September 2009 Archives

I know this isn't the "California for Dummies" I promised but I just couldn't resist. (It will come, just not today.)

I've been at DreamWorks for a little over three weeks now, and let's face it, while it's nowhere near as bad as most, it is a corporation. That means you have your little corporate sheep moments here and there. You have your "Kickoff" meetings. You have your "Touch Bases." You have your Microsoft Outlook with your meetings and your calendar and your email and your to-dos all wrapped in that Dilbert inspired wrist-slitting, soul-smothering, oh-God-I-really-do-work-in-a-cubicle-please-euthanize-me user interface. Imagine my inner programmer's unbridled joy when I found out I would be working on a Linux box, probably one of the most stable, un-bloated operating systems in existence. And then imagine my utter dismay when I found out that someone had actually written a Microsoft emulator for Linux so that we could all run Outlook and therefore, "communicate effectively as a team." Let me tell you, it was a long, hard fall with a big rainbow-colored splat at the end.

A common activity between classes (since I have no homework) is to watch my Outlook calendar change before my eyes. The training department is in total control of my class schedule, and apparently in control of very little else, so they'll schedule me for two or three classes a day a week in advance and then randomly shift things around until it makes sense. If I look at my calendar at just the right time of day, I can see the little blue-outlined boxes move up, down, from this day to that, all without any interaction from me. It's like Microsoft TV. I can witness the near future of my life unfolding before my eyes like Windows releases--"OK, this is what we'll do. Oh wait, that's broken, let's do this. No, that's too annoying, let's go back. Wait, no one's coming to that class because it negates everything they learned in the last class--let's just take the last class and make it prettier and bigger and slower." And so on.

One day during my first week here, a class just disappeared from my schedule. Poof! Gone. I wondered if it had moved to another day, so I started searching. Next week? No. The next? Nope, not there either. The next? AHA!--but it was in conflict with a meeting I didn't know I had, enticingly titled "Touch Base (& Cookies!)." What the hell is a "Touch Base (& Cookies!)?" I asked myself. And why am I being bribed with cookies to attend? I envisioned some doe-eyed HR representative with five minutes experience standing at the head of a conference table with a big plate of cookies, wringing her hands with giddy anticipation as her drooling invitees filed in one by one and took their seats. No one knows the topic of the meeting; no one cares. There's cookies! And what's with the training department? Didn't they see that I already had a "Touch Base (& Cookies!)" scheduled? Excuse me BUT THERE'S COOKIES! Have they no shame?

Turns out the training department made a boo boo. When they called to inquire as to why I wasn't present in a class that apparently had not been rescheduled at all, they corrected their mistake and restored my calendar. Relief! My "Touch Base (& Cookies!)" could once again take it's rightful place on the afternoon of September 16 without having to share space with a how-to on production management software.

But the damage to my psyche had been done. As the weeks wore on and my calendar filled up farther and farther into the future, I kept going back to September 16 just to make sure everything was OK. Yep, "Touch Base (& Cookies!)" was still intact. As a matter of fact, while all my classes and kickoffs and cookieless touch bases swarmed my calendar like flies, "Touch Base (& Cookies!)" seemed to be the most stable meeting on my schedule.

The shameless bribe certainly served its purpose--apparently you can sell any product or idea just by giving away cookies. It wasn't long before I no longer needed Outlook to remind me of the "Touch Base (& Cookies!)." "Touch Base (& Cookies!)" was imprinted on my brain like phosphor burn on a thirty-year-old Pac Man screen--September 16, 4pm to 5pm.

I find myself in awe of this deceptively simple crowd-pleasing technique. Just imagine how many of life's little irritations could be made palatable if only cookies were a part of the package:

"ObamaCare (& Cookies!)"

"Saddam Has Weapons of Mass Destruction (& Cookies!)"

"April 15th (& Cookies!)"

"Your Vehicle Warranty is About to Expire (& Cookies!)"

"You Have One Month to Live (& Cookies!)"

"Your Father is Transitioning to a Woman (& Cookies!)"

"BEYONCE HAS THE BEST MUSIC VIDEO OF ALL TIME (& Cookies!)"

The trick is, the cookies have to be REALLY good. And they were. Just don't ask me what the meeting was about because I don't remember.

I've been getting that question a lot lately. I'm writing this at work if that tells you anything. I'm not actually sitting on my blog site typing it all into that nice little window it provides; instead, I'm writing it in my favorite Linux text editor Nedit, or as I like to refer to him, Ned. Ned and I are old friends. We go way back to my grad school days when I ran him on an SGI. We took a seven-year haitus as I moved to Windows (forcibly, at gunpoint) and Mac (willingly), but we're back together again and very happy. Very, very happy.

I'm starting my fourth week at DreamWorks and I'm still in training. This is not a surprise, as they told me I would have four weeks of training when they hired me. I sort of envisioned this full-day-of-classes-type schedule where I would be sitting in front of a computer while someone at the white board told me what to do and why I was doing it, and then gave me homework to fill the remainder of the day. Well... that's close. What's actually happening is that I'm spending anywhere from two to four hours a day in front of a computer while someone at the white board tells me how to use tools that I don't yet know why I'm using because I don't really know what my job is. And most of these classes have no homework, so it's mainly a laundry list of "here's what it does" and then "thanks for coming, bye." No practical application as of yet. I'm holding out hope though.

Ten hour days are mandatory here, so you get ten hours a week of guaranteed time-and-a-half overtime, which you need because they've used that to justify their very low hourly rate for TAs (technical assistants). So that leaves anywhere from six to eight hours of complete and utter boredom per day. I've written emails, I've stalked old boyfriends on Facebook (one of which is about sick of it I'm sure), I've watched training videos, I've even taken one shell scripting tutorial and tried to rewrite it in Python. But I stopped short of completing it because I haven't made it far enough in my Python classes yet to figure out how to finish it off. Maybe tomorrow after Studio Python I. Or maybe Thursday after II. Who knows.

The good news is, this is the week they start the film-specific training. That means I get to learn exactly the what and how of the tools we'll be using for the movie I'm going to be working on. I'm in the lighting department which is at the end of the pipeline, meaning we have the most responsibility and the power to render nearly-finished frames. As a department, we set the mood of the film. That's an awesome job. One that scares the crap out of me.

I still don't really know what a Lighting TA does around here. If I did, the classes I've been taking would make a hell of a lot more sense.

So while my inner overachiever is completely under-stimulated, I've been enjoying the amenities to their fullest potential. Well, except for the free breakfast. I've tried, really I have, but I just don't do mornings. And most days the breakfast isn't anything to write home about--donuts, bagels, fruit--I can get that after a night at the local Comfort Inn. But Wednesdays are IHOP days around here. That's when they cook eggs, waffles, bacon, etc. I live for Wednesdays. And yet I've only made it to one Wednesday breakfast before they shut down the entree line.

It was good too.

Most of the time I'll come in a little after 9, and there might be a bagel or a cake donut left. But usually I'll head over to the toaster and toss in an English muffin or some raisin bread, butter it Paula Deen style, grab a Coke and take it up to my desk. So I actually have been eating breakfast. This is a new thing for me. And here's the weird thing: I'm dropping the pounds like mad. For years now, drinking Coke has been a rare treat. Most of the time I just lived on Evian because I was avoiding caffeine. Then while I was still in Texas I discovered Mexican Coke (mmmm real sugar) so I started drinking them a little more but not much. Then I got here and found free Coke everywhere. There's a fountain in the cafeteria and a fountain in every break room on every floor. I caved.

Apparently the caffeine is killing my appetite to the point that I just don't eat as much as I used to. And I don't really snack between meals either. Plus, I get home so late at night I don't really want to cook so I just nibble on whatever I can find and then go work on the web site. I haven't actually cooked dinner in about three weeks. They warned me when I got here about the "DreamWorks 15" because of the free breakfast and lunch. It seems to be working in reverse for me.

My weight loss actually started when I moved, the result of sheer panic. I dropped two pounds the day the movers told me what day they were showing up. I leveled off for a few weeks after that but then about a month ago, about the time I got here and started going outside, it started dropping again. My jeans are falling off. I'm not really complaining because I've been wanting to see 135 again for about five years... the problem is, I don't have smaller jeans to replace them with, and no time to go get them. Not yet anyway. However, I just went downstairs to the Bake Off and sampled everything up for a vote. That should buy me another couple of days before I run into the Old Navy wearing the last thing that still stays on, which would be my underwear.

And that's another thing. They do stuff here. They're having a bake off downstairs in the cafeteria as I write this. I sampled caramel corn with bacon (that was so out of context I have yet to form a complete opinion on it), toffee with chocolate and saltine crackers (not so good), a nice chocolate cupcake, much better toffee with chocolate and yes, another Coke. They're also having a talent show here on October 1. I have no talent that can be exhibited on stage; however, I suggested to my cube-mate David that maybe next year we should get three people together, dress as Muppets and do "Manah-manah." He laughed, but deep down I think he only shares my sense of humor to the point that he'd like to see someone else do it.

About a week ago, someone transferred to the Glendale office. We gave them a nice champagne send-off in the middle of the afternoon. Then last Friday night, someone brought me a Mike's Hard Lemonade out of the blue. Do I like it here? Yeah, I do. I like it here.

We work in a building that shares property with a bunch of other companys' buildings. And in the center of it all is a gym. A free gym. A very nice gym with a large pool. I went to sign up a few weeks ago and they said I'd get an email--I haven't yet. I need to go over there. But it may be a moot point because I'm getting a bike next week and I'd almost rather go out on the trail around the bay than spend yet another hour at work (or near it) at the gym. I'm already here so much, the bike will be a treat, whereas the gym will be more like, "Damn, can't I go home yet?" Yeah, I think that's how that will turn out. It's nice to have the option though. Some of their ellipticals have TVs attached where you can set your own channel. As long as those are working, this will always be an option for me. Perhaps on a rainy day.

A rainy day is something you don't see here in the summer, or so I've been told. We actually had one yesterday. It was nice. But today the sun is back out, it's 70-something degrees, windy, and I took what has become a ritual walk to the water on my lunch hour. We're right on the bay here, and the paved paths that run through the property are also public access. So every day I spend about 15 minutes eating and another 15 walking down to the water, staring at it for a bit, and then walking back. I've been landlocked my entire life. I don't get tired of the water. Unfortunately for the last four days I've had 1pm classes that made it impossible to take my walk, but today I decided dammit I'm going down to the water if I have to run down there and run back. I walked fast, stood there for a minute and then walked fast back. It was worth it.

My need to go outside comes from years of living in Texas with mosquitoes, fire ants and heat, but it's heightened by the fact that I now work in almost total darkness. The lighting department is very dependent on color calibrated monitors and a lack of glare; therefore, the overhead lights are never on, the windows are covered and you get one desk lamp to aim at your respective cube wall. On my first day I got my desk lamp. Ironically, I needed a flashlight to see where to plug it in. Now I'm sort of used to it; I don't feel like I can see a computer screen anymore with the lights on. With my eyes already causing me some age-related problems lately, that's a bad sign.

And by the way, there are not only NO fire ants here, there are NO mosquitoes, NO waterbugs and very few spiders. I've seen three silverfish in my apartment and one brown spider in the month I've lived there. That's about as bad as it gets.

I like that work doesn't start until 9 here. Of course that means I don't leave before 7:30 every night, but the commute by then is about 15 minutes back to the apartment. Even in the morning it doesn't take me more than 20 minutes to get here. What I'm fighting with is the same thing I've fought my entire life, and that is actually going to bed at night. Night is when I wake up. And now that I'm working when I get home, I'm that much more awake when I should be going to bed. Saturday night I worked until 3am, which meant I slept until 1pm on Sunday. That was the end of any illusion I may have had of a normal schedule. I went to bed again last night at 3, probably didn't actually sleep until 4 and then the alarm went off at 8. That was physically painful. Hence the breakfast issue on Wednesdays. Painful.

Some things never change.

Well, back to work (or lack thereof). Stay tuned for an entry I've been planning for some time entitled, "California for Dummies."

Ta da! It's Part 4. And I do hope the number of installations required to tell this story does not surpass the current number of Shrek movies. Which means this better be the last because Shrek 4 is in production as we speak.

Ludlow, California, has a Dairy Queen. Actually, I think Ludlow IS a Dairy Queen. It's a good sized Dairy Queen surrounded by parking lot, with additional truck parking across the road, all of which is surrounded by dirt. And every bit of it was packed with cars. People, kids, pets were all going back and forth between the cars and the store. Groups of guys were hanging out near their pickup trucks, probably waiting for their women to come back from the bathroom. There were so many people milling around you could hardly get through the parking lot, which was packed full. I drove through it and parked in a relatively empty area on the dirt next to a truck pulling a boat. Within five minutes the entire dirt area was full too.

I stopped the car but didn't turn it off so I could keep the A/C on for the cat. It was 108. I told Deanna to go ahead and go in, use the bathroom and pick me up a Reese's Blizzard (Dad was paying) and then she could stay with the cat while I went. So she left. After a while Dad came to my window and told me that if I needed to use the bathroom, the line for that was longer than the food line and was almost out the door. But there was a row of port-a-potties right next to our dirt parking area. I needed to go, but not that bad. Never that bad.

Bali Ree came out about ten minutes later, Deanna soon after. Deanna said that after she finally saw the bathroom, she didn't trust the food so we were all skipping the Blizzards and going on to Barstow. And so we were off again. It was late afternoon and it was still a long way to Bakersfield, but once we got back on the highway we knew the worst was over. The traffic was still horrible, people were still racing each other, but I was beginning to understand why. It was a nightmarish place, hot, dry, barren, no exits off the highway (except this one) and seemingly, no end. No one wanted to be there. They were all trying to get the hell out of there as fast as they could.

Barstow was completely uninteresting but we did get gas and changed highways, getting off of I-40--for the first time--and onto 58. It was a weird transition--all of a sudden it was like we were driving past graffiti-covered crack houses. There were yucca plants everywhere and had been since Arizona. I wanted to see a giant cactus but I had already given up on that. I've only seen them once in my life and that was in 1998 just outside of El Paso. We weren't nearly that far south. Once we ran out of crack houses we found ourselves driving through Boron, complete with a 20 Mule Team Road. And then boring dirt again. We passed Edwards AFB, which was impressive, and then made it into the hills where the temperature started to drop. The sun had just gone behind the hills when we noticed the windmills.

LOTS of windmills. More windmills than you can possibly imagine. Windmills to the left, windmills to the right, windmills on every ridge, on every hill, as far as the eye could see. Windmills everywhere! No wonder it was cooling off, there were fans blowing on us from every direction. And with the sun going down it was truly surreal--Deanna got out her camera and started shooting pictures.

"To the left!" I would yell, and she would stick the camera in front of my face to get a shot out my window. "To the right! Behind! No, look in front!" I think she took about 80 pictures before we got away from them.

80 pictures I'm still waiting for her to send me. But I digress.

The sun was almost completely down as we came out of the hills. The temperature started to rise again. It went from the 70s back into the 90s. It felt like home. I wasn't happy about that.

We found our motel in Bakersfield around 9, a Sleep Inn. It took pets. I had called from Gallup to make sure. We were all tired and Dad and Bali Ree were not getting along too well. Dad thought she had driven like a bat out of hell all day and he was sick of it. Then they got to their room, started unloading and then changed rooms because something smelled. So they had to take all the boxes Dad had already unloaded and move them to the other room, which coincidentally adjoined ours. Our room, however, was lovely. We brought in the cat after stuffing pillows in all the holes she could hide in and just like last time, she went straight underneath the bed skirt and stayed put.

We unloaded the cars for what seemed like an eternity. Bali Ree was tired and decided to take a shower and go to bed. Dad had said that he wanted to eat and he wasn't going to bed without eating. So Deanna and I were looking forward to food. We went outside to help Dad with the last of the boxes and Deanna asked him who was going to drive.

"Dinner... is that all you can think about right now?" he asked her.

We looked at each other. "We're just going on the last thing we heard," I said.

He softened. "I know."

We helped him carry in the last of the boxes and then he went to his room and shut the door. Deanna and I sat on our respective beds and wondered aloud if this dinner thing was going to happen. Because we were starving, and we could go by ourselves, but if Dad wanted to go we didn't want to just leave, and the way things were going we didn't want to go knock on his door. So we sat there and looked at a flyer for Rusty's Pizza while the cat found her courage and started exploring the tops of various pieces of furniture.

We sat, and we sat. And we wondered, and our stomachs growled and we tried not to fall asleep. I discussed the possibility of updating my blog because we finally had an internet connection. Deanna wanted to do something on her laptop as well. Maybe after dinner, we thought. And then Dad knocked on our door.

We were all too tired to be creative about where to eat. Rusty's was open late, so that's where we went. And I have to say that was some damn good pizza, and I even got to play a couple of games of Galaga while we waited for it.

After dinner we came back to the room and opened the door. No cat, no surprise. I looked under the bed skirt. No cat. I looked under another bed skirt. No cat. I felt around all the bed skirts, looked in the closet, under the desk, behind the TV--Deanna looked behind our bedside table, in the bathroom and under the air conditioner. NO CAT. We thought back to when we left the room. No, she couldn't have come out then without our knowing about it. Did someone come in while we were gone and she ran out? Where could she be by now if that happened? AND WHO THE HELL CAME INTO OUR ROOM? I was about to panic when Deanna finally pulled back the curtain and there she sat on the windowsill. That poor cat hadn't looked out a window for over a week. So there she sat, facing the back of a building and a stumpy palm tree, looking over her shoulder at us like we had just interrupted her favorite TV show. We closed the curtain and let her stay put.

I took a shower while Deanna worked on her laptop. Then she was to take a shower after me. When I got out she was face down on her computer, sound asleep. So I got in bed and wrote Part 1. Man that was a long time ago.

The next day was to be easy. It was roughly half a day to the Bay Area so for once, we didn't have to rush. We got out at about 9am and since the apartment office didn't close until 7, we knew we would get there in plenty of time to get the keys. So we took our time through orchard country and a lot of farm land. You ever wonder where they grow stuff? North of Bakersfield on 99. You know what they grow there? Everything. Nuts, flowers, grapes, tomatoes, onions, you name it. It was a rather slow drive through the orchards, slow enough I guess that the cat got brave enough to walk out of her carrier. Deanna was thrilled, she was coming to sit in her lap. Oh wait, no she wasn't. She climbed into her lap, then out of her lap, onto the floor under Deanna's feet and then flattened herself out like a pancake and squeezed in right underneath the seat. I could barely even get my hand under there when I lost a french fry. We were never getting her out now.

We got on the radio and told Dad what had happened. Then we pulled over at a gas station and opened up Deanna's door. Dad got down on the ground and looked under the seat and talked to her for a bit. She didn't budge. He felt around where she was. Actually she was pretty smart--there was a dip in the car floor underneath the seat and she was curled up in it like some kind of cat-shaped nest. Dad decided it was probably a pretty safe place for her to be, so we left her there and went on our way.

We traveled through farmland for what seemed like forever. We saw barren patches next to lush orchards. The barren patches had signs that said "Congress created dust bowl." Not sure what that was about. Deanna took some pictures. We also saw multiple tomato trucks and onion trucks on the highway. They were like rock haulers full of vegetables. By the time we stopped for lunch I was craving something with marinara sauce. What we got were hamburgers, but that worked about as well.

As I was setting up shade in the car for the cat, who probably wasn't going to come out from under the seat anyway, my cell phone rang. It was my driver from the moving company.

"Just wanted to confirm tomorrow at 8am in Foster City."

"I'll be there!"

"Great. Now I need to ask you something. I'm looking at the bill here, and I know this is supposed to be split out somehow between you and DreamWorks, and I don't know exactly how... but what it looks like is that your move went about $3000 over the estimate."

"What??? How could it possibly go over that much? Was it weight?" I was about to throw up.

"No, actually the weight came in under the estimate. It could be packing though."

"How? Certainly not $3000 worth of boxes." Seriously. Don't even.

"Well... yeah, it could be packing. But like I said, I'm not sure what they're doing here, so you may want to call your CSR and double check with them."

"You bet I will! Thanks for the heads up." And I hung up. Then I got really, really pissed. I decided I would go in and get some food, eat really quickly and then go back out to the car and make a phone call or two. But while I was in line and just about to order, they called me. I asked if they could call back in five minutes--their number came in as "Unknown"--she said sure, no problem. So five minutes passes and no call. I decided to wait outside where it's more quiet, especially since we didn't have the food yet. Ten minutes, no call. Fifteen. I went back inside and sat down with the family, who were already eating. I inhaled what I could but it wasn't much since I had lost my appetite. Then I went back outside. I was going to talk to them before I got on the road again. So I dug out my laptop from behind Deanna's seat. This required removing a backpack from the floor, which I did with great difficulty since the seat was folded down for boxes. But once I got the backpack out, what do you think I saw? Cat. Just lying there on her side, her feet straight out in front of her like the car floor was some sort of chaise lounge. She was perfectly within reach from the back of the seat. I filed that little piece of information away for later and dug the computer out of my bag so I could get my CSR's phone number out of my email.

I called. Heidi was on the phone so they put me on hold. Then they said she would call me back. When she finally did she was just calling to see if everything was a go for tomorrow.

"Well, Rick called and said that the move ended up costing like $8000. What happened?"

"Who's Rick?"

Ok, right, they don't necessarily know who the driver is. "He's the driver. He says he's looking at the bill and the total was over $8000."

"Oh no, that's not right. What he's seeing is the total before the DreamWorks discount. Actually we only underestimated by about $188."

Now THAT was impressive. I thanked her, took a big sigh of relief and got my appetite back. But we had to get on the road again. Oh well.

We continued on 99 until we got to 152 and then cut over to San Jose. We went through a lot of brown hills. It was scary. The road was steep and winding, and there was a guy in a camper pulling a boat on a trailer and he could not keep it steady in the wind. He kept passing us and then slowing down, and passing and slowing down. I kept thinking we were going to get hit by that fishtailing boat and get knocked into the reservoir. Bali Ree was way ahead again on some kind of personal driving challenge while I was hanging on for dear life, trying to keep the car on the road and a boat off my ass. Dad called us on the radio and Deanna had to respond. I wasn't taking one finger off that steering wheel.

"Well, hang in there," he said. "We'll see you at the bottom."

Yeah, hopefully not the fast way. Because you know what? California is weird about guardrails. They don't know where to put them. You'll be looking 200 feet straight down and there won't be a guardrail in sight. Then on the next stretch of road you might roll off into a shallow ditch and they have barriers everywhere. There's no logic to it.

Needless to say, we survived. After that it was a winding road among fresh fruit stands and then San Jose, where we would get on 101 and go to our final destination. Finally, I was about to no longer be homeless.

We arrived at the apartment office around 3pm, got out of the car and stretched. It was sunny and 80 degrees with a cool, refreshing breeze from the west. I faced the sun, closed my eyes and let the wind blow through my hair. My first words? "Bite me, Texas."