Meanwhile, our hero has:

• Helped install a rooftop TV antenna (without breaking my neck).
• Seen a parade chocked full of Mermaids and muscle cars (in a lovely rain sauce).
• Favored friends and strangers alike with my presence at bar-b-q or two.
• Finally stepped foot on the High Line…and it was good.
• Repeatedly learned that web developers are more in-demand than web designers, and that recruiters can’t tell the two apart. Seriously: READ the resume and not just the damn Dice keywords!

There…I feel a bit better. With this paragraph I hereby proclaim the ends of the first half of 2009. Far more tumultuous than I ever dreamed it would be, but that’s life, right? Anyway, stay tuned for the second half, because I guarantee things will be just as exciting. After all, unemployment can’t last forever, right? ^_^

For once I’m not bemoaning the fact I find it hard to post as prodigiously as I used to, but how with age has come a level of self-censorship my younger self would have laughed at.  Many have always thought it peculiar to write about your inner most thoughts, advertising them to complete strangers.  All the more strange when I think about how much of an introvert I tend to be.

Chances are the idea of it all held a great deal of magic to me, in the fact that I was unique in what I was doing in that point.  An early adopter in this new field, free to do what he wanted — to redefine his poor self image by bearing his soul and becoming enigmatic and mysterious instead of off center and to looked at as a walking oddity of social inadequacy — worthy of psychological study in his own eyes.  But the very act of writing was cathartic.  The more life started to give to me, the more I shared, the more people reacted, and the better I felt about me.

But as the rest of the world work up to the reality of personal publishing that the internet brought, I felt the internal censor that permeated my real conversations begin to creep into my virtual sessions of shouting into the void.  And what’s more, those who came after me found much greater success with it then I could ever have dreamed possible.  No longer was I unique, but I now I wasn’t even as good as what I was doing as I felt I was.

That’s why it’s so much harder to write than it used to be.

There was also more of a willingness to share the large mistakes I made in my life, and peer into the inner darkness of my true self.  Even if you’ve read my words and though I’ve exposed a lot what goes on in my head, trust me — I haven’t even scratched the surface.  Over the last month and a half I found that to be true beyond truth.  Some seriously dark and misguided thoughts ran through my head; sinking me into levels of depression I hadn’t faced in a while.

I know there were ways it showed outwardly, and it spurred on some self-destructive behavior — mostly in my dietary choices and lack of motivation to leave my bed when I didn’t absolutely have to.  Then again, being forced back into the sea of uncertainty about employment will make you think of terrible could be’s and horrible what if’s — given enough time and silence.

All the more reason to now redouble my efforts of seeking catharsis, just like this.

Shortly after six it was out the door and onto the Light Rail to Hoboken Terminal — bike in hand.  The ferry terminal looked closed, so I descended into the PATH station where I found similarly situated citizens.  In fact, there was more people with bikes than without on the platforms, and those numbers only grew as we headed to the World Trade Center station, and exploded exponentially when I reached the intersection of Warren and Church.

Just me and 30,000 friends

This past Sunday was the 31st annual Five Boro Bike Tour, and sick or well, rain or shine, I was there to press my luck — 42 miles on two wheels.  I had never done anything like this before, so just finishing was going to be a big accomplishment.

Just before 8:30, the pack of riders I was in finally started moving — not the first get on the course, I’m sure.  But did I ever try to catch them.  I kept a pretty brisk pace as I raced up 6th Ave. from lower Manhattan to Central Park.  I just can’t properly describe how exhilarating it is to ride unobstructed through those streets!  Even if I had only ridden than leg of the course, I think it would have been worth the effort.  The only real obstacles were the few impatient pedestrians who tried to dart across the course instead of heading to one of the intersections being controlled by the bike wardens or police.

Through, over, past, down, up, and down again

Things slowed down as we entered the bottleneck of Central Park.  Still, it gave me a chance to enjoy the view more.  Strangely enough, while we had control over the majority of the road, the bikes had to give up use of the bike lanes on this day.  The joggers apparently needed somewhere to run without the threat of becoming a speed bump — go figure.

Soon enough there was a steady pace going and the scene of trees was replaced by the stately looking buildings in Harlem.  The first boro crossing of the day was at hand, and I was getting excited.  Up the entrance ramp of the Madison Avenue Bridge we rode, across the Harlem River to the south Bronx, and less than 4 minutes later we were crossing the Third Avenue Bridge and leaving the south Bronx.  It almost feels like cheating to call that a trip into the boogie-down, but if the organizers count it, I guess I can too.

Back in Manhattan, we began the next leg of our trip by heading south on FDR Drive.  I started to see a bit more variety in the types of bikes being used, with recumbent bikes, two person bikes, and even some guy riding a unicycle.  There were also groups of riders with similar helmet adornments:  beer bottles, wine glasses, birds, butterflies, carrots, and some with just handfuls of cable ties arranged into interesting configurations.

Of Queens and bridges, parks and pandemonium

As the Queensboro Bridge appeared on the horizon, the true scale of this event started to dawn on me.  To see a street full of riders was one thing, but to see riders from one end of the bridge deck to the other was somewhat awe inspiring.  Somehow I managed to make the assent up the bridge without having to get off my bike at any point — a feat I would not be able to repeat on many of the other assents on the course.  While all the rain and mist was conspiring to rob us of the truly grand views we could have had, it was still cool to see the 100 year old double cantilever bridge up close and at a leisurely pace.

We descended and turned north as we made our way to Astoria Park and the not-quite halfway point rest stop set up under the RFK, er, Triborough Bridge.  There was free food for the riders in the form of bananas, orange slices, and the like.  I got an additional pick me up with some kisses from my girlfriend Jill and some smiles from my friend Erin, who were both volunteering at the rest area for the afternoon.  I was there just long enough to chow down and then it was back onto the course.

Now the real work begins

As the course snaked its way down along the riverfront towards the Pulaski Bridge and Brooklyn, the rain started to pick up, and the weariness in my muscles started to grow.  Every mile was felt more acutely than the last one, and making it to the end of the course would mean going five miles further on a ride than I ever have before.

Of course, I’ve never been one to do things the easy way.  Part of my pain was due to the fact that I was one of about dozen people who decided wearing jeans on the trip was a good idea.  Jeans and athletics are normal for me.  I’ve worn jeans for roller hockey, touch football, basketball, bike rides; summer or winter, spring or fall.  Of course, I forgot to figure in the fact that wet denim is heavy as all hell and my pants would be acting like a sponge.  My pack was still full, and I was gradually gaining weight with every revolution of the pedals.  Viola!  Instant agony multiplier.

Onward we rode; through Greenpoint and Williamsburg, past the Navy Yard and Brooklyn Bridge Park (both present and future).  The twists and turns in the course were reinvigorated me a bit, as did the near miss I had when someone in front of me had a blowout.  But that all adrenaline drained soon after I turned onto the B.Q.E.

B.Q.E. to Gowanus to Belt Parkway to hell

Leaving downtown Brooklyn behind, we were now biking on expressways all the way to the Verrazano.  You would think that would make it somewhat easier, but this was the point when the rain and wind was actually the hardest all trip  The climb over the Gowanus Canal was more brutal for me than the Queensboro had been, and the whole Gowanus Expressway was elevated above the buildings, giving the elements all the more power to make the riders miserable.

By the time we hit the Belt Parkway, I was damn near delirious.  I kept waiting to see the outline of the Verrazano, but with all the rain and mist, I couldn’t be sure if I even would see it until I was almost on top of it.  I must have walked my bike about a half-dozen times to give my legs somewhat of a rest, and I laughed quite crazily when I finally made out the bottom of the Brooklyn tower of the bridge.

Putting it into perspective

I didn’t even try to peddle my way up to the bridge deck level of the Verrazano — I knew that was a fools errand in the state I was in.  Instead, I took that opportunity to rest and snap some pictures, enjoying a structure I could never see on foot if not for this event.  As I looked down upon the Belt Parkway, I really had a growing sense of accomplishment, knowing I had just survived that crowded, rain soaked mess.

Of course, there was a greater sense of accomplishment when I finally reached that magical equilibrium point on the bridge where it stopped ascending and started descending into Staten Island.  Hooray! — the long, long coast had begun!

There was a festival set up at the foot of the bridge, on the grounds of Fort Worth.  Free massages, music, food…and all I wanted was a quick bite to eat and to head home.  As far as I had come and as much as I had accomplished, I was still far from Weehawken, and the Staten Island Ferry terminal was still three miles away.

In the end, I found that salvation looks very much like a street sign….

NOTE: More pictures from the tour are available on my Flickr page.

The setup

Most of this past week was spent working from the relative comfort of my futon while I hacked, coughed, shivered, and sweated through some kind of bug — no, NOT the swine flu, thank you.  Today was actually the first day I felt decent enough to head into the office.  Lucky me, huh?

As luck would have it, we were slated to have an early morning meeting to plan out the work for the next few weeks.  We all assembled in the conference room, with large sheets of paper carefully taped to the walls, ready to capture all the scrawls and scratches recapping what we did and planning out what were were about to do.

Then our CEO Steve started speaking, and I knew it wasn’t quite going to be run-of-the mill Friday.

The knockdown

I didn’t have to hear too many words to know this wasn’t going to be good.  When you start hearing “burn rate” and “reduce” in close proximity and delivered with a melancholy tone, you know the axe is going to be falling.  Even though Weplay is gaining a ton of new users (the 150,000 mark was just recently crossed), the advertising market just sucks right now, and things weren’t good enough to keep the staff at its current levels and somehow make it through the year.

We all returned to our desks and waited for our one on one conversations to tell us if we were gone or not.  I was under no delusions:  a contract worker only there for a few months had zero chance of ending up on the right side of the axe blade.  I started cleaning up my desk and the data on my laptop.

The body count was at least 5, counting myself.  Could have been more, but once your number is called, you really don’t hang around too long after that.

The dust off

So just a few hours after leaving my apartment, there I was staring back at the mess I call home.  I laid down for a little while, planning on getting some extra sleep.  But my cold also robbed me of some much needed prep time for the TD Bank Five Boro Bike Tour this Sunday, and Jill did remind me that exercise is helpful in recovering from sickness.  To bury my head in sleep or go out and face the day — what to choose?

I packed my laptop, grabbed my mountain bike, and took a short ride to a riverfront park where I finished my last invoice for Weplay.

Strange enough, this happens to be my sister’s birthday.  It also happens to be the second time I’ve become unemployed on this day.  Yeah…happy birthday, Shannon!

The summary

So a little more than three months have passed and I’m more or less in the same situation I was in before.  Well, at least this time around I don’t have to rebuild my portfolio from scratch.

I wish the remaining Weplay staff all the best.  It’s a great site with a great bunch of people backing it.  As for yours truly, I’ll be back in the saddle before you know it.  In the meantime, if anyone has any web or graphic design work they need done, I’m all ears.

Just sayin’.

Cool door, huh?  Well, behind it much time and energy has been spent, cranking out work for Weplay.  Work which has been actually getting in the hands of users, too (a small example).  I love that fact.  Too many times in my career I’ve done my best work only to watch it be doomed to the portfolio ghetto; only to be see the light of day on job interviews and those quiet nights when I want to reminisce and die a little inside.

Just sayin’.

I’m also happy to be working behind that door at a pretty exciting time in the relatively short history of the company.  There’s really an exciting air to the place.  The team has built a rather solid base, and has managed to organically grow the traffic and membership numbers, represented with a healthy upward arc.  And this past Tuesday the first of many publicity events took place with Derek Jeter introducing us to the nation on Good Morning America.  I have to say, that was pretty cool.

Just sayin’.

Well, there’s piles of paperwork to sort and receipts to organize.  Taxes to be paid and planning to be done.  Sleep to be missed and so on and so forth.

Not saying goodnight…just sayin’.

Jill and I at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens last spring.

To my ever-loving girlfriend:

You deemed me “wickedly adorable”, and managed to deal with my special brand of insanity.  You managed to teach me how to smile, and gave me many chances to practice.  You might never realize just how much I grew as a person, all because you came into my life.

There were many ups and downs through the year just past, and there’s certain to be more in the years ahead.  But you managed to keep me steadfast and level headed — a level of comfort I have been missing for quite some time.  I think with you at my side, I might just be able to make it through whatever life throws at me.

Here’s to the best thing to happen to me in a long, long time.

Happy first anniversary, Jill.  I love you.

My relatively new Samsung HDTV and Playstation 3 has received some use, though certainly not to their full potential.  While I didn’t go crazy and spend way outside my budget for either piece, I sure wasn’t getting my money’s worth out of them.  Add to that the stacks of DVDs that I still haven’t watched years after getting them — taking up valuable real estate in my cluttered little apartment — and I started to get downright depressed with the situation.

You already know the solution to this problem

While watching a DVD has historically been a once in a blue moon kind of activity, you’ll find my TiVo constantly cleaned out of shows.  When everything is just a few clicks away on the remote, it’s quite easy to get sucked into watching more and more.  For a long time I’ve toyed with the idea of ripping all my DVDs onto my computer, which would not only give me easier access to the videos themselves, but would allow me to pack up the discs and shove them in the closet, right next to my CDs.

In fact, those CDs are the best example of what’s in store for this project.  Back at the beginning of the decade I was dealing with over 500 CDs.  No place to put them and I would only listen to a handful at a time.  When I started ripping my CDs onto my computer, how I dealt with music completely changed.  It honestly improved my quality of life.

With the TV, the PS3, and my iMac awash with ample storage space, I finally have the parts to try the same thing with my video collection.

Notes from the lab

While I have the hardware to try, it wasn’t until very recently that all the software needed to pull this off decided to straighten up and fly right.

Just like when I made the move from CDs to MP3s, I had to do a lot of experimenting to see what worked and what didn’t.  I tried a multitude of ripping programs, tweaking settings all the while.  In the end, I chose to go with two programs:  Roxio Toast and Handbrake.

Why two?  While Roxio is the easier one to work with, it’s set to recognize the CSS encryption the studios put on some of their discs, and won’t rip them.  Considering I paid about $20 a pop for each of those discs, that really pisses me off.  Thanks, Hollywood!  I feel so loved right now.

That’s where Handbrake comes in.  Couple it with VLC on your Mac and those CSS encrypted discs become an open book.  Its almost enough to make me choose Handbrake outright.  But while the program gives you many more options — almost too many — its user interface leaves a lot to be desired.

Considering how many discs I’m going to have to go through and how long each of them is going to take to rip, a simplified interface is key — if for no other reason than my personal sanity.

A shaky bridge gets solidified

Once you have the videos, you still need to get them from one place to another.  On the Mac to PS3 front,  this is handled by Nullriver’s MediaLink: a preference panel software that bridges the gap and exposes your computer’s file system to the PS3.

But while things worked fine with videos and podcasts I downloaded, it seemed like nothing that I ripped myself would play.  At most the video would play for a minute or two before an error screen would rear its ugly head.  I kept tweaking settings and re-ripping movies, but nothing I did seemed to make things any better

Then the MediaLink’s 1.7 update showed up.  Suddenly everything that the PS3 could play, did.  No network issues.  Everything was solid as granite.  That was my green light.

The saving graces and looking ahead

While this is no small task, it’s certainly not as large as my CD project — 500 discs versus 160, at most.  I’ll also be aided by the fact that a recently purchased MacBook has given me a second machine with enough horsepower to rip discs, and I can it with me to work so I can take care of some there.  This will speed things up considerably.

And once I’m done with all of that, I have a stack of old VHS tapes I’d like to try and import.  Lets just say the research has already begun on that front.

Viva la digital!

Usually when things go dead up here its because things have gotten too busy in the real world.  But for once, the level of inactivity on my blog was actually doing a good job of mirroring the level inactivity in my life. Considering my last words here revealed I was out looking for work, you’d think that would be a horrible, terrible fact.

The anti-search job search

In a manner of hours of going live with my updated portfolio and writing about it here, a former Lime alumnus contacted me about a job opportunity.  After a relatively quick interview I accepted a design position at WePlay, a startup focusing on social networking for youth sport leagues.  This past Monday was my first day, and so far, so good.  Certainly refreshing to be diving into a new project, that’s for sure.

To be honest, I was always confident that my search would be short once I started looking for full time employment.  But I thought I would at least have to open up craigslist at least once or twice.  Seriously, it was a no-hunt job hunt.

Catching up on my slacking

I did have some freelance work to keep myself occupied, but I also had serious amounts of down time that I used to catch up on slacking off.  I slept strange hours.  I ventured on day trips when the rest of the world was chained to their desks.  I watch many movies and caught up on a lot of gaming.  Yep, the good life to be sure.  If not for those nagging human needs of shelter and sustenance, and the need of money to pay for such tripe things.

And if pigs could fly, blah blah blah.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to readjust myself to reality.

Well, here we are.  Is everyone ready to close out one of the most turbulent and historic years in a generation? I think I am. It’s certainly been big in my life, both personally and professionally, and its the professional side that I want to pump a bit here.

As of December 15th I am no longer an employee of Lime Wire, as my inclusion on the former employee list clearly shows. That’s nearly 3 ½ years at the Lime Group offices in lower Manhattan, and boy did I get to see an awful lot in that time.  The place changed quite a bit from when I started, and grew so fast that at times it felt like riding inside a tornado. But it was that crazed energy that kept things vibrant. The whole of my experiences there certainly lived up to my expectations, but as with all things in life, there comes a time to move on.

Say Hello to the New

Creek Bed Industries goes 2.0

This leads us to my freshly revamped portfolio site, Creek Bed Industries. Using as many of the new skills I’ve been learning in the last few years, I gave everything a top to bottom revamping for the first time since at least 2005. A great deal of ideas put into my head first at FOWD ended up being used. And I have to say I do so love the background art I came up with.

Future plans for the site included trying to build a Ruby on Rails version (a great learning experience) and adding more of my previous projects to what is already up there. I am also going to spend some of that time fixing up the blog as well. I see the styles of both of them converging to show a larger connection between my personal and professional sides — just like me in real life.

Future plans for myself are slightly less clear at the moment.  If you have project or some freelance  work available and would like some quality web and graphic design skills at your beckon call, you may want to drop me a line.

Final Thoughts

Goodbye 2008.  Hello 2009. ^_^

I’m seriously thinking about how I can rearrange my apartment, not to mention ripping apart my closets and tossing all manner of useless crap. I’m even contemplating ridding myself of some of my more useless pieces of furniture.

This is all just a stop-gap measure, of course. I’ve been comtemplating a move from my tiny little apartment for quite some time, but that has been pushed off to some future date (yet again).  Still, all this planned rearranging could help me save some future grief when that move finally does happen if I do it in a semi-smart manner.

Yes, I really have so many interesting things to write about….

I totally endorse the show that this clip makes fun of.  What’s more, I heard about this from the very show in question.  Keith Olbermann is good for television, I say. And humor is good for me.

With all my resurgent personal attention to the blog and its upkeep, I thought I would practice writing a bit with WordPress on my iPhone. With no copy and paste options currently available, I have to keep a better mind on what I’m writing than I usually do.

There are certainly days when I have tons of important thoughts I wish I could tell the world. This…is not one of them.

Sure thankful none of my bus rides end up like this.

Short, tragic, and funny are the series of Calamity Coach comics by Aaron Costain.  I fear the place the creator must live where giant squids, meteors and light cycles attack motor coaches with such regularity.

(via Drawn)

If you’ve got an urge to listen to John Wiliams compositions sung a capella and with humorous lyrics, then Corey Vidal’s got you covered.  His YouTube video called Star Wars (MP3 and lyrics here) actually manages to go through a medely of Williams’ best compositions with lyrics completely referenceing the sci-fi classic without once using one of the songs from the films.  Great stuff.

(via Boing Boing)

One of the pictures posted on ze frank's "From 52 to 48 with Love"

Yes, it was historic.  The largest number of registered voters to cast their ballot in an election since JFK in ‘60.  Historic enough that the New York Times broke out the super-sized font for the front page headline for only the 4th time in history.  It will be a moment in the history of our nation that we will tell our children and grand-children about.

Did you enjoy that?  Good, because that’s over now.

It’s time for the new administration to get to work, and for the rest of us to act like civilized adults and treat each other with respect and — dare I say, affection?  That’s why seeing things like ze frank’s From 52 to 48 With Love makes me smile.  It’s a place where of the divide send messages to everyone in photos like the one above.

Sometimes my fellow citizens make me smile for all the right reasons.