I was skyping with my parents when my dad asked if I had put on weight. When you’re skyping from an iPad and holding it in your arms, your arms look huge and if you’re at a low angle your chin could look like Jay Leno’s. But in typical parental fashion my dad just continued with his hypothesis that maybe since I’m at home all the time now that I was doing some extra snacking and thus gaining weight.

Oh parents.

I heard somewhere that for people who work in Amazon distribution centers, speed really all that matters. From personal experience I’d say that’s accurate considering some of the boxes I’ve received over the years. Whenever you order different items on Amazon there’s always the option to ship in fewer packages or separate them. The thing is that when you have two objects that don’t fit into one of Amazon’s boxes conveniently they just pick the biggest box and stuff it full of brown packing paper.

I can only imagine the shipping people getting two boxes in front of them and just saying “Screw it!” then rolling off dozens of feet of brown paper and stuffing it into a box three times bigger than it needs to be. Then sealing it with only two pieces of tape. Oh and don’t forget the bags of air, gotta stick in at least two dozen of them, especially if you’re shipping something super fragile like, a spool of DVDRs.

I’m still not playing Diablo III, but it seems that people are still having troubles connecting which is preventing them from playing even the single player. I played during the open beta which was also plagued with network troubles, but that was the stress test so it was understood. I certainly don’t envy Blizzard right now or the people probably scrambling to add servers or whatever it is taking to fix the situation.

I’m not going to get into gory details, but I had a dream and was worried what I’d find when I woke up, but it turned out to be a false alarm.

Back in the day I played the first Diablo and some of Diablo II. I could barely tell you anything about the story but man was it addicting. I played enough of the open beta for Diablo III to see which character classes I enjoyed most (Monk). The entire thing I didn’t really care much for the story and it wasn’t difficult at all. I was trying to figure out why it’s so addicting.

For me I love the sound effects which largely are the same sound effects from the original and like other Blizzard games of the time taken from sound effects libraries. I’m guessing there’s also a degree of gambling endorphin rush that occurs whenever you get a nice piece of loot from a random drop from a monster or weapon rack.

Like I’ve said before, playing games where numbers get bigger can be super addicting. Watching numbers get higher for little to no effort is oddly compelling.

So one thing I haven’t talked about in my comic at all are my kung fu classes. I did a comic 8 years ago (HOLY CRAP 8 YEARS???) which I wrote when I was first looking into finding a martial arts school. I did another comic about visiting that same school.

I went to a hapkido school for a year and a half but left after their Manhattan location closed and during the transition they allowed students to get out of their blue belt or black belt contracts. I decided to leave because it was feeling too commercial and even with my limited knowledge I didn’t feel that I was receiving the best instruction.

I ended up finding a rather hole in the wall Chinese martial arts school run by one guy from mainland China (I’ll just call him Sifu). His English isn’t so great but it gets the job done. Anyway, my jaw hit the floor watching his students do their stuff. I thought that maybe I couldn’t even be good enough to go there but ended up taking classes for 5 years.

This school was truly in the top 3 things that I knew I’d miss moving to San Diego and I doubt I’ll find an instructor close to Sifu’s level of expertise. But I’m doing my best to keep practicing on my own. One great thing about San Diego of course is the weather which means I can practice outdoors.

Back to the comic. If I have too many days where I don’t practice my legs get super restless and just need to do some kicking. I wish I was flexible enough to kick myself in the face but sadly it’s just a comic. So I might end up doing more kung fu related comics in the future.

One of the first things we noticed in San Diego is that windows aren’t barred here presumably because theft is much less of a concern in this area. There is one house not too far from my apartment which has bars on its windows. As I passed it I wondered what the public perception of this one house with bars. Do people think that they’re paranoid? Do they dislike these people because of how they make the neighborhood appear? Do they think that they’re distrustful of neighbors?

In New York I had been going to same hairstylist for a few years, not because I had a great rapport or relationship with him, just because at a certain point I figured I should just stick with one person. Well now that I’m in San Diego I have to find a new place to get my haircuts.

The first place that I’ve tried yesterday is a small barbershop where I had my fastest haircut in several years, or ever probably. It took about ten minutes, cost $10 and the front of my hair looks like the bowliest of bowl cuts I’ve had since my mom used to cut my hair when I was a kid. But with a little hair stuff to mess it up, it looks basically fine. When I got home I realized she probably could’ve taken more off the back but I wasn’t really paying that close attention.

Anna ended up fixing it so that I don’t have to feel like Moe from the Three Stooges.

This past weekend we went to an early morning screening of “The Avengers” (it was awesome!). We went to the front row of the back section and Anna asked a guy if the seat next to him was taken. He seriously tried to suggest that she take the seat one seat over from him. She basically said “Are you serious? Someone’s going to sit here anyway” and then sat down. By the time the movie started, the seat next to the guy’s friend was taken too. I’m not sure if the theater was sold out but it was definitely close if not.

We usually try to avoid the crowd but we kind of lucked out because by the time we got out of the movie we saw that there was a long line outside for the next screening. I guess most San Diegans don’t like to go to early movies.

Well Adobe finally released their CS6 product line, so I was eagerly downloading my preorder last night. Like many other editors out there who used mostly Final Cut Pro I was hoping that it would be something people would end up calling Final Cut Pro 8. I had even compiled a wishlist of things that I hoped would be changed in this new version.

Well, that wishlist sadly only has a few things on it that were checked off. I stayed up way too late compiling a list of good, bad and hopes for future versions. I ended up being so disappointed that I fired up the trial version of Avid Media Composer just so that I could be in a new editing program where all the SUPER BASIC features I was hoping for have been for years upon years.

I guess now is the time where I start adapting a bit to Premiere instead of hoping it’ll adapt to me. If you’re into video editing then check out my blog post about Premiere Pro CS6. Unlike most of the coverage you’re going to read about Premiere this is going to cover the super duper minutiae that probably only other editors will understand why I’m making such a fuss over.