Will Hines Dot Net

My iTunes will occasionally pull up an embarassing song from my library to remind me of how terrible my taste can truly be.

Currently: “Annie’s Song” by John Denver.

Shivers!

What is unemployment? It is a lifestyle in which getting out of bed at 8:30am makes you feel like you deserve a huge, gold-plated trophy.

I’m learning stuff in Flash.

The cats’ favorite toys: pens, which they bat around the floor joyfully.
Their favorite sleeping place: inside my bed’s box spring, which they have torn their way into.

My iPod is fixed. It was an amazing six-day turnaround from Apple. I filed a support request online on last Wedesday. The next day, DHL delivered a cardboard mailer to my door. I opened it, plopped my iPod in and taped with the enclosed tape. Then I removed the mailing label (revealing a new label addressed to Apple’s headquarters in California) and [...]

The Project re-launched at The Magnet Theater this past Saturday. Twelve improv teams performed — roughly 15 minutes each. That’s a ton of improv. But it was a very friendly room with a high concentration of friends in the audience — so it was a fun, forgiving, positive show. Every team had great performances. I was especially glad to see “Fat Kitchen” so I could see Ptolemy, Terry, Jane, Fountain and Chris Himes improvise.

Is it good to have audiences like that, or does it encourage bad habits? I think The Project is actually a good balance of both. It’s forgiving enough to encourage gutsy moves, but still lets you know if you’re really delivering something fun [...]

Fun Squad Episode 4 — and you can view the first three Fun Squad episodes if you’d like — has been shot. My apartment is covered with scraps of construction paper, scotch tape and alumnium foil. I’m exhausted. You wouldn’t think that answering questions like “Should Rob kick Matt square in the nuts BEFORE the ukelele song or AFTER?’ would be a mentally tiring puzzler, but judging from my current lethargic mental state, it is.

The main problem I have with Fun Squad is that even though I’m the creator — or really, co-creator with Rob, Matt, Jinn and Cragg — I don’t really know what it’s about. It was originally just a lo-fi kids show. Not a parody [...]

Hopey enjoys sitting on people’s laps when they are at the computer.

More cats in the next day or so.

Paying my taxes. I realize now, that while being unemployed since November 1 has been a joy, that I must indeed get a job.

Here’s my skills, blog readers: PHP, Perl, Cold Fusion, ASP, Javascript, CSS — I know that stuff cold. Also most database programming, especially: MySQL, SQL Server, and Sybase, Microsoft Access. Very solid knowledge of mail servers, spam filters and web servers. A healthy smattering of experience in Java. I’m excellent at cobbling squabbling systems together and figuring out code left behind by curmudgeonly programmers.

I can’t really design pages, though I know HTML so I can figure out why something isn’t appearing the way you’d expect it.

I’m in Manhattan, sitting at a “web2zone” cafe, waiting for mechanics at a nearby garage to finish putting new brakes on my car. I have a garage that I love, which reminds of a list I once tried to make of essential services to know of in order to feel in control of your life:

• good auto mechanic
• good doctor, dentist
• good video store
• good music store
• good coffee place

And, until I buy a laptop with a wi-fi card, a good web cafe. I realize that I typed “good” before each item in that list, and that it’s probably understood that I want a “good” one of each of them. But it felt necessary each time. I don’t just need a video store, I need [...]

Why don’t I own The Incredibles on DVD yet? Shouldn’t that have happened by now?

I say, “I gotta drink more water.”
You say, “What’s the big deal about that?”
I say, “I’m feeling run down. Water’s good for you. I should drink more. It makes everything in your body RUN better.”
You say, “Maybe you should worry more about going to bed before 3am instead of staying up all night putting inane entries in your blog.”
I say, “Just pass the water.”

“You” in this entry is played by Dennis Quaid.

There have been some requests for more cat pictures. I’ll get on it.

You’re not supposed to talk about the weather. That’s too cliche. And if you do talk about it, complaining is even more cliche. But I’m going to talk about it, and I’m going to complain. If it makes you feel any better, I promise to spend only one sentence doing it. And here we go: I’m sick of the rain.

In other, unrelated news: One of my improv teams, Primal Bias (myself, Kevin, Lombard, Cragg, Gavin, Tanouye), did a very fun improv set tonight and then went to Two Boots pizza. I ate so much of the pizza I started wondering if I was mad at it.

I went to tell someone they were acting “bananas” today, but decided that [...]