactly nothing creative, and it's killing me.

So instead of trying to define different places for my different facets, I'm tableflipping the messy, cluttered desk.  I'm me, I have many facets, I don't need a neat and tidy place for each idea.  Let the beautiful mess of fluttering papers and pencils and pictures fall where they may.

One place, one person, many facets.

Friendly bullets:

• LAN Slumber Party. Friends and games. So excited.
• Had an interview today. Wish me skill!
• Grats to Minecraft for it's 1.0 release.
• Blogger for Android is the tits.