MY LIFE -- OFFLINE

since this silly little website hit the internet a few months ago, my life has gone through some dramatic changes... not many of which were unforeseen. and since day one, my bio has noted that my current location is san francisco. now, finally... that is actually the case. over the past week, carlos, matt, christian, ray, and i have been surviving the often arduous process of relocating our lives. during this period, i have found myself feeling tremendous physical and/or mental stress at times, great joy at others... but mostly i just feel lost.

our new apartment is not currently, umm... connected. no phone. no cable. and most importantly, no net connection. this has kept me off of the web and away from the site, which is why you haven't seen regular updates here. i've been getting into work very early, and i thought i'd take a brief moment to bring you up to speed, and let you know, what is going on with me.

immediately after returning from gdc, the packing began... followed by the loading... and the driving... then the unloading... and climbing. this group of elliptical sentence fragments has compressed three days of my life into 20 words, as that's all i'd like to remember. it was painful, anger-inducing, and now it's thankfully over. my only advice: don't try to move yourself to a new place if that place has three flights of stairs leading to your final destination. seriously, just pay some other chump to do it... your body will thank you.

our apartment is nearing order, though it's far from being ready to be publicly unveiled. it's huge and will thus be quite suitable for nerdy gatherings, cocktail parties, and taco tuesdays as soon as we finish filling it with stuff. raymond's stuff, for example, is still incoming. and that boy, well... he's got piles of stuff. the amount of stuff currently stuffing the place is rather staggering, especially considering how much free space is still available. it merely reiterates the vastness of the apartment, and is a reminder that more stuff will be necessary to stuff the whole thing full of stuff... and stuff. right.

carlos and i have been keeping busy, though. his current employment status has freed up enough time to really explore the world of warcraft, which is lovely. i know what you're thinking. "how the hell does one play world of warcraft -- an mmorpg -- without a line harmoniously connecting pc to world wide web?" it's simple, really... wireless computing often offers sophisticated users access to less sophisticated users networks. one of neighbors, god bless them, has an open wireless network that requires no password to access. i could go into a bit more detail but all that matters is that carlos's laptop is capable of connecting to this network... allowing him to steal a net connection. my computer can't seem to benefit from our neighbor's friendliness or naivety. it tries oh so hard to function, but in the end it appears that antennas on more recent apple laptops are stronger than they were in the past... i'm reminded of futurama. "you call that an antenna?" indeed.

the funny thing is that in order for carlos to play wow, he's passing the signal from his laptop, to a hub, and through a wired connection to his pc. this works thanks to the power of apple's osx internet sharing, which seems to be working rather flawlessly at this point... ok fine, we've seen a disconnect here and there, but on the whole, this strange system that allows him to play an mmo in a house that our future isp can't even find on the map is pretty exciting. and oh so very nerdy.

we've also taken the time to get back into a semi-regular cooking routine. our efforts thus far have resulted in some fine meals, i must say. we hacked together chicken burritos the first night, using one of those pre-cooked, grocery store chickens and various other ingredients as our appliances were not yet functioning. since then, we've also made some excellent curry -- japanese-style with chicken, carrots, potatos, and onions -- and chorizo, egg, and potato burritos. this dish, which i will label as our current crowning achievement, was quite good. the pictures should give you some idea of what was crafted. i was rather blasphemous. "these are better than taco mesa's, dude." carlos agreed...

the mexican food in our district, the mission, has been quite fantastic overall. i mean, really, it's not san diego... but i'm beginning to realize that i must simply forget the wonders of the sd taco scene... it won't be replicated. instead, i'll just enjoy what we've got... a mass of taco shops, many of them open very late, within walking distance of the apartment. san francisco also has 24-hour pizza delivery... amazing.

last friday, jennie invited carlos and i to a dinner party at the bocce cafe in north beach. it took us forty-five minutes to make it the 4.8 miles between our place and the restaurant... we were late, to say the least. but once we arrived good times were had. i got to speak a bit with johnny liu about his ultimate game room feature which ran in the most recent issues of cgw and egm. i also met ign's mj, who gave me the rundown on sf's public transportation system... and more importantly, how to use it to get to our office building. that's a difficult matter, i'm afraid. it was great, of course, to see sandra, c-bake, and shane b. and as usual, jennie and rannie reminded me just how friendly people can be... you two floor me, everytime.

we drove back to orange county last weekend for raymond's final irvine-flavored bbq. though the attendance wasn't what i was expecting, i did have an excellent time. it was great to see my gamespy friends who won't be heading up to sf. bryn, kevin, jason, steve, and phu... you guys are seriously, seriously missed. really, bryn, get up here... asap. seriously. come on. i also invited all my socal friends over, as well. oli, shane, alex, chris, song, and liz... thanks for joining it was sooo awesome to see you guys and i've been bummed since the party because of just how much i'm going to miss all of you... i know i haven't been around much, but... yeah, it feels different now. and robert even made it out... running into him was quite fortunate... and having a new friend to hang with in the bay area is welcome. it's like high school all over again.

and now, i'm at work. in my new office. at my new desk. everything is much more corporate than before. but i'm surviving... mostly because my equipment is fantastic. also, ben's here. it's great to see him regularly again. matt too... we've been carpooling. it's nice. and our building seems to be owned by an evil genius... maybe the top floor is like a robot factory or something.

for some reason our entire e-mail server is down right now, meaning i can't even look at old messages... it's amazing what a roadblock this is... i can't even work. i've taken the time to write, here, and read up on tomato's ps2 release. wordimagesoundplay, as its called, is more an interactive motion graphics piece than a game, it seems... but with underworld providing the music, it could be interesting. if nothing else, it'll be a collector's item. only 5000 copies... i'd advise interested parties to order now.

to conclude this post -- a gallery. not much today... i need to remember to pull out my camera more often.

for now, that is all... until next time, adieu... Posted by ryan at April 6, 2004 11:26 AM