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Life

Angry Art, Life
Delving deep into my doodles
04.21.11 | Permalink | Comment?

I make a lot of little notes to remind myself about important things (as I’m sure most of us do), and I usually also add some sort of doodle. I was cleaning my desk and found a bunch of these on random bits of paper. I am no psychoanalyst, but I’d say there is a theme to my doodles. It would appear I mostly enjoy drawing robots relaxing and smoking fat blunts. I think this is indicative of my idea of happiness. The thought of having no worries, and being able to just relax while the sun shines on my belly.

You know how people say “it’s the little things…”, well I agree. And for me, one of the “little things” I love is having a peaceful moment to relax and stare off while I exhale rings of smoke. I play a game that I’ve played since the day I learned how to create “smoke-o’s”, where I try to shoot an “O” through another “O”. I do this because it’s fun and calming. I can’t remember what I was doing while I drew the image above, but I’m guessing I was watching a progress bar from the corner of my eye, while backing up work at around 4:00am (or maybe 4:20) and bouncing smoke-o’s off my monitors.

I’d like to point out that if you went back to my kindergarten archives (if such a thing exists) you’d notice another pattern in my drawings; I always add a bird(s) and sun (ironically) wearing sunglasses.

Aside from robots, I have a few other characters I draw. If it’s a side profile you get either the bearded stoner above, or a sort of Elvis-nerd hybrid that somewhat resembles Fido-dido. On the rare occasion the two have been combined, but who has the time anymore, I’m 30.

Pay no attention to my terrible handwriting. Yes, I always write in all caps. And yes, I realize I would be first to stone someone for WRITING LIKE THIS ON FACEBOOK, OR ANYWHERE ELSE FOR THAT MATTER. I’m allowed however because I took one college drafting class.

My other character is the front view. This character is ALWAYS Asian. Up until recently there would be some slightly racist, exaggerated features (45° to 60° eyes, large buck teeth, and an almost pig-like nose… sorry Asians…). The only thing I didn’t rework in this recent version is the classic rice hat. That hat was perfected while my brother and I spent hours at my grandmother’s kitchen table drawing Asians and Pirates, and Asian Pirates all over the people in the stacks of newspapers my gram had. That’s the same place I later developed the cartoon joint – classic!

Hope you enjoyed this look inside the artist that is this cobra.
Life
Cobras hate Carpet
04.21.11 | Permalink | Comment?

Holly recently got her income tax return, so she decided to redo the floors in the boys rooms. Originally she was considering re-carpeting them, but I suggested laminate would be cheap, look nice, and be easier to keep clean. She agreed and proceeded to do as Holly does – act fast. She pulled a Home Depot flier out of the newspaper and found an upcoming sale. We then went to look at it before the sale and discovered she liked the colour of another product better. She decided to buy 3 area rugs and 13 boxes of laminate planks once I convinced her I’d find a way to get it all in here Buick (had we brought The Sword there would have been no question – no one ever questions The Sword!). It took a few minutes, and my ride home was incredibly uncomfortable, but I did it.

The next day, Holly and I started tearing up Roan’s carpet around 9am. By 12:30 we were finished everything but his closet, and the transition strip in his doorway. That evening Holly went out and my brother came by to help me with Gage’s room. It took us a little less time than Roan’s room, which is strange since we took plenty of smoke breaks and ate a bunch of cereal. We also left his closet, and the transition at the doorway to be dealt with later. I finished the closet in Roan’s room and both transitions on Tuesday. This afternoon I plan to finish Gage’s closet so I can clean up all the tools, although that might prove pointless since I think Holly intends to start redoing her front railing as soon as possible.

I’m very pleased with how the floors look, and love the fact that I managed to complete the job without any major issues, set backs, or swearing outbursts. Hopefully the railing will have similar results.
Life, Love
In Memory of Kit (Christopher) Rousseau
04.19.11 | Permalink | Comment?

December 20, 1949 – April 9, 2011

Ten days ago the world lost one of its greatest creations – a loving, devoted father who was a perfect example of how amazing some humans can be. I only knew Kit a short time, but I doubt that even if I’d known him since birth I could adequately express through words alone the kind of man he was, or the impact he made on so many of his loved ones.

Please take a few minutes and read this, and this.

Although losing him is a tragedy, I can’t begin to explain the beauty I found in seeing his entire massive family rush to his side when things looked bleak. So many people with so much love. I made him a promise when we said our goodbyes, and I intend to stay true to it.
Book stuff, Fuck Microsoft, Life
Cobra computer capacitor caput
04.04.11 | Permalink | Comment?

Last Friday I was sitting at my desk, looking up directions to a friend’s house so I could meet my brother, who was giving his snake (and the last of my tanks) to my long time friend who first got me interested in reptiles, when I heard a loud pop. I asked Holly if she had made the noise, she said she didn’t hear it, but it was possibly her doing something (I forget what now). I thought it came from my computer, but everything seemed to be just fine, so I left. When I returned home half an hour later, I came upstairs and saw my machine attempting to post. I had left it idle, so I assumed the power had gone out, or Holly had used it and it crashed. She said she hadn’t touched it but noticed it started beeping a few minutes earlier. I tried not to panic, since this machine has acted weird like this in the past, and I had definitely saved before I left.

I did however have a hard time getting over the fact that I was mere hours away from completing the layout of the post and beam, as well as the bents. I couldn’t help but think that if I’d just kept working I would be done, and none of this would even bother me. Now I have to figure out what is the problem? did I lose data and subsequently my paycheque? how much will replacement parts cost – and can I afford said parts without the paycheque I can’t confirm I have earned over the last week? All these things were eating at me, as well as the stupid questions I can’t avoid asking myself – if I hadn’t have gone to meet my brother and friend would this have happened? if I woke up earlier or stayed up later the night before, could I have avoided feeling like I fucked up once again?

Until I can figure out what went wrong, I can only assume it was a million things I did (or didn’t do). Unfortunately I exhausted all my troubleshooting skills by Sunday morning, when something much more important arose, before I had a chance to call in the big guns (Jon and my dad). Jon was the first person I called when things went bad. I got the machine from him when I was in desperate need of something that was decent enough to work on. He was generous enough to slap together a bunch of random bits he had lying around and set me up with something better than I ever imagined. Unfortunately he’s an hour and a bit away. Luckily for me, I have the man who taught me a lot of what I know about computers – my dad. He gave me support over the phone, but there is only so much one can do to solve a problem they can’t see. I was able to eventually get an older machine of mine working and at least confirm that none of my data had been lost. I could now submit my hours, and did so as soon as possible. I got my machine to my dad a day later, and that evening he found the blown capacitor in the photo above (the cylindrical thing with the shiny top on the left). This explains the noise I heard, and confirms that there was nothing I could have done to prevent this happening when it did.

My dad had an extra motherboard that would work as well as the one I just killed (minus the dual video card SLI bridge), which he had intended on using to upgrade his own machine. Instead, he generously donated it to the “Incredibly Hurting, Somewhat Disappointing Son Fund”, and I am now back up and running with the book a few hours away from completion. In the end, the worst part of the computer bullshit is the unnecessary emotional stress I put myself and those around me through. It also didn’t help that James decided to give me a guilt trip about meeting deadlines again, which in reality is still all his fault, but whatever. I have bitched enough about that in the past.

I’m glad I have such kind, generous friends and family to help me when I need it. I’m even more glad that I can stop worrying about my computer and focus on helping the people who need it most right now. I can’t expect amazing people to be there for me if I’m not there for them, which makes me wonder how I got such amazing people looking out for me in the first place. I suppose that answer is less important than making sure they stick around though.
Life
BFFBDay
03.22.11 | Permalink | Comment?

Sunday was my brother’s birthday. For those who don’t know, he’s three years older than me, an inch or two shorter, and a lot more athletic. He’s also my best friend.

When we were kids he was a typical big brother. He would: do mean things to me; play mean tricks on me; force me to do things that were dangerous or I didn’t want to do, before he would consider letting me play with him or his stuff; throw a fit anytime I was anywhere near his room or his stuff (even though I would always let him in my room, and didn’t really care about my stuff); break my bones (see next paragraph for more info). Despite all that, I still (being the younger brother) thought he was cool, and just wanted to hang out with him.

One evening when I was five years old, I was sitting with my brother on the highest part of our back deck (which was in the process of being expanded to surround the above ground pool my dad had recently installed), when he decided he would be able to jump off and not get hurt. I said it was too high, and we would get hurt for sure. He jumped. Two minutes later he was back sitting next to me, telling me how big of a chicken I was for not jumping, when he just proved it was safe. I figured I was too small and I would die, so I refused. Two seconds later I was on the ground screaming at my brother, telling him how much I hated him. My mother, who had been inside (probably enjoying some much needed, rarely available quiet time), heard me shouting and came to tell me to stop. When she saw me laying on the ground she changed her tone from angry mum to somewhat panicked mum. Although my leg was quite badly broken, I had failed to notice the pain because I was so angry at my brother, who had given up trying to convince me to jump and just pushed me off the edge. It wasn’t until I saw the look of horror on my mum’s face that the gravity of the situation set in. An hour later I had a cast from my toes to just past my knee, and got to spend the next six weeks of summer in a wheelchair. Over the next few years we fought constantly.

By the time he started high school, we out right hated each other. He didn’t want anything to do with me, and I had given up all hope on him liking me. He was much bigger than I was then, and would regularly beat the crap out of me or threaten me with a beating if I didn’t let him have his way. By the time I started high school, I was almost the same height as him, but heavier (like I said, he’s more athletic… I’m more fat). One afternoon he tried to give me a beating because I ate a slice of pizza he wanted (I hadn’t done it to piss him off, I had one of two slices, and saved the other for him) , and I decided to throw a punch. It was a lucky shot, landing right in his eye and knocking him on his ass. That was one of the last times we physically fought with each other.

After that it became really weird. My brother was a good kid. He didn’t smoke, didn’t do drugs, got good grades, and tried hard at everything. I liked doing things I wasn’t supposed to, as long as I thought I wouldn’t die or go to jail, partying, and slacking off. I remember thinking that my brother was going to be like my dad – a hard working family man, with a career, and I would most likely never see 30. My brother was aware of my bad habits, and would regularly threaten me with using that info to blackmail me. I tried to avoid him for the most part since neither him nor my parents would have approved of most of the things I was doing, and I was terrified (as I am to this day) of breaking my mum and dads heart. It wasn’t until my brother and his friends started partying regularly that he and I began to get along.

To be more honest, it wasn’t until we started smoking pot together that we could finally tolerate each other. It started with my brother asking me to get some for his friends, then evolved into us regularly sitting around laughing together and having deep conversations about what each of us was doing these days. It wasn’t like we didn’t live together at the time, but we just didn’t talk to each other at all. Neither one of us really knew what the other was like.

Now we are closer than I ever imagined we would be, and I’m glad. I regret that we were enemies for so many years, but I fully understand how it is with older/younger siblings sometimes now. And I’m sure as far as younger siblings go, I was probably about as awful as they come. I am proud he’s my brother, and I still look up to him. He’s a great person, and I love being around him (even though he has tried to kill me).

Happy Birthday X!
Life
Cobra conveyance certified
03.09.11 | Permalink | Comment?

About a month ago, Holly and I went to Windsor to party with her family, as well as pick up the car we bought from her grandmother. As soon as we got in the car we noticed something was wrong with the tires. The car was shaking tremendously at low speeds, but seemed to get smoother the faster we traveled. On the drive home the rear passenger side tire blew and Holly’s dad was forced to put the doughnut on (Holly’s parents drove the new car home, while we drove home in her work vehicle). Although the car drove a lot smoother with the doughnut on, it was now only capable of a top speed of 80km/h.

A few days after we got the car home I managed to locate a full set of used tires in Fort Erie. Two hours and two-hundred fifty dollars later, the car drives like a dream. Although it’s fourteen years old, there is less than 100 000km on it! That’s the ideal used vehicle – one bought by a 75 year old women who only uses it for groceries and church. The inside of the trunk looks like it came off the factory floor yesterday. The back seat looks like it’s been sat in maybe twice. There is zero rust that I can see. The only things in rough shape are a few of the interior trims; broken trunk release (neither the car or key-chain buttons do anything); multiple scratches all over the front driver side; and apparently the brake lines.

Holly’s grandmother was kind enough to get the emissions test done for us, so all we had to do was get it certified. Holly took it with her to work yesterday and dropped it off. It passed, but there were a few concerns from the mechanic. As mentioned above, the brake lines are in rough shape and so they will have to be replaced (preferably soon). So far I’ve used the car once for something that wasn’t the car itself. That was helping the Dude move some desks the other day.

I’m glad we got it – it was a deal!, but so far it’s just a driveway decoration. One day soon however, you might be seeing a cobra in your rear-view mirror, and I tend to imagine mimicking this video when behind the wheel. Watch out…
Book stuff, Life
Book update
03.04.11 | Permalink | Comment?

In the last week or so, James has changed his mind a half dozen times with regard to the introduction and opening paragraphs of the book(s). Aside from that, everything has been going fairly smoothly. I’ve had to redo every single image (some more than once), label everything twice, and fix a million little typos/edits along the way. I really wish I had a Mac so I could figure out how to access the character map for James. I spend probably about 4 hours in total (per book) just finding and switching every instance where there is a fraction or where he has written something like: 45-degree instead of 45° (which is pretty fucking frequent when you’re talking about a book on layout intensive construction methods). It would save me a lot of headache if he could just figure it out, but there is no chance. Until I show him exactly how to do it there is no chance he will do anything to figure it out.

I’m getting incredibly fast at this whole book layout thing. At first I hated it because it seemed so intimidating and like it would take forever. Now I realize there is nothing intimidating about it, nor does it take me that long, and I just hate it because I’m sick of looking at it, doing it over and over and over again. Soon it should be done though. Done for good.

I’m currently about two thirds of the way done the entire project. I need to do a final table of contents, as well as add the Bents appendix. That still has never been done. I have a ton of the images done, but a large majority of them are fucked up drawings some engineer gave James years ago. James doesn’t understand them, nor do I. The guy who drew them is dead, and now I have to figure it all out.
Angry Art, Life, Sketchup
This shirt could save both our lives
02.28.11 | Permalink | Comment?

My brother has been telling me for a long time to submit some of my doodles to threadless.com and see what happens. If you’re not familiar with the site, it’s a place where users submit t-shirt designs which are then voted on by the community. If your design gets enough votes you get some money and the community gets the ability to purchase your design. It’s a pretty cool idea; if it works. It was also sort of a pain in the ass though.

I have to wait a day or two for my design to be approved. Once that happens I have 7 days to get some votes. However, if there is a low amount of votes in the first 24 hours, my design will get pulled. So I’m posting here (and everywhere else I can think of) and hoping people will help me out even if they hate my design. I know it’s a pain in the ass to go join a site and then fill out a poll, but it would keep me from bitching about money all the time both here and in ‘real life’. I’m sure everyone else is just as tired of it as I am. Let’s work together to shut me up!

I wrote a little description to go along with it, but since it’s pending approval you can’t see it, and since I just smoked a joint (something I’ve been doing very little of recently) I can’t really remember it. Something like “Buy this shirt or robots will kill you when they become self aware.”, only more eloquent longer. I’ll post about this again once I get the email telling me I’ve been approved or not.

Remember to vote or robots will calculate your face off.
Life, Photos
Weekend breakdown – take two
02.16.11 | Permalink | Comment?
Yesterday I wrote a fairly lengthy blog entry about our weekend in Windsor, only to have it completely disappear for no reason at all when I tried to post it. It seems ever since my WordPress got updated it’s been acting strange on my laptop. It seems to work fine on my windows machine, so perhaps it’s just an issue with Linux. Either way I’m resorting to an unordered list of things that happened this weekend instead of rewriting the entire post again.
- Picked up Holly’s parents around 10:30am Saturday
- Arrived in Windsor at Holly’s grandmother’s house around 1:30pm
- Toured retirement home, ironed out insurance details with grandma
- Dropped Holly’s parents off at her uncle Brian’s house
- Dropped our stuff at Holly’s aunt Lana’s house
- Met her parents, uncle and brother at TBQ for dinner
- Ate hummus
- Went to Sportsman’s Club for party around 8pm
- Said hello and happy birthday to Holly’s aunt Michelle
- Gave her an awkward gift (a picture of my eyes, she asked for it…)
- Drank a bunch of beer
- Met a bunch of Holly’s family (Jesus, there’s hundreds of them!)
- Had some good conversations
- Listened to a band play 2 or 3 decent songs and a bunch of shit
- People watched
- Listened to Holly and her cousin talk catty
- Studied several species of animal mounted on the club walls
- Studied several dancing humans of varying age/weight/ability
- Drank more beer
- Found passed out dancing human (above) by fluke and saved his life
- Left party around 1:30am, went back to aunt Lana and uncle Tom’s
- Helped Tom carry leftover food into awesome garage around 1:45am
- Discovered I was allowed to smoke weed in awesome garage at 1:52am
- Smoke weed and have deep conversations in awesome garage until 5am
- Re-enter house and discover Holly’s missing
- Find her laying on bathroom floor
- Hold her hair
- Get water and mobile vomit receptacle (large bowl)
- Walk her back to bed
- Wake up at 1pm
- Drink coffee and listen to drama from the night before
- Leave for home around 2pm
- Arrive home around 5:30pm
- Received phone call around 6:00pm from Holly’s dad
- Learn tires on car we bought from grandma (which he is driving) suck
- New car arrives around 6:30pm (minus a tire)
- Drop Holly’s parents off around 6:35pm in sweet ’97 The Sword (Le Sabre) with a flat doughnut
Book stuff, Life, Roanisms
I just want to give up
01.19.11 | Permalink | Comment?

Yesterday was supposed to be the day to end my financial woes and cheer me up about life in general. Instead the day consisted of 3 hours on the phone with James (which I don’t get paid for) going over Bents corrections, 4000 phone calls to his secretary, 8ooo logins to my online banking, 12000 instances of me shouting ‘FUCK’ as loud as I can and slamming my fist against something I wished was a human head, and finally an angry phone call where I informed James I was seconds away from putting my fist through my computer and backups of everything I’ve done for him and washing my hands of the whole thing.

I’m so sick and tired of being treated like I am the reason this project has dragged on so long, while at the same time working my ass off and not getting paid. I went to school to learn to build houses because I WANT TO BUILD HOUSES. I only agreed to do the book for fear that I wouldn’t qualify as an ideal candidate for a timber frame company with basic schooling alone. I figured the experience of illustrating a book on the field I wish to be a part of was a great way to show the world I know what I am doing (when it comes to timber framing).

I am so depressed I just want to smash everything I own then curl up in the pile of destruction and wait for death to find me. The only thing that made me happy (although it also made me real sad) was coming home from grocery shopping with Holly (which I was supposed to pay for, fuck) to a handmade card from the Roanster.

The card came in a halloween themed pouch with ghosts on the front, along with a $5 bill. Upon seeing the $5 I got bummed right out. Both because a nine year old has more money than I do, and because I should be the one helping him, not the other way around. I gave the money back immediately and gave him a hug. I told him I loved the card, and although I really appreciated the money I couldn’t accept it. He hugged me back then went to bed.

This morning I woke up miserable (surprise!). If I don’t hear from James or his secretary today a good reason why my money isn’t in my account, then I’m giving up. I will delete everything I’ve done for him and he can start over with someone new who doesn’t have an issue with starving or wearing tattered clothes. Me, I’m done.