That is one big burrito.  I must find the place that makes this burrito.

Today was a pretty big day:

The auto industry puzzles me. Over the last 3-4 decades, cars have remained relatively the same. You could take someone from 50 years ago, teleport them to the present day, show him a car, and he would probably say, “Yep, that’s a car.” Sure, cars have fancy gadgets like MP3 players, GPS navigation, and electronic dashboards. I’ll even give the industry credit for adding useful things like anti-lock brakes and catalytic converters. But in the big picture, cars haven’t changed. I recently saw this news article titled Six New Technologies Will Help Manufacturers Reach the 35 MPG Goal (Without Hybrids). This caught my attention a little bit because I in fact already have that technology. It’s called a 1996 Honda Civic. My car is over 10 years old and it gets better gas mileage than most cars available today and apparently better than most future cars not yet made. Now I’ll admit that a Civic is considered a small economy car, but it is 12 years old. Let’s compare this to the computer industry.

Take someone from 50 years ago who worked on a computer that looked like this. If you showed that person a modern-day computer, they wouldn’t know what you’re talking about. 12 years ago, I was rocking a Pentium II ~200 MHz machine. Since computing power doubles roughly every 1.5-2 years, we have computers that are exponentially more powerful and exponentially smaller. A computer from 12 years ago is no match for even an iPhone from today. So why is it that my car from 12 years ago is more efficient than most cars available today? I’m no car freak, so someone’s bound to tell me about all this other junk that’s available in cars these days, but my day-to-day use with cars has not changed my entire life. Why is that?

So apparently, the plastic that my water bottles are made out of, called polycarbonate plastic (not to be confused with the carbonite that encases Han Solo) contains a chemical called bisphenol A.  A quick search on bisphenol A reveals such lovely facts as “it can act as a synthetic estrogen” and it is an “environmental estrogen.”  As much fun as having a surplus of estrogen sounds, I think I’ll go buy some of those stainless steel drinking containers.

And now, kittens bobbing their heads.

Has it really been over a month already since my last post? Work is keeping me busy. A job in the CG industry is like no other job out there. Whenever I tell people what I do, their eyes light up and they want to know more. When I get home at the end of the day, I am still excited about CG.

I finished my last set of personal training sessions last week. After 2-3 months of working out with a trainer, I gained about 13 pounds. The problem with working out a lot is you have to eat a lot. It almost becomes a full-time job. I like eating probably more than the average guy, but the amount I need to eat and the number of times I should eat was getting ridiculous!

I picked up some drawing DVDs called The Structure of Man. They’re all about drawing the human form from your mind. I’ve watched the first few videos and it seems pretty interesting. Hopefully, with practice I’ll be at a level where I am satisfied with my own drawings. I basically would like to be able to draw my own character/creature designs so I can turn them into CG characters. I also really like concept art and would like to be able to draw some sweet work myself.

And…here’s me in 3d:

Working out with a trainer is unlike any other gym workout I’ve ever done.  He makes me want to cry every workout.  Sometimes my muscles get so tired, I feel like I’m working out but I’m mostly just hanging on to the bar while he’s moving it.  The first couple sessions were tests to shock my body.  The first day I didn’t eat enough and felt like passing out at the end.  The second day was a little better.  Now I try to eat throughout the day but it gets hard sometimes when I’m working.  This week he had me work on isolated muscle groups.  Just when I wanted an exercise to be over, he would strip a little weight and have me do more reps, strip a bit more and do even more reps.  Those burn like crazy.  Today was leg day.  My legs were so tired, I could barely finish the last exercise.  Then, when we were walking across the gym to another machine, my legs gave out and I had to catch myself on the ground.  Holy crap!  I’ve never had that happen before.  We started laughing as I hobbled back up and finished the workout with some ab work. It took me a couple of minutes to get down the stairs after that workout. I’ve already gained about 5 pounds since last week so he must be doing something right. And no, I’m not trying to get huge.  Think of Ryan Reynolds’ transformation from Van Wilder to Blade 3.

I’m getting pretty settled into work life. Everyday has a challenge and I’m learning a lot. I’ve been digging into a lot of Maya API programming and Python scripting both of which are turning out to be pretty powerful. When I was first starting my job, I was expecting to get a lot of grunt level work but I’m happy to say I’ve been getting a lot of cool assignments thrown my way. After a lot of college jobs serving people, I can easily say that I am happy with my career choice.

One of the benefits of not being in school anymore is that when I’m off work, I don’t have to do anything. When I was in school, I was always working on my reel or learning on my own.  Now that I don’t have to do that anymore, I am free to take up other hobbies. To give myself something to do, I signed up for a bunch of personal training sessions with this guy. I’ve been working out at my current gym for a couple years now and at other gyms for the past 6 years but this will be my first time with a trainer.  He said that I have good genes because of my build and I’ll shoot up about 15 pounds over the next 2-3 months.  Whoa! Hopefully, I won’t end up looking like this guy.

Check it out. Believe the hype.

There’s nothing quite like the experience of being a poor student bachelor. One of my roommates recently moved out of the house. She took all her belongings with her, which includes all the kitchen supplies and utensils. My kitchen belongings consist of one bowl, a shaker cup, and a fork that I found in the dish washer when we first moved in. Have you ever eaten cereal with a fork? It’s a sad sight to see. Anyways, I came home yesterday and had the craving for a nice bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats. Good thing I have a bowl! I look in the sink and my bowl is sitting there, shattered in a dozen pieces.

What…the…hell? My one bowl, the only thing I was eating out of, is no more. Now I saw the bowl that morning in the sink and it was good as new. Very suspicious indeed. I heard there was an earthquake that day so maybe forces greater than my own decided I shouldn’t have that bowl. No matter. Being the resourceful person that I am, I poured the cereal into my GNC shaker cup. How hard could it be to eat cereal out of a shaker cup with a fork? Well, I never got the chance because as I looked at my cereal, I saw that it was covered in ants! Arggh, foiled again! I threw my cereal away and decided to go on to Plan B: order pizza.

I call the pizza place by my house but no one answers the phone. What’s up with that? I’m hungry here! Being too lazy to drive down the hill to go to the pizza place in person, I move on to Plan C: canned goods. I open my cabinet and find a can of baked beans and some peaches. However gross that sounds as a dinner, I thought it would fill up my stomach for the night. But something was missing. I don’t have a can opener. Blast! As I hung my head in defeat I grab the plum that’s on the counter and have a piece of fruit for dinner. You win this time, student poverty, but your days are numbered.

I was looking at the front page of YouTube today and saw a video of Brett Dennen playing in a studio in Kentucky. It’s really cool seeing him become so successful the past few years. When I was 10 years old, he was my summer camp counselor. I later worked with him at the same camp for a couple of summers and became good friends with his brother, who is really my asian brother from another mother. Brett’s an all around awesome person and if you haven’t heard his music, I suggest you go check it out!