During warm-ups last night at my hockey game I experienced what few people will get the chance to in their lifetime. Our captain, Billy, unloaded his powerful slapshot from the blue line. It was a bit high and off target and caught me right in the head, about where my left temple is. It ricocheted off and jarred me a little but didn't knock me over. It was just LOUD. I heard a bunch of voices yell, "ohhhhh!". It took me a second to realize what had happened, and then I continued skating. What the hell were players thinking in the 70's with their 70's hairdos playing without a helmet? wacko. 

I have spent the better part of the day working on restoring things here after a server upgrade. Not that you guys would care, but it's been a long time coming. We were running on some pretty dusty technology here. Anywho.... there may be a thing or two clunking around still (like the flickr feed which is el busto right now). I'll get to it shortly geez...

Well, when you get a month off from work... you can't blame me for disappearing for a little while can you? I've been doing a little figure skatin'. No... but I have re-found that zone of normalcy which I needed so badly. You know the one, the way you feel when you get back from a vacation and you think, "I remember this. I am going to keep my head in this space from now on." But then a couple of days later, you're back in the grind, and the zen is gone. But for now, I am enjoying my last week off in the zone.Some random thoughts for the nerds... I'm switching back from Thunderbird to Apple's Mail App. I had been tied to Thunderbird because... hmm I'm actually not sure. Perhaps an allegiance to the Mozilla group, but it's just not doing it for me and I'm looking for better integration, so to Mail I go. We'll see how it works out. Don't get me wrong, I still love Mozilla, Firefox, and the whole effort. But for what I need right now, Thunderbird is just slightly clunkersville.Vitamin is a goldmine of articles and information shared by the top names of the web: Cederholm, Fuchs, Meyer, all in one place. One of my friends used to joke about being a wealth of knowledge about things. This site is a wealth of knowledge about everything web. 

So I've been pretty busy, and this month will be no different, but I strive to keep updating on occasion as well. So in brief, I provide you with 11 things on my mind today 1-11

1. I started playing ice hockey a couple of months ago. I've never played before and I'm not a great skater. But I am getting much better and I have truly become obsessed. I play left wing for the NY Shock and I just scored my first goal on Monday.

2. About 8 minutes before I scored my first goal, I sprained my ankle and I'm hobbling around in an air cast right now

3. We are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel for Ice Age 2. Production is still in full force, but we officially finished animation this week.

4. I was in the local Westchester paper a couple of weeks ago, for a story about Gymp3.com, a company that my friend Jason started that provides downloadable audio workouts complete with celebrity trainer and great music. You download from iTunes, save to your iPod and go. simple, and they are very cool.

5. Google Earth is really freakin' cool. Now for the Mac!

6. I just bought a Jabra JX-10 Bluetooth headset. So far it is really impressible, excellent design, lightweight, good battery life, and great sound

7. I have been obsessed with The West Wing on DVD. Up to Season 4.

8. NewsRadio was one of the best comedies that ever aired. Its run was blemished by the death of Phil Hartman, and bizarre scheduling by NBC which led to its cancellation prompting a huge public outcry including a story in Rolling Stone basically stating that NBC just cancelled the best show on TV. I am reminded of this unfortunate event because of the cancellation of Arrested Development... with many of the same causes. There's a very interesting site documenting and commenting on the details of the life of NewsRadio

9. I am currently listening to Sasha + John Digweed : Renaissance: The Mix Collection, Vol. 1

10. Windows Media is now dead on the Mac. It's a good thing... because Microsoft is now promoting Flip4Mac windows Media components for Quicktime. You download and install and can then play your windows media files in the quicktime player. Finally. Now... if Real Networks would just go to hell and not be such a crap ass with their proprietary lard.

11. Yes... this one goes to eleven. I bought a squeezebox by Slim Devices last year. It's incredible. I won't go in to detail, but visit their site, and you will get the gist. It is swanker than you know. as my friend Sheldon says... it's the brill. And yes... the volume goes to 11.

The things that you can learn on ESPN SportsCenter...

hang ten

Originally uploaded by KP.

My trip to California was awesome. The first week at SIGGRAPH was a bit of a working disaster. I spent many hours working on stuff back at the studio, but everything calmed down eventually and then I disconnected for a week out in Hermosa Beach.

Surfing was not the best as the surf was pretty dismal but the last day was intense. I want another vacation now.

I updated some pics on my Flickr account and added a Flickr feed on the site, hopefully to make up for the lack of activity that always seems to plague orangehat :)

My dad pointed something out to me yesterday that is so intensely true, I don't know how I never really thought about it. Whenever you have a vacation coming up, the time leadingn up to it is increasingly busy and stressful because of the looming deadline of being away.

This week has been hairy. Late nights and intense work have left me exhausted. I just released a new version of Diego at work and have been scrambling to get it out in time for a little testing before I leave for SIGGRAPH and vacation tomorrow.

But the storm is worth the calm. I am so looking forward to dialing it down and having time to be a bit more sociable, which I would probably have been able to do over the past couple of weeks if I wasn't rushing to get things done before I go on vacation :)

More frequent postings to come from the left coast...

I've been at my job for over 3 years now. I've always been a free-agent type of person. I don't usually work well for the man. And when I took my job at Blue Sky, I didn't think I'd be here for more than a year tops.

And then it was three.

It's gotten pretty gnarly at times, but I'm still here. And given the fact that I run a small department and have pretty free control over it's direction, I guess that would explain why I haven't pulled my hair out too much (yeah yeah yeah... so to speak).