Recently in Furdells Category

Sorry we were negligent in posting your birthday greeting. Hope you had a great (albeit snowy) birthday!

Ho ho ho! Remember kids, religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds! Merrrrrry War on Christmas! Also there was no Jesus.

Slate's cover article compares the Iraq War to the film Red Dawn. Gee, Slate, it looks like Furdell.com only scooped you by, oh, about five years. (Actually, Slate was also scooped five years ago by itself, but I'd like to point out that I also scooped that article by about a month.)

This year's Slate article also gets points off for crediting John Milius as "Conan auteur", when we all know that Conan the Barbarian could not have existed with anyone other than screenwriter Oliver Stone and star Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Queen Anne run went well last week... I finished in 31 minutes and change, which is pretty much exactly a 10-minute mile. If I can keep it up, that should be good enough to finish... the Big One.

That's the 8K (a.k.a. "five miles" for the metric-impared) I'm running on Saturday. I haven't had time to run this week, but hopefully the training I've done this summer is still somewhat intact. I've been wanting to run this one for a while, because it takes you down the Torchlight parade route before it starts, with parade-goers cheering you on from both sides of 4th Ave. downtown.

Here's my sprint to the finish from last week:

All of that wore out me and Alex:

I'm doing this 5K run in a few short hours:

Rocky main theme is on the playlist. Twice.

If there's one proven by my recent post about Hillary fanatics flipping over to McCain, it's that my mother isn't the only person who reads this blog. (And if humor is measured in inventive cursing¹, this blog was much funnier before my mother started reading it.)

Unfortunately it seems that some of our readers don't understand what Furdell.com is all about.

I understand if you don't agree with my decision, but don't insult my intelligence. Posted by Mary at June 3, 2008 7:41 PM

...just because we don't agree doesn't mean we have to insult her views. Grow up. Posted by jen at June 4, 2008 12:31 PM

Ladies, if you're looking for a blog that makes calm, rational arguments without insulting your intelligence, may I suggest this YouTube video of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up."

That's right, reader: I so completely don't acknowledge your intelligence, that I'm pretty sure I can rick roll you without even making an effort at deception. That's exactly how stupid I think you are.

Now that that's out of the way: in the interest of further angering Clinton supporters, and to further promote the use of inventive cursing, here's the video that reimagines the movie Downfall to be about Clinton losing the nomination, which she totally just did.

¹ It is.

Welcome to 2006, me. Yes, I've finally put some of my film and video projects on YouTube, now that I'm actively job-searching.

My Lucky Day
The 16mm project I did two years ago.

Citizen Kane in Under 2 Minutes
Something Matt B. and I dreamed up a while back. It was mostly an experiment in backlighting, but I still get a chuckle out of Julia's performance.

Three Dreams in the Order I Had Them
In hindsight, I don't love this one quite as much. I should never act.

Julia and I are moving to Seattle on Wednesday, and today is my last day directing at KEZI. In under two years, I worked my way up from part time "technical" director on morning shows, to full-time real-life director of the station's signature show: the hour-long 6pm/6:30pm broadcasts. (I also direct the 11pm news, but nobody cares.) Quite an achievement, I think, for someone with absolutely no television experience coming into this place. I've had a lot of fun here, and learned a lot. Hooray for me.

After many months of practice, directing live television has become a bit too easy for me, so in a way I'm glad to be moving on to new challenges. In fact, directing is so easy that I can do a perfect job even while typing during commercial breaks and long packages.

Happy birthday to my mom. She is the best mom, and she will assuredly make a smooth transition into being the best grandma.

We've already sent her a physically tangible birthday present, but here's a high-tech online bonus present for her, which I will share with all our loyal furdell.com readers: an hour-long clip from KOL-AM radio in Seattle, from 1962, right around when the Century 21 World's Fair Expo goodness was going on (the same event that gave us the Space Needle; note: I almost just typed Space Noodle). I don't know if she listened to this station, but nonetheless it's a cool memento of old-school Seattle.

(Technical note to mom: these are big files, 30 MB each, so you'll probably want to download them at school, save them to disk and copy to a USB key. Then you can bring the USB key home and import the files into your iTunes library, and listen to them there or on your iPod.)

Track 1
Track 2

That opening jingle on the first track always makes me happy. We ARE the number one-derful people in Seattle.

There's been some noise about the lack of purple musings on this blog. I admit it, it's been a long time. So long, in fact, that I am finding the "new" blog editor interface to be strange and confusing. But by neglecting my Furdell.com duties I have left myself without a leg to stand on when trying to mock a certain lawyer friend named Staci for having not one, but two dead blogs. (Or rather one dead one and one that never even came close to going live -- aborted, maybe?) So here's what's up with me, and may the mocking continue.

It's not an alien. As you probably already know, I'm rather pregnant. I know pregnancy is a "true" or "false" thing, and not an "on a scale of 1 to 10, how pregnant are you?" thing. Nonetheless it captures the essence of my experience to say I am increasingly pregnant. By which I mean that I am freaking huge, and getting more so daily. Apparently our baby is also huge -- in the 80th percentile, according to the Good Doctor. As Andrew said, "Good for him, he's already outstripping his peers." Among the many advantages to being pregnant are always getting to sit down on the bus, having a perfectly good excuse to read children's books (market research?), and getting away with saying "the baby made me do it" after eating all of the Valentine's Day Hershey Kisses.

Speaking of growing families. I have a new sister-in-law -- my brother got married last fall. She's pretty awesome, too. So hurray for my brother! He deserves it. (And I'm totally not sucking up, I don't think he even reads this site.)

My student days are numbered. Of course, numbers can go up really high. The story of my dissertation process could be a lot like "The Little Engine That Could," if the engine had vast swings in energy levels, a much more colorful vocabulary, and the need to make a pit stop every 5 minutes because an even littler engine was pushing on its bladder.

How many nicknames does one city need? Seatte/Rain City/the Emerald City/Jet City is still pretty cool, even in the middle of gray, dreary winter. We had lots of snow and freak windstorms in December and January, but now things are back to normal for us while our friends on the other coast are finally freezing their tushies off like they're supposed to in winter. Even in bad weather, it's still a very outdoorsy city. And though we've been here a year now we still love all the tourist attractions, like Pike Place Market and the monorail that goes to the Space Needle.

And finally, WTF is up with "Gilmore Girls"? I hate you, The CW.

I have a running joke with Andrew that absolutely everybody in his adopted Eugene, Oregon, is high all the time, and basically just contastly smoking the weed, to the exclusion of everything else in life.

Anyway, that's why this is hilarious:

I'm still at Microsoft, but I've moved over to the Windows Mobile team. This is the operating system that runs on handheld devices, like Smartphones and Pocket PCs. (Check it out here and here.) Version 6 is coming out soon, and I'll be working on testing the release after that.

It should be fun to work on, and at the very least I'll be getting a cool handheld device out of the deal. Swag!

Ultrasound provided the crucial visual evidence today: we are having a boy.

Skiing, that is!

Over the holidays, Andrew invented a new word while we were all watching the insipid Bob Saget-hosted game-slash-reality show 1 vs. 100.

During the course of the game, each player receives three opportunities to receive assistance from the mob, known as "helps". They are "Poll The Mob", "Ask The Mob", and "Trust The Mob". Each player can choose which of the 3 helps they would like to use at any point in the game.

I noted that "helps" is not actually a word, but merely an attempt to copy lifelines from Who Wants To Be A Millionaire without actually using the word "lifeline". Andrew proposed that "helps" be replaced with the more-trademarkable noun "helpamagoos", which everybody liked better (and, unfortuantely for 1 vs. 100, we invented it first).

I went to Snoqualmie Pass last weekend, and dared to ski on the blue-square (i.e. medium difficulty) trails "Top Traverse" and "Alpine", at a not-very-good weather time (freezing rain made the terrain very slippery). The slope was steep, and I wound up falling and losing a ski, which wouldn't normally be a big deal, except I have trouble getting back up on a slope (blame my poor 31-year-old non-flexibility). Even when I was able to get up, it was super-difficult getting my skis back on. Either the skis would travel downhill without me, or I would slide downhill without my skis. (A helpful snowboarder nicely delivered one of my rogue skis to me.) So, of course, I'm crawling around on the ground like an idiot while more expert skiers are sailing by me with no problem.

It was then that I decided what I need is one helpamagoo per skiing session. Kind of like when you're playing a racing video game, and you crash up and fly off the road, the game helpfully deposits you back on the track, car completely intact. That's what I need while skiing to minimize embarrassment.

In the meantime, I am highly enjoying my birthday present, new skis. I don't think I'll be doing any difficult black diamonds this year... I'm quite content to stick with green circles. Green circles are my friend.

Keep watching the skis!

It took him more than 24 hours to get from Jacksonville to Eugene. I believe he will not have kind things to say about U.S. Airways once he returns to the living.

The rumors are true...I've been promoted again. (For those of you just joining us, this is like the third time this year.)

To recap: our Senior Director of several years, we'll call him S., left here for greener pastures several months ago. I had hoped that the next-most-senior director, let's call him B., would get promoted so that I could get B.'s job. Unfortunately, instead they hired this schmo H., and promoted him to Senior Director instantly even though he was the least-skilled director of us all.

Well, as it turned out, H. couldn't take the pressure and walked out in a huff one day -- no two-weeks-notice or anything. We expect our fresh-out-of-high-school minimum wage slaves to suddenly quit on us with no notice, but not our 60+-year-old senior directors. So that was weird. And lest you think it was totally my fault, well, I was in Vegas when it happened.

So anyway, this time around they did indeed promote B. to Senior Director. He'll be directing our flagship show, the hour-long 6pm; I'm in his old position, directing the half-hour 5pm and 11pm weekday shows. (This also means my Friday now coincides with the rest of the world's Fridays -- I get weekends off. Or, rather, I get paid overtime when I do work those days, which will probably be often.

Also, B. is having a baby within the next few weeks. When he goes away on paternity leave, I'll be acting senior director, apparently. I'll still get paid the same, of course. But at least for a few weeks I'll have gone from completely-lowly-peon to ruler of all directors. Bwa!

Well, you see, Internet, I've been having an insane year. The last two months especially... working on the new Windows Vista, plus football officiating, plus... I'm going to be a dad.

Yes, it's true. There's going to a be another Furdell. A very small one.

So, between freaking out, and being really excited, and being super-stressed, I haven't done any writing. I've, honestly, sort of forgotten how. Hanging out with a bunch of English-challenged engineers will do that. So, let's get back into the swing of things and let everybody know What's Going On With James.

1. Seattle's cool, but it's really, really far away.

I love Seattle. I do sometimes feel like I'm in southern Alaska. It doesn't help in the winter when it rains all day and gets pitch dark at 5 p.m. There are, fortunately, tons of things to offset that:

- Rose's Chocolate Treasures in Pike Place Market
- Cinerama (good for action movies)
- My balcony

2. Football season was up and down.
It was my first year with the new association. I got to work at referee more than I had any prior year, which was great.

Funniest moment of the year: I was refereeing a freshman game at Soundview Park in Ballard. After a kickoff, I was getting ready to whistle the ready for play, but out of the side of my eye I noticed something running around on the field... it was someone's dog! The puppy ran toward the end zone carrying the kicking tee, where it stopped to play with its new toy, as one of the players exclaimed, "That's my kicking tee!"

(There's no rule that says a dog can't play football... or a giraffe...)

3. Wikipedia has replaced Casey Kasem in my life
Now, anytime I need to find out about a band or a song, I hit Wikipedia.
"Monkey Gone To Heaven" by the Pixies
"B.Y.O.B." by System of a Down
The Cheeky Girls

4. I worked on an unpopular piece of software.
My team develops the anti-piracy aspects of Windows; I specifically worked on the new volume activation. Volume licensing in the past allowed users to bypass activation, which was one of the big piracy weak points, but although we tried to make it as painless as possible, this new system will require companies' technical pros to do more work to get Windows installed. We'll see how it goes.

5. What the hell am I going to do now?
The year's winding down, football is over, it's holiday time, and I can't wait to take it easy for a few weeks. And, then, after that, try to figure out how the hell to raise a kid. In the meantime, I'll try to squeeze in some more writing. No promises, though. (We're also getting hit with more comment spam than usual, so if comments get closed, that's probably why.)

Go Seahawks.

I'm trying to convince her that 30 isn't so bad. It's only sort-of working.

I'm a director now.

Yep, months of underpaid part-time insurance-free work as a "technical director," or "switcher" as we say in the biz, has officially paid off. A few months ago, co-worker Mike, the weekend director, got a job in Seattle; now his replacement, co-named Andrew, is moving to Nashville to work as a grip on Spike TV's "Power Block," which I'm told is four shows about trucks, or something. And it should tell you something that working as a grip on the Power Block is paying co-Andrew much, much, much more than what he made in Eugene directing the weekend news.

I started out switching the morning shows, a stint that slowly depleted my savings and held the tantalizing danger that I might get injured or sick and deplete other peoples' savings as well. The worst part of switching the morning show was not that I had to be awake and alert from 4:30am to 7:30am, nor was it that I also had to be back in the afternoons from 4:00pm to 7:00pm to do audio and chyrons for the afternoon shows, nor was it the fact that I only got one day (Sunday) off per week, nor the fact that I often didn't get that day off either and received only regular pay and not overtime pay for extra work because I wasn't working 40 hours a week. It was more a combination of all those things. Also awful: you come home from work in the morning, you go to bed, wake up in the afternoon, and go straight back to work.

Luckily for my sanity, after about eight months Mike got the Seattle gig, which meant co-promotions for co-Andrew and myself. At last I was full time, with benefits and the ability to get overtime and everything. But I was still in a kind of limbo territory -- being a technical director for a long time doesn't look all that great on a resum?, I imagine. I mean, I'm sure you could get a fine job with that experience alone, but I'm also sure you could do a lot better if you could just drop that pesky "Technical" from the title. Co-Andrew, however, said he was in it for the long haul...

Until a scant two months later, when suddenly he found a job in his dream city, Nashville, doing his dream thing, which was a show about souping up trucks I guess. He's very excited. And now I get his old spot directing. It's a totally different job from what I was doing before, and requires an entirely different training process, which I've just started. (A technical director "switches" the show, pressing buttons that correspond to cameras and tape decks and the like to manipulate what shows up on your TV screen; the director tells the technical director exactly what to press and when, while simultaneously instructing the sound guy, the floor crew, and sometimes the anchor. It's mostly about timing.)

So that's the latest from me. More on my saga as it unfolds.

It's come to my attention that I've been slacking on the website. Well, I've been busy, okay? Actually I've been letting a lot of things slide that I was supposed to get to a while back...oops. Mental note: do those things.

Aaaanyway, I'm still alive, still in Eugene, still working for a local network affiliated television station. I'm a full time "technical director"...like a director, but -- choke -- less than. Actually that might all change soon. More on that as news comes in. By the end of this week I'll have put in almost 30 overtime hours, which, yes, is excessive. My paycheck still won't be as big as it was in Atlanta. Go figure.

Julia is going to Seattle for the summer to intern with the Seattle Opera and Seattle Symphony, which means I'll be alone with the cat. I'll be busy, though, as I intend to, for only the secondish time, prepare a whole volley of applications to film schools. This time someone will totally accept me, I swear. And, if they don't, it looks likely that by the time Julia finishes her graduate program at the University of Oregon I'll be able to get a higher-paying TV job almost anywhere in the country.

If you're wondering why Julia and I still haven't tied the knot, it's because I have no interest patronizing an institution that discriminates against homosexuals, even if I would stand to benefit in some vague social or economical way. If you think that's stupid, I'm okay with that. If you feel offended because you think I'm judging you for participating in the aforementioned institution, you've got me all wrong. And if you're wondering why Julia stays with me anyway, it's because I have perfect legs.

Well, that's all for now...gotta go technically direct the 11 o'clock news. Less...than... ::sniff::

But I'm also employed. This company had the intelligence and foresight to offer me a job. And/or, I tricked them into thinking I'm smart. Either way, I'll be working in Washington for another few weeks, and then we'll be moving to the other Washington. State, that is.

Once everything's finalized, my job title will be "Senior Developer," further emphasizing my oldness. (I also think that means I get cheap movie tickets now, so bonus.)

Everybody: thanks for all the moral support during the job search.

This blog thinks in Eastern Standard Time, because I made my previous post at 9:40pm last night. So only now, at 4:10am PST, can I wish my brother a Happy Birthday!!!

As James's tens digit reluctantly rolls over, I realize this year that the age difference between us has become insurmountably huge. It seems all he talks about these days are hair loss and his arthritis, whereas I try to steer our conversations towards video games and dessert. Will we ever be able to communicate again?

Don't blame me; I voted for Luthor. (Thanks to RM, who for some reason feels the need to encrypt his emails these days, so I'll be absolutely sure it's him sending me humorous links.)

To clarify a James statement, yes, I do indeed have a promotional notepad from the show Night Stalker, which probably failed because of Stuart Townsend's unsexy American accent. I got said notepad because I've been working at KEZI, the local ABC affiliate in Eugene (privately owned, as James points out, by Charleston Kezi of the Eugene Kezis).

I'm a "technical director", or in broadcast news parlance a "switcher." On the morning news, at approximately the buttcrack of dawn, I switch between cameras, video tape decks, chyrons, and still stores, determining what gets sent out live. A fellow Andrew at the station describes us as "D.J.s who don't get laid," and who don't have any say in what they put on the air, and whose primary audience is probably over forty.

In other news, I got rejected from USC film school again -- but only after being on the wait list, which is a step in the right direction. I plan to apply again for the fall 2007 semester.

And that's...the Andrew update.

Dateline -- The Pitt! Or... the 'Burgh! Whatever!

A study written by researchers Harold Wolman and Kimberly Furdell of George Washington University and Edward W. Hill of Cleveland State University looked at cities deemed to be distressed, including Pittsburgh, from 1980-2000. Researchers sought to evaluate the level of success of urban revitalization projects and the changes made from the 1980s to the 1990s.

In the study, researchers perceived that cities like Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Cleveland have successfully undergone revitalization since the 1980s.

It's like the old saying goes...

(P.S. Kimberly is defending her life today at 4 p.m. ET. Let's all send her good mental vibes.)

Reason 1: Arrested Development was cancelled today. Nobody watched it like I told you to. Taste the sad.

Reason 2: Microsoft doesn't want to hire me. Damn you Billy Gates!

Yes, I had an interview out there in Redmond, Wash. a couple weeks ago.

I knew it wasn't going to be easy. And, in the past, I've sometimes felt unprepared for the pop-quiz portion of software engineering interviews. This time, I was determined to be prepared.

Microsoft's interviews are notoriously difficult; they fly an army of people into Seattle every day, but make offers to only a small fraction of those people. A day of interviews at Microsoft is like running the gauntlet. They schedule you to talk to three or four different people, and if those people all like you enough, you eventually get passed on to the hiring manager... the big boss. (Come to think of it, it's kind of like a video game.)

Microsoft's philosophy is to look at as many people as possible, and try to find the ones who have the best potential, and they would much rather score someone as a false negative than a false positive. As a result, you can get weeded out in a hurry; if they send you home after only a couple interviews, that's a bad sign. So my mission was to do my best to stay alive and not get voted off the proverbial island. (Has Survivor been turned into a proverb yet?)

Before I left, I prepared myself as best I possibly could. I researched the coding questions I was most likely to be asked, and practiced them in C. I brushed up on C++ and object-oriented programming, and did my best to study up on testing procedures. I even picked up a copy of How Would You Move Mount Fuji?, which is full of famous logic questions (even though Microsoft has moved away from such questions).

I was nervous the day of the interview, as usual. This would be an even longer and arduous process than normal interviews, but it would also be a good test of how well I had prepared. One by one, I talked to members of the Office Business Application team, who were looking for a "Software Development Engineer in Test" (that's a diplomatic way of making "software tester" sound almost as cool as "software developer", even though it's clearly not).

My first interview was with "Altaf", who asked me a question I had prepared for: reverse a string (of words) in place. Mysteriously, I knew how to code it up quickly on the whiteboard. Later, when "Hamesh" asked me to eliminate the duplicate elements of an array, and "Brett" asked me to find missing element in an (n-1)-element array of distinct integers from 1 to n, I was again mysteriously able to come up with solutions (ahem... had some practice on those too). After answering some hypothetical questions from "Clodagh", I made it to the Big Boss... "Anu". I was excited about getting that far... I made it all the way to the end!

It felt like a miracle. Altaf, Hamesh, Brett, Clodagh and Anu. (Heh... "Brett.") I felt like I had set them up and knocked them down. Getting past the technical quizzes is the tough part; I can talk about myself in an interesting and engaging fashion for hours if I can just get past the damn tests.

Sadly, it wasn't meant to be. Getting turned down for a job is tough in any case, but this one really hurt because the degree of difficulty was so high, and I really thought I had nailed it. Microsoft told me they would "move quickly" on a decision, but wound up taking two weeks before giving me the bad news. Maybe that means I was close to landing it; I really have no idea why, in the end, they didn't want me. And that's the most frustrating thing of all; I'd really like to know whether I did some to screw it up in the end, or if there were just other candidates who were better qualified.

Not that it's all bad that I won't be working there. The primary benefits were obvious; they would cover relocation, and I would gain experience in Windows programming and testing, two areas where I really haven't had much experience at all (which also could have been a factor). There were some major red flags going up as I researched employment at Microsoft. Most troubling is the stack-ranking system they have for employee reviews; they grade on a curve, which means somebody always has to get the shaft (and it's usually the new guy). It makes for a less-than-comfortable work environment. Plus, lately, a lot of their smartest employees have jumped ship, worried that the software behemoth is focusing too much of "defense" (i.e. protecting its monopolies) and not enough on "offense" (i.e. innovation and promoting new ideas). Not that I think I would have been one of their smartest people if they had hired me, but I still found it interesting that former long-time employees feel like Microsoft's best (and most interesting) days are behind it.

So anyway, I'm disappointed that it's back to the drawing board on the job search. That's the other reason getting an offer would have rocked... because looking for a job SUPER-SUCKS. It's especially hard in my field, because it's not enough that you have x years of experience or attended y university... you're expected to prove yourself anew to each potential employer. Over the past several weeks I've worked on practice problems, programming quizzes, sample projects, and even an I.Q. test (really!) to prove my worth to various hiring managers. I've done nearly as much coding over the past month as I did all year while having a programming job (sadly, they didn't really give me a whole lot of work to do).

For example: this was a project I did while applying for this job. They said it should take two-three hours; it took me about 10 hours to get it right. After sending it to them, they almost immediately rejected me. Here's another piece of code I worked on for another company's programming test; it was so difficult I wasn't even able to finish in time. This is annoying, not only because it reinforces my low self-esteem, but because doing this work eats up a lot of time, and it's just demoralizing when all that work turns out to have been fruitless. My latest opus is this tic-tac-toe program, which I can only hope will impress the company I wrote it for: "Tic Tac Toe Industries." Hopefully they'll be impressed that my computer player always tries to select the center square first; Andrew calls that the "James gambit."

(OK, that last part was a lie; he actually called it the "Picard manuever." Damn you, Jean-Luc! Always outshining me!)

At any rate, it was great hanging out with Andrew, and it was great being in Seattle. It really reiterated to me how much I love it there... I would love, love, love to move there. Here's hoping somebody will be willing to hire me long-distance.

So, if you didn't already know, I'm living in Eugene, Oregon, with my girlfriend and cat. Julia (the girlfriend) will be attending the University of Oregon's arts administration graduate program; Asta (the cat) will be posing cutely on various surfaces; and I (me) will be moping around until I become employed again.

(As I type, Asta, posing cutely on Julia's new desk, knocks over a wireless internet card with his paw. That would be his "April" pose.)

Yes, I had a super-sweet job in Atlanta and saved up all kinds of money, but then I spent it all on a class in 16mm filmmaking at USC. It would be nice to not worry about being unemployed for the next six months or so, but on the other hand that class was very rewarding. Matt B. often reminds me of a day when he called me -- I had been up for something like forty hours, and was just frantically putting together my things so I could go out and help a classmate on a shoot -- and I told him I'd love to talk, but I was too busy, an unprecendented statement from me. What amazed me was how rewarding the extra work was, and how instantly gratifying. Even doing menial tasks on a film shoot was energetic and fun and creative. I loved it.

That being said, I'm applying for two different kinds of job in Eugene: the same-as-before type, like graphic design or database administration, which would keep me in large televisions; and the film/video production type, which would keep me super poor but probably a lot happier.

Speaking of large televisions, yes, the one I had for the last several years is now in the hands of some young rich Emory undergrad co-ed. ("Co-ed," as porn has taught me, means "girl.") We've gone from four televisions in a variety of sizes back down to the normal-size one I've had since 1998. (And, pending a birthday gift accruing about a month of interest now, I still don't have a computer monitor. I'm using Julia's. Oh sure, she'll buy one for herself...)

So that's where I am: comparatively teensy little Eugene, Oregon, jobless and now with two pieces of furniture. If you live in Eugene and wish to hire a Furdell, now's your big chance.

Apparently we've all been busy.

I just set up cable internet in our new place. As soon as I get a desk and monitor, expect me to moan constantly about how I don't have a job. Just give me a few minutes...

Well, if you're still checking this site after about a month of inactivity, you're probably a close friend or relative, and you already know that yesterday was James and Kimberly's 5th anniversary. As per my brilliant plan, only at the end of their dinner last night did they discover that the whole thing was paid for by me. Hah! Wish I could've seen that.

I'm finally done with my summer class in 16mm filmmaking, which was really great. I don't think I've ever worked so hard, and now I have a 7-minute film to show for it. It's not perfect or anything -- I only had about 24 hours to complete the editing and sound design, and the sound definitely needs more work -- but it's the start of something good.

Now I have a few hours to clean up, pack, reassemble the things I've dismantled, and get my ass to Mars.

Oh, and special thanks to Robert Morrison, who informs us that the film Chilly Dogs, apparently a Snow Dogs rip-off, includes a song by Smashmouth. That makes 18 Smashmouth movies and only 11 robot dance movies! Come on, people, I know there's more movies with robot dancing in them than this.

My brotha.

Kickin' it West Coast.

Today was pretty rough. I had to finish my test roll, which is where you run around frantically setting up and shooting subjects in various stages of light and shadow, distance, movement, etc. I was supposed to do this with a classmate, but he disappeared without a trace and became unreachable by cell phone. With an 8:30pm deadline, I scrounged up who and what I could to do the final 3 shots, and got the film in with more than an hour to spare. Phew.

Unfortunately I failed to get around to the location scouting and script revision I had planned to do (ah, lofty goals). But I did one other thing I was totally proud of...

Yes, it's been a while. As you may know, I made a long drive from Atlanta to Las Angeles in order to participate in a summer course on 16mm filmmaking.

This class is pretty intense. Calendars tell me we're in week 2, but it feels like a lot of time has passed, because every day is packed. Hours of work has gone into learning how to use a real-live film-using movie camera (I've only ever used boring old mini-DV tapes). You have to pay close attention to things like light density and f-stops and depths of field and things I've never given much thought to.

Equally time-consuming is the script-writing process, which I think is almost over for me. My script is actually based on one of law-student-friend Kurt's offhand remarks, so Kurt, if you're reading this, thanks for making off-hand remarks, and I promise to share some portion of the $0 projected earnings.

Now I'm in the daunting process of auditions, another thing I've never done. In fact I've never worked with professional actors before. It turns out finding them is surprisingly easy, thanks to the interweb. I posted a casting call, and in a moment I'm going to sift through about 100 resum?s of actors who are, bafflinging, willing to work for free and for some idiot who doesn't know what the hell he's doing. Some of these actors have been in TV shows or movies that I've watched. So totally weird.

So anyway, that's where I am right now. This weekend I'll do some test shooting, just to make sure I actually do know how to operate a camera. I'll cast my movie (only two characters, thankfully). I'll do some rewrites. Then next week the real work begins.

That's right, I'm driving to L.A. to take a class in 16mm filmmaking. Today I travelled around 730 miles and made it into Albequerquerque, where I'm staying at a Days Inn -- super-swanky compared to last night's Motel 6. Seriously. For $10 more, I get a king-sized bed and wireless internet, and complimentary shampoo!

Also, Albequerquerque is a lot cooler than Van Buren, Arkansas, home of the Motel 6. Actually New Mexico is pretty cool in general, even though it touches Texas (ewww!).

Speaking of America's Rectum, today I drove through the top, square-shaped part. Here's a recap of the three things I got pulled over for the last time I drove through Texas:

• Going 5 mph over the speed limit (no, really);
• Driving in the left lane, but not passing anybody -- because to pass them, I would have had to go more than 5 mph over the speed limit; and best of all,
• after driving from Atlanta to Montana and back again, apparently my license plate was dirty. And apparently you can get pulled over for that.

The guy only gave me a warning, but just for pulling me over, he will forever be remembered by me as...well, let's just say a Texan.

This time I resolved to treat all of Texas as a "work zone," which pained me because driving slower through Texas means spending more time in Texas. As it turns out, most of Texas is a work zone. Almost as soon as I got into the state, a sign read: "Work Zone, Next 68 Miles," and in that entire expanse I didn't see a single piece of equipment or worker. I hate Texas so much.

In an effort to add to Texas's smog without improving its economy, I drove through the entire expanse without stopping once. I considered stopping to go to the bathroom, since that would mean leaving waste, but that would have meant another couple of minutes in Texas. And sure enough, as soon as I got to New Mexico, everything was nicer and better and prettier.

So that's my story. What are you going to do about it, Texas? You can't get me over here in New Mexico! HAH!! Can't quite reach me now, huh, Texas?!?!?

Here.

Looks like Robin Furdell won't be giving me those parachuting lessons after all...and it's not because I assumed he was a woman.

• Furdell.com laments the divorce of Jonathan and Janice Furdell, presumably under the pressure of being known by friends as "Jon and Jan," which is just too cute.
• If I didn't attack her online, maybe I could convince Robin Furdell to give me free parachute lessons. But I...can't...help myself!!! Hey, Robin! Nice web presence! Too bad you suck!!!
• Rusty Furdell's hard-to-find food-related blog stopped updating on November 19, which just happened to be National Carbonated Beverage with Caffeine Day. Coincidence? No! Well, probably. More insultingly, some guy called Rusty's site "a great example of a weblog" back in September. That week, Furdell.com unveiled James's treatise on Unskinny Bop. You can not ignore us forever, Internet.
• Google searching is made difficult by our mother's insistence on writing books all the time. Mom, stop writing books. I even have to wade through pages that use your works as examples of how the Dewey Decimal System works, of all things. And I'm pretty sure you're staunchly anti-Dewey.

We at furdell.com hear your cries. "Where's Kimberly?!" you ask frantically. "She never calls, she never writes..."

Well, she's actually doing something important, unlike the rest of us.

The study ? "Evaluating the Success of Urban Success Stories: Is Reputation a Guide to Best Practice?" ? examined whether opinion matched reality about revitalization efforts in 48 distressed U.S. cities between 1990 and 2000.

[...]

The study, which updated a similar one done 10 years ago, was conducted by Wolman and Kimberly Furdell of George Washington University and Edward W. Hill of Cleveland State University. It was released last month in the Housing Policy Debate, a Fannie Mae journal.

The angle for this particular article: experts' low opinions about Rochester's level of economic distress are, well, accurate.

This has been Furdell news... ON THE MARCH!

(Buy Snacky Smores.)

Happy birthday to my brother, who today celebrates his one zillionth birthday. Whereas just yesterday I was able to have a conversation with him, now it seems like our vast age difference has caused a huge gulf between us. Whereas I retain my youth and all the good looks that go with it, James saves coupons and smells the medicine he takes from boxes that remind him what day of the week it is. But we love him just the same!

When Kimberly visited the ATL recently, she logged onto Amazon.com and forgot to log out. I was too lazy to do anything about it until I actually had to buy something, quite a while later.

In retrospect, I should have acted sooner. Or maybe she really did put the Rocky anthology in her wish list. I guess there's no way to know for sure.

Yup, that's what Kimberly wants all right -- Sylvester Stallone, and Alanis Morisette. Makes perfect sense.

Question 2: Getting a raise, Dad?

Dateline: my mom!

?Local politicians talk with even more platitudes and generalizations than the national ones,? said Elizabeth Furdell of Jacksonville, Fla. ?I assume most running for office will tout themselves as pro-family, anti-crime, pro-education. I want to know more about how candidates stand on development, traffic, schools, sewers, etc. I don?t care if they?re religious or not, only that they have some clue about these real concerns ordinary people face.?

Ahh, mom. Always so refreshingly eloquent. What's she doing in the Spokane (Wa.) Spokesman-Review? No idea.

DATELINE! Somewhere in southwestern Florida.

? April Etzold will coach the North Fort Myers Red Knights, who will be led by senior captain Eselina Sepulveda and junior co-captain Lauren Brod. Juniors Kayla Campisi, Taryn Glynn, Gina Dibagno and Misty Furdell also will contribute.

Way to go, Misty!

I have no idea who you are, but presumably you are related to me. Sooo... way to... contribute. With the swimming.

Dear Loser Internet-Surfer,

We Furdells are out gambling, drinking, and being debaucherous in America's most over-advertised tourist destination. Please feel free to try one of our links, or perhaps peruse our archives in the interim. May I recommend "6 Panel Movies." Always a joy.

Yours,
Your mother.

Kimberly and I have been married four years now. Actually, four years plus one day. Rawk. Andrew: thanks for the present.

Don't try to act like you don't know where he's been, either.

He's in the club all the time.

After seemingly years of anticipation, Kimberly's special day is here.

I got her a new bike.

Leave birthday greetings here.

Presenting the story of James and Kimberly's Awesome European Vacation, Featuring London and Paris. It may indeed be the Best Vacation Ever; the Good Vacation Luck Gods were smiling upon us the entire time, as well they should.

FYI, the details are long and boring and of little or no appeal to the general public. This is primarily a service to our friends, so that we don't have to bore them in person with endless details about what we did (we can bore them on the Internet instead). Don't click on the jump if you're not interested in the gory details.

Brain not yet working. We did so much in two weeks in England and France that it's hard to wrap my head around all of it right now. But everything went perfectly, and we even got really lucky on a few occasions. Details some time in the future when brain works again.

I was going to do this really heavy rant about naked Iraqi sex torture, but instead, since this weekend we're in the spirit of giving non-Furdells a voice, I shall instead copy-and-paste the work of my friend Mark.

Long-time readers who recall my sucky previous blog will remember Mark as the guy who has hilarious out-of-office automatic email responses. Here is another of those. Enjoy.

Because our friends are also hilarious, like us they deserve to have a voice. Eric Lipman, in fact, demanded it, and his late comments on Andrew's Jew Watch post are certainly worth repeating:

Alright boys (& kfree) - you're my web-savvy friends, so here's my idea; make it so:

Hijack the JewWatch domain name or IP address or whatever thingy you have to, and link it to . . . me. I'll get one of those webcams and Krazy Glue it to my head, leave it on 24/7, and all the anti-semites [please read that word as though spoken with the Polish immigrant accent of my late Great Aunt (in both senses of the term) Taube, affectionately known simply as "The T": ANti-semITES; in the interest of full disclosure, she was occasionally known to refer to Jesse Jackson as "that blek bestahd,"] can see how the chosen people really live, and that we're not so evil.

Imagine all they'd learn.

For example, they'd get to see me sit behind my desk, using my law degree to fight not-so-passionately to defend the interests of big corporations (often run by non-jews) accused of screwing the little guy.

They'd get to see me eat a bagel and bacon together - an image that screams religious and ethnic harmony.

They'd get to see me . . . well, that's pretty much what I do - eat and work. If nothing else, maybe I could bore the hate out of them.

Just a thought, nay, a little something extra.

(Ahh, a Lagniappe shout-out, no less.)

Meanwhile, the stuffed toy bear of dear Furdell friend John Chan has somehow found his way into the blogosphere. He's a playa and his name is Pup. And he is, predictably, funky.

You will listen to me. I am Pup. Pup is the voice in the back of your head.

Yes, I will speak in third person about myself. So what? That's cool yo.

Here I will Rant on and on because all I do is sit in the apt. all day watching my Bonzi tree grow.

Today's post was brought to you by the number P.

Watch out, playas. Pup's coming to steal your ladies.

Not realizing I had a niche audience, I haven't bothered to post an explanation of this site's changes.

Until now.

You see, my old website, though wonderful in every way conceivable, had its flaws. Drawing stuff was time consuming; I ran out of good ideas a long time ago; and I stopped caring. Plus, I swear only about 3 people were reading it anyway. For real.

In this site's new, much-better format, I get to occasionally post ideas without having to come up with visuals that often have nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Furthermore, there's two other contributors, which makes my total lack of inspiration and originality much less crippling.

Who are these contributors, you ask? Well, there's me. You knew that. Right. Then there's my brother James. Last but blondest is Kimberly, wife of James, making her weblog debut.

Sure, there are other Furdells out there, but we're the main three. That's why Google proclaims us Number One. Put that in your pipe, Phyllis!!! SIT IN YOUR TOWER!!!

For those of you who found my illustrated blog project a refreshing change from the humdrum text-heavy blogosphere: SCREW YOU!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! That's what you get for supporting me, losers.