So I got my Zippo-sized camera a couple of days back. It takes fairly crappy pictures, but honestly what can you expect from a $99, super-small, spycam. Outside the pictures actually aren’t that bad if you reduce them. They’re unsuitable for print, but knock ’em down to 400x300px or smaller, and they’ll pass for a really bad digital camera, or a poorly scanned print. Inside pix, different story. It needs a lot of light, no flash – but you can get some interesting stuff. Not pretty, but interesting. It’ll be fun to play with, but I can’t count on it for documenting anything.

I’m in some kind of mental fog/funk lately. I hope it’s just vacation-lag… I just can’t seem to concentrate on anything. A couple of projects at work were fast-tracked, and I did them as quickly as possible, but now I have to wait for someone else to kick in and sign off. In the meantime, I should be finishing up some of the other dozen or so non-rush projects, but I just can’t get into work.

This cloud is starting to drift into my non-work life as well. I haven’t really done a lot at home lately. I shot some pix & video with my friend James a few weeks back – and I keep meaning to edit together some rough footage so he can see what we have — we’re thinking about shooting some stupid projects in the future — but I haven’t. I’m also stalled on the CDR archiving project. Plus I owe a lot of e-mails.

So tonight, one of the vendors was having its holiday party. I planned on going and wanted to leave for it right after work. I was waiting for a couple of friends from the office to finish up some work so I could head over with them. Fast-forward a couple of hours later, and we finally head over. I go in, do the coat-check, walk upstairs to the buffet & drinks, stand there for a five minutes, then go back downstairs, grab my coat and leave. I didn’t even have a drink or food. I don’t know what it was, but I just couldn’t be there.

Let’s hope for this being a mild case of vacation-lag…

PIX OF THE DAY: Indoor shot with the little camera.
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PIX OF THE DAY: Outdoor shot with the little camera.
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PIX OF THE DAY: A portrait of the little camera with Chapstick for reference. Taken by the bigger, badass camera.
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So today was my first day back at the office after my little vacation jaunt back home. I had plenty of stuff to do, but I just couldn’t get back in the groove to get any of it done. I guess tomorrow will be my catch-up day.

I talked with a friend this weekend, and we kind of both had the same plan to quite working so much… to start keeping normal hours. I kind of blew that today. I mean, I didn’t really do anything, but I always get these little bursts of energy at the end of the day, so I finally started doing work around 7pm. Ugh. I e-mailed her to see if she made it out, and not response so hopefully she pulled of her exit strategy.

I keep meaning to give some highlights of my trip back home, but I never quite feel like jotting them down when I’m sitting near the computer. Here’s something… I had planned on jamming with the iPOD all the way home, but the rental car I end up with only had a CD player. I grabbed a few CDs before I left, but not nearly enough. So, while I was home, I made a couple of trips to some used CD stores and bought some stuff for the trip back. It’s fun to buy stuff you’d have no intention of paying full price for. Many of my selections were stuff I had on cassette way back in the day. Stuff like Pseudo Echo’s Love an Adventure – they covered “Funkytown” — it wasn’t nearly as cool as I remembered. The CD that is suprising me now is David Lee Roth’s Skyscraper. It’s actually holding up suprisingly well.

In an effort to waste even more money, I ordered a tiny, really, really cheap, digital camera today. It comes inside a Zippo lighter. It holds up to 300 pix. I figure if it takes even fair pix, it’ll be fun to carry around everywhere when I don’t feel like lugging around the big one. Plus, since it looks like a Zippo, I’ll be able to take it into shows. No flash, but maybe if i can get close enough, the stage lights will be enough. Of course this thing might be a total loss, like X-ray Spex… we”ll see.

PIX OF THE DAY: What was waiting for me back at the office.
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Okay, so I’m kinda having one of those moments where I feel particularly alone. I was on the phone with a friend talking, and drinking a bit. We had a fun conversation, but now I’m left with knowing that’s the last good conversation tonight. Everyone I could talk to is otherwise engaged right now. I need to know more people.

Yes, I’m still digging through the discs. I just found an old archive of e-mails. Here’s a choice selection:

—–Original Message—–
From: Me
Sent: Thursday, September 23, 1999 4:34 PM
To: A friend
Subject:

i’m bored… let’s kill everyone in the office using a hammer, and then go see a movie
————————-

Man I miss that job.

If anyone asks me what my favorite band is, I’m usually at a loss to tell them. A better question to ask is, “what bands do you always buy new releases from, without having heard any samples from the album” – which is a wordy question, I’ve been sitting here staring at this question, wanting to cut it down, but I can’t… so there. Anyway, one of the bands that fits into that category is Poster Children from Champaign-Urbana, IL. There’s a point to all this, I swear, I’m just wordy today. Anyway, so the Poster Children do this semi-regular Internet Radio show from their basement. I listen in occasionally, and one evening a while back they were talking about optical storage, and why it’s not a good format for archiving because of the high failure rate of the media over time. Yes, the Poster Children are geeks (two of them were computer programmers before starting the band), but they got me thinking about the need to reorganize and reburn a lot of my archived data. So, I’m sitting here going thru “Lance’s Big Ol’ Binder O’ Discs” and I’m finding the most interesting stuff. Apparently I’ve kept a lot, if not all, of my work from about ’97 on CDRs. I’ve only gone thru one disc so far, and I’ve already found all these chat transcripts that I worked on like six years ago. It’s totally fascinating reading all this stuff I wrote, and kept records on. I even found these job evaluations I did for people that reported to me, that I had totally forgotten about. I also found these event summaries that I’d churn out following online chats we’d do with celebrities. The copy is actually a lot funnier than I’d remembered. Apparently I’d just sit at my desk and rip on the celebrities and the kids in the contests, and then send out these summaries to the whole department. It’s kind of weird now to read about what I did then. They’re like little mini-diaries of a day at work, but all centered around the chats. Weird stuff. I can’t wait to see what else I find.

PIX OF THE DAY: Other nostalgia hanging on my board at home.
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So I went back home for a little pre-Thanksgiving celebration last week – my grandmother’s 100th birthday. That’s why I couldn’t ride to the reopened WTC station last weekend. I got back on Tuesday evening, and promptly collapsed (15-hour drive thank you). The past couple of days I’ve just been unpacking, relaxing, catching up on e-mails, the norm. This afternoon I decided to make a trip to the post office to pick up my mail – yes indeed, I’m the proud owner of a PO Box and was it ever stuffed. After I crammed all the magazines & bills into my bag, I was going to walk back to the apartment and relax some more, but the Hoboken PATH terminal was just sitting there staring at me, so I decided today was the day.

I hopped onboard a World Trade Center bound train and was lucky enough to get the “railfan” seat — this is the first seat in the first car with a window facing out the front. The first part of the trip was as I had remembered. They even had the Christmas tree in the tunnel (Caisson 3 upper – I think). Once we were past Exchange Place though, wow. It was super bright in there. I guess they added more lighting? Or maybe because the tunnel has been refinished, it’s brighter, less dirty & reflects more light? I dunno, but it was bright. You could make out all the details. And then all of a sudden *bam* you’re outside. The train just pours out into the “bathtub” and this totally weirded me out. It’s just bizarre. I can’t really explain it properly, but you’re in the dark tunnel, and then all of a sudden you’re outside where you’re not supposed to be. And then you just kind of ride around the base of the bathtub, and you can look up and see the buildings above, and the big truck ramp that decends into the pit. It’s weird. Especially if you were a regular rider of the pre-9/11 PATH. The station is bright & airy. It’s very minimalist, which I like. The only decorations really are these huge photo murals on the walls that are overhead shots of the financial district, and street grids. They’re essentially monochromatic, each mural alternating either red, white or blue. Also among the murals are quotes about Manhattan from famous folks, none of which I can remember right now. Once you get off the train, and go up one level, the layout is very simliar to the original. The big, long esclators are where they used to be. I had forgotten how deep the station was. I went up to ground level and you pop out across from the Millenium Hotel & Century 21. I’m still a little weirded out. Not in a bad way, just in a “woah” way.

PIX OF THE DAY: The Woolworth Building framed by the WTC PATH Station shell.
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PIX OF THE DAY: The WTC PATH Station shell.
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I really had planned on riding it the first day, but that’s not gonna happen. They announced it this morning on the train I was on. I felt like clapping, but no one else seemed to notice, so I just stood there listening to my iPod. I’m a kewl kid. A kewl kid with an iPod.

So I had planned on waking up at 7:30 so I could get in to work early to finish up some projects. This morning, I open my eyes, thinking I’m up too early because the alarm isn’t going off, and as my eyeballs slowly shift into focus, 11:41 is revealed on the clock. Doh. So since it’s the middle of the freakin’ day and the busses aren’t every five minutes, I’m into the office by 1pm.

Here’s the nice thing – no one noticed. Which begs the question, how long would it take for someone to notice my rotting corpse sprawled out in the kitchen?

Yesterday I had one of those NYC days I’m supposed to be having, and should have been enjoying these past few years, but for one reasons or another, didn’t. It was a full day. Up early to work on a vid shoot in Central Park all day. Off to a concert – caught the opening act and left before the headliners. Then capped off with an unplanned two-person roof party in SoHo. I feel like I’ve been in a coma for the past few years. Someone wake me the fuck up. Anyway, it was an awesome day that was chock full of lots of great little moments. I miss the little moments. Too often in the past I’ve just gone through the motions of the day, in a stupor, numb. I’m getting better I think. I hope it’s not just the alcohol doing it.

Of course today I’ve been sitting on my ass. I have a lot of work, personal & job, to get done in two days. And of course I installed this blog today. It went in without much of a hitch. By the time anyone actually reads this, I would imagine it will be styling, but as it is now, it’s in bland, default color, template mode.

PIX OF THE DAY: Xmas lighted CD rack in office. I’m stuck here, now you are too.
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